Coming up on Nebraska Stories...
The newest member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame...
A king sized love story from Nashville...
Teachers who dig geology...
And a student pursues the highest honor in 4-H.
* MUSIC
NARRATOR: From co-founding The New School
to saving European intellectuals from Nazi persecution,
Alvin Saunders Johnson's life is an epic tale of achievement.
* MUSIC
NARRATOR: The Academy Award winning film "Shindler's List"
tells the story of a German industrialist
who saved hundreds of Jewish workers
from the Nazi death camps.
As improbable as it seems,
a man from Nebraska also saved hundreds of Jewish lives.
He grew up near Homer, Nebraska
where in the 1880s he rode his horse to a one-room school.
In the 1920s and 30s he rose to prominence
as President of The New School in New York City.
He used his influence there
to rescue almost 200 European scholars.
ROBERT RIPLEY: If Nebraska needed their own person
called "Shindler,"
this is the man who made a similar achievement.
And it is nothing short of remarkable.
NARRATOR: But it wasn't easy.
He had many critics, some from his own university.
BOB KERREY: People who were saying, Don't do this Alvin.
I mean, come on.
This is not our mission to bring German Jewish intellectuals
over here and create something different.
That's not how we started off.
I believe what he did was the bravest act
of any university president in the entire history
of American education.
* MUSIC
NARRATOR: Our heroes name is Alvin Johnson.
He is the newest inductee into the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
INTERVIEWER: "Have you heard of Alvin Johnson?"
WOMAN: "No."
MAN: "Alvin Johnson? No."
MAN: "No."
MAN: "Ah, no. No, I haven't."
WOMAN: "No."
MAN: "I've never heard of Alvin Johnson. Never."
MAN: "The baseball player, right?"
WOMAN: "I've not heard of Alvin Johnson."
MAN: "I'm sorry.
I feel an immense sense of guilt not knowing that."
* MUSIC
STEVE SHIVELEY: Alvin Johnson was born on a farm
near Homer, Nebraska in Dakota County in 1874.
KERREY: If you'd met him when he was 10 years old
on a farm in Homer, Nebraska, you'd be asking him,
"Well, what do you think about farming?"
JIM McKEE: He became kind of scholarly in the eyes
of his friends and being a gangly youth they gave him
the sobriquet of "frog man".
* MUSIC
NARRATOR: When he was 18 years old,
he enrolled at the University of Nebraska.
Where he was tutored by none other than Willa Cather,
who said of one of his freshmen compositions,
"You write not badly, but you don't see."
But Alvin Johnson did have vision.
After graduating from Nebraska and getting a Ph.D.
from Columbia he rose to become one of the founders
and finally the President of The New School
for Social Research in New York City.
KERREY: Among the things that he carried over
into the creation of The New School was the belief
that the intellectual activity had to connect to life.
You had to get civically engaged.
NARRATOR: One of the jobs of The New School president
was to recruit some of the best scholars in the world
to come to the school and teach.
KERREY: What Alvin Johnson believed is
you've got a lot of people out there making decisions
and the quality of the decision making
is going to get better as a consequence
of understanding these things.
So he believed in bringing these phenomenal people
to deliver lectures and people who were already educated,
could sit in the audience and say,
"Oh, My God, I never thought of that before."
(Cloth being pulled off of bust)
(Applause)
RIPLEY: Alvin Saunders Johnson.
Humanitarian. Educator. Economist.
Innovator in American adult education.
Creator of a safe haven for Jewish scholars fleeing Nazism.
Author of America's first anti-discrimination legislation.
Elected the Hall of Fame in 2012.
* MUSIC
RIPLEY: I have seen three or four of very few photographs
that were ever taken of Dr. Johnson,
and it was a challenge for the sculptor to create an image
that was a great likeness with very, very scant information.
And I think the physical representation of him here,
is appropriate to his greatness.
WESLEY WOFFORD: I think its really important
in trying to capture the essence of someone is to
use the bust and to use things in that bust as symbols
to represent their accomplishments.
I thought his hands were very important.
His grandson who I was talking to yesterday was,
like, "I hung out with Alvin for a summer
and he had the biggest hands, you know, his hands".
He was a farmer, he worked with his hands and he read
and elevated himself and in doing so elevated many others
over the history of his life.
