Blog

Payback Painter

by | Apr 6, 2026 | ,

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.

Summit Town

by | Apr 5, 2026 | ,

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.

Diamond Tooth Mary

by | Apr 4, 2026 | ,

Diamond Tooth Mary

Mary Smith McClain is torn between what she loves and what she feels is right. For most of her life she was known as Diamond Tooth Mary, a dazzling blues singer who performed on star studded bills with Duke Ellington and Nate King Cole. She turned her back on the blues and joined the Baptist church. Her pastor said the music was evil. And she believed him. When Mary turned 82, her husband died. Money got tight. Old blues singers don’t have pensions. She accepted an offer to sing in New York City for the first time in 42 years.

Lost Graves

by | Apr 2, 2026 | ,

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.

The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived

by | Apr 1, 2026 | ,

Dr. Leila Denmark opened her practice in 1928.  She was Atlanta’s first female pediatrician and was still doctoring babies at age 90.  Dr. Denmark healed children until her retirement at 104.  That retirement lasted a decade.  She lived to be 114, the oldest doctor in...

A Selfless Man 

by | Mar 31, 2026 | ,

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

by | Mar 30, 2026 | ,

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 

by | Mar 29, 2026 |

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.

See Yourself as Others See You

by | Mar 28, 2026 | ,

H. Lee Waters didn’t set out to preserve history. He was simply looking for a way to survive. People couldn’t afford his portraits during the Great Depression, so he picked up a film camera, taught himself to you use it and persuaded theater owners to show the films for free, as an added attraction at the movies. If more folks the usual showed up, he’d take a small percentage.

For six years, H. Lee never missed a show, until one night his wife called him and said she was going to the hospital and bring their first baby into the world. By the time he got there, that baby had already arrived. He decided to stay home instead of traveling. He returned to the portrait studio. At 87, he was still clicking away at life — and getting the best of it.

Payback Painter

by | Apr 6, 2026 | ,

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.

Summit Town

by | Apr 5, 2026 | ,

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.

Diamond Tooth Mary

by | Apr 4, 2026 | ,

Diamond Tooth Mary

Mary Smith McClain is torn between what she loves and what she feels is right. For most of her life she was known as Diamond Tooth Mary, a dazzling blues singer who performed on star studded bills with Duke Ellington and Nate King Cole. She turned her back on the blues and joined the Baptist church. Her pastor said the music was evil. And she believed him. When Mary turned 82, her husband died. Money got tight. Old blues singers don’t have pensions. She accepted an offer to sing in New York City for the first time in 42 years.

Lost Graves

by | Apr 2, 2026 | ,

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.

The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived

by | Apr 1, 2026 | ,

Dr. Leila Denmark opened her practice in 1928.  She was Atlanta’s first female pediatrician and was still doctoring babies at age 90.  Dr. Denmark healed children until her retirement at 104.  That retirement lasted a decade.  She lived to be 114, the oldest doctor in...

A Selfless Man 

by | Mar 31, 2026 | ,

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

by | Mar 30, 2026 | ,

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 

by | Mar 29, 2026 |

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.

See Yourself as Others See You

by | Mar 28, 2026 | ,

H. Lee Waters didn’t set out to preserve history. He was simply looking for a way to survive. People couldn’t afford his portraits during the Great Depression, so he picked up a film camera, taught himself to you use it and persuaded theater owners to show the films for free, as an added attraction at the movies. If more folks the usual showed up, he’d take a small percentage.

For six years, H. Lee never missed a show, until one night his wife called him and said she was going to the hospital and bring their first baby into the world. By the time he got there, that baby had already arrived. He decided to stay home instead of traveling. He returned to the portrait studio. At 87, he was still clicking away at life — and getting the best of it.

Recent Posts

  • Beehive Telephone

    To find this business, you go west from Salt Lake City, Utah.   Turn left and drive for the rest of your life.  Along about middle age, you may pass a battered 1951 Ford Installer moving among the tumbleweeds.  That is the Beehive telephone company. 

    https://youtu.be/NE1QHNUxiLA
  • Europe’s First Soul Food

    Leroy Haynes has led a life that ought to begin, “Once upon a time…” He went to school with Al Capone’s kids.  Played in the old Negro baseball league.  Was an All American football player at Morehouse College in Atlanta.  Made movies with Bridget Bardot.  Studied for a Doctorate degree at the Sorbonne in Paris.  Quit to sell Soul Food to the French.  

    https://youtu.be/O0-aJ_M3F-E
  • $2 Doc

     Dr. Russel Dohner looked after his neighbors for 55 years, charging them for a visit about what they would pay for a fancy cup of coffee: two bucks when he started his practice.  Five bucks later on.  Dr. Dohner worked with a broken back and after he had a heart attack — the only two times he ever closed his clinic. The morning we first met, back in 1983, Dohner had been to surgery twice, prepped a broken arm, handled two emergency cases, checked on 50 patients and delivered three babies. It was not yet 10:30.  

    https://youtu.be/oqD6EJaWcN4
    https://youtu.be/oqD6EJaWcN4
  • Curing Cancer with Pie?

    A man has cooked up a possible cure for cancer using his wife’s pie plates. Don’t laugh.  Some of the finest medical minds in the country think he might be on to something.  

    https://youtu.be/tuzzhNohocw
  • Prison Barber

    Bob Stanfill spent his first night in jail at age 9.  For two decades he was in and out so often, he expected to die beneath prison towers.  Until one day, he married into a remarkable family.  They helped Bob open his own barbershop.  Surrounded him with customers.  And kept him out of prison for 30 years.  Now he’s back.  By choice.

