His eyes were scanning back and forth like a radar searching for its Target. I was lying on my stomach facing him and his comrades as they came toward me. It passed by me twice already once each Direction and failed to find me this time. They had shifted their position just enough so that this young 17 or 18 year old fella was coming right at my elevation on the side of this hill. My heart was beating so fast and so hard that I figured he'd probably feel the ground shake or hear. My heart beating you got about 10 to 15 feet from me and suddenly stopped just looking right at me and we stared at each other probably for 15 or 20 seconds. He looked almost as scared as I was. Then he raised the rifle into the air and started firing and yelling and within 30 seconds or so 20 or 25 Vietnamese were around me jumping and yelling and screaming rejoicing that they had captured an American pilot. It was noon, December 19 1971 but 16 years ago now. And I just been captured by the North Vietnamese. I just lost my freedom. That's something that doesn't happen to very many Americans. But in today's world, I believe it's something that can happen to anyone of us here in this Auditorium. I think the Iran hostage situation proved that the hijacking of the cruise ship the achille lauro prove that Aircraft or hijacked on a regular basis nowadays even busloads of children have been hijacked and held hostage for political reasons. I don't think it would shock the world if some terrorists came in this Auditorium tonight and held us hostage for political reasons be good publicity for them to hold maybe a hundred hundred and fifty people who are here remembering prisoners of War. And the anniversary of the signing of the peace agreements and Hold Us hostage would be good publicity for them. No one is immune to losing his or her Freedom even Americans or maybe I should say especially Americans in the world today. God has bless this nation and continues to bless this nation with freedom. He doesn't guarantee that we'll always have it. Maybe we won't always have it but he does bless us with it. Now at this time freedom is something that we should never take for granted. Still always strive to protect it because it is something that's very valuable to us freedom of speech press right to assemble the free exercise of religion. Like anything else? It's something that we really don't appreciate until we lose it. I lost it. I didn't even see an American flag for 16 months and then I was given my freedom back. Now believe because of that experience I enjoy it and appreciate it more than I ever did before. So tonight I just want to share with you a few of my experiences as a prisoner of war maybe just to give you a little idea of what some of these men are going through. I admit I did not have it. Nearly as bad as many of the men that were there from 56788 and a half years. If you leave tonight, thankful that you're an American. Thankful for the freedoms that we have in this country than I believe I will have fulfilled my goal this evening. Well, he took my gun 38 Smith & Wesson revolver. Empty the six rounds in the air by firing it. And then he started cutting my clothes off. Started cutting my jacket and my flight suit and whatever else I had on started cutting it off with knives. And before I lost an arm or a leg or something valuable that got them to stop and show them how a zipper worked. And this apparently amazed them. They were flabbergasted at a zipper. So they ended up stripping me down to my Fruit of the Looms. Tie my wrists and elbows together behind my back tied to ropes around my neck one stretched out front one out back. Now if we went through the jungle being led like a wild animal. We walked for about 2 hours. And for that two hours, I didn't really know whether they intended to keep me alive or kill me when Lee my back Cedar was captured about an hour and a half before this. All I heard was the shooting. I did not see what was going on. And so I didn't know if he was alive or if he was dead after we'd walk for about two hours. We came to small Fire camp. And this is where I saw I believe the first true military man there. The rest of the man and there were two or three women in the crowd as well enjoying me standing there in my underwear. They had they were like militia one might have had a helmet on the military helmet. Another one may have had the shirt on the uniform shirt. Someone else the pants. They all had the guns, of course is what they needed. And this was the first time I received any kind of a sign that they intended to keep me alive. One of the men at this little fire Camp offered me a small ball of rice to eat. I think about the only thing that would have made me happier at that time or relieve me as much would be an airplane ticket back to the States. I really felt like they wouldn't give me something to eat if they intended to shoot me. We walked a few more hours came to a dirt road. There was a truck there waiting for us was blindfolded put on the flat bed of the truck. Driven into the city of haiphong. We had bailed out about 5 miles to the north of haiphong. Was put on a helicopter and flown to the city of Hanoi and about 10 o'clock that night. I found myself sitting in a cell and the camp that had been nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. Beginning 16 months of captivity about 30 hours before this. I just bailed out when the aircraft much like this. This is the f4d Phantom. It's a good airplane is still being used today, even though there are some out to 15 in the 16 that can outperform it quite well. It is capable of speeds of two and a half times the speed of sound altitude 60,000 feet and could do about 1,600 miles per hour up around 50,000 feet so I can scoot along pretty well. Carries bombs shoots Rockets missiles both the heat-seeking and the radar