Captain Charlie Plumb was a farm kid from Kansas, he fantasized about airplanes. As a teen, he joined the United States Navy to live out that dream. On his 75th mission in North Viet Nam, just five days before the end of his tour, Plumb was shot down over Hanoi, taken prisoner, tortured, and spent the next 2,103 days as a Prisoner Of War. I had the opportunity to see him speak at Chapman last week and felt the need to share the experience:
Captain Charles Plumb
"Keep the Faith, Baby"
(My personal favorite Plumb story -- All about the importance of keeping a positive attitude)
Plumb recalled a day when he couldn't take a sock out of his mouth, "My sock. They had gagged me with it, shackled me and thrown me into a truck with two dozen other prisoners. We were scared. We didn't know where we were going or what was going to become of us. I realized that the only part of my body I could move was my big toe. Slowly, I tapped out, in code, "Keep the Faith, Baby" on the shoulder of another prisoners. Apparently he passed it on and somebody else passed it on and before I knew it I had been tapped "Keep the Faith, Baby" over 20 times.
Here's another truly inspiring story, an excerpt from his book, I'm No Hero: The Parachute Packer Story
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." -- Viktor Frankl
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