Surviving the Great Depression

by bob.dotson | May 31, 2024 | Blog, Hiding in History's Shadow

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.

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Nightmare RanchAugust 3, 2024
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When my wife Linda and I returned from our honeymoon, I went to cover my first Olympics. It was in Munich, Germany. 1972. 50 years ago today.
I soon became an eye witness to terror.
A group calling themselves “Black September” abducted the Israeli wrestling team. After a tense standoff, the terrorists flew away from the Olympic village in a helicopter. They demanded a plane to take them out of Germany.
The woman who owned the house where I was living and working spoke English, so I asked her on air: “Where do think the helicopter is going?” I was standing next to Mrs. Auspitz at her kitchen window. We were watching the terrorist's helicopter lift off from the Olympic village, carrying the Israeli athletes into the night.
The world press was saying it was headed to Riem, the international airport near Munich at that time. But Mrs. Auspitz said, “That’s the other way. They’re headed toward a small airport called Fürstenfeldbruck.”
I was reporting on NBC radio from her kitchen window: "Well folks, other reporters may be quoting official sources, saying the terrorists are taking their hostages to the Munich airport where a plane will be waiting, but Mrs. Auspitz lives here." She was right. The helicopter landed at the German Air Base. Later that night, German Chancellor Willy Brandt went on television to announce that the terrorists had been killed in an ambush: The Israeli wrestling team was safe. We went to bed enjoying that storybook ending.
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The OTHER Moscow OlympicsJuly 27, 2024
Efforts to boycott the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow did not go well. No alternative site was picked. In the midst of all this, here came Moscow, Kansas, with what it hoped was the answer. The 250 people in town started passing out bumper stickers. They wanted to keep the games in Moscow, if not Russia, then Kansas. At Moscow International airport, they expected big crowds, if they could find a plane that seats more than one. “We have a man who works at the post office,” said Doug Bell. “He knows all about air mail. And then there’s the guy who cleans the sewer tanks here. He knows all about rapid transit.”
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Olympic Athlete’s wifeJuly 26, 2024
My first job for NBC News was the Munich Olympics in 1972. Before the games began, I was sent out with a silent film camera to shoot minute-30 feature stories. Each one had to be shot — in a few minutes — on a single roll of film. Just 3 minutes of video. No natural sound. No interview.
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Sweat MotelJuly 25, 2024
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.
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Sail off on a Summer Dream July 24, 2024
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.
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Cave BrothersJuly 23, 2024
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.
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Professor LonghairJuly 22, 2024
Henry Byrd lived on a side of New Orleans most folks never see, the forgotten side of morning. Byrd never left the city. Never followed his fame. But most modern Rock stars can trace their heritage to his pounding piano style. They call him Professor Longhair.
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Turtle LadyJuly 21, 2024
At age 74, Illa Loetscher attempted an evolutionary miracle. The Mexican government gave her a very special turtle to see if she could raise it, send it to sea and have it return to her. It did. For 20 years, Illa opened her home to the sick and the wounded. Turtles tossed up on the shore and left to die. Kemp Ridley’s are the most endangered sea turtles in the world. The few that remain lay most of their eggs on Mexican beaches where — for years — those eggs have been stolen and eaten as a love potion. Illa puts on shows to get neighborhood kids to help her find the Ridley’s before the poachers do. She names each turtle after the person who found it. The latest was saved by a father whose child had been to the Turtle Lady’s House.
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Black PioneersJuly 17, 2024
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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
Bubble Wrap BoyJuly 15, 2024
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
Brain MusicJuly 14, 2024
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
Veteran’s LegacyJuly 13, 2024
Jeff Steiner is building a sanctuary. He is planting trees on a hundred acres he bought after returning from the Vietnam war. Half a year after high school graduation he was evacuating wounded G.I.'s. A shell exploded in his face. After his discharge, he became an alcoholic. Got divorced. Attempted suicide. Then, he decided to do something positive. Plant one tree for each of the 60-thousand fellow soldiers killed or missing in Vietnam. He had planted 30-thousand, when I met him.
https://youtu.be/nKeU_rKkf98
Navajo PhotographerJuly 12, 2024
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 TestersJuly 11, 2024
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
What She Cannot Live WithoutJuly 10, 2024
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.
https://youtu.be/8K9fV1csciM?t=3
America’s Best ArchitectJuly 9, 2024
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 ManJuly 8, 2024
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 ClarkJuly 7, 2024
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 GooseJuly 6, 2024
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 PhDJuly 5, 2024
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 StandsJuly 4, 2024
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 TorchJuly 3, 2024
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 WorldJuly 3, 2024
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 EssayJuly 2, 2024
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 HistoryJuly 1, 2024
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 JumpJune 30, 2024
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 LessonJune 29, 2024
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
Diamond Tooth MaryJune 28, 2024
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.
https://youtu.be/KneQ1riZQ8g
Odyssey of WordsJune 27, 2024
Professor Doug Brinkley was worried that his students had never seen skyscrapers made of ice. Never known a silent world. Never traveled much at all. Not even in books. He loaded 27 students into a bus and drove from Hofstra University in New York to Denali National Park, Alaska. Along the way, the library came alive.
https://youtu.be/7JMurFIB7TA
“I Will Find You.”June 26, 2024
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 PirateJune 25, 2024
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 bossJune 24, 2024
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
Last RollJune 23, 2024
Think what it must have been like. A time when only the rich could show the world images of themselves in color. The rest of us were frozen in black and white until 1935. That’s when Kodak produced a film so iconic, Utah named a state park after it. The only one in the country named for a brand of film. The company was down to its last roll, when I found this story.
https://youtu.be/YjV6ZabwXN0
Longest School TripJune 22, 2024
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 AboutJune 21, 2024
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 RescuersJune 20, 2024
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 RodeoJune 19, 2024
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 LizardJune 18, 2024
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 MeltJune 17, 2024
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 June 16, 2024
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 # 4June 15, 2024
"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 # 3June 14, 2024
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 # 2June 13, 2024
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 # 1June 12, 2024
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 PeopleJune 11, 2024
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 BoysJune 10, 2024
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

Surviving the Great Depression

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