missiles. Carries a gun that will fire a hundred rounds per second. It's pretty good weapon. yesterday I was safe and secure and confident in my for sitting in the cockpit if you've seen the movie Top Gun you kind of have an idea. What a fighter pilot is like how he is my wife will attest to this. They're generally very arrogant boastful very proud to have an ego to maintain of course sort of like a Muhammad Ali in a flight suit. Now, of course, I was never like that. What a fighter pilot never thinks about death or captivity or even defeat at anything and really that's a good attitude to have doing what he's supposed to do. He's too good in his own mind really for anything to happen to him, but sometimes things happen too humble. A fighter pilot like hanging from a tree while your parachute is Tangled Up in the branches dangling about 30 feet from the ground. Wondering how you're going to get down. now my F4 is in about a million pieces somewhere in North Vietnam. I'm sitting in a 15 by 15 foot cell alone. Wondering what's going to happen to me next. I wanted to tell. Candy my wife. and the rest of my family that I was okay. I didn't want them to worry about me. But they wouldn't know for about two more days that I was alive. I was only listed missing in action for three days and I'm thankful to God that she found out as soon as she did so she didn't have to worry so much. As you know, there are over 2,000 families in this country that are still wondering about the Fate. of their sons their husbands their fathers and others they still don't know 15 years after quote the war ended on paper. 1971 was a very difficult year for candy. One of her two brothers was killed in Vietnam just six months before I was captured. I think any poww will admit that it's really the families that suffer in a time like this because we know what we're going through. We know we're okay, but our families are wondering well now we've been married two years Candy's nine months pregnant at this point due any day to have our first child. Or separated by an ocean and a war and no way to communicate. President Johnson in October of 68 ordered the bombing halt over North Vietnam. We were not allowed to even fly over the north unless we're chasing enemy aircraft into the country, which is what we were doing which is to mig-21s up to the northern border. They went into red China we turned around at the border to head back as a result of the bombing halt in 68. There are no prisoners captured from November of 68 until December of 71, which is when we were captured little over three years. So when they got us they were very proud to have us. They plastered our pictures and newspapers and TV around the world. So the 21st of December two days after I was captured. Candy and the rest of my family knew that I was a prisoner of war. Two days after that our child was born first week of my captivity. Was involved mostly with intensive interrogation from about six o'clock in the morning until 10 or so at night. Different teams would come in just like it survival training. For those of you who went through that you'd get the the nice-guy routine it come in and and be nice to you and try and get information. They would leave and then black Bart would come in fellow with the black nehru jacket has scar from here down to here and one of these black racing caps on and just he looked me anyways. I had a distinct advantage. Over others and because I was a first lieutenant I'd just gone through pilot training six months in the F4 training in that shipped off to South East Asia and was on my ninth Mission. So I was a young squirt and I played on that. I'm just a dumb Lieutenant. I don't really know anything that you want to know and some friends of mine that are here tonight would probably attest to the fact that I didn't have to do a whole lot of acting to play the dumb Lieutenant role, but After nine days in solitary confinement. I was moved into the same cell with Lee my back Cedar and another f for navigator, that's me pilot in the cell with to Navigators, you know, and that's that's torture. But it was nice to be in a cell with other people just to talk was a we were allowed to take a bath for the first time in nine days save for the first time that didn't feel really good that first time. Dick had conned a deck of playing cards out of one of the guards and so we had some cards to play and so on I think loneliness is probably the greatest enemy that we had there. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in solitary confinement total probably of a month in my 16 months. Two nights later guard came in said gather up your things you're going to move. Well, we didn't have a whole lot of things to gather up didn't take long. We had two blankets. We had to prison pajama type uniform some of us had the maroon and grey Stripes others of us had sort of pastille gray or blue get a metal cup to drink from we had a little teapot we'd always water had to be boiled before we could drink it. Gary these things up. You also had a honey bucket. You know, what a honey bucket is don't you that's little bucket that you relieved yourself in and we moved to a camp called the zoo. This was nicknamed by the older prisoners. We had been there two weeks. Three of us were taken out of our self for about two hours when we came back. We realize that some men or somebody had been working in the courtyard in front of ourselves when the guard locked us up. We found piece of candy on the floor. Has wrapped up in a piece of paper when the guard left we opened it up and there was a note inside and started out by saying welcome to the zoo. You three pows are the only three in this camp that have been here less than five repeat five years. Now I've been a prisoner about three weeks at this point feeling sorry for myself. Feeling pity on Kenny wells until