* MUSIC
NARRATOR: Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933.
Within months every Jewish professor in Germany was fired.
By the end of 1933, the first concentration camp was built.
It was called Dachua.
Soon it was illegal for Jews to hold any government job.
With remarkable foresight, Alvin Johnson saw what was coming.
At The New School in 1933 he created a graduate school
called "The University in Exile".
It was a way to bring scholars
into the United States from Germany.
Just how difficult these individual rescues were,
can be seen in the escape route of Polish scholar,
Dr. Alexander Turyn.
Dr. Turyn made his way from Poland to the Black Sea
where he took a small boat to Istanbul,
then another boat to Smyrna
where he was joined by his wife and son.
Together they proceeded by train to Bagdhad
and then flew to Karachi
and finally got to Bombay,
where they boarded the ship The President Roosevelt
and by way of Cape of Good Hope,
made it to New York City.
In addition to saving lives, Johnson's dramatic rescues,
brought a new generation of gifted educators to America
whose teaching impacted thousands of students.
INTERVIEWER: Is that worth being in the Hall of Fame?
JOHN JANOVY: Oh, absolutely. And when you look at the talent
and the intellectual power that came over to this country
as a result of people like that,
absolutely, worthy of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
And, obviously, much more than a baseball player.
NARRATOR: The professors at The New School
created such a dynamic atmosphere,
it attracted a 19-year old student from Omaha,
named Marlon Brando.
Brando said, "I was only there one year,
but what a year it was."
Another student was playwright,
Tennessee Williams.
Three years later, Tennessee cast Brando in
the Broadway premier of "A Streetcar Named Desire."
In his autobiography,
Alvin Johnson was so modest that Brando and Williams
weren't even mentioned.
Johnson's low-key manner throughout his lifetime
was classically Nebraskan.
SHIVELY: He was born and grew up in Nebraska.
Bachelor and Master's degrees at the University.
And the people I've interviewed who talk about him
always bring up that he was a farmer at heart.
He never lost his Nebraskaness.
* MUSIC
When Elizabeth King lost her job,
she packer her car and moved to Nashville.
Where she not only met country music legends,
but the love of her life.
* Music from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" *
NARRATOR: Young, independent, and emerging
from a broken engagement,
what Mary Richard's portrayed on the popular 70's sitcom,
Elizabeth Yax was living in real life.
ELIZABETH KING: Here I'm twenty-nine, no house,
no fiancé, no job.
What do you do?
You move to Nashville.
(Laughter)
NARRATOR: Rather than a sit-com,
Elizabeth's story could be a classic country song.
A spunky, small town girl, grows up in a happy family,
graduates college with a degree in sociology and big dreams.
ELIZABETH KING: I went into radio because that's
what you do when you have that kind of degree, I guess.
KSYZ was the newcomer on the block
and they had a lot of fun things going for them.
NARRATOR: Within four years Elizabeth was sales manager
and just when things couldn't get better,
the station was sold.
Elizabeth's story was in for a big change.
ELIZABETH KING: I had just been engaged prior
to the radio station selling.
And I called off my wedding.
So, here I am, I'm 29, the station is sold,
I've lost my job but I do have my RX-7.
I put everything that fit in that RX-7,
which, trust me, wasn't a lot.
(Laughter)
I took off to Nashville.
(car engine accelerating)
ELIZABETH KING: I think I was a little crazy,
but definitely determined and I didn't have anything.
NARRATOR: But thanks to a friend,
Elizabeth had a place to stay
and a backstage pass to the Grand Ole Opry.
ELIZABETH KING: It was a common courtesy thing
that they would give you access back stage
if you worked in the radio department,
in with a radio station.
NARRATOR: In a way only Elizabeth could do,
she turned a single night's access into a two year pass.
ELIZABETH KING: Yes, well that's called makin' friends.
(Laughter)
So, you smile and you make friends
and you just belong there and little by little, you know,
I didn't have to show a pass,
I didn't have to be on the list.
* Music
NARRATOR: Elizabeth made a lot of friends.
* Music
NARRATOR: But, none more important
than the one she made with Terry King.
TERRY KING: It was like wow, what a great smile.
NARRATOR: Like a page from a romance novel,
Elizabeth and Terry met for the first time
backstage at the Grand Ole Opry
where Terry was working as a musician.