    FAMILY UNLOCKED HIS LIFE.  NOW HE HOLDS THE KEY FOR OTHERS. 

    https://youtu.be/oN0mY-4N0tk
  • The Hugh Heffer of Cow Photographers

    A cow today produces three times as much milk as those that came with Christopher Columbus.  The most productive sell for more than a million dollars.  For that kind of money, buyers want a cow to look as expensive as it is. That's why they call on Maggie Murphy.  She poses cows to fit the cow buyers fantasies. 

    https://youtu.be/CTvihCi6ZKU
  • El Capitan’s Courageous Climbers

    Americans favor hope.  Their dreams are not just dust awaiting the broom.  Sure there’s the small print in life -- the effort and sacrifice it takes to succeed -- but the brain gives up less easily than the body.   People find ways to live their dreams.  Case in point: a man with a broken back who lifted himself out of a wheelchair and climbed the tallest cliff on earth.  

    https://youtu.be/D_HlG_ykAsg?t=5
  • Sweat Motel

    David Stauffacher grew up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm.  He became the chairman of a $12 million dollar motel chain.  His construction crew and most of his stockholders call him “dad.”  The children get no allowance and no salary, but they do get a percentage of each motel once it is in operation — a sort of sweat equity. 

    https://youtu.be/j9Csg4-t-Ss
  • Sail off on a Summer Dream 

    Summer is the season of the possible, when dreams don't seem so far away.  The long summer days set a haze over the pace of our daily lives and leave us time to reflect.  Come on.  Lets set sail.

    https://youtu.be/7sDX73TjOx4
  • Cave Brothers

    In the mountains west of Boise, Idaho, clouds  are the only shade.  The sun's heat can evaporate a 3 gallon can of water in 3 days.  Americans survive in some of the harshest places.  Survive?  They thrive.  Some of our finest inventors have their best ideas far from the hardware store.  We were passing through these mountains one day when we noticed a microphone in the desert. It's chord led over a hill to a place where Tom Edison would feel right at home.

    https://youtu.be/Cg5qo8_Er3s
  • 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.

    https://youtu.be/QDYbK_l8JgI
  • Lady Eye

    Virginia Snyder looks like the little old lady Boy Scouts help across the street.  You can’t always tell a book by its cover.  Same with people.  At retirement age, Virginia opened her own detective agency.  With no prior police training, she became one of only two women in Floria to get a Class A Investigator’s license.  The cases she handles are none too dainty — murders, muggings, drug sales.   She keeps a trunk load of disguises for safety.  

    https://youtu.be/GIqUYffkd2w
  • Diner Donor

    A special story of love and courage that reaches across color lines to touch the core of America.  For 30 years, Barbara Knox beat the dawn to work.  This was her last.  She was worried.  Her boss was retiring, closing the diner where Barbara had labored all of her adult life.  The place was more than a paycheck for her.  

    https://youtu.be/g_wfaJaDDuQ
  • The Old West Built in the Backyard

    Alberto Munoz came looking for the Old West and all he found were K-Marts.  So, he built the Old West in his back yard.  As a child growing up in Spain, Alberto spent his Saturdays in darkened movie houses watching westerns.  He fell in love, not with the shootouts and the sheriffs, but with the music.  It was the music that brought him to the Montana wilderness.  Alberto was a classical pianist.  For 20 years, he corresponded from his home in Madrid with a pretty American ballerina.  She went to see him perform in Los Angeles.  They married 3 days later. 

    https://youtu.be/rV1CRzBo_Q8
  • Bubble Wrap Boy

    Simplicity is the mark of genius.  Grayson Rosenberger is changing the world with scissors, Scotch tape and a souped up hair dryer.  He’s found a way to make artificial legs look real for less.  A lot less.  Artificial leg covers can cost a thousand bucks.  Grayson’s cost $11.  He has invented a lightweight and more lifelike prosthetic leg using bubble wrap.

    https://youtu.be/lFaJXwlIURg
  • Rock n Bowl

    A bowling alley is the small town nearly everyone came to.  As familiar as memories.  The Rock n Bowl is New Orlean’s oldest.  But the crowd isn’t here for the good old days.  They want some good ol’ nights.  The Rock n Bowl is the world’s only second floor, strip mall bowling alley with a band.  

    https://youtu.be/ZB1b8r9pCqo

  • Tree Doc

    Dr. Olaf Robero, a plant pathologist, believes a tree’s death is just a passing phase. He has found a microscopic mix that can double a tree’s life.  

    https://youtu.be/zMoxoM3XN-Q?t=2
  • Brain Music

    A young man climbed the ladder of success and found it was leaning against the wrong wall. Now he has to chose between two very different careers.  A lot of us love the spotlight.  Look at the explosion of personal postings on the internet.  Everyone trying for their 15 megabytes of fame.  Robert Gupta is different.  He could be famous, but backed away.  Robert was a gifted kid who performed with major orchestras all over the world.  He sailed through Suzuki, Julliard and Yale.  Got a Masters in music at 19.  Music was supposed to be his hobby, so his dad asked Robert to follow another passion — one that could put groceries on the table.  Robert began assisting medical researchers at Harvard and two other colleges, studying Parkinson’s disease, the effect of pollution on the brain and how to restore spinal cords.  He received his first college degree in Pre-med — at 17.  Had his choice of med schools, but decided to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He was perfectly happy playing second fiddle.

