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Today’s Lesson from Ms Ruby: “I’ll try.”
On an island off the coast of South Carolina sits an old school with a wooden floor, smoothed by a century of sliding feet. You’ll hear reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, but this story is about another “R.” Remembering Mrs. Ruby, Ruby Forsyth
Rush hour on Memory lane. Ruby Forsythe was 85 the last time I saw her. She’d been teaching 66 years, living above her classroom on Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Her students called her Ms. Ruby. She had 72 of them that day in this one-room school at Holy Cross-Faith Memorial Church.
In her early years, Ms. Ruby was the only teacher African-American kids had on Pawleys Island. “I was mother, father, counselor, everything,” Miss Ruby said. “You got to start with little things that are not in the book.” Half a century before Yoda, she told her students never to say, “I can’t.” Always say, “I’ll Try.” Some walked miles to get to her class. Many went on to college and made major contributions to our country. Miss Ruby summed up her philosophy of teaching: “Sow the best seed into whatever soil you have.”
A New Life
Working folks have always been the great voyagers of America. There were always new businesses, new jobs, new frontiers just over the next hill. But something fundamentally is changing in the American economy. Old skills don’t always fit new jobs. The American instinct to move on when times get tough can no longer solve the problem.
We caught up with Jim and Deborah Carey and their daughter Chastity once again. The bankrupt farmers still had not harvested a dream. Jim had won and lost six jobs in a year. Six jobs. In three different states. And he had a new baby. All was not bleak. Two things were about to happen that would change their lives for the better.
Hired Husband
Bob McClain doesn’t have the kind of face that would launch a Soap Opera, but he’s a handyman with a difference. He listens. His smile crumples up the silence in people’s lives. Not everyone knows how to fix things. McClain is ready to help.
Remember Them
There’s an old warehouse near San Francisco Bay filled with bronze sculptures, a salute to Americans who did not dream in black and white. They envisioned a country where everyone was equal. A long line of people have tried to make that so. Mario Kyoto thinks they ought to have their own Mount Rushmore. His work is so stunning, the Oakland City council has given his giant figures a home.
The Rescued Save the Rescuers
Roby Albouy spent most of his adult life in the Colorado mountains. But he carries faces from France framed in his mind, the fellows he passed on to freedom during World War Two. They were the downed crew of an America bomber. He was a fighter with the French Resistance. They never knew each other’s names. After we did a story on Albouy, the crew and their French saviors found each other again. They had all lived long enough to joke about things that once were breaking their hearts. Without each other, they may not have grown old at all.
A Chance to Grow Old
Every veteran carries faces framed in their minds, comrades who did not return from war. Roby Albouy and I were walking through the Aspen meadows out in Colorado one summer when he pulled a yellowing snapshot from his pocket and showed me the ones he can’t forget.
Mama Hale
Childhood should be a season of dreams, but some children awoke each morning from an American nightmare: They are born addicted to drugs. Clara Hale saved hundreds of them. One morning she found a baby by her door. Mrs. Hale took him in. Word got around. Soon her tiny apartment was jammed with cribs.
Old Believers
Behind America's success story are untold tales of endurance. The people who succeed in this country come from sturdy stock, the ones who have always carried on when the going got tough. Their ancestors thought America’s streets would be paved with...
The Ring that Saved a Life
Motts Tonelli enlisted in the New Mexico National Guard to play with an Army basketball team. The day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, he traded his ball for a gun. Tonelli was captured in the Philippines in the opening days of World War Two. Forced to walk 70 miles to a prisoner of war camp. Along the way, a Japanese soldier gave Motts an extraordinary gift.
The President Who Never Owned a Home
My grandfather Paul Bailey was a rock ribbed, small town Republican. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, was his friend. Grandpa Bailey once argued a case before Mr. Truman, when Truman was a Jackson County, Missouri, Commissioner.
“You must have won,” I grinned, “if you became friends?”
“No,” he said, “I lost. But I learned something about Mr. Truman that made me admire the man. He opened a hat shop in Kansas City after he came home from the front lines of World War One. The business failed. His partner declared bankruptcy. Truman did not. He moved in with his mother-in-law, so he could pay back every penny.”
