>> GEORGIA MILITARY COLLEGE
Captain Charlie Plumb visited Georgia Military College to talk with the 144th Corps of Cadets, GMC faculty and staff and the wider community about patriotism and sacrifice for Patriot Day.
Plumb is a former Naval fighter pilot, prisoner of war and renowned author. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with an engineering degree. He later became a jet fighter pilot and a combat veteran who completed 74 successful missions over Vietnam. He survived six years in comunist prison camps and has received multiple awards.
In addition, he helped to start the Top Gun School in Miramar, Calif.
“Regardless of who you are, the most value I can offer to you for our time together is inviting you into my little prison cell,” said Plumb standing in a dimly lit spotlight on stage and gesturing into the darkness behind him. “If I do my job correctly this morning, you will see the same kinds of challenges you and I face daily are the very same challenges I faced in that prison cell in Vietnam.
Your response to that challenge has to be the same recipe of responses I used to survive.”
Plumb draws the connection between his experiences and what his audience is going through by stating that the first connection is emotion: feeling overwhelmed, underappreciated, afraid, inadequate and more. He questions the audience on how to survive, how to lead and help those around you, and how the resources they have on hand now could impact the situation he was in.
“The first thing you learn in a prison cell is pain and the second thing you learn is that time flows together and you acclimate. You get so comfortable in your cell that the last place you want to go is outside your cell,” said Plumb. “You’re in a mental box. We all get there.
I’m convinced the mental box of our lives can be more restrictive than those walls of stone and steel that I was behind.”
Plumb described becoming accustomed to his cell. In that box, the people around him were untrusting and the world outside was even scarier and unpredictable. Instead of thinking along the questions he asked prior to the audience, he lost sense of time and became trapped in the mental box that compelled him to want to stay in the cell.
With this lesson on their mind, he turns to the audience and asks them to shout out answers to his prior questions.
For survival, the audience answered that perseverance, faith in God and your country, confidence, grit, strength, tenacity, patience and imagination are needed. Plumb questions back to the audience where they receive the qualities and how to measure it.
“Here is a list of qualities you can’t learn in a textbook or measure with a yardstick and yet here they are at Georgia Military College,” Plumb said pointing at the qualities on the written paper. “I call these the panels in your parachute.”
Plumb describes his experience meeting the creator of the parachute that he used to jump from the plane. He describes how grateful he was to this man and how much character he showed when he told Plumb that he doesn’t know the number of parachutes he packs and that all his gratitude comes from knowing he served. He encouraged his audience to be mindful of how they pack their parachutes: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical. The attributes the audience named before, he explained, are part of the panels that hold the parachute together. He reminded everyone that a true patriot is proud to serve and proud to help above all else. The parachutes on their backs are not only used to save their lives but can be packed to save others too. Unity and good will are key lessons in both his experience, the tragic story of 9/11, and the stories of each person in the auditorium.
“What I want the cadets to remember from 9/11 is how we came together as Americans on that day,” said Plumb in the GMC reflection video.
“All stripes, all colors, all religions got together for one time because of the tragedy we faced together.”
Plumb reflected on what patriotism means and how the students of GMC and GMC Prep can be patriotic and remember events that happened before their lifetime. He emphasized how connections can be made from horrible events they may have a hard time imagining to what is happening in their everyday lives now.
“Being forgotten is worse than being a prisoner of war for six years,” said Plumb. “If we can’t remember the good and the bad; if we can’t remember 9/11, then we’re destined to repeat the problem.”