hoosierhistorylive: Recent Episodes
Nelson Price
A lively, live discussion of fascinating topics from the rich history of the state of Indiana. Host Nelson Price, the "connoisseur of all things Hoosier," engages guests in a lively, live conversation about high-interest issues relating to Indiana history.
Rock and roll icon Chuck Berry was the headliner at a concert at Bush Stadium in 1972, the first of a long-forgotten series of music festivals at the former baseball stadium in Indianapolis. A poster for that 1972 concert is now part of the collection of the Indiana Music History Project.
So are rare vinyl LP's and 45's featuring Indiana musicians. And so are four Indiana University yearbooks from each year that Hoagy Carmichael was a student in the 1920s, although the music history project generally focuses on the "vinyl era"; that's usually defined as stretching from 1950 to 1990.
The 1972 poster, vinyl LP's and yearbooks are among more than 5,000 pieces of memorabilia, ranging from a record player, photos and cassettes to flyers for concerts, that have been donated during the last year to the music history project, an initiative of the Indiana Entertainment Foundation.
So Rick Wilkerson, the executive director of both the entertainment foundation and the music history project, will return to share updates since he was Nelson's guest last July about the vinyl era of Indiana music. Rick, who formerly owned vinyl record stores in Indianapolis, attended the Chuck Berry concert in 1972, although the poster was donated by musician and photographer Neil Sharrow.
As Hoosier History Live salutes the recent 80th anniversary of D-Day, a milestone during World War II, we will explore the Indiana connections to the largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken. Our guest, World War II historian Ron May, an author and chaplain, interviewed Hoosiers involved in various ways with D-Day, which was June 6, 1944. He also has researched the lives of those who did not make it home.
In addition, Ron has visited American cemeteries in Normandy, France, and Luxembourg. So we also will discuss Hoosiers who are buried at the graveyards, including a pacifist from Indianapolis who served in a medical detachment and voluntarily walked into a minefield to come to the aid of two wounded comrades. William McGee, who was 21 years old when he was killed in March 1945, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the military's highest decoration.
Ron May, who is based in Carmel, has been a frequent Hoosier History Live guest when we have explored World War II history, most recently on a show in 2023 in connection with his book titled "World War II: Indiana Landmarks".
New information continues to emerge about a woman whose deathbed testimony in 1925 helped end the stranglehold of the notorious Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. And there are multiple, new efforts underway to spotlight the legacy of Madge Oberholtzer, the victim of a lurid crime by KKK leader, D.C. Stephenson, her neighbor in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis.
So Hoosier History Live will follow up a show from 2021 with Charlotte Ottinger, the author of a trail-blazing biography titled Madge: The Life and Times of Madge Oberholtzer published by the Irvington Historical Society. A registered nurse who also lives in Irvington, Charlotte will return as Nelson's guest to share more insights about Madge, who was brutally raped by Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the KKK, during a train trip to Chicago with him and one of his associates.
After being brought back to her family's home, Madge courageously recounted details of Stephenson's physical and sexual assault. Her statements resulted in his eventual conviction of second-degree murder in a sensational trial that helped end the clout of Stephenson, who had intimidated Indiana political and civic leaders.
Maybe you have heard some of these comments about houses built in the 1800s and early 1900s:
"They never had closets." "Anything that sticks out of the house – like a wing -- was a subsequent addition." "Their only light was from candles or kerosene lamps."
These are widespread misconceptions that our distinguished guest, Indianapolis-based architectural historian Benjamin L. Ross of RATIO Architects, plans to dispel when he joins Nelson in-studio. For more than 15 years, Ben Ross has been involved in analyzing, interpreting and planning for the future of historic sites in Indiana and across the country, including well-known historic houses.
Some myths about historic houses are so pervasive that they even are repeated to visitors by well-intentioned docents at the sites, Ben says. They include: "The back part of the house is shorter and simpler, so it must be older." "Almost everyone was a homeowner." "Many people lived in one place their entire lives." In some cases, Ben says, the myths distort social history and the way people lived in the 1800s and early 1900s.
A fan favorite even though he shunned publicity, hard-charging Bill Vukovich was the two-time defending champion at the Indianapolis 500 and on his way to a third consecutive victory in 1955 when he was killed during a horrific crash.
One of his closest friends was a nationally acclaimed sportswriter, charismatic Angelo Angelopolous of the Indianapolis News, who chronicled Vukovich's rise from a hard-scrabble childhood (and a family tragedy) to his triumphs at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Angelopolous had completed an eagerly anticipated biography of his friend before the sportswriter died at age 43, probably as a result of radiation exposure he endured as a pilot in World War II by flying over atomic bomb sites in Japan.
The manuscript of the biography of Vukovich went unpublished for nearly 65 years and remained in the closet of Angelopolous' nephew. But Vukovich never has been forgotten among Indy 500 history enthusiasts. A photo of the publicity-adverse driver covering his face in his Gasoline Alley garage after escaping crowds following his triumph in 1954 remains the bestseller in the Speedway's photoshop.
All across the state, sites are named in his honor. The city of Lafayette, for example. In Indianapolis, there's Lafayette Road. In the city of Princeton in southwestern Indiana, there's a Lafayette Park.
And the Marquis de Lafayette, hailed as a hero of both the American Revolution and the French Revolution, is the only individual to have two counties in Indiana with names associated with him: Fayette County and LaGrange County. LaGrange was the name of an estate in France owned by Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834).
Now, admirers across the country, including Hoosiers, are preparing to spotlight the 200th anniversary of Gen. Lafayette's grand farewell tour of 1824-25, during which the distinguished "guest of the nation" returned to America after his triumphs in the Revolutionary War. He traveled 6,000 miles and visited all 24 states that comprised the country then, including Indiana. Lafayette's interactions with the Hoosier state were brief but eventful.
Sure, the White House has been the setting for hundreds of joyous and celebratory events. But the historic home of U.S. presidents and their families also has been a setting for deaths, including that of the only First Lady from Indianapolis. Not only did Caroline Scott Harrison, the beloved wife of President Benjamin Harrison, die in the White House, so did his grandfather.
William Henry Harrison, the shortest-serving president in history, had only held office for 31 days when he died in 1841 at age 68. He had been elected to the presidency as a resident of Ohio; beginning at age 27, though, he had served as the first governor of the Indiana Territory and lived in Vincennes.
During our show, we will explore these deaths as well as others with connections to the presidency of Benjamin Harrison, a Republican who was elected in 1888 after having served as a U.S. Senator from Indiana; the deaths include tragedies involving two of his Cabinet members. Also, just one month after Caroline Scott Harrison succumbed to tuberculosis in 1892, her father, John Scott, a retired college professor and Presbyterian minister, died in the White House, where he had been living with the First Family.
Nelson will be joined in studio by Jennifer Capps, the veteran curator at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis, where a current exhibit, Death in the White House explores these losses in the mansion of the country's chief executive. The exhibit includes displays about Victorian-era mourning customs, so Jennifer will share insights about them during our show.
Nearly 160 years ago this month, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Washington D.C. Witnesses to the tragic event on April 14, 1865 may have included several Hoosiers who claimed to be at Ford's Theatre.
In the decades following the shooting, residents of Indiana towns and cities including Dayton in Tippecanoe County, Ladoga in Montgomery County, Jonesboro in Grant County and Aurora on the Ohio River – as well as Indianapolis – were interviewed by newspapers about what they witnessed. Or claimed to have seen.
During our show, we will explore these reports, including some involving Hoosiers who even said they helped carry the fatally injured president's body to a house across the street, where he was pronounced dead the following morning, April 15. We also will explore the reaction in the Hoosier state to the shocking news that the Great Emancipator, who lived in southern Indiana from ages 7 to 21, had been slain just after the Civil War ended.
She vanished more than 75 years ago over the South Pacific while attempting to fly around the world in a Lockheed Electra 10E twin-engine airplane sponsored by Purdue University. That's just one of the connections between famous aviator Amelia Earhart and the Hoosier state.
She was particularly associated with Purdue, which has the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of artifacts associated with the famous aviator, whose disappearance in 1937 remains a mystery.
To explore the sky-high stack of Earhart links to Indiana, Purdue staff writer and historian John Norberg, an aviation expert, joins Nelson for an encore broadcast of one of the most popular shows in our Hoosier History Live archives with the original show from 2012.
During the final two years before Amelia Earhart vanished, she was a sort of visiting celebrity-in-residence on the West Lafayette campus, where she was a career counselor for women students, and where she lectured and conducted conferences. She also was an adviser to the university's department of aeronautics.
Have you ever gazed up at the Art Deco-style Circle Tower Building in downtown Indianapolis? With its tiered exterior design of the upper floors, the 14-story building has been a landmark on Monument Circle for more than 90 years.
