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. ...Rodeo Doc
Dr. James Allen is his own best patient. He’s had more broken bones than a bucket full of chicken at a Baptist picnic. 30. He’s also dislocated both of his shoulders. Fractured his spine and collar bone, while competing in the National Calf Roping...John Henry
They say, if you listen quietly, up on Big Bend Mountain, you can still hear him hammering. Old John Henry’s ghost fighting progress with his big, broad arm. Legend has it that John Henry fought his famous battle with the steam drill near here, man against...Bass Reeves: The Real Lone Ranger
Charles Davis hoisted his cane for attention. “Bass Reeves!” he shouted. We looked at one another for some clue as to what was to come. The only sound was an industrious bee in a honeysuckle bush. “I can tell you more about him than perhaps you ever heard.” Bass...3 year old photographer
Elizabeth and Bob Williams bought their son Robert a toy camera. He preferred his dad’s. Robert’s father was a freelance photographer. He started submitting Robert’s pictures with his own. Time and again, Robert’s pictures were the ones that...Recent Posts
- 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.
- A Coach for Those Who Will Never be Stars
There’s a group of kids from a tough neighborhood who stand out from the rest. They wear ties and are clean shaven — all because of an unassuming teacher named Bob Salisbury. Each day, he teaches six special education classes. After school he coaches basketball. Works hardest with those who will never be stars.
- The Doctor Will Fly to You
Picture this the next time you’re waiting until your knees turn numb in a doctor’s office. Patients in an Idaho wilderness have one who will fly to them. Rich Paris is the only doctor for the remote areas of Custer County, Idaho, a neighborhood about the size of Connecticut. Doc makes his rounds alone. Hailey to Challis. Two hundred sixty miles in one day. Two decades ago, he made a deal with his heart. Not his head. He decided that patients should pay nothing extra for this fly-in service, since he loves the commute so much.
- Homeless No More
Forest Cochran was just two. Much had happened in his little life. His parents separated. His mother Karen lost their home. There was no shelter for the homeless in Loganville, Georgia. But Joy Davis and her husband Wayne took them in. They have helped dozens of people get back on their feet. Once they started their single bathroom with ten strangers. Why?
- Life in a Jar
The keys to history’s treasures are often discovered in unexpected places. One of them turned up in a tiny Kansas town, unlocking a story half a world away. This week let’s celebrate the 100th anniversary of a woman who saved 2,500 children. In 1940 the Nazis walled off a neighborhood near Irena Sendler’s home in Warsaw, Poland. Pressed almost half a million people into an area the size of New York City’s Central Park – with not enough food to keep them alive. Five thousand were dying each month. Sendler, a public health service nurse, devised a daring plan to save the children.
- 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?”
- Music from the Edge of Nowhere
Gordon Wright was the conductor of the Arctic Chamber orchestra, a group he formed to take classical music to the remote villages of Alaska. His musicians have performed in places so cold, the violinists play wearing gloves.
- Grand Central Station’s Hidden Secrets
A secret room. A walled up tomb. A priceless jewel. No, not on the set of the next Indiana Jones movie. They lay hidden in America’s busiest railroad station. Train travel still thrives in New York City. Grand Central Terminal sees as many trains today as it did in the golden age of steam and steel. Picture the population of Atlanta and Buffalo pouring out of trains and subways. Seven hundred thousand travelers every day. Ten thousand pause to grab a meal, a thousand stop to ask directions. Some lose more than their way. In one month, train crews sent Grand Central's Lost and Found three hundred cell phones, one hundred and fifty eyeglasses and an engagement ring.
- 70 Year Old Middle Schooler
John Suta bought tarnished french horn for $75 bucks. His retirement pay left little for lessons, so he found another way to learn how to play it. He showed up at Roosevelt Middle School in Eugene, Oregon, and asked to join the beginning band.
Okay, the kids thought it was funny, then they heard the seventy-four year old’s first sweet note.
- Hands Free Hero
Marty Revellette lived his life with a single mindedness that blocked out everything but challenge. He was a man with no arms, but he pulled a women from her burning car. She survived. This story tells not only “how,” but “why.” The country owes its success to those who are willing to try regardless of disability, people who risk their lives for country, family, even strangers.
- Living Ghost Town
During this dark time, it is well to remember the families in this country who help others end nightmares and find dreams. It is the very core of our American story because most of us also have ancestors who risked everything for a better life. The communities they built prospered because people took care of one another. Some still do.