The only asset Mr. Truman had when he died was that house. His wife had inherited the home from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
As president he called home collect. Never billed the taxpayer.
“Mrs. Truman wanted Harry to buy a car,” Grandpa recalled. “He said, ‘We can’t afford one, but when we get out of this Great White Jail (the White House,) we’ll get one.”
After president Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess bought one. There was no Secret Service following them.
President Truman retired from office in 1952. His income was a U.S. Army pension. $112.56 a month. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ‘allowance’ and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, Mr. Truman declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”
One day on the way to Grandpa’s house, he stopped to show me the retired president mowing his mother-in-law’s lawn.
“Hi, Harry,” he waved.
Mr. Truman shaded his eyes and smiled when he recognized his friend. “Hi, Paul.”
Grandpa grinned and then said, “Okay, Bobby. Let’s get out of here before this Democrat stuff sticks to the tires…”
Today’s Lesson from Ms Ruby: “I’ll try.”
On an island off the coast of South Carolina sits an old school with a wooden floor, smoothed by a century of sliding feet. You’ll hear reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, but this story is about another “R.” Remembering Mrs. Ruby, Ruby Forsyth
Rush hour on Memory lane. Ruby Forsythe was 85 the last time I saw her. She’d been teaching 66 years, living above her classroom on Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Her students called her Ms. Ruby. She had 72 of them that day in this one-room school at Holy Cross-Faith Memorial Church.
In her early years, Ms. Ruby was the only teacher African-American kids had on Pawleys Island. “I was mother, father, counselor, everything,” Miss Ruby said. “You got to start with little things that are not in the book.” Half a century before Yoda, she told her students never to say, “I can’t.” Always say, “I’ll Try.” Some walked miles to get to her class. Many went on to college and made major contributions to our country. Miss Ruby summed up her philosophy of teaching: “Sow the best seed into whatever soil you have.”
A New Life
Working folks have always been the great voyagers of America. There were always new businesses, new jobs, new frontiers just over the next hill. But something fundamentally is changing in the American economy. Old skills don’t always fit new jobs. The American instinct to move on when times get tough can no longer solve the problem.
We caught up with Jim and Deborah Carey and their daughter Chastity once again. The bankrupt farmers still had not harvested a dream. Jim had won and lost six jobs in a year. Six jobs. In three different states. And he had a new baby. All was not bleak. Two things were about to happen that would change their lives for the better.
Hired Husband
Bob McClain doesn’t have the kind of face that would launch a Soap Opera, but he’s a handyman with a difference. He listens. His smile crumples up the silence in people’s lives. Not everyone knows how to fix things. McClain is ready to help.
Remember Them
There’s an old warehouse near San Francisco Bay filled with bronze sculptures, a salute to Americans who did not dream in black and white. They envisioned a country where everyone was equal. A long line of people have tried to make that so. Mario Kyoto thinks they ought to have their own Mount Rushmore. His work is so stunning, the Oakland City council has given his giant figures a home.
The Rescued Save the Rescuers
Roby Albouy spent most of his adult life in the Colorado mountains. But he carries faces from France framed in his mind, the fellows he passed on to freedom during World War Two. They were the downed crew of an America bomber. He was a fighter with the French Resistance. They never knew each other’s names. After we did a story on Albouy, the crew and their French saviors found each other again. They had all lived long enough to joke about things that once were breaking their hearts. Without each other, they may not have grown old at all.
A Chance to Grow Old
Every veteran carries faces framed in their minds, comrades who did not return from war. Roby Albouy and I were walking through the Aspen meadows out in Colorado one summer when he pulled a yellowing snapshot from his pocket and showed me the ones he can’t forget.
Mama Hale
Childhood should be a season of dreams, but some children awoke each morning from an American nightmare: They are born addicted to drugs. Clara Hale saved hundreds of them. One morning she found a baby by her door. Mrs. Hale took him in. Word got around. Soon her tiny apartment was jammed with cribs.
Old Believers
Behind America's success story are untold tales of endurance. The people who succeed in this country come from sturdy stock, the ones who have always carried on when the going got tough. Their ancestors thought America’s streets would be paved with...
