Oldest Family Business

by bob.dotson | Oct 4, 2024 | Blog, Hiding in History's Shadow

Avidis Zildjian lured good workers to his company in suburban Boston with a simple promise. “You take care of my family and I’ll take care of yours.” That pledge has remained unbroken for more than eighty years.

When was the last time you heard a factory worker say, “I’ve been here 26 years and I’ve never seen a layoff.”

The 70 workers on Zildjian’s production line are confident they will always have good-paying jobs, because no one has to compete with a machine. Whenever a task was automated, the employee who performed it is trained for another one worth equivalent pay.

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My first job for NBC News was at the Munich Olympics in 1972. That’s where I met legendary basketball coach Abe Lemons. He was president of the College Coaches Association that year, but told me he couldn’t get tickets to any Olympic basketball games. Instead, he scored a seat to the finals of the hammer throw.
I asked Abe: How was it?
“Well, our seats were kinda high up,” he said with a slow grin.
“How high?”
“When one of those hammer guys wound up and tossed, the fellows around me all yelled down, ‘How’d he do?’ And the fans down below would turn, cup their ears, and say: ‘Huh?’”
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Silent DreamsMarch 21, 2025
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https://youtu.be/XBEbbqe__II
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Norris Alfred. In search of great truths. Or a minor truth. Or two.
https://youtu.be/UA7EXn1RTTU
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https://youtu.be/AfezvJo6hmA
The REAL Johnny AppleseedMarch 9, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/aV0eCAOD0k8
Legless WrestlerMarch 8, 2025
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.”
https://youtu.be/JuRXkxRvGk0?t=4
Singing SullivansMarch 7, 2025
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 …”
https://youtu.be/1nsCVHRXmEQ
One family Saves Another March 6, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/IsgVVnDZfGI
Wanted: Alligator Wrestler March 5, 2025
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 GrasMarch 4, 2025
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?
https://youtu.be/T_Z0CKvwgJk
Lost City of Cecil B. DemilleMarch 3, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/J2hMCChTIo0
Singalong Sound of MusicMarch 2, 2025
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?
https://youtu.be/40eBiEVNIWs
Yellowstone National Park in WinterMarch 1, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/0KOQhXn-oDs
Until It’s Not Here No MoreFebruary 28, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/3Adr3VNI06A?t=25
Babies Behind BarsFebruary 27, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/tI4D1g7mh04
So Cold, Spit BouncesFebruary 26, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/PRvvNAYFORg
No PhonesFebruary 25, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/Mgp4o3hLrjk
A Normal LifeFebruary 24, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/Y97zuBqiWS8
Painting his SoulFebruary 23, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/5asqYq0DbOA
If America Had a KingFebruary 22, 2025
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?
https://youtu.be/b5tmR0pc9Dw?t=7
Changing Racial HistoryFebruary 21, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/xqaguGXAHjg
Baseball TryoutsFebruary 20, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/8BBf-ItVZPE
Never Park in Space Reserved for UmpiresFebruary 19, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/cR4tw_E3OjE
Beer Cans Heat homeFebruary 18, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/GR2aIMcPMwI
Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part ThreeFebruary 17, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/J67WI-0xCkY
Boys of WinterFebruary 17, 2025
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?
https://youtu.be/8wpHxGCe0nc
Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part TwoFebruary 16, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/LI8yX28UIdQ
Shadows Play On This StageFebruary 16, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/xS1_6fjnhy0
Through the Looking Glass Darkly, Part OneFebruary 15, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/1y-qFCsya3M
Singer Saves a TownFebruary 15, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/aY2d39k3ZtY
Who Makes Those Crazy Valentines?February 14, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/UWaDmJFrQEg
Driving BlindFebruary 13, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/aS-yAl8NlIc
Smoking PensFebruary 12, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/DQlYZVI6L-4
Book of LoveFebruary 11, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/xxTLjzJm4KI?t=12
Small Town Singers with Big City VoicesFebruary 10, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/7Vn4IFGSN48
Small Town FootballFebruary 9, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/MsXg86uG37g
A Coach for Those Who Will Never be StarsFebruary 8, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/VtSorBcQjec
The Doctor Will Fly to YouFebruary 7, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/fqOPapl17ZU
Homeless No MoreFebruary 6, 2025
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?
https://youtu.be/WuhQT6j4tbs
Life in a JarFebruary 5, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/mTsQM8aGVwU
Dragon SlayersFebruary 4, 2025
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
Music from the Edge of NowhereFebruary 3, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/ixs1D50vuM4
Grand Central Station’s Hidden Secrets February 2, 2025
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.
https://youtu.be/m-HmzJBPVPM

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