- All of America is their backyard
Dan and Susie Kellogg sold their home in Colorado. Bought an RV. And set out traveling into the unknown. They decided to live full time in a mobile home with enough kids to field a football team. 12.
- One Hole, Par 70
Laughter echoes down Pillar Mountain. Two duffers in Kodiak, Alaska, are ice picking their way up the snow-covered cliffs. Carrying golf clubs. The course is practically straight up, fourteen hundred feet, from the valley floor to the green. Pebble Beach, it ain’t. But it is a golf tournament. One hole, par 70. That’s right. One hole, par 70.
- Would be Czar
There once lived a Prince, who became a pauper and then lived happily ever after. This year, he turned 94 and is painting his life on little bits of plastic, a life that would have been filled with pomp—if the circumstances had been different.
Andrew Romanoff was born into Russian royalty, a prince raised in a castle. That’s usually a recipe for a grand life, but he lost his kingdom in the Russian Revolution, only to find a fairy tale ending in northern California.
- Blind Kayaker
Lonnie Bedwell never let a handicap, handicap him. The man is lights out blind. Lives far from fast water, but Bedwell was the first blind person to kayak the Grand Canyon. He navigated the rapids listening closely, as friends called out the way.
WHAT INSPIRED HIS QUEST? THE FRIEND WHO SHOT HIM.
- Arctic Explorer
Will Steiger searches for land that hasn’t felt footsteps, the coldest parts of our earth, where the north wind bullies and temperatures cower—to seventy below. In this vast wilderness near the North and South Poles he seems oddly out of place—plodding carefully through the massive ice, alone. Will Steger explored the unknown—one step at a time—for more than forty years. Some ice fields are now so thin, his sled dogs fall through. But science alone won’t fix this. Will thinks people coming together and working for the common good might. We may get blisters on our hands, and calluses on our dreams, but the ally he seeks is the part in all of us that knows what is right. Many preach about saving the planet. Will just puts his boots on and goes.
- Orphan Train
Five little boys rattled across America in the fall of 1922. They were part of a remarkable odyssey. One hundred thousand such children were plucked from the streets of New York City and sent west, to a new life. Most were the sons and daughters of immigrants, found starving and alone. The Children’s Aid Society swept them up and shipped them to villages all across the country. At each stop their arrival was advertised. Kids trouped off the train, lined up, and couples simply picked the one they wanted. The brothers had very different experiences, but survived — with the help of each other.
- Rejecting Stardom
Many people in Goose Creek, South Carolina, were speechless when Braeden Kershner turned his back on celebrity. It seemed somehow un-American. Don’t we all want to be somebody special? Don’t we try to become our dreams? It’s not that Braeden didn’t try. For months they watched him conducting music in front of a mirror with his eyes shut tightly, so he could see his dream. Conducting the Boston Pops. He did, after learning every instrument in the orchestra.
That night could have made Braeden Kershner a star. Few step out of the spotlight after they’ve had a flash of fame. Instead, he joined the Marines, just before 9/11.
- Pops Dream
Braeden Kirchner likes to conduct music with his eyes closed, so he can see his dream. The boy from Goose Creek, South Carolina, wanted to conduct the Boston Pops. Never mind that Braeden was just 18. To prepare for a career in conducting, he learned to play every instrument in the orchestra. He finally got his chance.
- The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived
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 the world.
- Slower is Better
The only journalism course Norris Alfred ever took, he failed. In 1980, he was nominated for a Pulitzer prize. This is what he wrote:
“The concept of progress has a firm hold. We are on the march from Worse to Better. From Cruelty to Compassion. With our bought vote, we cast a hope that the next leader will take us where we should go, confidently heading the parade of progress in an armored limousine.”
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 gold. What they found, instead, was opportunity to build, discover, create, achieve, survive, and grow.
For many that chance started in wilderness. They carved out lives, planted dreams and worked hard. In wilderness, time does not drift back into the past. It renews itself. People, too, or so I had heard. That’s why I went searching for a place few ever find. A moose munched his lunch by the side of a bubbling stream as my four-wheel drive waddled across the creek and continued up a mountain a few hundred miles southeast of Anchorage. At the top was a remote Alaskan village where the rhythm of life still resembled that in 1650.
- 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…”
- Family Music
The Knight family, Laura and John and six kids, manage to survive, no thrive, on $4-thousand dollars a year. That’s something to sing about. On their farm, music is all around them.