The Ring that Saved a Life
Motts Tonelli enlisted in the New Mexico National Guard to play with an Army basketball team. The day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, he traded his ball for a gun. Tonelli was captured in the Philippines in the opening days of World War Two. Forced to walk 70 miles to a prisoner of war camp. Along the way, a Japanese soldier gave Motts an extraordinary gift.
The President Who Never Owned a Home
My grandfather Paul Bailey was a rock ribbed, small town Republican. Former President Harry Truman, a Democrat, was his friend. Grandpa Bailey once argued a case before Mr. Truman, when Truman was a Jackson County, Missouri, Commissioner.
“You must have won,” I grinned, “if you became friends?”
“No,” he said, “I lost. But I learned something about Mr. Truman that made me admire the man. He opened a hat shop in Kansas City after he came home from the front lines of World War One. The business failed. His partner declared bankruptcy. Truman did not. He moved in with his mother-in-law, so he could pay back every penny.”
The only asset Mr. Truman had when he died was that house. His wife had inherited the home from her mother and father and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire lives there.
As president he called home collect. Never billed the taxpayer.
“Mrs. Truman wanted Harry to buy a car,” Grandpa recalled. “He said, ‘We can’t afford one, but when we get out of this Great White Jail (the White House,) we’ll get one.”
After president Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess bought one. There was no Secret Service following them.
President Truman retired from office in 1952. His income was a U.S. Army pension. $112.56 a month. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an ‘allowance’ and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, Mr. Truman declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”
One day on the way to Grandpa’s house, he stopped to show me the retired president mowing his mother-in-law’s lawn.
“Hi, Harry,” he waved.
Mr. Truman shaded his eyes and smiled when he recognized his friend. “Hi, Paul.”
Grandpa grinned and then said, “Okay, Bobby. Let’s get out of here before this Democrat stuff sticks to the tires…”
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- I Wouldn’t Choose Sight
Native American sculptor Michael Naranjo lost his sight during the Vietnam war. He created a 17 foot sculpture by touch.
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No one had time for the old man squatting over a box of vegetable peelers on a New York City street corner. The crowds swirled around him on their way to work, but he didn’t seem to notice. The solitary street vendor flicked a slice of potato off his thousand-dollar suit, smiled to himself, and asked, “Why would you buy four peelers, if they last a lifetime? Because you have four friends,” Joe explained. “Never underestimate a small amount of money, gathered by hand.” For 60 years he loved the glorious uncertainty of starting every day—with nothing.
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- Farm to Fame
Chuck Taylor waved at a hawk strafing the wheat field in front of him. “There is beauty everywhere. I just want to express what I am feeling.”
He pushed up his feed company cap and began to sing louder than his farm tractor engine. Chuck’s voice boomed over that Colorado field, keeping time to the rhythm of his motor. The tractor turned into the setting sun, revealing a big man, close to three hundred pounds, haloed in the cab. Chuck Taylor was wondering why that sun wasn’t a spotlight.
TURNS OUT, IT WAS.
- Payback Painter
Bussey, Iowa may make you homesick for a place you’ve probably never been. Just 422 people lived there the day I dropped by. But this small town has made a big difference in Todd Spaur’s life. He was in a terrible accident two decades ago when his car flipped off a bridge and lay hidden in heavy underbrush for 16 hours. He could not call for help or call out because he’d broken his back, neck and most of the bones in his face. Doctors said he would never walk.
“I could wiggle one toe,” Todd says.
The town offered to look after Todd while he proved the doctors wrong. He decided to take art classes with some of the money townspeople donated to help him design a new life. The man who struggled to stand for 18 years, now dangles from a cherry picker two stories tall. He’s painting a picture of all those people who pitched in when he needed them most.
Life has taken Todd Spaur to such a dark place, perhaps it is easier for him to see beauty. The fellow with 9 steel plates in his body and a fractured hip vertebrae, has been painting this gift on the side of downtown wall for 10 painful months. In Todd’s mural you see America that was and in this place still is.
Its not just a painting. Its everybody’s story.
- A True Fairy Tale Wedding
Deborah Huddleston fell in love with Glenn Gammage. They were married out on the prairie, dreaming dreams, as if they were new. He speaks 5 languages and has circled the world with the U.S. Navy. She has seldom left Texas. They fell in love and decided to marry, never having met.