I got this note realize that there are 79 prisoners on the other side of this wall in three different buildings that had been there anywhere from five to seven years already. This particular note established a communication system where we would just place a note on top of this 8-foot High brick wall that separated our two Courtyards one day. We would pass a note to them days in between they would pass one back to us. We communicated that way every day. Problem was getting the note up there and making the pick ups as well. Well, the other two men became con artists Lee and Dick at at distracting the guard and I would make the drop and the pickups. They asked us all kinds of questions about 40 some questions. They wanted to know what the stock market was like how it was doing. They want to know about the space program. Did we really land on the moon? They didn't know that. One question. One of the fellows ask was have they developed birth control pills for males yet? Yes. I just report the facts yours. Through that system. We developed a visual Communication System. They had drilled a hole the size of a nickel through the end of their building that faced our door now they had to go through 15 inches of brick and mortar with a piece of wire to do that. One fellow would have to stand on the shoulders of another fellow in order to get up to the whole because of where it was hidden in order to communicate through that hole. They could see our little peephole in our door that had a flap across it that the guards would move to one side and check on us from time to time that could be moved to one side from inside the cell. They would stick a wire through their whole and flick it up and down once for a DOT twice for a dash and transmitted to us using the morse code. They could see our whole Hand by sticking it through the peephole. So we would transmit back to them using the Vista visual alphabet that the deaf use. Communication was vitally important to us. It was our Lifeline. It kept us going. He encouraged us. We encourage them. They passed rules and guidelines to get by on that helped us out. We could pass information to them about the outside world from the last five years. Communication is important to all of us whether you're in school whether it's on your job and your family whether it's with your marriage partner, whatever. It's so important your relationship to God. I discovered that you can talk to God anywhere whether you're free or behind bars. He's always there ready to listen comfort. Eating has always been one of my favorite pastimes is my family knows. probably more so now I love pizza. I love to enjoy every little morsel of it slices of pepperoni and mushroom and onions and olives and all that good stuff. But what they fed us there in prison was cabbage soup twice a day every day for six months. And then we get a variation in our menu would get pumpkin soup twice a day every day for the next six months and then back to cabbage. We get a second plate of something that might be wax beans translucent noodles that you could almost look through. Some rice soy bean curd occasionally little bit of protein in that. And we get bread. We would get small loaves of bread like submarine sandwich sandwich might be made out of and we get half of one and was sort of like eating cracked wheat. Only the little Crunchies that we're inside the bread were bugs that were cooked into the bread. And so that made it tasty some of the fellas would not eat the bugs and so they pick out the bugs from inside out of the dough in there and one fellow picked out of a half a piece of bread loaf of bread over 100 of these little critters. By the time you got them all out. All he had left was the crust to eat but my philosophy and that of others was well protein is protein and so we would eat it. I was mostly in the Hanoi Hilton in large cells once I was out of solitary confinement, we had sells about 25 by 50 feet into mansion. In the Hanoi Hilton we had about 10 of these large cells in the shape of a trapezoid around the courtyard. With the exception of two short stays in solitary confinement one of two weeks and another one of a week right before the agreements were signed. I was in a large cell. We had drawn to a fairly large group The kept the new guys those of us captured on December 19 1971 to the end of the war separated from the old guys the ones that had been there from November 68 on back to around August of 64. Kept a separated because they felt like well, they can't help us resist them and what they're trying to do if they keep us apart. They didn't realize that we were communicating with these guys every day sometimes two or three times a day. Each of these large cells was considered a squadron in the fourth Allied pows Wing World War One to Korea now Vietnam, the senior ranking man. You need cell was a squadron commander and we divided up into flights. We had four flights in our cell. And we shared and distributed the responsibilities of serving the food washing the bowls and the plates afterwards and and so on. It gave us the opportunity to do a lot of talking. played cards a lot Bridge pinochle cribbage poker some of the guys played poker. I didn't really believe in that at that time. We had one fellow that spent some time in Paris France. And so he taught French lessons played a lot of games. We exercised some of us exercise quite a bit. I exercised four to six hours a day. Just to pass the time. push-ups sit-ups running in place isometrics every Friday would have a Commander's call. We get together and we talk about past week things that we accomplished things that we wanted to try and do in the next week primarily concerning communication resistance. So on. Commander always had a hundred percent attendance at his commanders call because he had a captive audience. Of course, we'd have