- Puppy Rescuer
Ready for a happy puppy story? Sure you are. George Mahle takes pups on a 4,200-mile odyssey to loving arms.
https://www.today.com/news/puppy-rescuer-takes-dogs-4-200-mile-odyssey-loving-arms-2D79517768
- Dog Tags
Stacey Hansen, a fire fighter in San Jose, California, found an old dog tag while vacationing in Vietnam. It belonged to Marine Corporal Steven Zucroff who died during the War - the day after Mother's day -- his 21st year. She brought Steven's dog tag home. His brother Brad lived just an hour away, They met in a park overlooking the Pacific near Stacey's fire station. Brad carried an old box with his brother's things.
"You've seen his name," he said, as the two walked across the bluff and sat on a bench, "Now you should see the person.”
He lifted the lid and pulled out a picture. It was not the image of a weary warrior Stacey expected.
- Truck Driver Surgeon
Wisdom is found in unexpected places. Tools for some of the first microsurgeries were invented in a garage. An out of work truck driver tinkered and perfected them until they changed our world.
- Amish Coach
Amish Country. Most of the kids on this tiny high school basketball team are shorter than their coach, but at the turn of the century, they won 49 or their first 53 games. A record unmatched in the entire county.
- Animal Hospital
Peter Holworth is a foster parent to hundreds of sick little seals that wash up on his shore. Some are near death from starvation when he finds them. Peter nurses these babies back to health.
- Teen Cinema
There are places where the past is not past. It keeps circling back around. Many towns in America are like that. Petaluma, California, continually celebrates a magical time when kids showed up to shoot a low budget movie called "American Graffiti." It launched some big name careers and boosted an unknown director, George Lucas, into an orbit that would lead to his epic -- Star Wars. History in Petaluma is never far, far way. Sadly, this town -- so tied to movie history -- lost its last picture show. Kids could have just hopped into a car. Their moms would have driven them to the movies in another town.
"Oh, no!" Madison Webb looked stricken. "You're not supposed to go with your parents!”
So, the teens created a business plan that would reopen their theater.
- Exercise for Booze
It’s high time for something silly. “High” is the appropriate word. I don’t endorse or condone what George Contos has done. He simply had a personal plan to make good health fun. You see, George spent 50 years pouring drinks behind Benders Bar. He wanted to spend another 50 on the other side. So, each day he worked out at the YMCA. George was 90 years old at the time. He could do 1-thousand sit ups without stopping. Contos spent his mornings at the Y, so he could spend his afternoons at Benders, drinking Boiler Makers. His health plan worked for him. He was rarely ill. "I promised my wife, I would have just one drink. One at a time.”
- 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.
- Names We Never Knew
A lot of folks have asked how I got started searching for the stories of ordinary people. I remember the moment. It set me on a path that I have follow to this day. I had come to Miami, Oklahoma, to shoot a documentary. Artist Charles Banks Wilson’s most ambitious project. I had no idea back then how that work would change my life. Wilson convinced me that country would be better served if we listened more to people who don't have titles in front of their names.
- Catholic Rabbi
One of Baltimore’s most dangerous neighborhoods has a special gift. It’s a blueprint for peace and its working. You could not find a more likely place for peace on earth to begin. But Rabbi Gela Ruskin is celebrating a Jewish sabbath in a Catholic high school. Baltimore’s Saint Frances Academy may be the first in the country with a full time rabbi on the faculty. Every junior in this Catholic school is required to take a full year of Jewish studies. Some think that is something a devout Christian did not need to do. But not school president Sister John Frances.
- Santa’s Toy Workshop
Remember the first time you sat on Santa’s lap? It was perhaps the most important speech of your life. Blow it here, you could end up with a sweater. We visited a unique toy workshop. For 35 years, volunteers have met once a week in an old sheep barn to make toys — year round — for children whose lives are as rough as theirs used to be.
- Joy Doesn’t Come from a Credit Card
This is for all those who are tired of credit card traditions at Christmas. People in Lake Palmer, Colorado, gather at the town hall for what looks and sounds like an Easter egg hunt. They set off every year to find a special log that will light the darkest days of the year. A yule log. Hidden in the hills above the town.
- American Story Holidays Special
Kick back with a holiday treat, the American Story Hour Long Special. Filled with stories that will make you smile. Grab the egg nog and enjoy. Ho. Ho. Ho.