    https://youtu.be/gMfnUAG7M6Q
  • Where a Game is Not a Bottom Line  

    Legend is a word we use easily.  A team wins thirteen games – legendary.  A guy tosses one good season of baseball – he’s a legend.  A single Saturday afternoon thrill – legendary.  But what of the legends who build quietly, year in and year out, until they touch us all.  For sixty summers Jimmy Porter gently coaxed the kids of Carollton, Texas, to play the game he loved.

    https://youtu.be/Ea0oDp7Ab2c
  • 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.  

    https://youtu.be/p0leIVX3OgY
  • Navajo Photographer

    Let’s relax with some beautiful scenery, courtesy of a Navajo photographer who shows us what we might miss, even standing next to him.  LeRoy DeJolie grew up on a ranch, north of the Grand Canyon.  All of his life, he has straddled two worlds.  Now he teaches photography to young students and helps them see more deeply. 

    https://youtu.be/Pq4QqEsi8-E
  • Kid App Testers

    Zade Lobo sings like it’s closing time.  The 8-year-old is testing a new computer app.  Adults hover over him like a rock star.  They want to know how to make this app so simple — even a grownup can understand. 

    https://youtu.be/uxD55IGaG2g
  • Angels on My Roof

    Rachel Johnson races the garbage men each morning.  She makes a living on what they come to throw away. 

    America survives and thrives because of all those names we don’t know, seemingly ordinary people who do extraordinary things.  They don’t run for president or go on talk shows, but without them, the best of America would not exist.  

    https://youtu.be/UzG4_KQn3h0
  • America’s Best Architect

    Faye Jones was chosen one of the outstanding architects of the last century.  He built his crowning achievement — a church — out of 2 by 4’s. The American Institute of Architects ranked his Thorncrown Chapel, deep in the Arkansas woods as the best building constructed since 1980.  This web of pine and glass is so functional, so architecturally pure, the building would collapse if any one part were removed.  His designs seem to be variations of the spectacular tree houses he built when he was a boy.  One of them had a fireplace.  

    Jones laughed, “That fireplace was its undoing.”

    But, build a better tree house, folks will find you and ask for another.

    https://youtu.be/w8hQQ0EwzMg
  • Picture Man

    Few people in Cabbagetown know his name.  He just showed up one Sunday and has seldom missed a Sunday since.  They call him simply the “Picture Man.”  He is not the first photographer to come here, but he is the first to give back something of himself.  Each week he passes out hundreds of prints of the pictures he has taken.  He pays for the prints himself.  They are photos of feeling.  Orion Catlege is partially blind. 

    https://youtu.be/K0jxqSByc5w
  • Georgie Clark

    The first person to ride the rapids through the Grand Canyon was a one arm Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell.  He lashed himself to a 17 foot boat and plunged down the Colorado river in a rocking chair.  For nearly a century only a handful of people dared to follow in his path.  Then, came Georgie Clark.  She opened the Colorado river to us all.  

    https://youtu.be/xAmmtyXmRls
  • Papa Goose

    Ever wonder what happens to birds who are too old to migrate?  Gurney Crawford did.  He built a place for them to land and singlehandedly diverted the flight path of Canada Geese.  How did the geese say “thank you?”  

    https://youtu.be/q7NxpZiXqCQ
  •  Kid PhD

    A budding Albert Einstein. Brilliant of course. But an humanitarian too. All at the tender age of 16. Andrew Soo was already working on his doctorate in Medical Research. He started early. His parents taught him to read at age 2. By 5 he was solving algebra problems. At 8 he entered High school. Finished a year later. At 12 he pushed his scooter to the University of Washington. Tutored honor students in science. His smarts brought him to campus, but charity got him admitted. The faculty was impressed by a foundation Andrew started in his spare time. 

    https://youtu.be/qCw0tJm_6SA
  • The Statue of Liberty Still Stands

    I pursued many American dreams for the TODAY show, but this was a nightmare.  We were suspended eighteen stories above New York Harbor on a thin metal ladder tilted between the pedestal and the big toe of the Statue of Liberty. She approached her Centennial riddled with rust.  There are holes in her gown large enough to take pictures through.  And that was what Peter B. Kaplan was doing.  I was climbing with him. The odds were against me.

    https://youtu.be/zImaPK6ubkE
  • Miss Liberty Gets a New Torch

    The Statue of Liberty has been buffeted with salt water and baked with sun.  She approached her Centennial riddled with rust.  That had so weakened the statue, French artisans crafted a new torch gilded in gold.  They ply their trade much as the original builders did nearly a 150 years ago.  Brought with them two tons of hand made tools and 4 tree stumps.  

    https://youtu.be/Kf9rlahbf7s
  • The Most Photographed Monument in the World

    The Statue of Liberty has been buffeted with salt water and baked with sun.  She approached her Centennial riddled with rust.  There were holes in her gown large enough to take pictures through.  And that is what Peter B. Kaplan was doing.

    https://youtu.be/1Wb2fRBOHeo
  • American Essay

    There is more to American than just a blur out of a car window, but you must linger to see it’s details. I’ve crisscrossed this country for nearly half a century listening to your stories. While most reporters focus on life’s flat tires, I look for something far more difficult to find — what keeps the other tires rolling.  I discover people who are practically invisible, the ones who make our lives better, but don’t take time to tweet and tell us about it.  

    https://youtu.be/wzfbhUhmy2o
  • Wrong Side of History

    America’s fight for independence was — for some — a civil war.  100-thousand Americans fought with the British.  Forty thousand fled to Canada after the war.  Among them, a battle-scarred man who walked with a slight limp.  Everyone knew his name: Benedict Arnold. “Oh, the traitor, eh?” Steve Arnold smiled. He looks remarkably like him. Steve is Benedict Arnold’s closest living relative.