Also on Monument Circle, the Columbia Club has been a presence even longer. The building that houses the prestigious private club was completed in 1925 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
But two former Army airfields in Indianapolis are long gone. Stout Field, where famed aviator Charles Lindbergh made a stop on a national tour in 1927, was in the Mars Hill neighborhood of southwestern Marion County. Schoen Field, which opened in 1922 and became the site of several tragic crashes, was located near the former Fort Benjamin Harrison on the northeast side.
Hoosier History Live will explore these current and bygone landmarks as well as several others, including the barracks at Fort Harrison and the Traction Terminal that was the hub of the state's extensive Interurban system of electric rail cars during the early 1900s.
https://hoosierhistorylive.org/mail/2024-04-13.html
Surveys in recent years often have found more than 25 percent of Hoosier respondents did not know the name of the governor, according to a Ball State University professor quoted in a recent Indianapolis Star article.
Does that sound alarming?
Well, efforts are underway to increase civic understanding both by the general public and by students at Indiana schools. In a joint project, the Indiana Bar Foundation and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce are publishing an updated book, Here is Your Indiana Government, to enhance understanding; it can be downloaded for free by the general public at https://www.inbarfoundation.org/indianagovernmentbook/ and is being made available to Indiana schools (and their libraries) ranging from elementary schools to high schools.
During our show, Nelson's guests will share about ways that people can get involved in public affairs; projects to enhance civic understanding, and Bar Foundation-supported programs such as We the People and Mock Trial. We also will share various intriguing "Indiana facts" featured in the updated civics book. They include some that are obscure or quirky such as:
- In what Indiana city is it illegal to throw a snowball in city limits? Tune in for the answer.
- Who is the only elected county official with the authority to arrest a sheriff? Hint: It's probably not the office holder you would have assumed.
- And tomato juice was invented at what famous site in Indiana?
Calling all Hoosiers (or Hoosiers at heart who live in other states): Do you have any questions about Indiana's heritage that you'd like to ask historians? This show will be an ideal opportunity, with an open phone line throughout as Nelson is joined by Glory-June Greiff, a well-known public historian with broad and deep expertise about the Hoosier state. In between phone calls from listeners – the WICR-FM studio number to call is 317-788-3314 – Nelson and Glory-June will interview each other, particularly about topics related to Women's History Month.
She will share insights about women sculptors from Indiana during the early 1900s, including those whose works are featured in one of Glory-June's books, Remembrance, Faith & Fancy: Outdoor Public Sculpture in Indiana. Two of the sculptors whom Glory-June will discuss are:
- Janet Scudder (1869-1940), who was born in Terre Haute and became one of the most prominent women sculptors in the country. The Swope Art Museum in her hometown displays some of her works.
- And Myra Reynolds Richards (1882-1934), an Indianapolis native whose outdoor sculptures and statues can be seen across the state, from Delphi to the Fountain Square neighborhood in her hometown. She also created the statue in Greenfield of James Whitcomb Riley that stands in front of the Hancock County Courthouse.
Although the heyday of the Indiana Avenue jazz music scene in Indianapolis has been explored frequently – including on Hoosier History Live shows – one aspect is seldom discussed. What happened to the lives of the musicians during the 1970s, '80s and '90s? Where did they perform after the Indiana Avenue nightclubs closed?
Those are the questions we will explore when Nelson is joined by a well-known Indianapolis musician and producer who worked with, was influenced by and befriended many of the jazz notables who, earlier in their lives, had performed on "The Avenue". The heyday of the Indiana Avenue jazz scene generally is defined as stretching from the 1940s through the mid-1960s.
Bill Myers, 58, who is best known as a bass player (although he has played several other musical instruments), began meeting former Indiana Avenue headliners as a 12-year-old. He eventually went on to play an array of gigs with everyone from the legendary Slide Hampton (1932-2021) to saxophonist Jimmy Coe (1921-2004). Bill Myers thinks he has the distinction of being the only male to ever play bass with the popular Hampton Sisters after one of them, Virtue Hampton, their bass player, suffered a stroke.
From a massive former factory on the eastside of Indianapolis that's been repurposed into two charter schools to a 1950s-style diner in Plainfield and a former Masonic Temple in Greenfield, sites along U.S. 40 in Indiana will be in Hoosier History Live's spotlight. We also will explore a bygone barbershop that was owned by a formerly enslaved African American entrepreneur as well as two early automobile manufacturing plants , one of which is set to become a music venue.
Stretching from Richmond to Terre Haute, U.S. 40 bisects the state and follows the route of the National Road, which was completed across the Indiana wilderness during the 1830s. Its designation as U.S. 40 came in the 1920s. That's also when P.R. Mallory opened a massive factory on the highway (which enters Indianapolis as East Washington Street) that eventually employed thousands of Hoosiers who made electronic components and dry cell batteries. After sitting vacant and decaying for more than 30 years, the plant (the birthplace of the Duracell battery) has been repurposed as the home of Purdue Polytechnic High School and Paramount Englewood Middle School.
It's among the historic sites – current, bygone or repurposed – that Nelson and his guests will "cruise by", although they won't leave the radio station. He will be joined by two board members of the Indiana National Road Association:
- David Steele of Indianapolis, a business and civic leader who has crusaded for six Indiana Historical Bureau markers. Along those lines, the Indiana National Road Association has erected 15 interpretive panels along the U.S. 40 route in Indiana.
- And Bob Hunt of Greenfield, who is retired from Eli Lilly & Co. With his wife Beverly, Bob renovated a former Masonic Temple that was considered one of the largest lodges in the state when it opened in 1895. The historic building on U.S. 40 now is a banquet and event center in Greenfield owned by Bradley Hall Events.
One series is called "Sharing Hoosier History Through Stories". Another series, about historic landmarks across Indiana, is titled "If These Walls Could Tell". There's also an annual "Liar's Contest" on the opening night of the Indiana State Fair.
Storytelling Arts of Indiana is deeply involved in each of those, and, as Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, we will spotlight a woman who has been a key figure in the nonprofit organization since it was created in the late 1980s.
Ellen Munds, the executive director of Storytelling Arts, is a former children's librarian who, with two co-founders, launched the organization with a festival at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in 1988 after a year of planning. Ellen, who is retiring on June 30, will be Nelson's guest as we spotlight her and the organization created for the promotion and preservation of stories.
In turning back the pages of Storytelling Arts' own history story, it seems a floatation center in Indianapolis played a key role. According to Ellen, she met future professional storyteller Bob Sander, one of the other co-founders of Storytelling Arts, when he co-owned a local floatation center.
How often does Indiana rank as the No. 1 state in a national list? Well, here's a record for the books: More Carnegie Libraries were built in Indiana than any other state.
Between 1901 and about 1918, 164 public libraries built in large part by funding from philanthropist and industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) were constructed in Indiana. More than 100 of them are still used as public libraries across the state. Others have been repurposed as everything from restaurants to museums, art galleries, local government offices and civic centers, with many retaining the "Carnegie" name in some way.
To explore a range of aspects about "the Carnegies" – which include two branches still in use in the Indianapolis Public Library system – Nelson will be joined by studio guest Dr. William McNiece, president of the Marion County Historical Society, who has done a deep dive into the topic. The first Carnegie Library built in Indiana was in Goshen and the last town to receive funding was Lowell, Ind. OF Indiana's 92 counties, only 9 did not receive any Carnegie funding for a public library, according to Dr. McNiece.
Way back in 1876, when firefighting equipment was transported by horse-drawn wagons, the first Black firefighters were hired by the Indianapolis Fire Department. The four African Americans included a firefighter who, in 1911, died in the line of duty.
Details about the story of the trail-blazing firefighters will be described on this show as Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month. Our guest will be Corey Floyd, an IFD battalion chief and president of the Indianapolis Black Firefighters Association, which is in the midst of a major project. A history museum about Black firefighters is being developed in a non-operational (shuttered) fire station on the north-eastside.
The museum in Old Station No. 31, 1201 E. 46th St., is expected to feature historic firefighting equipment, uniforms, helmets, plaques and videos. Battalion Chief Floyd, who grew up near Old Fire Station No. 31, says he hopes the museum will open in two or three months.
On the east end of downtown Indianapolis, there was a community (or "barrio") of Mexican families during the 1940s and '50s. During the 1960s and '70s, camps in the farm fields of Grant County and Howard County were set up for migrant workers, most of them of Mexican or other Latino heritage. So there were urban as well as rural residents of Latino heritage in the Hoosier state during the mid and late 1900s.
In our rotating series about ethnic heritage in Indiana that has focused on heritage groups ranging from Germans and Irish to Ukrainians and Koreans, Hoosier History Live will follow up a show in 2018 about the Mexican communities in northwest Indiana during the 1920s. The guests on that show included Nicole Martinez-LeGrand of the Indiana Historical Society, who will return to share insights about the subsequent evolution of Latinos during the mid and late 1900s.
Nicole is the co-author of "Hoosier Latinos: A Century of Struggle, Service and Success" (Indiana Historical Society Press); her ancestors came from Mexico to the Indiana Harbor area of Lake County as early as 1918. Steel companies in northwest Indiana recruited Mexican immigrants as workers, with a barrio established in the Indiana Harbor area of East Chicago.
