Where a Game is Not a Bottom Line  

by | Jul 14, 2026 | Blog, Hiding in History's Shadow | 0 comments

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.

  • Saved from Extinction

    St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia, is the last great barrier island untouched by real estate development.  For nearly a century, the place was a rich man’s playground, last owned by Edward J. Noble, the fellow who made millions by punching little holes in candy and calling them Life Savers.  Today, his island is saving life itself. 

  • Breakfast for Less than a Tip

    Franny Ward charges only $1 for breakfast at her restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas, a price unchanged for years.  Coffee is dime, if that’s all you’re going to have.  How does she stay in business?  She sells 200 meals a day.  That’s enough for Franny.  If folks can’t come, she brings the food to them.  Charges an extra dollar.

  • Alone with the Beauty She Creates

    The mirrors seldom see movement.  The doors are mostly closed.  But music comes from a solitary window, six hours a day, seven days a week.  Inside, Charlotte Bergen lives her life alone with the beauty she creates. Four times a year, the reclusive woman emerges from her home and heads to Carnegie Hall where she conducts the American Symphony Orchestra. It’s an expensive treat.  She pays for herself.

  • A Tugboat with Sails  

    There was a time when ships chased and caught the wind for profit, carrying cargo to the world.  Like skinny ties, the past is circling back again.  In Norfolk harbor, Virginia, there’s a tugboat unlike any other.  It’s called a Tugantine.  Part tugboat.  Part sailboat.  It started as a joke.  When her captain, Lane Briggs, noticed a 28 percent saving in fuel, the sails stayed on.

  • Young at Heart Singers

    The Young at Heart Singers in North Hampton, Massachusetts, have been entertaining the world for four decades.  This is not your typical senior citizen chorus.  They give their own take on contemporary songs at the top of the charts.  You won’t believe how GOOD they are.

  • Hocus Pocus

    A real life Harry Potter and his friends learn magic in a school millions pass by every day.   Like the best magic, it hides in plain sight. 

  • Woman who Saved the Elks

    For more than half a century, Mardy Murie lived beneath the spidery ice crystals and the ghost trees of the Grand Tetons.  Some say she is a treasure in these mountains.  She and her husband, Olaf, wrote their names across the history of conservation in America. They came to the Tetons in 1927.  Raised a family in the wilderness following the dwindling elk herd.  Their research saved the elks for all time.  

  • Combat Comic

    Bobby Henline is the kind of guy who could make the faces on Mount Rushmore grin.  He fought on the front lines in Iraq during Dessert Storm.  Went back after 9/11 three more times. Then a roadside bomb blew off his face.  He survived.  What’s he doing now?  Making us laugh.  

  • Honeymoon Trail

     Memory is too fragile a thread from which to hang history.  The old west is different from what we see in the movies.  It was America’s forge, and the pioneers who passed through it had spirits of hammered steel. Mormon settlers in northeastern Arizona traveled along a dusty 70-mile wagon trail to reach the St. George Temple in Utah. The trail eventually became known as the “Honeymoon Trail” because so many newlyweds made the passage. 105 years after its opening, I joined a wagon train, where Mormon couples still re-enact the romantic journey of their forebears. 

    https://youtu.be/5B_Cn7igIpo

  • Woodstock

    My most memorable big crowd gathered in a muddy field called Woodstock, with signs promising “Peace and Love.”  That was 55 years ago today.  I went “back to the garden,” for an anniversary concert 25 years later.  It was still muddy.   Rained most of the day, but more than a quarter of a million people partied on.  Paramedics were busy fixing broken ankles and arms.  750 people were taken to the hospital.  Some concert goers set out islands of straw to keep from sliding away. Others folded up tents and beat feet for home.  A few looked to the skies for a face wash.  And stuck it out.  Re-staging Woodstock was a lot like trying to recapture the moments of a senior prom.  Like music, it can’t be touched.  Only felt.

    • Saved from Extinction
      Saved from Extinction St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia, is the last great barrier island untouched by real estate development. For nearly a century, the place was a rich man’s playground, last owned by Edward J. Noble, the fellow who made millions by punching little holes in candy and calling them Life Savers. Today, his island is saving life itself.
    • Breakfast for Less than a Tip
      Breakfast for Less than a Tip Franny Ward charges only $1 for breakfast at her restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas, a price unchanged for years. Coffee is dime, if that’s all you’re going to have. How does she stay in business? She sells 200 meals a day. That’s enough for Franny. If folks can’t come, she brings the food to them. Charges an extra dollar.
    • Alone with the Beauty She Creates
      The mirrors seldom see movement. The doors are mostly closed. But music comes from a solitary window, six hours a day, seven days a week. Inside, Charlotte Bergen lives her life alone with the beauty she creates. Four times a year, the reclusive woman emerges from her home and heads to Carnegie Hall where she conducts the American Symphony Orchestra. It’s an expensive treat. She pays for herself.
    • A Tugboat with Sails  
      A Tugboat with Sails There was a time when ships chased and caught the wind for profit, carrying cargo to the world. Like skinny ties, the past is circling back again. In Norfolk harbor, Virginia, there’s a tugboat unlike any other. It’s called a Tugantine. Part tugboat. Part sailboat. It started as a joke. When her captain, Lane Briggs, noticed a 28 percent saving in fuel, the sails stayed on.
    • Young at Heart Singers
      The Young at Heart Singers in North Hampton, Massachusetts, have been entertaining the world for four decades. This is not your typical senior citizen chorus. They give their own take on contemporary songs at the top of the charts. You won’t believe how GOOD they are.