TERRY KING: I was still with Patty and we had just
gotten back from a USO tour with Randy Travis
and so we were at the Opry.
NARRATOR: That was the very night Elizabeth
used her backstage pass.
ELIZABETH KING: Pretty good night for me, too,
because two years later I married that Terry King.
(Laughter)
NARRATOR: Terry grew up one hour from Nashville
and taught himself to play guitar.
TERRY: * Stepped out in the land of the Delta blues...*
BNARRATOR: But he didn't get his start in country music.
TERRY: * W.C. Handy, won't...
TERRY KING: I ended up in Muscle Shoals
and was a staff writer there for awhile.
NARRATOR: Terry wrote songs for top R&B talent,
but after a few years he moved back to Nashville
and went to work for top country artists.
ELIZABETH KING: Terry got a call and it was Mel
and he said, We're going to Branson.
NARRATOR: Terry and Elizabeth had been dating
over a year when he got the call.
It was the early 90's and while Terry went to Branson,
Elizabeth stayed in Nashville.
TERRY KING: I said, Mel, I said you know this girl
that I was dating in Nashville.
I think I'm going to ask her to marry me.
He said, Take me home and you can take my car.
(Laughter)
NARRATOR: Elizabeth and Terry tied the knot
back in Nebraska just a few days before Christmas.
ELIZABETH KING: It was 15 below zero
with 25 below zero wind chill.
They always said it'd be a cold day when I get married.
(Laughter.)
And it was.
(Laughter)
NARRATOR: Terry continued to working for Mel Tillis.
But after their first baby arrived,
Terry left his musical career
and the family settled in Nebraska.
TERRY KING: Elizabeth's a good saleman.
She's very strong, not only personality wise,
faithwise, some aspects she has not only save my life,
she saved my soul.
ELIZABETH KING: Looking back, do I think I can move
to Nashville and do what I did again now at my age?
No way.
But am I glad I did?
Because now I can say there are no regrets.
NARRATOR: And here is where the story
gets a little sweeter.
Elizabeth and Terry still keep in touch with their old friends.
(Laughter)
NARRATOR: It's more than twenty years since
their fateful meeting backstage of the Opry and yet,
the lovebirds are still singing.
(Applause)
Teachers travel back into deep time
to expand their understanding of geology
and discover what really drives learning.
* MUSIC
DAVE HARWOOD: It's the earth, we study the earth.
It's really hard to study the earth in the classroom.
HARWOOD: Ready to Go!
(Van door shutting)
* MUSIC
HARWOOD: These teachers, they're going to be challenged,
and they're going to feel like
their students in the classroom.
HARWOOD: We're here at the Platte River.
It's really the first stop where people have gotten
dirty and wet, and, getting into the science.
(Shovel slicing sand)
HARWOOD: What do you see?
HARWOOD: But they're also meeting each other.
They're learning a lot about each other.
(Walking through cold water)
HARWOOD: We're really building up a fundamental
set of knowledge about how rivers work.
It's a very basic principle of
water moves sediment.
DYLlAN PINKMAN: My name is Dyllan Pinkman.
I teach at Dawes Middle School.
And I've been teaching for three years.
I love doing experiments and I want to be able
to do that with my classroom.
I can share my experiences with them,
and I can have some credibility when I go into the classroom.
(Unpacking the van)
HARWOOD: There certainly is that social dynamic.
You've just gotta work through it.
(Setting up tent and cutting vegetables)
HARWOOD: Living, camping, sharing,
the daily adventure out here.
HARWOOD: I would say that this is, just from past trips,
this is probably your biggest learning day,
where you start to perceive how big geology really is.
* MUSIC
HARWOOD: Each rock has a particular set of, like,
signatures or fingerprints that tell us something
about how the rock was formed.
DAVID PETERS: We are looking at a lot of sand.
I could probably use a little more shade.
I probably try to focus on the big picture.
I didn't know there were quite so many details about sand.
HARWOOD: Being out of their comfort zone,
it puts them in the position of where their students are.
I'm a professor and I do my research and I teach
about things at a pretty high level,
but you know, I was probably, well,
I was a really poor teacher for quite some time.