    https://youtu.be/eRpIdTiiP74
  • Bungee Jump

    Bungee jumping was just taking hold in America when this story was done in 1991. I call it Bernstein’s symphony of air. First. And last.

    https://youtu.be/slskGwADc5Y
  • The Most Important Lesson

    There’s an old grocery store in Detroit, Texas.  Its shelves are stocked with music.  Edith DeWitt’s dad opened the place in 1919.  His daughter has nudged aside the can goods to nourish other needs.  For 66 years she learned to play dozens of instruments so she could teach whatever her students wanted to master — piano, organ, drums, ballroom dancing, tap dancing, marimba, banjo.  She also mastered ballet, acrobatic dancing, drama and voice.  Her most important lesson?  

    https://youtu.be/zb6XNK5M5zg
  • 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.)”

    https://youtu.be/C4xTxUvcmwE
  • 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 

    https://youtu.be/7SSpNj7LdZU
  • “I Will Find You.”

    Bill Eisenhuth watched his psychiatric patients come and go.  He decided to follow them into the streets.  His office became the steam vents and alleys where his patients lived.

    https://youtu.be/I0yxtlVvs1U
  • Wannabe Movie Pirate

    To all of us who grew up watching pirate movies, this place is kind of special.  Blackbeard had a home just off of Main Street.  There were more parrots and eye patches on these wharves than on the movie backlot.  In 1981 they came back.  Russ Morphew ran the only school for pirates this side of Hollywood. 

    https://youtu.be/TMlKCGAxXv0
  • Teen is her mom’s boss

    Jasmine Lawrence is living every kid’s dream. She gets to boss her mom. April Lawrence works for her 16 year old daughter.  How’s that working out? It began with a bad hair day. The chemicals Jazzman used to relax her curls left her practically bald. She decided to create her own recipe — at age 11. Thirteen when she went off to summer camp to learn how to start a business. Eden Body Works was born with a $2-thousand dollar advance on her allowance.

    At an age when most kids are lucky to get a summer job stacking shelves, Jazzman has 30 products in stores. She signed a distribution agreement with Walmart. Plans to take her brand world wide. Projected profits: one million dollars.  Not bad for a kid in Williamstown, New Jersey.

    https://youtu.be/Liz5c12TPR4
  • Carrying Home in his Heart

    For 93 years Beltran Paris has carried his home in his heart.  He is the last of the old time mountain men who came from from France and Spain to take a job few people wanted.  You can find him behind a moving white blanket of sheep. He still walks them 150 miles to winter pasture.  In all those hours alone, Beltran Paris set a plan.  He took his pay in sheep.  One day, he hoped his children and his children’s children would own the valley where he walked.  They do — Butte Valley, Nevada.

    https://youtu.be/iw-t39Iwyrk

  • Keeping Kids Out of Prison

    Detective Dick Dutrow has had to arrest children as young as 11.  He worries less about catching them than keeping them out of prison.  When all else fails, he will raise a troubled boy himself.  He took in 35 foster children in the 15 years.  Most went to college.  Married and now have children of their own.  None went to prison.  

    https://youtu.be/y9yMfXJj-gA
  • Longest School Trip

    If you could take Alaska and lay it over the lower 48 states, one side would touch Florida, the other California.   It's distances are so vast, travel budgets for high school sports teams can run 100-thousand dollars a year.  Arch rivals often live a thousand miles away.  Any high school kid who wants to perform or play music must first —  learn how to pack.  

    https://youtu.be/9Huz2pd-at4
  • American Families We Used to Hear About

    Under a cotton puff sky, I met the kind of family America used to know.  Wading through the wheat fields came Roger and David and their nephew Jay.  Their dads work on the oil rigs.  So do four older brothers — 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.  They live in a home their parents bought two decades ago for $140., a home their parents rebuilt in the quiet of their evenings. 

    https://youtu.be/w4gt4LHxKbg
  • Rescuing the Rescuers

    The wind can sound like Hell's idea of music in the north Atlantic.  Blizzards blow in biblical proportions; one of them taught Lanier Phillips a great lesson.  Caring can come from unexpected places.  

    https://youtu.be/y3fY2h2ByZk
  • Soul Circuit Rodeo

    June 19th. This was the date great, great, grand daddies used to mark the calendar of their lives. In  1865 folks gathered to hear a general who came to tell Texas what the rest of the world already knew.  Black Americans were now free.  They called it Juneteeth, the day that changed the world.  Black Texans had already turned their world upside down.

    https://youtu.be/4Y_VIbUYyx8
  • Texas Spiny Lizard

    The Texas Spiny Lizard is the most elusive animal on earth.  It can only be caught with a blow gun and pitted pimento olives. 

    https://youtu.be/ZRR3gnDOSEg
  • In a Beefcake World, He was a Patty Melt

    In a beefcake world, LaGrand Nielsen was a patty melt, putting on the pounds. So, at 96, he started eating right.  At 97, he entered the Panhellenic Games in Greece. Won races in China, South Africa, Finland, Australia and Rome. How’d he do it?