- VANISHING SILENCE
No matter how far we go into the wilderness, we can seldom escape the sounds we make. There are few places where planes do not fly or foghorns cannot pierce. Just as city lights keep us from seeing dimmer stars, these noises of every day life drown out the more delicate voices of nature. Gordon Hempton searches for spots to record the earth's chorus -- without us.
- Cultural Center of the Country
New York spends more money on the arts than other city in the country, but a lot of those dollars come from outsiders. If you subtract all that out of town money, the place that spends the most per person for culture is Bassett, Nebraska.
“Huh?” Yep.
- Lost Graves
I found myself in a forest filled with forgotten lives. Their final resting places were marked, not with names, but numbered stakes, unnoticed, until Bud Merritt stumbled upon them. He found the first of six lost graveyards at what was once the largest mental hospital in America: Milledgeville, Georgia.
- Photo Wagon
John Coffer turned his back on modern times to wander America in a wagon pulled by oxen, stopping only to take portraits with his antique camera. Coffer traveled at two and a half miles an hour for five years. 25 states. 10-thousand miles. He crisscrossed America so slowly, everywhere he went, folks joked he was a temporary resident. Coffer captured old fashioned images of modern America.
- A Selfless Man
A surveyor from Valentine, Nebraska, was charting the land of the Rio Grande. He stopped for lunch and took a nap. When he awoke, poor people had gathered to eat his scraps. That bothered Frank Ferree. It bothered him so much he sold all his land to buy food and medicine for the poor. He kept nothing for himself. For 40 years Frank Ferree fed thousands on both sides of the Rio Grande. Five Presidents of Mexico have given him gold medals. He melted them down and bought beans.
- Homesteading Class
There’s a mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the locals call “Misery Heights.” The last cowboys left there in the 1930s. It was too remote to raise horses, too cold to grow crops. Just right to teach something about life. Jack Snoble teaches a course in homesteading. Class size, one student.
- VOLUNTEER CAFE SAVES TOWN
There are a lot of little towns in farm country fighting for their lives. In Havana, North Dakota, the sun hasn't set. When the town's cafe went under, all 158 people in town volunteered to cook. It became something of a competition. They made $51,000, enough to open a new grocery store, build sidewalks and put an archery range. Now they dream of a jacuzzi.
- Photographer for Life
Milton Rogovin grew old watching his neighborhood grow up, sharing the yearbook of their lives. He was still photographing them at age 100, surrounded by friends who were now taking his picture -- the "forgotten ones," who did not forget him.
- Home Plate Wedding
Some folks do not see limits, only opportunities. Ed Lucas decided he wanted to broadcast baseball games, after watching the first nationally televised playoff. He ran outside to celebrate his decision. The twelve year old fired a fastball to a boyfriend with a bat.
“The ball came back and boom, hit me right between the eyes.” Destroyed his retinas. Left him totally blind.
- Planting Poems
In 1915, Robert Frost brought his wife and four children to a small farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He was a terrible farmer. He used to milk the cows at midnight, so he could sleep late. Townsfolk figured he’d be on their welfare rolls by Christmas. Then, they read something he wrote. It inspired them to do something very special for poets.
- Forget Me Not
Steven White tried for decades to save a small island for someone he’d never met. Waves were slowly whittling it away. He told me the tale as we chopped through the water in a tiny boat on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.
"Holland Island once held sixty houses,” Stephan pointed out as we approached what had once been a neighborhood that stretched two miles down the shore. “It was a bustling community that had sixty-eight kids in school until rising tides forced them to abandon the building. My home is all that remains above water.”
Working alone, he hauled hundred pound stones across Chesapeake Bay to shore up the place.
- Love in the Kitchen
A caring heart is as good a measure as any, when you try to evaluate success. World-class Chef Scott Peacock once told me, "It's always the most important ingredient.”
He was lifting a cake out of the oven. Turned and dropped it on the kitchen table next to an elderly woman.
"Tell me if it's ready?"
Edna Lewis didn’t poke it or taste it. She cocked her head and lowered her ear to the dish.
“It’s fading away,” it’s fading away
There was a reason she was in the cookbook hall of fame. She cooked
by ear.