I changed entirely the way that I teach,
based on the interaction with these teachers
and by seeing the power of what motivates these teachers
to just keep going.
HARWOOD: If you were to sketch this or draw it...
* MUSIC
MANDY: I've taught earth science for just one year now,
and I can really see that what I was teaching
was just really, really a bit more fragmented.
I'm getting this really big picture now.
MANDY: How wide should we draw it?
HELEN: How about we go from edge to edge of that...
MANDY: Geology is huge, these processes
are really big and far reaching.
Having that understanding, is huge for me at this point.
HELEN: We'll call that the "holey layer."
(Laughter)
HELEN: Earth isn't the same as it was a million years ago,
at ten million years ago.
The earth is constantly changing.
* MUSIC
HELEN: It's exciting to think,
the huge scale of earth's time.
* MUSIC
HARWOOD: We're up at six.
We go to bed at ten, eleven, twelve.
Depends on how it goes, but we can be in the vans
working from eight o'clock to seven, eight at night.
TERESA: Okay, I am sick of you!
(Laughter)
HARWOOD: I'm always amazed at how much they can continue to go
and continue to stay engaged.
GROUP: * Happy Birthday to you. *
HELEN: Thank you.
(Applause)
HARWOOD: To the trip's greatest Olympic swimmer.
HELEN: Yeah.
Let me see if I can not catch my hair on fire.
HARWOOD: When I prepare for this, I really don't know
how its going to go, even every day.
It depends on what the teachers bring.
What questions they bring up.
They can then start to follow their own curiosity.
PINKMAN: This doesn't look like Nebraska.
It's crazy.
This whole area would've been filled up to the highest ridge.
That's weathering and erosion,
what we're learning in class.
HARWOOD: Dyllan, he's very aware of why he's here.
He's here to bring more of this into the classroom.
So I'm really happy he's got that perspective of
the kids, otherwise it's just for his own enjoyment.
That's not what's driving any of these teachers.
I mean, it's hard to be out here waking up
on the ground every morning.
Enduring it, for the students, I think is what's
motivating a lot of these teachers.
* MUSIC
HARWOOD: Today's gonna be a great day.
We'll be taking a boat ride into Alcova Reservior.
And up Fremont Canyon.
HARWOOD: See it? Right there?
We're in the 'road hair',
we're in the 'road hair' stage.
HARWOOD: We'll be going into the bowels of the earth,
if you will, back in time.
* MUSIC
PETERS: This is pretty awesome!
HARWOOD: We didn't really go down in the earth,
but we went back through time.
It's like taking a knife, cutting into the earth,
folding it back and looking all the way down.
Just going into deep time, where its really hard to fathom.
3 billion years old.
Two billion years.
A long time.
HARWOOD: So, I want you to try to think about
the relationship of these rocks as they cooled.
PINKMAN: Its trying to get the kids to understand
the time-frame and how long all of this stuff
takes to actually happen.
Science is everywhere you go.
I doesn't just have to be just out of a book,
just out of a video.
* MUSIC
PINKMAN: Whoo!
HARWOOD: Just this morning Dyllan said,
"You know, I'm not gonna teach the same way.
I realized how lame my presentation
on weathering, or of erosion was."
He's gonna change the way he presents this
and pull it into a way that makes the students think.
PINKMAN: What math class lets you go out and do this?
HELEN: I did it myself, if I can do it, you can do it.
HARWOOD: And they're able to share with their students,
and show a picture of them,
standing next to these rocks; the students,
automatically will have respect.
The teacher will have credibility
for having been a geologist.
That's huge.
MANDY: I don't think I've ever learned
or done so much in two weeks ever in my life.
PETERS: I've begun to wonder if Dr. Harwood
isn't sort of a freak of nature.
We're exhausted.
And he's the guy cooking the meals and driving the van.
I suggested about a hundred miles back
that we turn around and do it again.
That, I'm ready to go.
HARWOOD: You've kind of got to let go of your
classroom is partly what this is about.
And let the students partly drive what is learned
and then they stay fully engaged.
* MUSIC
Sheridan Swotek is hoping her innovative 4-H project
will put her on track to receive the organization's highest
recognition, the Diamond Clover Award.
* MUSIC
SHERIDAN SWOTEK: I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
my heart to greater loyalty,
my hands to larger service,
GROUP: my health to better living
for my club, my community, my country and my world.