    “All my competitors are dead.”  

    https://youtu.be/IYngYuPWKQw
  • A Father’s Gift 

    Eureka, Montana, is home to the world’s most exclusive golf club. A nine hole course was built with just one person in mind — a handicapped son.

    https://youtu.be/Nq1W9Az2ses
  • Miracle Beneath the Sea Part # 4

    "Bless their hearts,” Caroline Surofchek said, squeezing my hand. We were sitting together at a memorial service a few years later for the families of the men who went down with the sub. At ninety-one she was the only wife still living. “Those Abele boys weren’t nothing but little kids when they lost their dad. Thanks to them I’ve outlived the mystery of what happened to my Steve.”

    MYSTERY SOLVED.  TIME FOR THE FAMILIES TO SAY GOODBYE IN PART FOUR OF THE ABELE BROTHER’S SEARCH FOR THEIR MISSING FATHER’S SUBMARINE.  

    https://youtu.be/-27TIE4xMcE
  • Miracle Beneath the Sea Part # 3

    While the Abele brothers searched for their father’s submarine, the crewmen’s relatives looked for one another. The boys’ mom, Kay Abele, had kept them together for years, writing notes to the other sixty-nine families, week after week, until she died. Then they drifted apart, losing track of one another. The last relative was located the morning the Grunion was found.

    TWO MYSTERIES.  SOLVED.  THIS IS THE THIRD OF FOUR STORIES IN THE ABELE BROTHER’S SAGA. 

    https://youtu.be/g8dmRNgsMck
  • Miracle Beneath the Sea Part # 2

    The sea holds many mysteries, but few detectives were as dogged as the Abele brothers who search a lifetime for their father’s submarine which went missing during World War Two. In 2006 they began crisscrossing the Bering Sea, probing its depths with sonar. The brothers caught a break when a Japanese historian found a lost account of the Grunion ’s last battle, which mentioned a confrontation between a cargo ship and the sub. The freighter’s crew spotted two torpedoes bubbling toward them, the first of which missed; but the second exploded and stopped the engine. Terrified, the Japanese seamen turned a deck gun on the sub, firing eighty-four times as it began to surface. 

    "There was a dull ‘thud’ noise and a little spout. Presumably oil, we don’t know,” John said. Their dad’s sub slid into history’s shadows, and seventy men were never heard from again. Until now.

    https://youtu.be/9inK0jO8QZo
  • Miracle Beneath the sea Part # 1

    We all make deals with our hearts from time to time, redoubling our efforts when others drop away. Sensible voices tell us to stop, but we don’t. The Abele brothers, John, Bruce, and Brad, spent a lifetime searching for their father’s submarine, long after the U.S. Navy gave up and historians closed the book on one of World War II’s biggest mysteries. 

    https://youtu.be/VRae5RfZVk8?t=7
  • Town Follows People

    Valmy mayor Gene DeGrazia owns a gas station in the middle of a dessert.  To entice motorists to stop, he built a motel, dug a pond and put up signs to his secret fishing hole.  Over the years, that gas station spawned a tiny town.  The new interstate highway bypassed it, so DeGrazia, who had become mayor of Valmy, Nevada, made an executive decision.  If people no longer came to town, the town would follow them.

    https://youtu.be/w6tMLYksf5w
  • Ritchie Boys

     Ever heard of the Ritchie Boys?  They were a group of German born Jewish immigrants who were trained and sent back to defeat the Nazis that killed their families.  Their story has been hiding in history’s shadow.

    https://youtu.be/KW28vh3CdaM
  • Flying Fathers

    These guys were to hockey what the Harlem Globe Trotters are to basketball. Their goalie rode a horse named Penance. Their best player was a priest dressed as a nun, “Sister Mary Shooter.” She would distract the other team’s goalie by lassoing him with a twelve-foot rosary. 

    https://youtu.be/VG-iQo17gaQ?t=3
  • How to Make Life Beautiful

    Pat Knisley, a swimming coach from New Bern, NC, cares more about kids than a winning team. Her enthusiasm and love have inspired thousands of young students. Despite a 20-year battle with multiple sclerosis and the loss of her husband, Knisley continues to teaches us a lesson in life.

    https://youtu.be/ODydY7x63p0
  • Go Cooker

    There was a time when rush hour in Odessa, Texas, became a kind of moving McDonalds.  There was more that sizzled than hot pavement.  Hooked to the back bumper of several small cars were little ovens that fried eggs on the way to work and steaks on the way home.  The oven’s heat came from the car’s exhaust pipe, which was shielded to keep out fumes.  Bill Worrell was responsible for this culinary revolution.  No matter how fast he went, there was still one problem.

    https://youtu.be/NwasMcuSZc0
  • Long Lost Man Who Saved a Life

    Let us remember a time when Americans lived up to their ideals and those ideals helped save the world. On June 6, 1944 we set out to free Europe. The invasion began just 3 miles from the little port where the Pilgrims left for the new world. The allies too, carried a gift of freedom.

    American soldier Sam Fuller returned on the 40th anniversary to find the Frenchman who saved his life during the D-Day landings. 

    https://youtu.be/RiyNeDP_unQ
  • Surprise! I’m Alive.

