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.
- The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived
- Slower is Better
- Today’s Lesson from Ms Ruby: “I’ll try.”
- A New Life
- Hired Husband
- The Oldest Doctor Whoever Lived
- Slower is Better
- Today’s Lesson from Ms Ruby: “I’ll try.”
- A New Life
- Hired Husband
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