SHERIDAN: Alright, thank you.
And we have the Nebraska flag for the Nebraska motto.
Who would like to hold that?
* MUSIC
SHERIDAN: Alright, we'll review it real quickly.
Its "Equality Before the Law."
Alright, can we all say that together?
GROUP: Equality before the law.
SHERIDAN: Alright. Good job.
* MUSIC
(Sewing machine)
KAROL SWOTEK: My mother was a local 4-H-er
and then I was kind of a local and state,
now she has gone on to national.
Oh, I think she will be an intergalactic 4-H-er
before you know it.
She's very motivated and very determined and
very willing to do the hard work it takes to get things done.
* MUSIC
SHERIDAN: In the 4-H program
there is something called the Diamond Clover Program.
You have to do something monumental in your community
I would never thought I'd actually be doing goats.
KAROL: My daughter said
I just think it would be just so fun
and I know other counties have sheep exchanges
or other animal exchanges.
SHERIDAN: Goats are just something
that peoople are probably not most familar with.
He actually was able to donate six goats from his family.
And so that is how we kind of got started.
COLE MEADOR: One of my goals, ultimately,
was to be able to have some type of project like this
where urban kids could show a goat.
All kids should be able to raise some type of animal
during their life.
You know, most kids can raise a dog or a cat,
but their nothing compared to raising a livestock species.
KID 1: Head might jump on you.
KID 2: Okay, leave it out so that when they're ready...
MEADOR: You know when you are dealing with livestock
you're dealing with all sorts of different health problems.
MEADOR: Go straight into that muscle.
And pull it straight back to make sure you're not in a vein.
And just give him the shot and rub a little bit.
MEADOR: I'm getting those animals broke to show,
bonding with that animal and then in the end,
ultimately, having to sell that animal.
So it's a totally different aspect to raising a pet.
(Feeding goats)
SHERIDAN: They come out every other night or so and
work with their goats and really get the goats to know them.
Working with our goats is basically just kind of
walking them around and practicing setting them up.
And just getting your goat to know you.
Then by the time of the fair, they're realing familiar
with their goats and they're ready to show them.
MEADOR: Then if the judge stands right here,
all of you guys should be at the front of your goats.
So as that judge looks down the line
all he sees is those animals.
So he is comparing them.
Perfect.
Sheridan, why don't you go ahead and walk her again.
(Traffic noises)
* MUSIC
SHERIDAN: There are kids who are really disconnected from
what how agriculture affects us.
I took them to my work and got 160 K through 5 kids
be able to interact with a goat.
SHERIDAN: "So what are other things you see about Ted?"
SHERIDAN: Some of them,
they've never seen a goat before in person.
And so having them come up and see a goat and feed a goat
and having them have that hands on interaction.
is really pretty cool.
4-H KID 1: So, on a Nubians, their ears are big and long,
so you can actually notice that they have ears.
Then on the LaMancha goats, they have little ear lobes,
that are about the size of that.
(Goat eating hay)
4-H KID 2: At the fair, you take their collar and
you put them up right there and hold them with two fingers
and lead them around.
4-H KID 1: So you don't choke them.
SHERIDAN: The kids usually don't expect to come
to their summer day camp and work with a goat.
We've done this a couple of times
and they are still talking about the goat that came
like three weeks ago.
* MUSIC
(County Fair 4-H kids preparing to show goats)
KAROL: What I've seen through my children and my club
and other kids interacting with 4-H is,
they are enthusiastic when they have a chance
to learn something new.
* MUSIC
SHERIDAN: 4-H really teaches 4-H teens to be a greater role model
in their community and with whoever they work with.
I feel 4-H has made me definelty a better person.
* MUSIC
(Goat bleating)
* MUSIC
* MUSIC
Watch our stories online at netNebraska.org/nebraskastories
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Join the Nebraska Stories conversation.
Nebraska Stories is funded by the
Margaret and Martha Thomas Foundation
and The Nebraska Office of Highway Safety.
Sustained funding for arts coverage on Nebraska Stories
is provided by the H. Lee and Carol Genndler Charitable Fund
and The Nebraska Arts Council
and Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
* MUSIC
Captioning by Finke/NET Television, copyright 2014
* MUSIC
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