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.
- 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?
- 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.”
- Turning Desert Green
Few places in America are more remote. We are five hours from the nearest airport. 90 miles from a pizza. 60 from a round of golf. But people do live here because Ben Leaton had a dream. He diverted the water of the Rio Grande river and a tiny sliver of this vast desert turned green.
- Riches in the Backyard (Aspen Miner)
Stefan Albouy grew up listening to the tales the old miners had to tell. Stories of gold and silver and riches untold. As a small boy, he dug holes in the hillside behind his house. Laid track for his ore carts across his backyard. At age 11, he wrote the owners of the old Smuggler’s mine, asking for a lease. They sold him one. The Smuggler had once produced the largest silver nugget in history. But for years, it had been abandoned. Stefan restored the old mine exactly as it was in 1893 and working alone, he made a living.
- Flying Squad
30 years ago, an innovative approach dramatically lowered drug trafficking in Charleston, SC. Police snapped pictures of people who come to buy drugs, thus cutting off sales. The cops gave copies of those prints to suspected drug dealers. The dealers tossed them away. Police issued them tickets for littering. The suspected dealers threw them away too. When they didn’t pay, police arrested them on Friday nights (peak drug buying time) and held them until Monday morning court.
- Mom and Pop Jail
One of the most unusual Bed and Breakfast Inns is an old Victorian house across the street from a neighborhood church. Fred and Gloria Shepperson run Pennsylvania’s last mom and pop jail.
- Eyewitness to Terror
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.
But a few hours later, Mrs. Auspitz woke me and pointed out the window toward the Autobahn, which ran near her house. There was a long line of hearses. Each contained the body of an Israeli Olympic wrestler. They had not been saved. They all died. I left Germany with the conviction that terrorism could touch my life at any time. It did. Twenty-nine years later. I was standing outside a church one block from Ground Zero on that terrible day terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, in New York City.
- Caring for All
Ruby Walker is an inexhaustible wisp of a woman who cleans 27 houses a week. Five houses a day. Two on Saturdays. That has been her routine for two decades, since her husband died. Most are big homes, as you might expect, but Ruby also works the other side of town — for free.
- Native American Medicine
Some say Rocky Stallings knows more about early Native American life than anyone in the country. He listened to the elders. Listened and learned. Where most folks see weeds, Rocky was taught to find medicine. On a hill near his home in San Antonio, Texas, he has found 197 different kinds.
- Tina Allen Gets a Life
Tina Allen has a date with a new day. We met her the year before, checking into an Atlanta hospice. Alone. Doctors told the young woman she’d be dead from a brain tumor in three months. But something rare happened inside her head. The tumor shrank. Fewer than 5% of patients with brain tumors as big as Tina’s survive. Doctors said it was now possible for Tina to move out of hospice and go to work. When the tumor was detected four years before, she had just graduated with a degree in interior design. Now, she’s making plans again. “Another day! Great!” Tina smiled.
- An Artist Who Paints with Nature
Jimmy Lee Suddeth drew his first picture in the dirt. It washed he away with the evening rains. He never had time for formal training. Never went to town for art supplies. He made his own from nature. Now his paintings, made entirely of natural material, hang in art galleries and fetch big bucks.
- Elusive Fireflies of Light
Jake Hoover was looking for gold in Yogo Creek. He discovered something more. What little gold he found was cluttered with blue stones. He tossed them into a cigar box and sent them off to Tiffany’s. The New York jewelers fired back a check. The old prospector had stumbled across what could be the world’s largest deposit of Sapphires. An usual village was planned. Home owners got the right to search for gems in their backyards, but only if they dug them out by hand.
- Kids Soap Opera
If you want to know what’s happening at Henderson school, you don’t join the Yearbook staff. You watch a Soap Opera at lunch time. Each Friday, the kids in the cafeteria share a second carton of milk with “The Growing Years.” A show they write and produce themselves about their own problems.
- California’s First Surfers
Sliding through a hurricane of surf. Heartbeats clock the distance. This sport can make a young person old or an old man young again. Look beneath their wrinkles, you’ll find the beginnings of California’s surfing.
Sliding through a hurricane of surf. Heartbeats clock the distance. This sport can make a young person old or an old man young again. Look beneath their wrinkles, you’ll find the beginnings of California’s surfing.
Sliding through a hurricane of surf. Heartbeats clock the distance. This sport can make a young person old or an old man young again. Look beneath their wrinkles, you’ll find the beginnings of California’s surfing.
- Dancing with Hope
Ne Sin was born in a palace with a diamond on its roof. Her mother taught her to perform for princes and kings. She lived in splendor, a lead dancer of the Royal Cambodian ballet, a tradition that dates back 12-hundred years. During the Communist takeover of Cambodia, the Imperial performers were marked for execution. Ne Sin and her mom managed to escape to America and are trying to keep the art form alive.
- Sweet Beginnings
Planes aren’t the only thing taking off at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Down at the end of the runway, a bee farm is soaring. Sweet Beginnings created 360 new jobs in a neighborhood where crime is never more than a street corner away.