Now that awards season is underway in Hollywood – Oscar nominations were announced Tuesday – our spotlight will be on movie and TV directors with Indiana connections. The filmmakers range from directors of movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood such as the holiday classic "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947) and "To Have and Have Not" (1944) to popular hits like "The Amazing Spiderman" (2012).
"Miracle on 34th Street" was directed by George Seaton (1911-1979), who was born in South Bend. Although the movie has become a Christmas classic, it was not initially released during the holiday season and was not promoted with yuletide as a focus. Nelson's guest, Dan O'Brien, a screenwriter and former TV sportscaster based in Greenwood, will explain why. In addition to being a director, George Seaton was a screenwriter and won an Oscar for his screenplay for "Miracle on 34th Street". He also won an Oscar for his screenplay for "The Country Girl" (1954) starring Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby; Seaton directed that movie as well.
Other movie directors we will spotlight include Howard Hawks (1896-1977), whose ancestors helped found Goshen, Ind., where he was born. Although Hawks primarily is remembered as a director of Westerns (several starred John Wayne, including "Red River" and "Rio Bravo"), Hawks was known for his versatility. His other hits include "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953) starring Marilyn Monroe as well as "To Have and Have Not" (1944) that teamed Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall for the first time.
Who was Bertha Ross? A park on the north west side of Indianapolis is named in her honor. Namesakes of other city parks include a superstar in baseball's old Negro League, a beloved cook at Flanner House and one of the first Black officers in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Our show on Saturday (Jan. 13) will spotlight "African American namesakes of Indy parks", with Deputy Mayor Judith Thomas sharing insights.
Because of a tragedy, a picturesque town with a Greek name (unusual for Indiana) has been in the national news for more than six years. That has often obscured the colorful heritage that Delphi in northern Indiana has reclaimed in captivating ways, including cruises on a portion of the former Wabash & Erie Canal, restored historic structures and a park showcasing the waterway's heritage, that have made the city a popular destination for visitors.
Hoosier History Live will spotlight Delphi (population. 2,975), the county seat of Carroll County, where, from May through September, visitors enjoy cruises on The Delphi, a replica of a 19th century canal boat. In this encore broadcast (original air date: Jan. 14, 2023), we also look at the history of some sites associated with the tragedy, the murders of two girls in February 2017, as well as the Canal Interpretive Center, which includes an interactive museum, and restored buildings such as the Delphi Opera House. Not only did James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, perform at least six times at the opera house, he also visited the Delphi area to enjoy fishing and other leisure activities.
Nelson's guest is Carroll County historian Mark A. Smith. He is a docent at the Reed Case House, a grand, Federal-style home built in the 1840s by the contractor of the region's section of the Wabash & Erie Canal, which was constructed to connect Toledo on Lake Erie with Evansville on the Ohio River. The Reed Case House eventually became an inn for travelers and canal workers.
He quit school after the fifth grade to ride the rails, so Henry Ulen was an unlikely Hoosier to become an international business tycoon. Ulen also created and became the namesake of an unusual small town that's surrounded by the city of Lebanon in Boone County.
In this encore broadcast of a show from 2022, History Live will take a dual look at Henry Ulen, an industrialist, and the town of Ulen that he founded in the 1920s not far from where he had grown up. "I traveled from the time I was 14 until I was 18," Ulen once said. "The moment the idea hit to go somewhere, and it always did in the spring, I was off. St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dodge City, Cincinnati . . . anywhere the next freight train happened to be going."
Henry Ulen (1871-1963) founded Ulen & Company, a prestigious business that oversaw infrastructure projects in places like Bolivia, Iran and Greece. The company was based in New York City until Ulen decided to return to Indiana and create a town as a community for his executives and engineers. Although that's no longer the case (Ulen & Company shut down more than 60 years ago), the 40-acre town still has about 120 residents. Just as in the 1920s, the hub of the community is a golf course and country club.
Whether you have been naughty or nice during this yuletide season, have you wondered how a sleepy village founded in southwestern Indiana during the 1840s became the country's only town that has a post office with the Santa Claus name?
Hundreds of thousands of "Dear Santa'' letters from children around the world have been delivered to Santa Claus, Ind., since the early 1900s. And the Spencer County town (approximate pop.: 2,580) has become a tourist destination, with an internal, recreated historic village that includes a Santa Claus Museum, a church built in the 1880s and a towering Santa statue that weighs 40 tons.
To celebrate the season and its spirit, Hoosier History Live will explore the evolution of the unusual town (its original name was not Santa Claus) and the letters, which are answered by a joyful army of community volunteers known as "elves". They toil in the recreated historic village, which opened within the town in 2006.
With construction finally underway of a new home for the Indiana Archives, which include a trove of historic material such as the transcripts of landmark court cases, Hoosier History Live will follow up a show we did last year about the status of the archives. In addition to highlighting aspects of the $102 million structure being built on the downtown canal in Indianapolis, we also will spotlight some of the landmark court cases, which range from "slave trials" early in the state's history to the death penalty case involving a teenage girl and a gruesome murder in 1906.
Nelson's returning guest will be Chandler Lighty, executive director of the Indiana Archives and Records Administration. For more than 20 years, many of the state's archives, which include the original Indiana State Constitution of 1816, have been housed in a deteriorating warehouse on the eastside of Indianapolis that was intended to be temporary and is not sufficiently climate controlled. A tunnel will connect the new Archives building with other buildings on the state government campus.
To share insights about the landmark court cases with transcripts housed in the archives, Chandler has consulted with former Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randy Shepard, who was a guest on Hoosier History Live in 2019. The cases include two that became known as "slave trials" in the early 1820s involving teenage African American girls. The cases tested the then-new constitution prohibiting slavery in Indiana. During this show, Chandler will discuss one of the cases, involving a teenager in Vincennes named Polly Strong. On Hoosier History Live, we have explored the other "slave trial", which also involved an enslaved teenager, Mary Bateman Clark, on a show that we rebroadcast most recently in 2020; our guest was well-known Indianapolis journalist and historian Eunice Trotter, a descendant of Mary Bateman Clark.
Once there was a majestic courthouse in Marion County designed in the Second Empire style with a clock tower, spire, cupolas and statues of Greek goddesses. Once, where Butler University's campus is located today, there was a spacious park, with a boathouse for canal rides, an outdoor band shell for concerts, a roller coaster and diving horses.
And once there was a long covered bridge that extended across the White River, enabling travelers on Washington Street in Indianapolis to make it across the waterway without getting wet.
These and other bygone landmarks will be the focus of our show with the author of a new book, Vanished Indianapolis, that describes the distinctive sites and explains why they went away. The author who will be Nelson's guest is Ed Fujawa, the creator of a popular blog about city history, class900indy.com.
Although Ed is an Indianapolis attorney, he never tried a case in the Marion County Courthouse, which was demolished in the early 1960s. (Today, the site is a plaza just south of the City-County Building, which replaced the courthouse as the home of local courtrooms and various city offices.) Constructed in the 1870s, the courthouse drew national attention because of its lavish architecture. In Vanished Indianapolis, Ed describes a daredevil in 1919 who climbed to the top of its central spire and was among the thrill seekers attracted by the building's design.
With the approach of Thanksgiving, Hoosier History Live will spotlight the trail-blazing woman who wrote the first cookbook published in Indiana. Also on the menu: We will explore food fashions of the mid-18th century era when the cookbook came out.
The author was Angelina Collins (1805-1885), who was living in New Albany, Ind., when her popular cookbook was published in 1851. Titled "Mrs. Collins' Table Receipts" (and retitled "The Great Western Cookbook" when it was reprinted in New York later during the 1850s), the cookbook "is an excellent reflection of the dishes served in middle class homes in mid-century Indiana", our guest says. (The word "receipts", as in the title of the book, was often used during the era to refer to recipes.)
Our guest on this encore show (originally broadcast last Feb. 25) is Indianapolis-based food historian Sheryl Vanderstel, an expert on foodways of late 18th century America through the pre-Civil War era. With more than 20 years of experience as a historic consultant to museums and historical societies in researching and developing programs, Sheryl helped launch the hearthside dinners at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park.
It may be easy to unfurl a flag, but there sure are a lot of twists in the story of how the current Indiana state flag became the official symbol. At one point, even the Stars and Stripes (a k a the American flag) was the official flag for the Hoosier state.
The backstory about the state flag and several untold, related stories are described in a new book, The Indiana Flag: Who Really Designed It?. The author, Morgan County resident David Reddick, will be Nelson's studio guest to dig into the history that he's unearthed about the blue and gold flag with the torch and 19 stars. (Refresher history tidbit: In 1816, Indiana became the 19th state to enter the country.)
Also during our show, David Reddick will share insights about the life and career of Paul Hadley (1880-1971), the watercolor artist from Mooresville credited with designing the state flag. According to folklore, Hadley won a contest sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1916. The actual story is more complicated, David Reddick says.