- Midnight Basketball
My grandfather’s basketball coach was James Naismith, the man who invented the sport. In those days the Founding Father had not yet punched a hole in the bottom of the peach basket that was used instead of a net. “Coach,” grandpa said, “this game would be a whole lot faster if we didn’t have to climb a ladder to pull out the ball!” Few people alive have ever heard Naismith’s voice. Here’s a rare recording: https://goo.gl/s8yVK1
Basketball has always been more than a game. It brings together groups that may have no other common ground.
- Coach Abe Lemons for the Laugh
My first job for NBC News was at the Munich Olympics in 1972. That’s where I met legendary basketball coach Abe Lemons. He was president of the College Coaches Association that year, but told me he couldn’t get tickets to any Olympic basketball games. Instead, he scored a seat to the finals of the hammer throw.
I asked Abe: How was it?
“Well, our seats were kinda high up,” he said with a slow grin.
“How high?”
“When one of those hammer guys wound up and tossed, the fellows around me all yelled down, ‘How’d he do?’ And the fans down below would turn, cup their ears, and say: ‘Huh?’”
- Silent Dreams
Janelle Barencott has never heard the bounce of a ball, the swish of a net. But on this day, she got to play against the best of the best, players dreaming of jobs in the National Women's Basketball Association. Janelle’s dreams are silent.
- Budding Larry Bird
March Madness gives us a chance to watch the superstars of tomorrow. Before Larry Bird became a basketball legend, he was a shy student. I covered one of his first games. Hop in my Way Back Machine for a bit of March Madness from 1979. You’ll be watching the only undefeated major college basketball team in the country back then — the Sycamores of Terra Haute, Indiana.
- Helping Buddy Walk Again
The black muscle car roared up. Growling, throbbing. A tiny silver skull wired to the brake lights blinked with red eyes, the same color as the cross - painted on the car's roof. Two words decorated its side: "Bone Mobile." Anyone looking for wonder among the world's ordinary stuff would, as they say in old movies, "follow that car.”
- Widow’s Guilt
In January 1957, Henry Alexander offered an innocent black man, Willie Edwards, a terrible choice while he looked down the barrel of a gun. Either run or jump from a bridge north of Montgomery, Alabama. He leapt into the Alabama River 50 feet below. Some fishermen found his body three months later.
Edwards’ wife, Sarah, was left with two children. She was pregnant with another. They never knew what happened to their father.
Before Diane Alexander’s husband died, he gave her his guilt. Clippings from his Ku Klux Klan days. The pattern for his hood. His pistol. A whip. And a stunning confession.
“He said, ‘My problem is Willie Edwards. I caused (his death.)”
- Summit Town
Folks in Polk, Nebraska prefer to get their news the old fashioned way — in a newspaper, the Polk Progress. Its editor Norris Alfred is the only Democrat in the county. Why do people buy his newspaper? “I play poker with a lot of them. And I lose.” Norris loves slow news days. Gives him time to put things into perspective, something he’s done so well for 70 years.
Norris Alfred. In search of great truths. Or a minor truth. Or two.
- Four Corners
There was a time in America where neighbors were considered part of your wealth. In Four Corners, Louisiana, they still are. Hardly a family here makes $10,000 a year. But together, they had rebuilt eleven homes. They linked up with trade people who taught them how.
- What She Cannot Live Without
Doris Travis’s talent brought her to Broadway twice. The first time she was 14. Doris did something no other 14-year-old had ever done. She danced her way into one of the most popular shows in New York City. It took her more than twenty seven million minutes to get back. She was 93.
- NBA All-Star’s Greatest Opponent. Himself
Chicago Bulls Hall of Famer Bob Love ended up bussing tables in a Seattle restaurant because he suffered from a life time of stuttering.
- Dancing into Memory
In Radio City Music Hall, the years do not flow back into the past. They gather invisibly around you. Each Christmas the Rockettes dance into our memories. Doris Carie was a Rockette at 17, the youngest girl in the line. They lived in the theater from 8 in the morning until 11 at night. After a year, she was sore all over. She went home to Georgia, but she never forgot the lessons.
