Total Career Success -- Leo Thorsness, Medal of Honor Recipient on Surviving Hell: A POWs Journey

Leo Thorsness, a Medal of Honor recipient and Viet Nam POW for six years will be featured on Total Career Success, an Internet show on VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network, at 11 a.m. Central on Monday, June 29. The show is designed to inform and encourage listeners to achieve their career goals by featuring experts and business leaders to provide advice on job search and career advancement. Leo Thorsness has one of the most unique resumes having been an Air Force pilot in Vietnam, a corporate executive and State Senator. His new book, Surviving Hell: A POWs Journey, tells a powerfully poignant account of life as a POW. Thorsness has masterfully told his story of survival in a way that has lessons for us all. Whether you are in the military, a Vet, or patriotic citizen, you can apply his essential building blocks of character, courage, faith and loyalty to your life and career challenges and survive anything.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) June 26, 2009 -- Leo Thorsness, a Medal of Honor recipient and Viet Nam POW for six years will be featured on Total Career Success, an Internet show on VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network, at 11 a.m. Central on Monday, June 29. The show is designed to inform and encourage listeners to achieve their career goals by featuring experts and business leaders to provide advice on job search and career advancement. Leo Thorsness has one of the most unique resumes having been an Air Force pilot in Vietnam, a corporate executive and State Senator. His new book, Surviving Hell: A POWs Journey, tells a powerfully poignant account of life as a POW. Thorsness has masterfully told his story of survival in a way that has lessons for us all. Whether you are in the military, a Vet, or patriotic citizen, you can apply his essential building blocks of character, courage, faith and loyalty to your life and career challenges and survive anything.

Leo Thorsness was awarded the Medal of Honor after release as a POW not because of his imprisonment, but because of heroic action prior to being shot down in enemy territory. He learned of his nomination, however, in Hanoi Hilton where POWs had developed a tap code to communicate against Viet Cong rules. Tortured for six years, Thorsness tells how he and other pilots kept their humanity through sheer resilience and resourcefulness.

Show co-host Sheryl Dawson shared, "Leo Thorsness' account is authentic, harrowing, and compelling. Though humble, Leo was not humiliated. Though physically brutalized, he was not broken in spirit. Though isolated from life as he knew it, he grew in every aspect of being by keeping his spirit, mind and body disciplined."

Co-host Ken Dawson added, "Every POW ought to be a Medal of Honor winner in my opinion. Leo shares the reality of being a POW while sharing the hope and humor that kept him and fellow POWs going through years of uncertain captivity. By refusing to be stripped of their basic dignity, POWs continued to wage war against the enemy even during the darkest moments of their long captivity. Don't miss this opportunity to hear a story that will make you proud this July 4th."

To listen to the broadcast, please visit www.voiceamerica.com and enter Total Career Success. The show will air live at 11 a.m. - noon Central on June 29 and will then be available as an archive on the web site, or can be downloaded to MP3 players and cell phones.

Leo Thorsness, Medal of Honor Recipient

Leo Thorsness is author of Surviving Hell: A POWs Journey. A Minnesota farm kid born during the Depression, Mr. Thorsness found his calling in the Air Force and had become an experienced fighter pilot by the time the Vietnam War began heating up in the mid-1960s. In 1966, he was sent to Southeast Asia to fly an F-105F "Thud" -- a fighter with a two-man crew -- in support of the American bombing campaign in North Vietnam. Operating from Takhli in Thailand, he carried out "Wild Weasel" missions to identify and destroy hostile radar, flak and surface-to-air missile installations, clearing the way for fighter-bombers to attack vital targets in the communist homeland. On one such mission, on April 17, 1967, he and his "back-seater" took part in the action for which Mr. Thorsness was recommended for the Medal of Honor. Not long after this fight against all odds, on a similar mission his plane was shot down. He observes in Surviving Hell, that he was about to embark on "an ordeal that would brutalize me . . . and also allow me to become a better and fuller person." A strong religious faith and a love of country and family helped him to survive the next six years of torture, isolation and neglect.

Upon his return from Viet Nam, Mr. Thorsness retired from the Air Force as a Colonel, became a Director of Civic Affairs for a major corporation, then a Washington State Senator, before retiring a second time. He currently volunteers to help veterans and speaks to organizations on ethics, demonstrating the rewards of doing what is right through his combat and prisoner-of-war examples of leadership, courage, teamwork, communications, focus, decision making, family and friends support, and enduring hard times to achieve success. Mr. Thorness has an engineering degree from the University of Omaha and Masters in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. Among many awards and decorations, The Leo and Gaylee Thorsness Chair in Ethical Leadership, has been established in his honor at the University of Richmond.
      
For more information, visit http://www.leothorsness.com

About Total Career Success

Total Career Success is broadcast on VoiceAmerica, the world leader in Internet Talk Radio, and syndicated on World Net Radio; the show aims to engage listeners in new ways of thinking about their potential, their goals, and their future. The show hosts are Ken and Sheryl Dawson, principals of Total Career Success, Inc. and authors of Job Search: The Total System, 3rd edition. They have served corporations in outplacement and career development as well as talent management for 30 years in their consulting firm Dawson Consulting Group. The show presents guests who are experts in their fields to share the lessons they have learned in succeeding in their various areas of excellence and to discuss tips about a broad range of career issues, from specific career opportunities, to industries and workplace changes, to financial and advancement considerations.

For more information, visit http://www.betterjobbetterlife.com/mediahome.shtml and http://www.dawsonconsultinggroup.com

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