- Joyful Noise
Folks in Boldon, Georgia proudly call their town, "the Briar Patch." Like Brer' Fox, they outwitted hard times, terror and indifference to bring us a Christmas Carol unique in all the world. It is called "the shout" an old West African word for "circle." The congregation of the Mount Calvary Baptist church is the last who can carol it. Early missionaries didn't want the slaves to sing the shout because it reminded slaves of home. Down through the years, this congregation has cradled the oldest Black spiritual in America. A Joyful noise, indeed.
- Miracle
The heart is the ultimate muscle. It can lift a heavy burden and make life easier. Those who meet Amy Wall notice her heart first. She was born deaf, the nerves in her ears, incurably damaged. “You can’t rebuild that inner ear,” her doctor, Matthew Bucko told me. “That is like trying to put a new brain into someone.” Amy’s brother and sister asked their mom, if they could pray for a miracle. She was skeptical.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
- Fix-it Santa
No child ever asks what Santa would like for Christmas.
I was pondering that point while shuffling in a long line waiting to see St. Nick. A little girl sprang onto his lap.
“I want a Barbie doll,” she announced.
“I want a Barbie!” her sister said.
“You want a Barbie, too,” the bearded man nodded.
“And some doll clothes,” the little girl poked his red coat.
“I want some doll clothes, too,” her sister said.
“Oh, boy,” sighed the Jolly Old Elf. “We definitely have an echo in here.”
This one, just needs a hug. He is more than a storefront Santa. The twinkle in his eye is love, not sales. His workshop is filled with the glitter of little kids’ dreams. But, he’s not making toys. Santa and his elves are making electric wheelchairs. The first, he built for a baby in Vietnam. She had lost both of her legs to a land mine. Santa wore a different uniform then. He was Marine major Ed Butcher. There have been 11-hundred wheelchairs since.
- Wrong Brothers Aviation
Tim and Wesley Friesen think the Wright Brothers intended to open the skies to everyone, not just professional pilots. They have formed a company called Wrong Brothers Aviation to prove their point. They teach non-pilots how to fly by themselves. The motorized hang gliders they use are so simple, they do not require a pilots license. One big drawback. A student's first flight is solo.
- Living in a Movie
Brian Jones bought a home 40-million people see every Christmas. He signed a check — sight unseen — for $150,000 dollars. Brian flew to Cleveland, Ohio, for the first time in his life to find it. He figured it must be just around the corner from a flagpole. His wife Beverly, a Navy navigator, had jokingly sent him an email saying someone on EBay was auctioning off the house where they filmed Brian’s favorite movie — “A Christmas Story.” She was at sea at the time. “I didn’t have time to consult her,” Brian said, “There were other bidders.” When Beverly heard how he had spent their savings, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He wrote another check for $200,000 bucks to restore the old place to its happy-ending splendor. That house was Brian’s Red Ryder dream. The couple bought another house across the street. Opened a gift shop to help pay for it all. Here you can find the movie dad’s major award, the old man’s leg lamp. “Fraw—GEE-lay,” said the dad, reading “Fragile” on the box it came in. “Must be Italian.” The first year Brian opened the house and the store, leg lamp sales totaled nearly $700,000 dollars. If you've always wanted to display your leg lamp and avoid "shooting your eye out," it may be time to move. Brian just put the home for sale, along with much of the surrounding neighborhood that serves as a museum campus.
- Orphan Reunion
Life turns on the tiniest things. Jimmy StOlp and Andy StAlp were raised side by side in the same orphanage. Never knowing they were brothers. In 1926, the clerk at the Tennessee Home for Friendless Babies misspelled one brother’s last name. The mistake was never discovered. The Navy became Andy’s family. He was a good son. Andy Stalp saved his shipmates during World War Two. Tossed burning gasoline tanks over the side during a Japanese bombing attack at Guadalcanal. He earned a silver star.
There were no medals for the battle his brother fought. The other orphans bullied Jimmy. Thought he was retarded. But he was deaf until 1961. When doctors operated, they found rice, papers and other things children had stuffed into his ears.
Some nugget of strength prompted Jimmy to endure. He married on an Easter weekend. So did Andy. Both still wondering if somewhere, they might have a family of their own. The two wore out a lifetime looking.
- Toys not new, but loved
Why do you suppose toys mean more to us as the years go by? Joe Daole knows. He’s got a house filled with them — more than one hundred thousand. Many are handmade and reflect their time. None are in mint condition. They’ve been loved. “Toys are not just playthings,” Daole says. “They’re memories.”