entertainment at every commanders called One Flight would be responsible for the entertainment that week. And we might put on a skit or would play some kind of a game like Jeopardy or Hollywood Squares. One time we played a game that we only played one time ever play it again because it didn't go over very well. That was the PO W version of The Newlywed Game. Now let me explain this a little bit. We pair up with a partner and then one partner go down at the other end of the cell and ask us questions. Like what will your partner say is his favorite soup cabbage or pumpkin? Or what will your partner say is the one thing that you do that aggravates him the most. Well, that didn't go over very well. One question that was asked was who in this cell? aggravates you the most well, it turned out to be the squadron commander that everybody answered there and so we didn't play it again. After I'd been there six months may now of 72. I received my first letter from Candy. She was allowed to write one letter per month. However, I hadn't received one until after six months. I feel fortunate to have received that because many had been there several years before receiving any if they ever received one. But the first sentence said Kevin and I are fine. So I knew had a boy. I'd been in prison two months and a friend of mine was captured and he said yes candy and a boy and the both doing fine. I read it and stars and stripes but two months later someone else came in and said, yeah candy had a girl they're both doing fine. So I didn't know if we had a son or a daughter or twins until I got the letter. So I didn't even meet Kevin until he was 16 months old. He's now sitting about six piece back here 16 years old Junior Ridgefield High School. And has his driver's license. Alrighty. At that time also received my first package. They were allowed to send one five kilogram package every two months about 11 pounds. In my 16 months there. I received two to three pounds worth of material total. So somebody was eating good and wearing the socks and whatever candy sent but it wasn't me. First package I received was just a little baggie. It had some black and white powder in it. And took me a while to figure out what that was finally tasted it and I realized what it was. It made me Furious. I really chewed out the guard that was sitting there across the table from me. Fortunately. He couldn't speak English. I want to realize was that one time this was a one pound package of Oreo cookies. Now, can you think of anything more unamerican than the crumble up in Oreo cookie? I couldn't. We were having worship Services there something that was very meaningful to us a time when we could just draw close together. Talk about spiritual things sing some songs, prey. Vietnamese tried to stop at that first for the first three weeks. It came in and started pulling guys out of the cell the first week from the most senior guy on down until trying to guess the stop we continued soon as the service is over. They brought them in back second week that came to the door and started pounding on just told us to be quiet. We're going to start pulling you guys out. And the third week they just gave up. They said go ahead have your services just try to be quiet. So you don't disturb the rest of the camp we had hymnals. Written on our toilet paper that we had to keep hidden or else they would have taken that. We had a quartet even that would sing special songs. Some of my favorites were Amazing Grace sure most of you know blest be the tie that binds very special song to us because we had a particular tie that was binding us together there. And one my favorites if not, the favorite that we saying there was America the Beautiful we're going to sing that tonight. Sometimes I think we take our spiritual freedom for granted just as much as we do or political freedom. The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 5 not to take your spiritual freedom for granted instead use your spiritual freedom to serve one another in love. And I think that's when we felt the best is when we were helping someone else. By serving someone else whether it was encouraging someone to eat who is refusing to eat or refusing to eat very much taking risks chances to communicate when we knew that torture awaited if we were caught or tending the wounds of someone that needed help. Speaking of wounds medical treatment there was not very good. There was an older poww I did not meet him personally, but heard about him major Fred cherry. That was captured a believe in 1965 separated shoulder. Either during the ejection or sometime in captivity, at least they tried to operate I have to give them credit for that. They tried to fix his shoulder. 13 different times and when he was released, he really didn't even have a shoulder just kind of went from his neck and Blended right into his arm. There was a fellow by the name of Jack inch a Navy F4 back Cedar. That had his thumb almost completely cut off during the ejection got it caught on the canopy rail because he wasn't position quite right when he got in the ground. He wrapped his thumb in the palm of his hand with something. He was captured immediately taken to prison locked up. He was told we will not treat your thumb until you start to talk. Well he held out for three or four days. Till I started passing out from the pain finally started getting a little bit of information his name and so on. I said, okay. We're going to treat your thumb. Five or six men came into the cell. They laid him on the table four or five of them held him down while another man took a machete. Courage them the rest of the way off. That was their way of treating his thumb. He had a whole but an inch wide and two two and a half inches long the side of his hand. Is captured in August of 72 released in March of 73, and I don't believe is handed