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
- The Most Primitive Place on Earth
- Beehive Telephone
- Europe’s First Soul Food
- $2 Doc
- Homeless No More
- The Most Primitive Place on Earth
- Beehive Telephone
- Europe’s First Soul Food
- $2 Doc
- 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.
- Sail off on a Summer Dream
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.
- Cave Brothers
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.
- 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.
- Lady Eye
Virginia Snyder looks like the little old lady Boy Scouts help across the street. You can’t always tell a book by its cover. Same with people. At retirement age, Virginia opened her own detective agency. With no prior police training, she became one of only two women in Floria to get a Class A Investigator’s license. The cases she handles are none too dainty — murders, muggings, drug sales. She keeps a trunk load of disguises for safety.
- Diner Donor
A special story of love and courage that reaches across color lines to touch the core of America. For 30 years, Barbara Knox beat the dawn to work. This was her last. She was worried. Her boss was retiring, closing the diner where Barbara had labored all of her adult life. The place was more than a paycheck for her.
- The Old West Built in the Backyard
Alberto Munoz came looking for the Old West and all he found were K-Marts. So, he built the Old West in his back yard. As a child growing up in Spain, Alberto spent his Saturdays in darkened movie houses watching westerns. He fell in love, not with the shootouts and the sheriffs, but with the music. It was the music that brought him to the Montana wilderness. Alberto was a classical pianist. For 20 years, he corresponded from his home in Madrid with a pretty American ballerina. She went to see him perform in Los Angeles. They married 3 days later.
- Bubble Wrap Boy
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.
- Rock n Bowl
A bowling alley is the small town nearly everyone came to. As familiar as memories. The Rock n Bowl is New Orlean’s oldest. But the crowd isn’t here for the good old days. They want some good ol’ nights. The Rock n Bowl is the world’s only second floor, strip mall bowling alley with a band.
- Tree Doc
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.
- Brain Music
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.
- Where a Game is Not a Bottom Line
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.
- VANISHING SILENCE
No matter how far we go into the wilderness, we can seldom escape the sounds we make. There are few places where planes do not fly or foghorns cannot pierce. Just as city lights keep us from seeing dimmer stars, these noises of every day life drown out the more delicate voices of nature. Gordon Hempton searches for spots to record the earth’s chorus — without us.
- Navajo Photographer
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.
- Kid App Testers
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.
- Angels on My Roof
Rachel Johnson races the garbage men each morning. She makes a living on what they come to throw away.
America survives and thrives because of all those names we don’t know, seemingly ordinary people who do extraordinary things. They don’t run for president or go on talk shows, but without them, the best of America would not exist.
- America’s Best Architect
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.
- Picture Man
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.
- Georgie Clark
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.
- Papa Goose
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?”
- Kid PhD
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.