WHAT TOY OF YOURS DOES HE HAVE?
- A Heart for Christmas
Glenda Gooch lives with a heart that beats for two families. On Christmas eve 1995, she was dying. Her only hope, a new heart to replace one damaged since birth. It came on Christmas morning with a letter from the mother of the boy who had the heart first. He was just her age. Ten. Killed by a drunk driver. Died a week after his birthday on Christmas eve.
- Donkey Ball
Jimmy Deramus went out to buy his daughter a pet and came back with 18 donkeys, a backyard full of alarm clocks. The herd grew to 600. Jimmy picked the best to play basketball. In small town arenas all across the south, people came to ride his front five. The object is to pass and shoot from a donkey's back. Most folks spend more time on the floor than the termites.
- Battlefield Artist
Cameras replaced most of the artists capturing conflict long ago, but not all. This is a look at the Iraq war, as you never saw it. Few of us venture out beyond the limits of our settle lives. But artist Steve Mumford paid his own way to war, just to create art. He bought his own flack jacket, his own airplane ticket and hitched a ride into battle, armed with only a press pass from an online arts magazine. He spent more than 11 months on the front lines. The world has seen more images from the Iraq war than any other conflict in history. None like his.
- Racing Old Age
Gertrud Zint celebrated her 70th birthday racing the clock. She was setting new national records for swimmers her age. Gertrud was so fast, they sometimes paired her with women who are 40 years younger. She holds world records in 8 different events. She might have done even better, if she didn’t have arthritis. An American bomb fell on the hospital in Germany where she worked as a nurse during World War Two, crushing her legs. Gertrud was buried alive for two and a half hours. Athletics helped her recover, so she kept at it.
- Glass Harp
When the Renaissance Players perform in Miami, Jay Brown tunes up with a turkey baster, and in just a few minutes people hear him play Mozart on 47 brandy snifters filled with water. It’s no gimmick. Jay Brown’s instrument was once more popular than the piano.
- Beats a 260 mile School Bus Ride
Crane High is the only locally tax supported public boarding school in America. It was built in a part of Oregon you seldom see in the travel brochures. Out here, people remember bone grey better than rainbows. Southeastern Oregon has a desert so vast, Jerry Deffenbaugh must drive 260 miles round trip to watch his son play high school basketball. Some weeks he does that 3 times. The school draws just 50 students from a district the size of Massachusetts.
AND YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD A LONG COMMUTE.
- Pearl Harbor Internment Camp
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, saw a sunrise of fire. And the memory still burns. Its sizzling seas sent the United States into World War II. Before the day bled away, 110-thousand people were arrested in America for what another country did. Most looked like the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor, but in Hawaii, they rounded up European-Americans too.
- Crack House Cops
Elsie Calloway found a drug pusher selling cocaine in her basement. Police closed nearby crack houses, but addicts always came back, until the cops tried something different. Patrolman James Jones now lives in the house he once raided. Columbia, South Carolina, made him an offer that would godfather grin. His family got a home. Fixed up first rate for about half what other renovated houses in the neighborhood cost.
- East Meets West
This isn’t my first rodeo. In 1981 I put on cowboy boots to find Christine Gulich. Didn’t need them. She lived in a small town south of Boston. Christine was a book keeper in Abington, Massachusetts, at the time. The only thing that says “West” in her part of the country are road signs pointing to where the sun sets. Yet Christine is the first woman from Massachusetts to compete for the title of Miss Rodeo America.
- Kid Billionaire
Jared Issacman became a billionaire before he could drive. He as so young, he hired his dad to wine and dine clients. His mom worked for him too. Issacman used some of his money to pilot Elon Musk's all-civilian mission to the edge of the universe. Purchased purchased all four seats. Kept one for himself. Donated the other three to charity. He made his billions by figuring out a way for businesses to process credit cards more quickly. It all began in his basement. He was just 16. This was the first story ever done on the kid who defies the odds.
- All Mine: Death Valley
Many a man has come and gone, but Susan Sorrells stays in Death Valley, California. Her family left her a little town called Shoshone. She owns a small cafe and the Crowbar saloon. And a thousand acres of the driest land on earth. The ground is not worthless. The state liked its remote location. Wanted to build a prison. Susan was offered enough money to retire comfortably, but she said, "No."