- TV’s Birthplace
Television did not begin in New York or Los Angeles. It was the brainchild of a fourteen-year-old farm boy, the vision of a fellow with a funny name: Philo T. Farnsworth. Philo was plowing a field on the family farm near Rigby, Idaho, day dreaming about sending pictures through the sky, when he noticed the sun glinting off the parallel lines he had made in the dirt. In a single, blazing moment of inspiration, it occurred to him that a picture could be broken down into lines, too, beamed into space and then put back together on a television set.
- Clown Clergy
The new methodist minister in Sparta, Georgia, was a guy with a red nose. No, not from drinking or sunburn. Folks thought they were hiring the Reverend Bill Matthews. What they got was Bags the clown.
- The REAL Johnny Appleseed
Paul Rokich grew up in the old American Smelter camp in Tooerle, Utah. Copper lay under the Oquirrh Mountains. To get it, workers nearly killed the soil. The Oquirrh's were so polluted, experts told Rokich they could not be saved. One moonlit night, he flipped over the copper company's fence, alone in the darkened desert with a knapsack and two trees. Let’s let Paul tell the tale.
- Legless Wrestler
The more of America I see, the more I find people who are ruled by courage, love, endurance and are driven to work hard no matter what may befall them. They are often overlooked and under reported. Nick Ackerman was the first disabled athlete picked as NCAA outstanding college player in the country, even though he was competing with no legs. He beat all the able bodied wrestlers. “I always thought I was the normal one," Nick grinned. "I used to break the legs off my G.I. Joe Action figures, to make 'em cool like me.”
- Singing Sullivans
On Betty Sullivan’s 75th birthday, her kids got together to sing for their mom in a place polished with dreams and hard work. Carnegie Hall. She was set to perform again at Carnegie Hall on her 90th birthday. Coronavirus canceled the celebration.
Jim and Betty Sullivan just wanted their eight kids to learn music. They began to teach them in an old home, now covered in weeds. Son Tim sang country songs. His sister, Heather, wrote themes for television shows. Her sister, Stacy, had a recording career, and big sister, K.T., was a world-class cabaret singer.
She sang them a song with her favorite line.
“You have never left my mind long enough to leave me …”
- One family Saves Another
Come on. Take a walk with me. I want you to meet Jim and Marty Dwyer and their five boys. The Dwyers always wanted a baby girl but figured it wasn’t going to happen after those five boys. So they agreed to raise someone else’s. But she wasn’t a baby. And she brought her brother. And those two brought four more.
- Wanted: Alligator Wrestler
Used to be only Seminoles wrestled alligators. The tribe lived in the Florida swamps. Gators were their major source of food and profit. But today, the 26 hundred members make big money running gambling casinos, enough for kids to afford college and dreams beyond the swamp. None of them wants to learn this dangerous, ancient skill. Chief James Billy tried to keep the tradition alive. It cost him. Big time.
- Country Mardi Gras
Mardi Gras comes with fancy masked balls and big parades. Thousands spent on costumes and parties. But for a Cajun in Mamou, the celebration costs only $7.50. For that, you get a beer, hard boiled eggs, sausage and the answer to the age old question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?
- Lost City of Cecil B. Demille
Oscar night. Time for little known Hollywood history. Amateur archeologists have uncovered a lost Egyptian city. Not on the Nile. Beneath the sands of coastal California. It was buried by that Pharaoh of films, Hollywood Director Cecil B. DeMille.
- Singalong Sound of Music
The Sound of Music movie was re-released with a twist. The audience showed up in costumes and was encouraged to sing along. I did. Want to see?
- Yellowstone National Park in Winter
150th celebration Yellowstone National Park. It does not give up winter easily. The geysers cough and crackle and keep their warmth inside. Old Faithful is the first to break its glass jail. Splashing in the sun like a ghost train in the Rockies. Warm rivers are the only winter fire. Snow the only blanket. Animals who survive are as stubborn as the land itself. Bison have passed through the ice and the pain, standing dark and still, trembling in the wind. Trumpeter swans preen and float. The plain begin to look beautiful. Swirling through snow on currents of ice, they spin free. The Aspens are crystal. The pines are glass. An iridescent bone yard, waiting for the world to thaw.
- Until It’s Not Here No More
150 years ago, the plains Indians of Oklahoma were refugees of war. The tattered remains of once proud tribes who had become foreigners in their own land. Practically overnight, they were faced with a new language, new religion and a new way of life. In the struggle to survive some of the old ways were forgotten. But Katie Osage remembers. "I was born in a tent and raised in a tent. Yeah, I still live in a tent." For nearly a century, she has lived in two worlds. And she has survived.
