Perspective is everything
Linda Cavanaugh is Oklahoma's most honored broadcast journalist and one of my dearest friends.
Linda has received over 35 national awards in addition to 24 regional Emmys. In 1995, Linda went to Vietnam and became the first American journalist allowed in the Hanoi Hilton, a POW camp. On this week of Veterans Day, may this special devotional give honor to those who have served our country and continue to stand guard for all of us in the name of freedom. Here is Linda's story: Through the years, people come into our lives whose wisdom can guide us for a lifetime. All we have to do is listen.
Dan Glenn is one of those people.
I came to know Dan in the jungles of Vietnam. The former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW had agreed to allow photojournalist Tony Stizza and me to tell his story as part of a documentary about the war.
It was a story that began on Dec. 21, 1966.
On that day, Dan was a 26-year-old pilot in the cockpit of an A-4 when his plane was shot down over Vietnam. He parachuted out, landed in a rice patty and was quickly captured. Villagers stripped him to his shorts, beat him and turned him over to the North Vietnamese.
“They wired my hands behind me and put enough pressure to pull your shoulder blades together,” Dan remembers. “And they hung me from the rafters.”
Although he was trained to fight in the air, Dan's battle for survival would be on the ground.
As a captive, he was taken to the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” by the American POWs. It was here that U.S. prisoners were interrogated and tortured.
“All the movies tell you when the pain gets too great, you pass out. You don't pass out,” Dan says.
Sleep deprivation was a common tool to get the Americans to reveal information.
Dan, and other prisoners, were placed on stools, their hands tied behind them. As they'd start to doze off, they'd fall off the perches. The prison interrogators would beat them, return them to the stools until they fell off again and then beat them again. In Dan's case, one episode lasted for 10 days.
“My prayer was always, `God just help me get through this. Whatever it is. Help me to do what I'm supposed to do. And whatever you decide, that's what it'll be.'”
Never could he have imagined how long he would have to say that prayer.
“When I was first captured, I said to myself, `I hope I last an hour.' Then, it was `I hope I last until the end of the day.'
`I hope I last six days.' I never dreamed it would be six years.”
Much of what Dan learned during his captivity more than 50 years ago is surprisingly relevant to the challenges many face today. He learned to deal with seemingly endless hardship by breaking it down into manageable pieces. “If you don't have any idea when it will be over, you do it one day at a time.”
And, he never lost hope. “If you totally lose hope you're pretty much doomed.”
But, perhaps most importantly, Dan says he and other prisoners learned to draw strength from each other.
“We had nothing. But we had each other. And, we had a responsibility to take care of each other.”
They learned to
communicate through the thick walls of the prison by using their drinking cups to tap coded messages to one another.
The messages included information from outside the walls brought in by new prisoners. Messages of support. Messages of encouragement. They discovered strength as a group that they sometimes lacked as individuals. And, many credit that strength — forged by respect for one another — for their survival.
Dan was finally released in 1973, along with the hundreds of other American POWs held captive in Hanoi.
He made a new life for himself when he returned. He did so by bringing home the values that helped him survive his captivity. Perseverance. Determination. Courage.
But, he purposely left one emotion behind. Hatred.
“Some guys came back and they were filled with hate. And, they let it dominate their lives and they died with that hate. You choose whether or not you're going to let hate dominate you.”
What I'll always recall from our trip together is what Dan Glenn chooses to remember about his time as a prisoner of war. He focuses on gratitude for the friendships he made, the importance of supporting one another in difficult times and the necessity of hope.
Dan will celebrate his 81st birthday on Christmas Eve. When we visited recently, I asked him if he was ever angry about losing six years of his life.
“It's not six lost years,” he said. “In looking back, it was six formative years of my life.”
Perspective is everything.
“... we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” — Romans 5:3-4.