It may be easy to unfurl a flag, but there sure are a lot of twists in the story of how the current Indiana state flag became the official symbol. At one point, even the Stars and Stripes (a k a the American flag) was the official flag for the Hoosier state.
The backstory about the state flag and several untold, related stories are described in a new book, The Indiana Flag: Who Really Designed It?. The author, Morgan County resident David Reddick, will be Nelson's studio guest to dig into the history that he's unearthed about the blue and gold flag with the torch and 19 stars. (Refresher history tidbit: In 1816, Indiana became the 19th state to enter the country.)
Also during our show, David Reddick will share insights about the life and career of Paul Hadley (1880-1971), the watercolor artist from Mooresville credited with designing the state flag. According to folklore, Hadley won a contest sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1916. The actual story is more complicated, David Reddick says.
A rotating series on Hoosier History Live delves into the ethnic heritage of (and immigration to) Indiana. We have explored dozens of ethnic heritage groups, ranging from shows about Ukrainian immigration and Scottish heritage to the state's early Mexican heritage and the Arab heritage in Indianapolis. Many of the immigrants and refugees become U.S. citizens at naturalization ceremonies held at various venues.
This time, we will explore the topic from a different perspective: that of a federal judge who oversees many of the naturalization ceremonies. Judge James Sweeney of the U.S. District for Southern Indiana will be Nelson's studio guest to share insights about an aspect of his job that he considers among the most rewarding: officially making Indiana residents new American citizens.
What has been the homeland for the most immigrants at Judge Sweeney's naturalization ceremonies since he began his stint on the federal bench in 2018? He plans to share the answer during our show, as well as offer other observations about naturalization ceremonies that he's overseen. (The U.S. District for Southern Indiana includes a wide swath of central and southern Indiana, stretching from the Indianapolis metro area, Kokomo, Terre Haute and Richmond to Evansville, Bloomington and New Albany.) According to court officials, 1,333 residents of the district have been naturalized as U.S. citizens so far in 2023, with a total of 1,850 projected by the end of the year. The number declined during the Covid pandemic, when naturalization ceremonies were unable to be held for a few months. (In 2020, only 925 residents of the district were naturalized, compared to 2,286 in 2018.)
It's a creepy chapter of Indiana's history, but probably appropriate to explore during the season known for all things ghastly. Graverobbing in central Indiana had been an "open secret" for decades before several arrests in 1902 and subsequent trials drew national attention, according to Chris Flook, a public historian and senior lecturer at Ball State University's department of media.
Rings of graverobbers in Indianapolis and Hamilton County had been plundering small cemeteries in the Hoosier capital city and rural cemeteries. They sold corpses to various medical schools that were desperate for cadavers. (These medical schools predated the formation of – and were unaffiliated with – the I.U School of Medicine.) Chris Flook, who will be Nelson's studio guest, describes the grisly conspiracies in a new book, "Indianapolis Graverobbing: A Syndicate of Death".
Key figures in the graverobbing rings included Rufus Cantrell, an itinerant African American preacher known as the "King of the Ghouls", and his competitor, Hampton West, a white, former Confederate soldier who was based in Hamilton County. They were hired to ransack cemeteries by the medical schools, including the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons, that sought cadavers to use in training students. In his book, Chris Flook describes the impact of racism in the arrests and trials of the conspirators.
"Racism played a decisive role in how the participants were adjudicated", Chris notes. "The Black graverobbers received a disproportionate amount of blame and punishment for a criminal conspiracy created, managed and maintained by white doctors at some of the medical schools."
A controversy about religion divided churches, communities and even families in southern Indiana during the early 1800s. The conflict among Baptists even affected the church that young Abraham Lincoln attended with his family in what is now Spencer County.
Our guest Randy Mills, a retired distinguished professor at Oakland City University in southern Indiana, has researched and written about the fights, which involved missionaries sent to the then-Western frontier (which included Indiana) from the East as well as foreign and domestic missions. According to Randy Mills, a Midwest historian, some historians suspect the bickering that impacted Little Pigeon Baptist Church, which young Abe Lincoln attended, may have caused the future president to avoid formal religious affiliations later in life.
"At the heart of the bitter conflict was a frontier preacher named Daniel Parker whose violent preaching against mission efforts split churches, communities and families," Randy Mills says. In an article that he wrote for Indiana Magazine of History, Randy Mills noted the feud among congregations was triggered by the arrival in the frontier of a Baptist missionary, John Mason Peck, from New England.
Some of their creations are gone, with parking lots or modern structures currently on the sites. But some of the distinctive work of historic Indiana architects still stands in the town of Madison, the city of Evansville and historic neighborhoods in Indianapolis including Herron-Morton Place and Woodruff Place.
The Indiana Album and various partners are creating an online resource with biographical information about Indiana's architects and the buildings they designed, which ranged from houses and churches to theaters, hotels and a basketball arena.
Some of the structures designed by Indiana's first prominent architect, Francis Costigan (1810-1865), are now museums in Madison, the scenic town on the Ohio River where he was based for much of his career. Other Costigan-designed houses are still private residences. So are homes designed by Indianapolis-based architect Louis H. Gibson (1854-1907), who wrote two books about house planning and design, including Convenient Houses (1889), a guide for people of modest means to build their homes.
Snicker if you must, because that's an understandable reaction to an annual tradition in Northwest Indiana. At the Pierogi Drop every New Year's Eve in the city of Whiting, a 10-foot tall version of the dumpling associated with Polish cuisine is dropped into a boiling cooking pot at the stroke of midnight. And in the summer, the Pierogi Fest in Whiting sometimes draws more than 350,000 enthusiasts.
Also in Lake County, a historic former courthouse in Crown Point was known for decades as a "marriage mill". Hollywood celebrities like silent movie star Rudolph Valentino, sports icons such as Muhammad Ali and Joe DiMaggio and other notables trekked to Crown Point for speedy weddings. No waiting periods, residency requirements or blood tests were required then. Now known as the Old Lake County Courthouse, the former "marriage mill" structure, which was built in 1878, is a tourist destination that houses a museum and distinctive retailers, including antique shops as well as merchants who sell vinyl records and vintage clothes.
The clothes won't be needed at two rival clubs, one of which dates to the 1930s in the city of Roselawn. The Sun Aura Club (which has had several names during its colorful history) and the Ponderosa Sun Club are nudist colonies. A third such club also flourishes in Northwest Indiana: The Lake O' The Woods Nudist Colony can be found in Valparaiso.
Following up last week's show about the lavish French Lick Springs Hotel, Hoosier History Live will focus on the southern Indiana town's other claim to national fame. French Lick, of course, is the hometown of the basketball superstar often called "Larry Legend". He also became known as "The Hick from French Lick".
Larry Bird persevered through significant challenges in his youth (including an impoverished family and a tragedy) to become one of the greatest players in NBA history. Before that, he was a sensational player at Springs Valley High School, then reaped national fame at Indiana State University. After his playing career, he coached the Indiana Pacers, lifting the team to unprecedented success, then served in top management for the organization. His triumphs also include playing on America's Dream Team One in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (the first time NBA players were permitted in the Olympic games), even though he was in excruciating pain.
Our guide as we explore Larry Bird's life and career will be veteran sports journalist Mark Montieth, currently a sports columnist for the Indianapolis Business Journal. As the former Pacers beat reporter for the Indianapolis Star, Mark covered all three seasons the team was coached by Bird, who took them to their debut in the NBA Finals in 2000. Mark has a trove of podcast interviews with (and stories about) Indiana sports notables at markmontieth.com He has been a previous Hoosier History Live guest, including on a show in 2017 about the early years of the Pacers in connection with one of his books, Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indiana.
There's a significant connection between a lavish resort hotel in southern Indiana and an Irish immigrant who became the mayor of Indianapolis as well as a powerful political boss in the early 1900s. There's also a connection to a major amphitheater that was dedicated at Riverside Park in the summer of 2021 in honor of the colorful former mayor, who was known as the "father of the Indianapolis park system".
The French Lick Springs Hotel wasn't always lavish. In the 1840s, a modest hotel was built on the property in Orange County that's long been touted for its mineral springs that are said to have healing qualities.
It took colorful Thomas Taggart (1856-1929), who bought the French Lick hotel after his three terms as Indianapolis mayor, to make it a showplace known for its spas, gambling, gardens, gourmet dining and distinguished guests. By then, Taggart, a Democrat, was a nationally known political boss. He eventually bought a summer home for his family on Cape Cod at Hyannis Port, where their next-door neighbors were the famous Kennedy family.
Who knows if the soil is rich at the site that's now White River State Park? Regardless, the history of the site near downtown Indianapolis that's now a 250-acre cultural campus certainly can be described as rich and mighty colorful.
Beginning as a fishing ground for Native Americans and encompassing a long era in which the area was industrial, bleak and unappealing, the White River State Park site today has an array of enticements to attract visitors, including an amphitheater for popular concerts. The park includes a portion of the Central Canal, where gondola rides are available, and there are promenade pedestrian walkways. (The portion of the Central Canal west of the West Street bridge is considered part of White River State Park.)