  • A Mountain of a Man 

    Finis Mitchell wanders Wyoming’s highest mountains alone.  He has climbed 279 peaks, so many summits so often, the U.S. Geological Survey sends him its maps to correct from memory.  He has hiked 18-thousand miles.  Back in the Great Depression, Finis lost his job in town and was forced to live off this land.  He gave something in return.  Mitchell packed in 2 and a half million trout, stocking more than 300 lakes.  He was one of the few living Americans who has a mountain peak named after him. Finis had climbed nearly all of them.

  • G.I. Wallets

    There was a time when wallets were like mobile phones.  They held everything.  Some hold a mystery.  They were stolen more than 80 years ago.  25 were hidden in old barracks around Camp Roberts, California.  Thousands of soldiers have trained here since the wallets disappeared.  Staff Sargent Tom Murotake has spent years searching for their owners.  

  • Reggie Jackson’s Dad

    Hall of Fame baseball great Reggie Jackson learned the game from a dad who raised three sons by himself.  They lived above his tailor shop in suburban Philadelphia.  His father did not remarry until he had put each child through college.  Martinez Jackson had little money, but he had wealth.  He left his sons “a whole wide world to make a living in.” 

  • Paying with Paintings

     

    Jim Mott, a successful, middle-aged artist, traveled the country trading paintings for hospitality. He managed to safely explore twenty-nine states while traveling fifteen thousand miles. Cost him nothing but gas.

  • Money Making Inventions

    John Spirk and his best buddy, John Nottingham, have more money making patents than any other living American inventor.  Thomas Edison had more, but they were gaining on him.  What’s their secret? 

  • Dream Big

    Bonnie Joe Hunt had a dream.  Everyone laughed.  She was a Native American after all and Indians didn’t do that, so she decided not to talk about it.  At age ten she quietly started learning languages.  Eight of them.  And spent a lot of time alone, practicing. No one is laughing now.

  • Achy Breaky Parts

    Sherrill Headrick was one of the greats, a middle linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs in the very first Super Bowl.  No ten yards there were tougher than those from his bed to his bathroom.  Nine yeas of pro ball left Headrick with roving arthritis.  Hands that could trip a pass receiver by the toe, can barely lift a comb.  But Headrick still competes in the only game he can.  He has become a professional Bridge player, one of the best in the country.  The old champ is out there on the playing field, if not in body, in mind.  

  • Largest Private Library

    Lucia Madrid had one of the largest private libraries in the world.  In the vast Chihuahuan dessert of west Texas there was no TV, no video games, no movies.  Just her trading post.  Amid the Coke cans and the candy, she stacked 13 thousand books. Books in her bedroom.  In dusty shoe boxes.  In milk cartons.  Free for all her neighbors.

  • Home is the Town Dump

    For 24 years Suzi Valadez crossed the Mexican border to feed and clothe  2-thousand children who lived in a town dump.  Their parents pay $10 down to buy a lot.  Another $60 to build a home.  They then can earn $2.50 a day sorting garbage.  They come to the dump looking for a better life. 

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • The Most Primitive Place on Earth

    The Okefenolee Swamp is one of the most primitive places on earth, a swamp so big, you could lose New York City inside.  Every 20 years or so, in times of drought, a great purging blaze burns out the vegetation.  One lasted for more than a year.  

  • Beehive Telephone

    To find this business, you go west from Salt Lake City, Utah.   Turn left and drive for the rest of your life.  Along about middle age, you may pass a battered 1951 Ford Installer moving among the tumbleweeds.  That is the Beehive telephone company. 

  • Europe’s First Soul Food

    Leroy Haynes has led a life that ought to begin, “Once upon a time…” He went to school with Al Capone’s kids.  Played in the old Negro baseball league.  Was an All American football player at Morehouse College in Atlanta.  Made movies with Bridget Bardot.  Studied for a Doctorate degree at the Sorbonne in Paris.  Quit to sell Soul Food to the French.  

  • $2 Doc

     Dr. Russel Dohner looked after his neighbors for 55 years, charging them for a visit about what they would pay for a fancy cup of coffee: two bucks when he started his practice.  Five bucks later on.  Dr. Dohner worked with a broken back and after he had a heart attack — the only two times he ever closed his clinic. The morning we first met, back in 1983, Dohner had been to surgery twice, prepped a broken arm, handled two emergency cases, checked on 50 patients and delivered three babies. It was not yet 10:30.  

  • Curing Cancer with Pie?

    A man has cooked up a possible cure for cancer using his wife’s pie plates. Don’t laugh.  Some of the finest medical minds in the country think he might be on to something.  

  • Prison Barber

    Bob Stanfill spent his first night in jail at age 9.  For two decades he was in and out so often, he expected to die beneath prison towers.  Until one day, he married into a remarkable family.  They helped Bob open his own barbershop.  Surrounded him with customers.  And kept him out of prison for 30 years.  Now he’s back.  By choice.

    FAMILY UNLOCKED HIS LIFE.  NOW HE HOLDS THE KEY FOR OTHERS. 

  • The Hugh Heffer of Cow Photographers

    A cow today produces three times as much milk as those that came with Christopher Columbus.  The most productive sell for more than a million dollars.  For that kind of money, buyers want a cow to look as expensive as it is. That’s why they call on Maggie Murphy.  She poses cows to fit the cow buyers fantasies. 

  • El Capitan’s Courageous Climbers

    Americans favor hope.  Their dreams are not just dust awaiting the broom.  Sure there’s the small print in life — the effort and sacrifice it takes to succeed — but the brain gives up less easily than the body.   People find ways to live their dreams.  Case in point: a man with a broken back who lifted himself out of a wheelchair and climbed the tallest cliff on earth.  

  • Sweat Motel

    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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