    Patrolman Bill Sample was stationed at the Philadelphia Children’s hospital.  His beat took him among children who are very sick.  He smiled and they talked, telling him of dreams they would not live.  Bill Sample decided to provide some of those dreams. He paved the way for Make a Wish and all the other big time charities that followed.  The little girl featured in the first story did not die. 

    https://youtu.be/xmsiGKTZqv4
  • Sunshine Child

    Patrolman Bill Sample was stationed at the Philadelphia Children’s hospital.  His beat took him among children who were very sick.  He smiled and they talked, telling him of dreams they would not live.  Bill Sample decided to provide some of those dreams. He paved the way for Make a Wish and all the other big time charities that followed.

    https://youtu.be/nk_lbOQhW3A
  • That Last Howard Johnson’s

    his a month of memories.  I remember a time when summer was served in 28 flavors.  Howard Johnson’s ice cream was every where.  When I was a kid, the brand was as well known as Coca Cola.  I had my last taste in the state where it began.  The last Howard Johnson restaurant was closing in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

    https://youtu.be/lDO368xnI7M

  • Simpler Sign Language

    A 21 year old graduating senior at the University of Virginia has developed a simpler sign language for autistic children and stroke victims, helping some to communicate for the very first time. Micki Cassagne brings life to children crouching in the darkness of their minds.

    https://youtu.be/UVwjuaWvqq0
  • Places No One Else Has Photographed

    David Tatnall worked as a janitor until he saved enough to go looking for places no one else has photographed.  His was not the dry Australia of foreign imagination.  Tatnall hiked the high mountain forest east of Melbourne where the rain melts the landscape into a vivid softness.  

    https://youtu.be/De4niM7MRcs
  • Surviving the Great Depression

    It is an accident of history that old stories are recalled in black and white.  Familiar, faded images.  Always the same.  They never tell it all.  During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, farmers from half a continent funneled into California looking for work. Leo Hart helped their children find a way out of poverty.  He taught arithmetic in an air plane.  Children with the highest marks got to taxi it around.  Those kids ended up owning mining companies and supermarkets.  They became college professors, engineers and judges.  Their teacher emphasized what they could become, not what they were. 

    https://youtu.be/ONMTYLwHiBs
  • Saying NO to Money

    West Texas has one of the most sparsely populated counties in the country, 647 square miles of nothing but sagebrush, rattlesnakes and sand.  It has one town.  Only 110 people live there.  So few, the mayor bought something unusual to let them sleep late. 

    https://youtu.be/8cBqresVrrw
  • A Lobbyist for Wildflower

    Carroll Abbott was the only registered lobbyist in Texas — for wild flowers.  I loved his motto:  “A weed is just a flower in a place you don’t want it.”

    https://youtu.be/_35r6SsaSi8
  • Riches to Rags

    David Rosenblum was a professional race car driver who didn’t win many races, but crashed a lot of cars.  He was a drug addict, driving 130 miles an hour.  Rosenblum went from riches to rags, until he met some real heroes, kids who declined a drug deal every day.  Chris Serano and his friends passed up what David could not.  So, he tapped their strength to control his own addiction.  In return, he offered them a ticket out of North Philadelphia.  He picked his pit crews from  the Edison High shop class.  Good kids with average grades who are often overlooked.  

    https://youtu.be/WePOnBVr_pw
  • People’s Bridge

    San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was so loved when it opened in 1937 that a lot of people scribbled their names and addresses on its towers. A friend bet 14-year old Bill Hughes a quarter that Bill couldn’t write a letter to a name and address chosen at random and get a reply. The friend closed his eyes and put his finger on a name: Patricia Lucas. Bill wrote the letter.

    https://youtu.be/3QYAi2uUFeo
  • Fighting Grossman’s

    I overheard this exchange in Walmart between two older men, one a customer and the other a greeter offering him assistance: “Can I help you?” “Sorry,” said the customer, pulling out a cart. “I don’t hear so well.” He pointed at his ear. “I flew combat during the war.” “I served, too,” said the greeter. Carl Grossman, an affable little guy, played his trump card in this game of “Me, too.” He leaned in, touching the customer’s arm. “Eight of us brothers were in uniform during World War II.”

    https://youtu.be/Nn1a-Qo0vyU?t=8
  • Section 60

    There is a section of Arlington National cemetery where mothers come to tend their son’s graves.  They watch over them, just as they did on playgrounds long ago. Let us pause a moment. And remember.

    https://youtu.be/DU58dgmbRgk
  • Winning the Game of Life

    For 35 years Tyrone Curry started work every morning at four.  Seldom quit before dinner, but the longtime janitor at Evergreen high school in Seattle, Washington, was happy.  He accepted that someone has to put out the folding chairs in life.  Someone has to do the jobs we all take for granted.  Besides, it left him muscled like a man who tilled poor soil and he liked that.  Still, everyone wondered why he didn't kiss his trash sack goodbye, after he won the Washington State Lottery.

    https://youtu.be/9rfvZbQ3YKo
  • Naval Academy Family

    This story took four years to complete.  We followed a family of students who were making Naval Academy history.  The mom was one of the first women to graduate and her oldest children — twins — graduated in the same place and at the exact same moment 30 years later.  There was still one more child in the Academy.  The dad went there too.  The Disher Family is the first in American history to send everyone to the Naval Academy.

    https://youtu.be/iWYKcxBMcx8
  • Light House Homes

    Pete Jerowitz likes to rest with his eyes open, so he can see his dream.  Can’t beat his view. He’s living in a lighthouse.

    https://youtu.be/WALAWg5ei1Q
  • Homeless Chef

    The winter of life brings choices.  Decisions.  Its time to travel back looking for lost dreams.  Rollie Richardson quietly gathered some of his homeless neighbors from winter’s worst.  And helped them try to find those dreams.  He drove them non-stop from Delaware to Disney World for nothing but a smile.  

    The homeless used to be people he stepped around on the way to the bank, where he was a vice president, until one day, he made the kind of choice the homeless make.  Friends offered him drugs and he took them. He was 51 years old.  Delores, his wife of 38 years, sent Rollie to rehab — 8 times.  He finally quit for good, after a friend said, “Folks used to look up to you.”  