even started to heal you. Contrast that to the medical treatment that he received in the states when he came home it took his index finger rotated it about 90 degrees and made a thumb out of it within a few months his back on flying status for the Navy again. On the 18th of December of 72. That was my one year anniversary of being there being in Vietnam the rest of the fellas in the cell made me a cake in the shape of a 1 And I made it out of bread dough and whatever they could get their hands on. Tasted terrible, but the thought was was nice. We were the old heads in the group of this new guy group had been there one year. I decided on my anniversary one year anniversary that I was going to play poker. I told you that's something I really didn't believe in when I was first there, but I had played for freebies. We'd made poker chips out of bread dough. It's amazing what you can make out of bread dough. We'd roll it out. Like you're rolling out pie dough. And with the bottle cap, it's damp out the little things and let them dry in the sun. They be hard as bricks. We had three different colors using red brick crumbled up to make nickels or whatever and then cigarette ashes some of the men smoked. They were rationed 6 cigarettes a day to make some gray ones. And then when you use some lime that we had for whitewash to make some different coins and so they had nickel dimes and quarters then the play poker with some of the man who had been there years and years. Had debts build up into the tens of thousands of dollars. Or they won that much too, but they paid them all up settle their accounts after they were released. Of course, you know, if you'd been there eight years piling up your your salaries over the years you had enough money to to pay off your poker debt as well. I decided my anniversary. I'm going to play poker and play it for real. So about eight o'clock that night. I'm $1.65 in the hole. The lights go out the air raid siren downtown goes off starts blowing and then came the B-52's. At first I thought God was out to get me for playing poker. But then I realized that President Nixon and the rest of this country is serious about ending this war. We were up in the windows cheering. We had men pulled out and put in solitary confinement for cheering the bombs. We knew that the end was near just a matter of a few months or so to get the agreement sign and would be home. Christmas of 72 was much more enjoyable than 7171 had been a prisoner one week. I was in a Cell by myself. Candies in the hospital in the states with the two-year-old or two day old son, but in 72 we were in a large group, so we did some neat things. We even made a fireplace in our cell One Man donated his striped shorts the maroon and grey shorts and he ripped them in little rectangles and using bread dough. Of course for the glue. We glued them up different spots on the wall and made her fireplace. We made a tree Out of some stools that they finally gave us after about nine or 10 months to sit on instead of sitting on the floor because they wanted to impress the International Red Cross when they came in September to inspect the camp. We had these stools and we had two in the bottom for the base of the tree and then three two and one and and tied them together and some of the men had green towels for taking a bath with and so we drape them over the front. So we had our tree made ornaments out of labels off of cans and one of the men made an angel out of bread dough and that's cute little angel even had a little Halo and wings and so on. Daniel didn't make it. That first night our local resident pack rat came in the door of the cell and he ran down through between our beds there and up the tree and grab the angel back down and out the door before we could scramble out and and kill him with our truck tires that we wore. So the angel didn't last long, but it's nice just to be in a large group or it could sing songs and pray together and think about our families together rather than being alone. 15 years ago today, January 27 1973 Peace agreements were signed in Paris two days later the camp Commander came into our Courtyard with five or six guards everyone in smiles and read that two days before the governments of Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United States of America. signed agreements to end the war in Southeast Asia there would be a 60-day withdrawal period where we had to have our troops. Out of South Vietnam, they would release the prisoners during the 60 days 25% every 15 days. That was the longest 60 days of my life. Knowing that the agreements were signed. The war at least on paper was over. But I wouldn't really be free until the end of the 60 days. We received a Red Cross package. Then only one package had been received in the previous eight and a half years until agreements were signed. Then we all got one so they could say that we were getting them. We were fitted for clothes for our release shoes. Got my ring back. This is the only thing that I was wearing at the time of my capture that I received back and I really didn't think I would get it back. I really expected that. Someone had melted it down and was in somebody's mouth somewhere in the country was glad to have it back. on the 28th of March 73 we were loaded on a bus. camouflage bus driven from the camp to the Gilliam Airport It was a great sight to see the Camp go out of view out the back window the airport come into view in the front come around the corner of the makeshift terminal there see the c-141 aircraft parked there with red cross and the tail. We form two lines in order of are captured eight saluted the Air Force Colonel who is officiating the release. We were escorted to the airplane one by one. As I walked across the ramp. I wanted to look back. But I couldn't I didn't want to look back. I just want to go