- Babies Behind Bars
Pete Weststein used to live in a place of blue distances, tending his dairy herd. It is now a valley of prisons. Four of them, nudging aside the cows and the quiet. His wife Frieda is raising her family next to those prisons. She wondered, what became of the babies that were born inside.
- So Cold, Spit Bounces
There is still a little frontier in all of us. Something that urges us out beyond the limits of our settled lives. Diana Moroney shrugs off the world she lives in to find her heart in another. She races a team of sled dogs 11-hundred miles from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, sliding through a snowy wilderness so big, it would cover everything from Maine to the tip of Florida.
- No Phones
Silverton, Washington has a hang up about being in touch. Out here, rivers sparkle like winter stars. And the air smells like it was just made. Denny Boyd grew up in asphalt meadows dreaming of such a place. So 15 years ago, he left city life to open a store in the mountains of western Washington. He neglected to notice the small print in his dream. Silverton, Washington was one of the last towns in America where you cannot make a phone call.
- A Normal Life
Seth Chwast cannot hold a conversation or a complex thought. At two he was diagnosed with Autism. His mother was determined to give him a normal life.
A counselor suggested that Seth consider mopping floors for a career. Instead, his mom enrolled him in one last therapy class at the Cleveland, Ohio, Museum of Art.
THE BOY WHO COULD BARELY SPEAK BECAME A WORLD CLASS ARTIST.
- Painting his Soul
His eyes were turned to beauty only he could see, a gallery of gods. Native American spirits, watching over Christ.
“Some of my Zuni people won’t go along with this,” Alex Seowtewa told me, but he painted his vision on the walls of a church for more than half a century. This old mission in the heart of the pueblo was not in the heart of most Zuni’s. It reminded them of a time when Coronado came calling, looking for gold. And paid with death. The priests who ordered the Zuni’s to build the mission were found dead, buried beneath its floor.
“I was told not to look at the color of skin by my grandfather,” Seowtewa said. He dipped his brush into his own soul and painted what seemed best. For Alex, religion is a search, not certainty. He spent his life capturing clouds and sunsets to hang on a church wall.
He reached into the world and found its vagrant beauty.
- If America Had a King
When George Washington took the oath of office, the presidency was a uniquely American institution. Back then, kings ruled most of the world. They believed they were divinely chosen. Of course, the first presidential inauguration changed all that. But what if the popular general had decided to become king? Who would be our king today?
- Changing Racial History
Macon county, Tennessee, is so lovely folks like to say, “If you stay long enough to wear out a pair of shoes, you’ll never leave.” Not everyone was given that chance. Black people used to be run out of the county. Some were hung from a tree on the courthouse square. Fred Thomas’ friends thought he was crazy when he opened a medical clinic in Macon county. “If I had listened to what people said,” Dr. Thomas pointed out, “I would have been a plumber.” Fred Thomas ignored the county’s racial history. He began to forge his own.
- Baseball Tryouts
Jeff Hall’s buddy asked him, “Are you going?’ 290 guys, most of them from the Philadelphia area, were driving 19 hours non-stop to tryout for their beloved Phillies in Florida. Hall had pitched for dozens of minor league teams for 8 years, until a sore arm sidelined him. “Now, I’m in the real world.” Driving a forklift. The longest job he’d ever held. 17 months. Hall didn’t have the money for the trips to Clearwater, so his neighbors donated a thousand dollars to give him one last shot before his 30th birthday.
- Never Park in Space Reserved for Umpires
John McSherry ran a school like no others. He taught how to be UN-loved. His students were would-be big league umpires. McSherry, a National League umpire, worked his class like a drill sergeant. Get by John McSherry, the rest of the world seems like a smile.
- Beer Cans Heat home
Now you can enjoy heating your home. An inventor in Woodsdale, Ohio, gets all the warmth he needs from empty beer cans. Add a garbage pail and a copper coil buried in compost. You get heat. Wisdom doesn't always wear a suit.
- Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part Three
A PBS interview with the team that won a National EMMY for what was — at the time — an untold story: African American history in the old west. Their 1973 documentary, "Through the Looking Glass Darkly,” had higher ratings than any of the network shows the nights it aired. A high definition restoration of the original program was paired with this interview on the 30th anniversary. Bob Dotson, produced, wrote and narrated. Photojournalist Oliver Murray was also an associate producer, as was George Wesley.
- Boys of Winter
One afternoon in St. Petersburg, Florida, I stopped to watch Fred Broadwell waiting for a pitch, crouching over the strike zone, leaning into the wind, seemingly suspended. The ball floated toward the plate. He chopped it toward the shortstop and shuffled off toward first base on stiff legs. It was a big day for Fred. A couple of years ago he was sidelined with pneumonia. Now he was back at 95.
DID HE SCORE?
- Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part Two
Listen to Logan Jackson's story: "Dan Porter was an old Civil War veteran. I was a little boy. At the time we met, they were enforcing the Jim Crow law, which said black men could not vote. ‘Man told Dan Porter, says, ‘Don’t you go in there and try to vote.’ Says, ‘You can’t read.’ “Porter says, ‘That don’t make no difference. I’m one of the men who made General Lee surrender!’” Logan stared into the faces around him, ‘You don’t know who General Lee was, do you? He was a general in the Civil War. Yeah, an old soldier.’ Well, Dan, he voted.”
How a diverse group of Americans succeeded in living together is a fascinating tale that has made an extraordinary difference for the millions who came after them. Of course they had racial problems, and still do, but the way they worked them out holds lessons for our own time.
- Shadows Play On This Stage
Only shadows play in the Tabor Opera house. But for Evelyn Furman, it is an attic filled with memories. They survive because of her single minded devotion to the old theater in Leadville, Colorado. She saved it from the wrecking ball until younger generations fell in love with it too. Evelyn didn’t just preserve the brick and the mortar, she saved its stories.
- Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part One
One of the most diverse places in America is not where you might expect. Oklahoma once had 28 towns settled by former slaves, scattered throughout 37 Indian Nations. For nearly a century it was primarily a land of the Red and the Black, a checkerboard of Indians and ex-slaves who very nearly got their own state until thousands of immigrants from around the world joined them seeking free land -- land they got in a single day.
- Singer Saves a Town
I was sitting in a small cafe. At the other end of the counter was a man who looked like Lincoln. He was big and rawboned and about 80. His voice pierced and rattled like an old bugle. I couldn't help overhearing. He was holding forth about a fellow named Paul Sykes, who arrived in Oklahoma with 600 former slaves from Alabama the year before one of those big land runs that offered up free homesteads out west.
- Who Makes Those Crazy Valentines?
People buy more than 1-BILLION Valentines each year. Ever wonder who writes all those cards? What kind of mind comes up with "Be My Tootsie Wootsie or I'll Break Your Armsy Warmsy?" Well, I did. Went to the center of all this creativity, to the cupids of Kansas City.
- Driving Blind
Dee Follett has not seen a flower for half a century. She does not hear the bees. For her, summer is just another season of imagination. Dee is both blind and deaf, but each year she tries something no one else would dream. We found her driving a car.
- Smoking Pens
A third of all the paperback books sold in America are romance novels. One company has published a billion books in ten years. Enough to give a copy to every man, woman and child in China. The author of those books, Laura London, was voted “the most sensuous writer.” She is a man. His real name is Tom Curtis, a cross country trucker.
- Book of Love
Now here’s something that Valentine cards just can’t convey — the depth of your love. In this age of social media, where anyone can be a star, here’s a consolation prize, Romance novels that let you and the one you love — or would like to love — be the main characters.
- Small Town Singers with Big City Voices
We tend to think of classical music as big city music. Oh, there may be a snatch or two out in the country, but most often classical music is something big city folks bus to the boondocks on warm summer nights. That's the image. In Brattleboro, Vermont, it is wrong. Some of the finest classical singers in America live in this village.
- Small Town Football
A friend of mine played football for a school so small, the players changed uniforms at half time and came back as the band. There were so few girls, they borrowed cheerleaders from another town. It made for some close relationships. My pal married a cheerleader. She also played flute in the band. She also moved the yard markers. That’s the way it is with small town football — a family affair.
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