    Rollie got a new job coaching kids and started cooking up an idea with the money he made.  Every Saturday, he would entice the homeless with a gourmet breakfast.  Then, offer to help them solve their problems.  They had heard that message many times, but in Rollie, they saw themselves — a mirror of hope in the vast uncertainty of life.  

    https://youtu.be/A8DI6a9s-9c
  • A REALLY Senior Prom

    Mount Clemens, Michigan is a suburb of Detroit, not Hollywood.  But for fantasy, nothing could top an evening like this.  The oldest citizens mingling with its youngest at a REAL senior prom.  This is not just one of those cute things kids sometimes do for older folks.  Rose Dysert earned her invitation.  She graduated from high school at 98.

    https://youtu.be/wSKGZyisMKU
  • Medical Careers for All

     Shanita Viera believed she could be a brain surgeon one day, but being a doctor was something few kids in her block ever considered, until the staff at New York Presbyterian hospital volunteered to teach them. Just the prescription to pull a dream within reach.  Don’t you wish people could see what we wish we could be.

    https://youtu.be/6sA0fAfb9J4?t=2
  • Mark Mothersbaugh- A Musician for All Ages

    Here’s something rare.  A Rock star whose music also makes kids giggle.

    https://youtu.be/buaABb5_vvM
  • Does Our Music Matter?

    Jimmy Driftwood is an Ozark farmer who also taught history.  Each evening as the sun slipped over the ridge, he set his lessons to song.  One of them lifted him out of a tiny school in Snowball, Arkansas, and made him famous.

    https://youtu.be/ueQHKk5E6Zw

  • Dragon Slayers

    Aniak, Alaska has the only Emergency Medical team serving three thousand people in an area the size of Delaware.  Every EMT is a teenager.  Teacher, Dave LeMaster, wasn’t too happy about letting his students cut class for all those emergency calls, until one day the rescue pager sounded and someone screamed, “Oh, my God, the principal just fell!”  LeMaster shook his head in disbelief, “By the time the ambulance got here, they already had him stabilized.”  And now?  “It’s like Ghostbusters,” LeMaster grinned.  “Who you gonna call?” 

    https://youtu.be/eheoWXS6sO4
  •  Restoring the South Bronx 

    After years of urban decline, the community of the South Bronx gets a boost from native Hedy Fox, who brings the skills she learned in college to the challenges of neighborhood crime. 

    https://youtu.be/rju_8MisuSI
  • The Man Who Made a National Park

    Photographer Rex Ziak (pronounced Zeek) spent almost a decade trying to get a new National Park at the point where American explorers Lewis and Clark ended their westward journey. He tramped along the last bit of trail they blazed near his home in Southwestern Washington, studied their journals and discovered no one had accurately pinpointed that place on the Pacific coast. So Rex spent years searching their path until he found it. That work led directly to the creation of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, but Rex didn't attend the opening ceremony. He planned it that way.

    https://youtu.be/QI0oqwBZsYI?t=4
  • Finding Hope

    Every generation faces terrible challenges.   Wars, depressions, holocausts.  Polio, Aids, pandemics.  We cannot predict what will come, but it is well to remember people who play a bad hand well, over and over again.  They are why America not only survives, but thrives.  Let me share with you one of my TODAY Show reports that was so much more than a weather story.  

    https://youtu.be/iCBs-lXVBYM
  • Doctor Will Come to You

    I remember when milk and doctors came to your house.  Fred Richardson still does — in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Chicago.  He is a brave man with a big heart.  Dr. Richardson returned to his old neighborhood to open a one-man practice. Scary?  No.  His neighbors keep him safe.  

    https://youtu.be/JENgGJNrOrM
  • 40 Acres and a Mule

    The Federal government gave some starving folks 40 acres and a mule during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It saved them.  I found them 50 years later. 

    https://youtu.be/UOPugUifQWM
  • Mother’s Day Dad

    The Alonso’s lost their mother during the 9/11 attack in 2001.  Janet went to work at the World Trade Center that morning and never returned. Robert was left to care for a 2-year-old daughter and a baby boy with Down syndrome.

    “If I was to tell you I did this by myself, I’d be a liar; I’d be a flat-out liar,” Robert said. “I got my mom, my aunt, my pop to help.”

    But he never returned to work at the pizza place he owned in Stony Point, New York. His family substituted for him. “I owe it to my children to be around,” Robert explained. “If I buried my grief in work, my kids would lose both their parents.”

    How’d they turn out? 

    https://youtu.be/Fm679Gt0d-g
  • Above the Whispers and Stares

    Not all my stories were done in America. I found Doug Mealing in Australia.  One side of his face grew faster than the other.  He was born with Elephant Man’s Disease.  Mealing worked far above the whispers and stares repairing the old Sydney Harbor bridge, but could not climb above his problems, until a woman’s love earned him a job on the number one soap opera in Australia. 

    https://youtu.be/9Rac-A1jwW8
  • Immigrant Surgeon

    One of the finest brain surgeons in the world began his journey  very differently from most doctors.  The hands that pluck out brain tumors once picked vegetables for $22 a day.  Alfredo Quinones was a migrant worker living in an old camper top in the middle of California field. 