home. The last person's foot hit the ramp of that 141 the ramp started coming up. The engines were started. We taxied out pull down the runway power pushed up. Now thank one word was spoken the whole time. They lied to us. So many times during our captivity that we really weren't sure whether this was for real or not. We knew that they could always stop us at some point. Until the airplane was in the Air Gear came up in the well and the whole place broke loose when you see There's No Stopping Us Now. I could shoot out a couple engines if they wanted we were going home. Captivity was over. And I had my freedom back. We had a flight of about two and a half hours to Clark Air Base in the Philippines for a quick 3-day physical exam that was almost like being back in prison. Again. We were confined to the hospital. But we could call home. I called home twice as loud to take a shower for the first time a good hot shower and 16 months fitted for a uniform. We're given two hundred fifty dollars to go over to the BX Base Exchange and do some shopping. And then of course, they took the two hundred fifty dollars out of our next few paychecks, but at least we got out of the hospital for a couple hours. On the 31st of March of 73 then was flown to Travis Air Force Base in California. They had nine Hospital set up for repatriation. The Air Force had flown candy and Kevin who is now 16 months that time my mom and dad and then my brother and sister as well came down to greet me. Welcome me home. coming home was one of the most I was going to say the most exciting but with my wife you're a bear say one of the most exciting things I've ever happened in my life. We received a hero's welcome. America was glad just to have a war over with we received all kinds of gifts Ford Motor Company gave us a free use of a car for a year and got a lifetime membership to European hell spawn got a wardrobe of several hundred dollars have a lifetime pass to all professional baseball games for myself and and a guest New York Mets flew us from Washington out to New York for a whole weekend for dinner and a baseball game and I think the highlight of that whole period when we came back was getting to go to the white house for dinner with the president. Unfortunately those who served our country one over there and maybe spend a year there. on the ground came home A B minus a hand or an arm leg and I maybe they were emotionally scarred for the rest of their life because of what they went through just serving their country. They came home and they were treated like dirt because of what they had done and they were just obeying orders. There's a saying that all is fair and Love and War. I don't think any war is really fair. Especially this one because of the attitude of our country and the people involved. Certainly, not fair for the men who fought over there. For the 50,000 families 58,000 or so families that lost loved ones over there wasn't fair to them. Or is it fair? To the man who are still missing in action over there, and we know for a fact that some are still alive. Canton I feel like it took about two years for us to readjust to one another we'd only been married 2 years when I left. And separated then 60 months and that took us a couple years to get back to really know one another again. She had changed a lot. You know, she was independent what she had to be with a child now and maybe stubborn little bit too. And you know, I know that I hadn't changed at all and that 60 months. I was the same sweet lovable humble and modest person that had always had been particulars a while to get back together emotionally and psychologically. Who feel now that our marriage is stronger because of this experience we had heard that as many as as high as 85% of the married prisoners had gotten divorces when they came back. So it was a lot of stress and strain on the families. We survived that were in the lucky 15% We can look back on this experience and truly believe what Paul said in Romans chapter 8 verse 28 that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love him. And that's what he did in our lives. Even sometimes when the storm seems like it's going to threaten our life seems like God can always work it out if we'll just put our faith in him. He doesn't always take the storm away. Sometimes you'll just work it out and let the storm rage one of the most important things in my life the time of my release. And also right now it's my freedom. I know especially. In looking at these candles tonight that I'm one of the lucky ones. the lost my freedom was captured came home lost my freedom and got it back. Now I appreciate it and enjoy it even more than I ever had in the past. Evidence shows that there are many many people still alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. They deserve a second chance to come home start their lives over again, too. There are many things that I will never take for granted again. like food a bed chair table food a knife Fork glass drink out of food car clothing money to go and buy what you want. food Education Health, I love to run I've been running since I was 14. I think I enjoy it not so much for the health that I get from it. But just for the freedom to be able to go out and run anywhere I want. food a Kleenex aspirin Pepto-Bismol food and door knobs on the inside of the door. Next time you go through a door. Thank God that you have the freedom to go through it. my family I appreciate much more now and thank God for my physical family for my spiritual family. and for America America is not perfect. It never has been and never will be but you compare it to any other country in this world. You have to agree that America truly is a beautiful Nation. so when you see the flag flying Thank God for the freedoms that Flag represents. Don't take them for America or your freedom for granted.