The White River State Park campus also includes Military Park, which was the setting for the first Indiana State Fair in 1852. Later, Military Park was a training ground for Civil War soldiers.
To share insights about the White River State Park site, then and now, Nelson will be joined in the studio by Jake Oakman, executive director of the park. Before his current post, Jake was a speechwriter for Gov. Eric Holcomb and communications director for Visit Indiana. Today, the White River State Park campus has become one of Indiana's most-visited attractions.
Even those who only dabble in Indiana's art history likely know about the Hoosier Group of painters, including T.C. Steele, who drew national fame. But another group of painters actually formed the state's first colony of artists.
The Richmond Group Artists formed in the late 19th century in far-eastern Indiana, traveling along the Whitewater River and painting on weekends. In 1898, they founded the Art Association of Richmond.
That evolved into the acclaimed Richmond Art Museum, which is generally considered to be the only independent art museum in the country that's housed in a public school: Richmond High School.
Earlier this month, the art museum and its executive director, Shaun Dingwerth, were named recipients of the Governor's Arts Awards. The awards are given by the Indiana Arts Commission and the office of the governor to honor outstanding contributions to the arts.
Once upon a historic time, a touring circus started spending the winter in the Indiana city of Peru. Circus performers, exotic animals (camels, tigers, ostriches, hippos and more) and equipment would "winter" and train in the town in Miami County.
Those beginnings in the late 1800s kick-started a heritage that flourishes, in a different way, to this day in Peru, which trumpets itself as the "Circus Capital of the World".
Every summer now, the Peru Amateur Circus showcases a youth program in which about 200 local young people from ages 7 to 21 practice and perform acts such as juggling, tumbling and flying on the trapeze under a permanent, three-ring "big top". It's part of the Circus City Festival's fanfare that also features one of the largest parades in Indiana.
To share insights about the deep circus heritage in Peru and how it was revived after the "wintering" of traveling circuses ended in the early 1940s, Nelson will be joined in studio by three guests. The guests, all from Miami County and board members of the Peru Amateur Circus, will be:
- Tim Bessignano, a circus historian who also has served for 33 years on the Circus City Festival's board. He oversees the circus wagon shop and the acquisition of horses for the parade.
- Kathi Greene, who has been immersed in the circus heritage in Peru for 51 years, starting when she was one of the original youth performers. She has been a rigger, clown and trainer; her grandchildren are the fourth-generation of her family to be involved in the circus.
- And Matt Barnett, a history teacher at Maconaquah Middle School.
Even though a couple from the town of Auburn in far-northeastern Indiana married after World War II, their letters included in a new book, "Army Guy, Red Cross Gal", are not love letters. Because they weren't even dating each other before they went overseas, their descriptive letters were not written to each other.
Instead, the "Army guy", who became a military police lieutenant with Gen. George Patton's Third Army, wrote to his Indiana family members about his wartime experiences, including becoming ensnared in the historic Battle of the Bulge and witnessing the horrors at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Meanwhile, the "Red Cross gal", wrote to her family about her experiences, which involved being stationed in Italy and working at a sprawling sports complex that Fascist dictator Mussolini had built.
To discuss the lives and letters of the couple, another resident of Auburn, the co-author of "Army Guy, Red Cross Gal", will be Nelson's guest. Barbara Olenyik Morrow is the author of seven books, most focusing on Indiana history. In "Army Guy, Red Cross Gal", she inserts narrative passages between the letters that illuminate a range of episodes during World War II. She notes that nearly 12,000 people from Indiana were killed during the war, including nearly 100 from DeKalb County, where Auburn is the county seat.
Roadhouses, saloons and gambling were part of the wildness during the late 1800s and early 1900s at Brighton Beach, a long-forgotten, notorious area just west of downtown Indianapolis. Newspapers in the 1890s called Brighton Beach (where enticements included "chuck-a-luck", a game of chance played with dice) "one of the toughest places in town".
Ed Fujawa, an Indianapolis attorney and founder of Class900 Indy, a blog about city history, has researched some bygone rowdy pockets of Marion County, including Brighton Beach, which was located north of W. 16th Street and west of today's I-65. The area now primarily consists of infrastructure for the Indianapolis Water Company.
"The infamous reputation of the Beach, and its saloons and roadhouses, continued to grow (during the 1880s), as did a criminal element", Ed Fujawa wrote in a recent blog post. "Reports of crime were frequent. Robberies, assaults, stabbings, even murders, were reported."
Strike up the band. But not necessarily a marching band.
For this Hoosier History Live show exploring Indiana's music heritage during what is known as the "vinyl era" (generally defined as 1950 to 1990), the most appropriate band probably would be one that played "rock and roll", as the music was called during its early decades. Histories of other genres during the vinyl era also are being included in a new initiative launched by the Indiana Entertainment Foundation.
The foundation's initiative, called the Indiana Music History Project, is spotlighting the 40-year vinyl records era with various endeavors. They include a new gallery with artifacts such as a recreation of an Indianapolis radio station during the 1960s or '70s; a Wikipedia-type online resource documenting music history during the vinyl era (including entries about Indiana-based businesses, venues and musicians), and a streaming radio service that plays music by all-Indiana singers and bands.
Our guide for this exploration will be music historian and record collector Rick Wilkerson, executive director of the Indiana Entertainment Foundation and the Indiana Music Heritage Project. Rick, who once owned popular vinyl records stores in Indianapolis, will be Nelson's studio guest to share insights about the new initiative and our state's impact during the 1950-1990 music era.
Almost ever since the city of Indianapolis was platted in 1821, a site along the White River has been distinctive for various reasons. It started as a burial site, then multiple graveyards that became known collectively as Greenlawn Cemetery, where thousands of early residents were buried.
Beginning in 1917, Diamond Chain had a manufacturing plant on the site just southwest of downtown that employed hundreds of Hoosiers. Now the site on White River is planned to be the location of a new stadium for the Indy Eleven pro soccer team.
So Hoosier History Live will do a deep dive into the history of Greenlawn, the burial site of initial settlers and subsequent residents, including civic leaders, early African American residents (in segregated parcels), infants, impoverished Hoosiers and a vast range of other Hoosiers. Because of various factors, including the fact that Greenlawn was prone to flooding, the cemetery was closed in 1890.
They explored and advocated for the protection of a range of aspects of Indiana's natural heritage, from birds and other wildlife to flowers and plants, including ferns. In many cases, they lived during eras (including the late 1800s and early 1900s) before the word "environmentalist" even was used. Some of them were called "conservationists".
They were often self-taught in our natural heritage, with true "in-field" experience. Even though Frank Wallace (1878-1968) didn't have a high school diploma, his expertise meant that he served as an Indiana state entomologist for more than 40 years. Jane Brooks Hine (1831-1916) of DeKalb County in northeastern Indiana became known as the "Bird Woman of Indiana" while documenting hundreds of sightings for the federal government. A former teacher and mother of six, she wrote for various publications and served on the Indiana Academy of Science.
During a later era, John Gottschalk (1912-1999), a native of Berne, Ind., rose to become a top federal official as director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. On a local level, Maurice McClue (1878-1957), who loved wildflowers, trees and wildlife, donated more than 80 acres of his family's farm to "the citizens of Steuben County" in an era before land trusts.
To spotlight seven diverse Hoosiers who, amid great personal sacrifices, served in World War I, Hoosier History Live will feature as guests the Bloomington-based director and a producer of a new documentary that features them.
Six soldiers and a nurse from Indiana are the focus of "Over There: Hoosier Heroes of the Great War", which is expected to be shown on various PBS-TV stations across Indiana by the end of the year. The Hoosiers featured in the documentary by Blue Ace Media include some who were killed on battlefields in France, often amid acts of outstanding bravery.
Maj. Samuel Woodfill (1883-1951), who was born on a farm near Madison, Ind., received multiple accolades for his heroism, including the Medal of Honor, and likely would have become a nationally known public figure but, as a shy and modest man, did not like attention. Lottie May Berry (1888-1917) left a comfortable life in Indianapolis to become a nurse overseas for the American Red Cross; she died shortly after arriving in France. Lt. Aaron Fisher (1892-1985), who grew up in the historic African American community of Lyles Station, Ind., was acclaimed for multiple acts of courage in an infantry regiment in the U.S. Army, which was segregated during World War I.
Before the dust settles on last month's Indianapolis 500, Hoosier History Live will explore historic medical treatment, advances in care and safety issues at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Last year, we explored the first infield hospital at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and other medical developments and challenges by time traveling to the opening of the world-famous racetrack in 1909. But we only covered the first 50 years, stopping in 1959.
Now we are roaring back with a sequel that will begin in 1960 with the appointment of a new medical director at the Speedway. Dr. Thomas Hanna, who would serve in that capacity for 21 years, received a baptism by fire in 1960 because his first year involved a spectacular tragedy during the Indianapolis 500. In the infield, privately constructed scaffolding collapsed, killing two spectators and injuring 76 others.