    HOW DID A GUY LIKE THAT BECOME A DOCTOR?  

    https://youtu.be/eOVhMkRoQXA
  • School of the Air

    Long before Covid-19 made virtual classrooms a necessity, students in Australia’s vast Outback were learning via two-way radio.  The Warwick family built an extraordinary life in that dessert on not much more than hope. Their ranch sits on some of the driest country on earth. In order to make a modest living they farmed one hundred and twenty five square miles.  Their kids’ closest friends lived six hundred miles away.  The children dressed up on Halloween and described their costumes to their teacher over a short-wave radio.  They experienced the first chapter of modern communication.

    https://youtu.be/mb3s12KSbgM

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  • Piano Boxer

    A second grade girl gave me a lesson in equal rights long before the women’s movement — equal rights, equal lefts — punched my lights out.  Imagine if she’d had some training.  Doyle Weaver, a piano teacher, teaches arpeggios by day, punches by night.  Weaver is the founder and coach of the oldest girl’s boxing team in America. 

    https://youtu.be/uMipkuwmi1Q
  • Helping Artists Survive

    The beauty of this rare land masks how difficult life can be out here.  The Painted Dessert is chiseled by wind.  The sun leaves creek beds peeling.  In this barren place, Loren Phillips seems compelled to enhance life to add a beauty of his own. 

    https://youtu.be/CjYEpYXVGpY
  • Bus Boy Referee

    What's my all-time favorite story?  The next one.  A storyteller never stops searching.  At the core of this lifelong quest lies a simple truth - the shortest distance between two people - no matter how different - is a good story.  Once you know a person's story, you begin to see how much we are alike and that helps you appreciate what each of us brings to the mix of America.  That's not always obvious at first.  I was shooting a story in Las Vegas, Nevada, when I stumbled across a better one.  That city’s only commerce is hope.  Instant winners.  Methodical losers.  It is also home to the anonymous thousands who feed those dreams.  And, have dreams of their own.  Back home in the Philippines, Carlos Padilla is something of a legend. He has refereed 23 World Championship fights, but in between, he takes orders, as a bus boy.  

    https://youtu.be/Cy9iTD_oyb4
  • Old Man on the Mountain

    Niels Nielsen volunteered to sling from a slender thread of steel half a mile high to repair a Great Stone Face in New Hampshire.  His father once worked on the Statue of Liberty.  Niel liked to think he carried a torch, too.   Folks gathered below to watch and wonder:  Is that the face of an old man on the mountain?  It is seen from only one direction.  Without people, it is merely a pile of rocks.  Perhaps that is why the Old Man is so special.  Real men struggled to keep him from disappearing.  They failed.  The Face collapsed on May 3, 2003.  You can still see it here.

    https://youtu.be/8spdNdm8Xuo
  • Who’s the Savage?

    You remember Sitting Bull who helped defeat General Custer at the Little Big Horn?  He was a Great War Chief of the Lakota Sioux Indian tribe. He was also a man who cared deeply about children. 

    On his trip to New York City with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Sitting Bull was moved by the orphans he saw on the streets.  He spent his pay buying them food which he handed out in a back alley.  Ron His Horse is Thunder told me that story.  He is Sitting Bull’s Great-Great-Great grandson.  Ron let me ponder what he had said.   Finally, he looked up and asked, "Who's the savage?”

    https://youtu.be/HUyzuBsjoLk
  • College by 12

    One mother told me her Home Schooling curriculum includes Honors laundry and AP vacuuming.  And then — there’s the Harding family who sent 6 kids kids to college by age 12.  That’s right.  12.  The Harding’s offer tired parents some tips.

    https://youtu.be/cXb58-KCUjw
  • Vietnam Wall Washers

    Michael Najarian found his name chiseled on a list of war dead.  His was one of more than 58 thousand names on the Wall of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Najarian served in Vietnam, but was still very much alive.

    "I just sort of sank on the ground," he said, shaking his head.  "I couldn't believe it."

    You may not either. 

    https://youtu.be/eLoSCbw06KQ
  • Best Lessons Learned Outside the Classroom

    Sometime the best college lessons are learned outside the classroom.  A young man with Down Syndrome taught a fraternity what no professor ever could. Todd Martz respected everybody the same.  Black. White.  Red. Yellow.  Short.  Fat.  Ugly.  Beautiful. The fraternity brothers were so taken with Todd’s approach to life, they did something extraordinary.

    https://youtu.be/F6MTWJj-ygs

  • Who Invented the Wild West?

    Lewis Whirlwind Horse was the last living member of a traveling troupe of cowboys and Indians who invented the way we imagine the Old West must have been.   “We were playing at the old Madison Square Garden in New York City, which is neither square nor a garden,” Whirlwind Horse said. “Buffalo Bill directed us to ride our horses around a circled ‘wagon train’ so we could show off our riding skills. My role in the act was to grab a pioneer woman and take her into a tepee set up at the other end of the arena. She was supposed to scream until Buffalo Bill came and rescued her, but we Indians were doing the screeching. You see, we played gin rummy while we were waiting for Bill to come shoot us, and she sat in on the game. She was the best card player in the show. Beat us every time. We were supposed to be killing her, but her card playing was killing us!”  

    https://youtu.be/51c1ze8jotg
  • America’s Largest Do It Yourself

    Three little boys live in a magical place riddled with secret tunnels: a 35,000-square-foot building their parents are restoring, mostly by themselves.

    That's right: a home one-third the size of Downton Abbey — without the downstairs help.

    https://youtu.be/raOSYDwrcFk
  • Cold Case

    TV would have us believe that "high-tech" catches criminals, but only about a third of the cases get solved with DNA evidence. The rest rely on people whose minds never retire.

     BILL PETERS SOLVED THE MYSTERY TO A LIFE LONG ROMANCE.

    https://youtu.be/gbXS1kYIfsI

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