By Troy Buchanan
Personal circumstances many times determine one's perceptions of the world in which they live. And whether postively or negatively, those perceptions determine how they live their lives.
At one point in Edward Lee Hubbardıs life he saw the world from a six-foot by six-foot concrete cell on the outskirts of Hanoi.
Edward L. Hubbard addresses an audience in the Will Rogers Auditorium on the campus of Rogers State University as part of an Edward Jones lecture series.
Hubbard, a retired Air Force Colonel, was shot down while flying a mission over North Vietnam on July 20, 1966.
Hubbard was a crew member aboard an EB66C Skywarrior when the plane was stuck by two surface to air missiles near Tuyen Quang, Quang Bac Thai Province, in North Vietnam. He was one of five crew members aboard the plane at the time it went down.
The crew and technicians aboard the EB66C that day included Capt. Lawrence Barbay, Capt. Glendon W. Perkins, Capt. Norman A. McDaniel, Capt. William H. Means Jr., 1st Lt. Craig R. Nobert and Hubbard.
While Barbay, Perkins, McDaniel, Means, Nobert and Hubbard were all captured, imprisoned and later released after nearly seven years in captivity, the fate of Nobert was never known.
Government documents and various sources state, "the U.S. believes there is a good possibility he (Nobert) was captured and died in captivity." On January 18, 1978, the Department of the Air Force declared Nobert dead, "based on no specific information he was still alive."
As a prisoner of war from 1966 to 1973, Hubbard discovered how a person's perception of the world and attitude toward life can have a dramatic effect on the way he or she lives their lives.
Rogers County residents got the chance to hear Hubbard speak about his unique personal view of the world during a lecture at Rogers State University. Hubbard was on the campus of RSU as part of a nationwide sponsorship by Edward Jones financial services, which operates an office in Claremore.
Hubbard asked the audience, "How many of you have had a bad day this week?"
As you would expect a number of hands were raised.
"Well, itıs time to stop wasting time having bad days," he said. "I had six and a half years of 'bad days.' You have to decide when it is time to stop having bad days."
Hubbard said he could have easily given up on that cold concrete floor in Vietnam. After 28 straight days of lying there he said he came close, wondering to himself, "How am I going to survive."
"The first three years of my captivity were the most terrifying of my life," Hubbard said. "We all travel down this road called life. And on this road there are rocks. Some will see those rocks as obstacles while others will see them as stepping stones."
Hubbard, born on May 18, 1938, in Kansas City, Mo., spent the first 24 years of his life in the Kansas City area. In June 1955 he joined the United States Air Force Reserve at Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base (AFB) and flew as a flight engineer in a C-119 for several years.
In August 1961 he went on active duty, going through the aviation cadet program at James Connally AFB in Texas for Basic Navigation Training. He was commissioned and received his "wings" on July 6, 1962.
From there it was on to Navigator-Bombidier Training at Mather AFB in California and then to survival school at Steed AFB in Nevada.
Hubbard realized that as a prisoner, enduring sometimes brutal beatings at the hands of his captors, he had better learn to look at life's experiences as stepping stones. Without that attitude, he said, there was no way he was going to survive.
On the Will Rogers Auditorium stage, with a U.S. flag on his left, an Oklahoma flag on his right, a chair and a small table with two bottles of water, Hubbard kept the audience in rapt attention as he spoke about his time as a prisoner of war and how that time shaped his current attitude towards life.
"Have you ever heard the term 'ball and chain?'" he asked. "Thatıs everyone's perception of what they are dragging along with them in the world. If you change your perception, chances are you will change the outcome. My initial perception when I was taken prisoner almost cost me my life. But I learned you have to get things into perspective in order to deal with them."
There was none of the bitterness you would have expected from someone who had been kept confined for 2,420 days with a wife and two-year-old son waiting back in the U.S.
On the contrary, Hubbard displayed a ready sense of humor and a view on life that made you feel like it was time to stop complaining.
"Problem solving in prison is not optional," he said. "If you don't solve your problems, you're going to die. I remember getting up very morning at 5 a.m. - not by choice - and looking through a crack in the door to see the sun rise, just to let me know I was still alive."
Hubbard said as a prisoner of war he learned he had to change the human thought process and learn to use the resources that were available.
"Everyone in this country thinks they are over worked and under paid," he said. "Everyone believes they are operating beyond their full potential. As (POWs) we were put in an environment were we truly learned how to go beyond our limits. No one is really ever going to reach beyond their full potential because we really donıt know what that is."
Hubbard said his time in prison allowed him the opportunity to look back upon his life and he discovered there were things he could have done a little better everyday. Being in solitary confinement, with no communication with other prisoners, gave him a lot of time to think, he said. Since no talking was allowed, over time, the prisoners of what was to become known as the Hanoi Hilton, invented a "tap code" to communicate with one another through their cell walls. Through those walls the prisoners shared their knowledge of history, poems, stories, conducted church service and passed along vital information to one another.
The POWs lived on 300 calories a day, Hubbard said. A small bowl of rice, and a bowl of what looked like weeds, twice a day.
"I went from 175 pounds when I was captured to 95 pounds in six months," he said.
Not only did the American prisoners have to deal with the physical limitations of captivity but the mental aspects, as well. That proved to the hardest part, Hubbard said.
Before the evening was over, Hubbard asked audience members to close their eyes while he described the cell in which he was confined.
Imagine holidays spent alone in a cell with no plumbing, no heat, nothing but the knowledge that you are not the only prisoner experiencing same distress. In the summer the prisoners cooked and in the winter they froze, Hubbard said.
In the spring of 1973, 591 Americans were released from prison camps in Vietnam, including most of the crew of the Skywarrior lost in July of 1966. The crew had been held in various POW camps in and around Hanoi, including a camp near the border of China.
"On July 20, 1966, on my 26th mission over North Vietnam, we were shot down by two SAMs," he said. "I spent 2,420 days as a POW in North Vietnam, being released on March 4, 1973. When I returned to the USA, I had been gone for nine and a half years, except for the few days leave I took in May of 1966."
Not long ago, Hubbard got the chance to return to Vietnam and tour the POW camp where he was held. He went in and sat in the very same cell where he was held so long ago.
Hubbard said it would be easy to feel bitter about his experiences in Vietnam.
"But I do not want to go through life feeling bitter," he said.
Hubbard closed the lecture by leading the audience in the song, "God Bless America."
İ2004 The Claremore Progress