As by far the biggest of the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan, the legendary Hoosier Slide was a national tourist attraction. Sometimes likened to a sandy version of a Swiss Alp, the massive Hoosier Slide near Michigan City, Ind., stood 18.5 stories high and was the setting for wedding ceremonies, picnics and endless frolicking, with climbers and gawkers traveling by train or ferry to the towering dune during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
By 1920, though, the Hoosier Slide had disappeared.
Hoosier History Live will explore the heyday of the Hoosier Slide, the reasons it vanished from the landscape and the flourishing of Michigan City as a lakeside resort during the era that the huge dune captivated so many tourists. In particular, visitors from Chicago enjoyed spectacular views from atop the Hoosier Slide of Lake Michigan as well as Michigan City's vast lumberyards.
Nelson's studio guest will be Christopher Taelman, who lives in Granger, which is a few miles north of the University of Notre Dame, near Indiana's state line with Michigan. Chris serves as chief development officer of the Hospice Foundation based in Mishawaka.
During a show five years ago, Hoosier History Live explored the connections between Indiana and Ellis Island, the gateway to America for generations of immigrants. The receiving center for aspiring Americans in New York Harbor opened in 1892 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, the only president elected from Indiana.
As a kind of prequel to that show, in this encore of a program broadcast in July 2022, we delve into the immigration scenario that led the federal government to open Ellis Island, including controversies at its predecessor, Castle Garden on lower Manhattan in New York City. The country's first official immigration center, Castle Garden, was operated by New York officials.
We also will explore the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which Harrison opposed as a U.S. senator from Indiana. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended the immigration of skilled and unskilled Chinese laborers, passed without Harrison's support. According to Nelson's guest, Harrison was labeled the "pro-Chinese candidate" of the Republican Party in his presidential campaign of 1888.
For a deep dive into the histories of Geist Reservoir and Morse Reservoir, which supply much of the water for residents of the greater Indianapolis area, Hoosier History Live will plunge into several questions. Were you aware that a historic village called Germantown, which was founded during the 1830s and flourished for more than 100 years, was subsumed to create Geist?
Do some of Germantown's structures, which included houses, a post office and a mill, remain underwater in the reservoir located in northeastern Marion County and southern Hamilton County? Geist Reservoir was created in the 1940s, although the Indianapolis Water Company began a push to develop it more than 20 years earlier.
Construction of Morse Reservoir, which is located northwest of Noblesville and south of Cicero in Hamilton County, began later, in the 1950s. Both reservoirs were named in honor of executives of the water company, now part of Citizens Energy Group. Beginning in the early 1960s, a crusade to build luxury homes around Geist came to public attention and was quickly controversial.
or a deep dive into the histories of Geist Reservoir and Morse Reservoir, which supply much of the water for residents of the greater Indianapolis area, Hoosier History Live will plunge into several questions. Were you aware that a historic village called Germantown, which was founded during the 1830s and flourished for more than 100 years, was subsumed to create Geist?
Do some of Germantown's structures, which included houses, a post office and a mill, remain underwater in the reservoir located in northeastern Marion County and southern Hamilton County? Geist Reservoir was created in the 1940s, although the Indianapolis Water Company began a push to develop it more than 20 years earlier.
Construction of Morse Reservoir, which is located northwest of Noblesville and south of Cicero in Hamilton County, began later, in the 1950s. Both reservoirs were named in honor of executives of the water company, now part of Citizens Energy Group. Beginning in the early 1960s, a crusade to build luxury homes around Geist came to public attention and was quickly controversial.
Feast on this: His name is Chadwick Gillenwater. But children across Indiana know him as bow-tied Professor Watermelon, the performance name he uses when he travels to schools, libraries, museums, summer camps and historic sites for presentations about history and writing. At various historic sites, Chadwick, a veteran teacher and school librarian, also offers workshops for children called Watermelon University.
The historic sites include the James Whitcomb Riley Museum Home in the Lockerbie neighborhood of Indianapolis. It's also the setting for one of Chadwick's books for children, George and the Goblin Hole, in which he uses a real historical figure (the butler at the home when Riley was in residence) along with a fictional character, a contemporary boy, to inspire interest in the Hoosier poet. In addition to his presentations as Professor Watermelon, Chadwick is a history reenactor who frequently portrays James Whitcomb Riley (in costume) at civic events and presentations to children.
So why not tap Chadwick a k a Professor Watermelon for tips about how to excite children in history, and insights about what turns them off? When he joins Nelson as a studio guest, Professor Watermelon also will suggest some do's and don'ts about sparking an interest in writing among young Hoosiers.
From the small city of Ligonier in northeastern Indiana to major cities including Indianapolis and South Bend, waves of Jewish immigration had, in a range of ways, an impact between 1840 and the 1920s on their communities. Immigrants came to the Hoosier state from various homelands, with a Jewish teenager who fled the Austro-Hungarian empire eventually becoming one of the founders of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation and a brigadier general for the Union Army during the Civil War.
Our guide for a statewide exploration of Jewish immigration in this encore of a show originally broadcast in 2022 will be Michael J. Brown, executive director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society. Michael is the host of IN-Jewish History Podcast, a series that delves into the Hoosier state’s Jewish heritage. He has worked for Israeli start-ups and is a board member of Sinai Synagogue in South Bend.
The differences in Jewish immigration patterns between South Bend and Indianapolis are among the topics Michael discusses when he is Nelson's guest for a show focusing on the 1840 to the 1920s. In Ligonier for much of that era, a multi-generational, German-speaking Jewish community flourished; a similar scenario unfolded in LaPorte and other, smaller Indiana cities.
As Hoosier History Live salutes spring, we will have another in our periodic series of call-in shows. During these shows, listeners are invited to call in with questions or insights about any aspects of Indiana's heritage. As a bonus, our host, Nelson Price, is joined by a co-host; they interview each other in between fielding the phone calls.
To celebrate spring, who better to join Nelson than our favorite gardening expert, Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, the Indianapolis-based writer, editor and speaker known as the "Hoosier Gardener''. Jo Ellen also is a garden coach and the past president of Garden Comm: Garden Communicators International. Jo Ellen has a free, award-winning newsletter; to subscribe, visit hoosiergardener.com.
Nelson and Jo Ellen will branch out beyond garden-related topics, but those also are planned for the show. Jo Ellen will share insights about an aspect of Indianapolis city history in which she has deep ancestral roots: the concentration of German heritage growers, florists, nursery owners and gardeners on the southside for more than 100 years beginning in the late 1800s.
Nearly 120 generals during the Civil War had connections to the Hoosier state. They include some who were courageous, others who were colorful, and some who were controversial.
One of the generals, Solomon Meredith, was a Quaker who commanded the legendary Iron Brigade during the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Another general, Jefferson Columbus Davis from Clark County in southern Indiana, murdered his commanding officer at a hotel.
Yet another general, Ambrose Burnside, a native of Union County in eastern Indiana, oversaw the capture of Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan, who had led Southern troops on a rampage through Indiana. Despite some successes as a commander, Burnside's leadership was disastrous during the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia.
As we varoom toward racing festivities, Hoosier History Live will shift into reverse gear for an exploration of the rapid construction of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1909. We also will spotlight early auto races at the Speedway that year, including some tragedies that preceded the successful inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911.
It took Speedway founder Carl Fisher and his partners about three years to acquire the property for the racetrack, according to our guest. Then, several factors resulted in a rush to get the Speedway built quickly. Beginning in March 1909, construction involved a total of 500 laborers and 300 mules.
Nelson's guest will be Mark Dill, an acclaimed historian of early auto racing and the creator of FirstSuperSpeedway.com, an extensive online archive about pre-1920 auto racing. An Indy native and former vice president for marketing and public relations at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Mark is based in Cary, N.C., and is the author of books about the early era of auto racing, including The Legend of the First Super Speedway: The Battle for the Soul of American Auto Racing.
Before the dust settles on the holiday season, Hoosier History Live will explore the impact of a man who, during a Christmas Eve visit to Monument Circle in the 1930s, found the center of Indianapolis "dark and depressing". So Edward Pierre, an influential architect, crusaded for the first ornaments to be placed on trees at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in 1947. This was decades before what's now called the "Circle of Lights", which began in 1962.
The impact of Edward Pierre (1890-1971) on Monument Circle during the holiday season is just one of the aspects of his career and life that we will spotlight during the show. Pierre, who co-founded the architectural firm of Pierre & Wright and served as president of the Indiana Society of Architects, also designed dozens of other buildings, including the Indiana State Library; Bush Stadium (the former home of the Indianapolis Indians, which opened in 1931 as Perry Stadium), storefronts in Broad Ripple and residential homes in such northside Indianapolis neighborhoods as Meridian-Kessler and Williams Creek Estates. Nelson will be joined by two guests:
- Lisa Hendrickson, the granddaughter of Edward Pierre and an Indianapolis-based author, editor and owner of a public relations business, Lisa Hendrickson Communications. She wrote about the distinguished architect (whom Lisa called 'Grandpa Ed') in the spring 2022 issue of Traces, the magazine published by the Indiana Historical Society.
- And Carol Street, the undergraduate research archivist at the University of Kentucky. Carol formerly was the archivist for the Ball State University Architectural Archives, where the architectural records of Pierre & Wright are housed; she says she "fell in love" with Pierre's designs while working on the archives.
Like clockwork every yuletide season, the town of Santa Claus in far-southwestern Indiana is in the national spotlight. Ever wonder about the history of the town in Spencer County that claims it has the only post office in the world with the Santa Claus name?
Our host, Nelson Price, will share insights about that during one of our periodic call-in shows. And it so happens that Nelson's co-host, our WICR-FM colleague Charles Braun, has visited the Santa Claus Museum & Village, which is located within the town.
In between phone calls from listeners, who are invited to call with questions about any aspect of Indiana's heritage, Nelson and Charles will interview each other about Santa Claus, Ind., and other topics. A distinguished attorney, Charles is the host of "Legally Speaking", which airs at 11 a.m. on WICR and is the longest-running call-in legal advice show in the country.
The first Girl Scout troop in Indianapolis. The first African American woman to graduate from an Indiana college. A suffragist who became a top leader of women's groups in the state. And the founders of the first Black sorority at a predominantly white college in the country.
All of those women and girls had a deep connection to Irvington, the historic neighborhood on the eastside of Indianapolis. As Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, they are among the women whom we will spotlight when Nelson is joined by Sampson Levingston, founder of Through 2 Eyes, a history storyteller who does popular "walk and talk'' tours through diverse Indianapolis neighborhoods, including Irvington.
Sampson has researched the historic women and girls whom we will describe, including Indianapolis Girl Scout Troop 1. The first Girl Scout troop in Marion County was formed in 1917, just five years after the organization had been founded nationally. The local scouts initially got together in private homes. They eventually began meeting regularly at Irvington Presbyterian Church, where an Indiana historical marker commemorates the trail-blazing troop.
A white clapboard chapel with a steeple and a historic cemetery in northern Hamilton County are the sites of cherished annual events known as "homecomings" that draw people from across the country. They come to honor the Roberts Settlement, a historic farm community founded by free Black families in the 1830s who arrived from the South to start new lives on the Indiana frontier.
After initial challenges during its pioneer era when the community was isolated, the Roberts Settlement flourished for decades, with farm families of mixed racial heritage (including several families related by marriage) building Roberts Chapel in 1858, replacing its log predecessor. A highly regarded school, School House # 5, opened in 1877. The community peaked with nearly 300 residents on 2,000 gently rolling acres.
Today, only the chapel and the community's cemetery remain, but a Legacy Walk project is underway to create outdoor exhibits near the chapel. That's where descendants of Roberts Settlement families have returned for the massive "homecomings" that began during the 1920s. The 100th homecoming is planned for June 30-July 2.
Multi-class basketball that began in the late 1990s killed attendance at games, particularly the tournaments. Girls basketball teams didn't exist at Indiana high schools before the early 1970s. And the first basketball game on Hoosier soil was played in 1894 at a YMCA in Crawfordsville.
All of those are misconceptions, a basketball historian says. So, Hoosier History Live will explore prevailing assumptions about Hoosier high school hoops as well as share tidbits about the history of the sport that has long been part of the state's cultural identity. This will include a look at unusual sites that once served as gyms such as a Studebaker factory in South Bend as well as racial obstacles that confronted a team from Michigan City, Ind., in the 1950s.
Nelson's guest will be Matt Werner, a basketball historian and author based in LaPorte County who is known for his extensive research into the sport's storied past in Indiana. In an in-depth analysis published last March in Nuvo that used data supplied by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), Matt challenged the assumption that the elimination in 1997 of the single-class tournament system in Indiana (immortalized in the movie Hoosiers based on the upset victory in 1954 of tiny Milan High School) killed attendance. Instead, as Matt documented, attendance at tournament games, including sectional, regional and semi-state playoffs, had been in a 25-year slump beginning in 1962, the peak year for tournament attendance. Multi-class basketball, in which Indiana high schools compete against teams of similar size, actually slowed the rate of decline, Matt has concluded.
When he arrived in the brand new city of Indianapolis in 1821, Calvin Fletcher was nearly penniless. Yet he went on to become the first attorney in the new state capital city, a banker, a state legislator and a wealthy landowner. Fletcher, who was passionately anti-slavery, also became the first major civic leader in his adopted hometown.
To top it off, Fletcher (1798-1866) wrote an astounding, nine-volume diary. Since its publication by the Indiana Historical Society, the extensive diary has become a trove for anyone seeking insights about daily life in early Indianapolis. In his diary, Fletcher described everything from the weather to events, large and small, in Indianapolis.
A native of Vermont (Fletcher was just 17 when he left his family's home), the self-made early power broker became the patriarch of a family that was prominent in the city for many generations. As his wealth increased, Calvin Fletcher moved into various houses, but for a long period he lived at Wood Lawn, a farmhouse he built on his 269-acre farm in what's now the Fletcher Place Neighborhood just south of downtown Indy. Fletcher also owned vast amounts of property elsewhere in the city and state, including large tracts of farmland in Hamilton County.
Because of a tragedy, a picturesque town with a Greek name (unusual for Indiana) has been in the national news for nearly six years. That’s often obscured the colorful heritage that Delphi in northern Indiana has reclaimed in captivating ways, including cruises on a portion of the former Wabash & Erie Canal, restored historic structures and a park showcasing the waterway’s heritage, that have made the city a popular destination for visitors.
Hoosier History Live will spotlight Delphi (population. 2,975), the county seat of Carroll County, where, from May through September, visitors enjoy cruises on The Delphi, a replica of a 19th century canal boat. We also will look at the history of some sites associated with the tragedy, the murders of two girls in February 2017, as well as the Canal Interpretive Center, which includes an interactive museum, and restored buildings such as the Delphi Opera House. Not only did James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, perform at least six times at the opera house, he also visited the Delphi area to enjoy fishing and other leisure activities.
Nelson’s guest will be Carroll County historian Mark A. Smith. He is a docent at the Reed Case House, a grand, Federal-style home built in the 1840s by the contractor of the region’s section of the Wabash & Erie Canal, which was constructed to connect Toledo on Lake Erie with Evansville on the Ohio River. The Reed Case House eventually became an inn for travelers and canal workers.
"This is a story about a Christmas (when) I really didn’t know what I was doing.''
That’s what a private in the Army infantry from southern Indiana wrote in his diary about Christmas Day of 1944, when, as a POW during World War II, he was forced into a boxcar by German soldiers. Scott Thompson, who had grown up on a farm near Evansville and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, was taken to a stalag in eastern Germany where he spent the rest of the holiday season.
He survived the ordeal and shared his account decades later with Ron May, a World War II historian, chaplain and the author of a three-volume set of books, ''Our Service Our Stories'', that feature interviews with Hoosier military veterans. In addition to interviewing Scott Thompson, who died in 2016 at age 92 after a career as a social studies teacher, Ron talked with Loren Wright, a native of Owen County who, also as an Army infantry soldier, was aboard a transport ship crossing the English Channel on Christmas Eve of 1944 when its “sister ship”, the SS Leopoldville, was sunk by a German U-boat. About half of Loren Wright’s regiment were among the 802 soldiers who perished in the frigid water.
''Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have been somber for me ever since,'' Loren Wright told Ron decades later. To share some accounts of what Hoosiers endured during the holiday seasons of World War II, Ron will be Nelson’s studio guest. He has been a ''Hoosier History Live'' guest on several previous shows, most recently on a program last May about children and teenagers who confronted special challenges during World War II.
Amid predictions that a recession is possible next year, Hoosier History Live will time travel to the Great Depression and explore one of the two most consequential governors in Indiana history. Paul V. McNutt, who was elected in 1932 (the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt won the presidency), was even considered as a possible Democratic nominee eight years later for the nation's top office if FDR had decided not to seek an unprecedented third term.
During the early 1930s, McNutt spoke out early on in support of Jews during rise to power of Nazis in Germany, notes our guest, Justin Clark of the Indiana Historical Bureau. Not only will Justin share insights about that during our show, he also will discuss McNutt's lifelong rivalry with Hoosier Wendell Willkie (who, coincidentally, became the Republican nominee for president in 1940) as well as criticisms that McNutt filled state government jobs only with Democrats while governor and clashed with organized labor.
McNutt (1891-1955), who also served as the country's first ambassador to the Philippines after World War II, was named one of the two most consequential governors in Indiana's history by Linda Gugin and James St. Clair, authors of "The Governors of Indiana" when they were Hoosier History Live guests . We explored the life of the other "most consequential" governor, Oliver P. Morton, a Republican who held the state's top office during the Civil War, during a Hoosier History Live show in 2019. And we put the spotlight on Willkie when his grandson, David Willkie, was our guest in 2015.
Ever heard of a telephone installed in a mausoleum in case someone was buried alive and needed to call out for help? Did you know the first stewardess in the history of commercial airlines is buried in a Terre Haute cemetery? And were you aware that the historic cemetery's office was built as a waiting station for Interurban passengers?
Hoosier History Live will be exploring all of these aspects related to a landmark, Highland Lawn Cemetery, and an array of compelling people from western Indiana buried at the scenic graveyard, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. This show will follow up two of our recent programs, an exploration of the landscaping and design at historic cemeteries in which Highland Lawn was mentioned as an example of the Rural Cemetery Movement, as well as a show about notable people from Parke County and nearby areas.
Mike Lunsford, a popular author and storyteller based in Parke County, will return as Nelson's guest to share insights about Highland Lawn, where he has led tours for many civic groups; he also has written newspaper and magazine articles about people interred there. They range from prominent Hoosiers to working-class, poverty stricken and colorful characters from a broad region of western Indiana. The notables include Socialist, labor leader and presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, who died in 1926 and whose life was the focus of a Hoosier History Live show in 2019.
Ever since the 1820s, when David Buchanan arrived by covered wagon in the Indianapolis area and opened a tavern before becoming a farmer, the Flanner and Buchanan families have been intertwined with city history. Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Centers is a 142-year-old, family-owned business that began during an era when funerals and visitations typically were held in the parlors of private homes (hence, the derivation of the term funeral parlor). Before that, in the mid-1800s, undertakers often were carpenters.
As the funeral business evolved (Flanner and Buchanan opened the first crematorium in Indianapolis in 1904), so did the civic impact of members of the Flanner and Buchanan families, who were brought together by marriage in the 19th century. Frank Flanner, who began in the mortuary business in 1881, founded Flanner House (initially known as Flanner Guild House), a nonprofit to assist African Americans, including former enslaved people who had come to Indianapolis. His sister, Anna Flanner Buchanan, helped start the first YWCA in the city.
All of that and more will be explored during our show when Bruce Buchanan, the CEO of Buchanan Group Inc. (which includes Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Centers), the fourth generation owner, is Nelson's studio guest. The massive Community Life Center on the city's far eastside, a multi-purpose event space owned by Flanner and Buchanan, and adjacent Washington Park East Cemetery are on the site of David Buchanan's farmland in the 1830s. The multi-generational impact of the families on the funeral business and civic affairs is described in a lavishly illustrated book, Building Community: The Flanner and Buchanan Families of Indianapolis written by local author Julie Young.
When well-known Indianapolis-based jazz violinist Cathy Morris was growing up in Columbus, Ind., she was influenced by a woman in the same house: her mother, a multimedia artist.
Cathy, 61, has gone on to emulate her mother's multi-disciplinary approach. In addition to her performing and recording career (she plays the electric violin), Cathy is a producer and a composer. She founded Arts With A Purpose, a non-profit that connects a range of artists (from musicians and dancers to visual artists) with various Indiana communities, with a goal of inspiring social change. She has produced "Here For You", a compilation disc of music by 18 women musicians from Indiana.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, Cathy Morris will be Nelson's guest to explore various aspects of her life and career, which has included performances with student orchestras across the state. Last March our spotlight was on a trail-blazing novelist and mentor for aspiring writers, Barbara Shoup, the former executive director of the Indiana Writers Center.
With the Indiana Legislature in full swing, it's ideal timing to spotlight the Indiana State Capitol, including history stories from its top (the dome) to its bottom (the cavernous basement, which once held everything from cannon balls to bathtubs for legislators and secret staircases). We also will time travel to an era before the current Statehouse, built of limestone, opened in 1888.
Before that, state lawmakers met in an earlier Statehouse built in 1835 that unwisely involved the extensive use of stucco on the exterior. Suffice it to say that the "stucco Statehouse" did not hold up well during Indiana winters. After the ceiling came crashing down in 1867 in the room where the House of Representatives met (fortunately, the legislature was not in session during the collapse), state leaders realized the stucco structure desperately needed to be demolished and initiated plans to construct the current State Capitol building. But there were controversies from the start with the so-called "People's House", including squabbles among prospective architects and cost-cutting moves that impacted the design of the dome, as our guest has written about.
Our guide for Statehouse stories will be a retired lawyer and lobbyist, Libby Cierzniak, who now writes a blog about Indianapolis city history, indypolitan.com. Her most recent blog post, titled "What lies beneath: Secrets of the Statehouse basement", describes an astounding range of creepy, colorful or just plain unexpected items and uses for the subterranean level.
Getting a jump on Women's History Month, Hoosier History Live will spotlight the trail-blazing woman who wrote the first cookbook published in Indiana. Also on the menu: We will explore food fashions of the mid-18th century era when the cookbook came out.
The author was Angelina Collins (1805-1885), who was living in New Albany, Ind., when her popular cookbook was published in 1851. Titled "Mrs. Collins' Table Receipts" (and retitled "The Great Western Cookbook" when it was reprinted in New York later during the 1850s), the cookbook "is an excellent reflection of the dishes served in middle class homes in mid-century Indiana", our guest says. (The word "receipts", as in the title of the book, was often used during the era to refer to recipes.)
Our guest will be Indianapolis-based food historian Sheryl Vanderstel, an expert on foodways of late 18th century America through the pre-Civil War era. With more than 20 years of experience as a historic consultant to museums and historical societies in researching and developing programs, Sheryl helped launch the hearthside dinners at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park.
Buckle up to time travel to World War II and the post-war era as Hoosier History Live explores Indiana connections to the acclaimed Tuskegee Airmen. There even are Indiana/Tuskegee links; such as MOAA, to the aerial competition that eventually became known as "Top Gun", the inspiration for blockbuster movies.
This show follows up a program in 2017 that delved into the lives of several Hoosiers who were fighter pilots in the trailblazing squadron, which drew its name from the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama. This time, as Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month, we will spotlight an aviator and educator from Angola, Ind., who became the director for the first two phases of flight training for the Tuskegee Airmen. Not only that, four of the Tuskegee pilots trained by Dr. Lewis Jackson (1912-1994) went to win the championship trophy in the first U.S. Air Force competition that came to be called "Top Gun". Those pilots in that initial competition (officially called the Air Force Fighter Gunnery Meet) were flying an aircraft made in Evansville, a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.
Our guide for all of this and other Tuskegee/Indiana connections will be Reginald DuValle, an Indianapolis native who graduated in 1979 from the U.S. Air Force Academy. Known as "Reg", he is the past president of the Indianapolis chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc, a nonprofit that honors members of the all-black Army air squadron who served during an era when the military was segregated.
One persistent myth about Strawtown is that the village in Hamilton County near the White River came close to being designated the new state capital of Indiana more than 200 years ago.
Other myths involve Chief Straw, the supposed namesake of the village who has been described as an early Native American leader in central Indiana. Even though a 10-foot monument to Chief Straw was built in the 1920s in his honor, historians now doubt that he ever existed. The monument to Chief Straw, who was said to be a leader of the Lenape (or Delaware) tribe during the 1780s, is now on private property.
To sift myths from facts about Strawtown, Hamilton County historian David Heighway will be Nelson's guest on this encore broadcast of a show originally broadcast on July 17, 2021.
David has been a guest on several other Hoosier History Live shows, including a program in 2017 about the violent early era of Fishers. David's popular presentations about the rough-and-tumble chapter in Fishers history of the 1870s continually surprise those who regard the suburban city as a sleepy farm town before its explosive growth in recent decades.
Excuse the creepy topics, but isn't it Halloween season? Appropriate, then, to time-travel to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when, as our guest puts it, "the city of Indianapolis had all the makings of a perfect horror movie set, the largest saw factory in the world, acres of stockyards and slaughterhouses, and the specter of ceilings dripping with something that appeared to be blood but on closer inspection would turn out to be catsup."
With the multiple slaughterhouses and pork-packing businesses, the king of the heap for about 100 years was unquestionably Kingan & Co., which had a five-story plant as part of a massive operation that encompassed 27 acres spanning both sides of the White River west of downtown Indy. Ironically, thousands of hogs once were slaughtered daily at the enterprise not far from the site today of the Indianapolis Zoo.
Major landmarks in downtown Indianapolis today include Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts. During the early 1900s, though, the site was the home of Arab Americans. A thoroughfare in the neighborhood called Willard Street (which vanished in the 1920s as the area was repurposed) was the hub of what was known as the city's "Syrian colony" because most of the Arab Americans residents then were of Syrian and Lebanese heritage.
Today, Marion County is the home of more than 5,600 Arab Americans, while about 3,200 others live in neighboring Hamilton County, according to arabindianapolis.com, a multimedia project. In addition to Syria and Lebanon, the immigrants or their descendants now come from an array of homelands, including Egypt, Jordan and Morocco.
Hoosier History Live will explore the Arab American heritage in Indianapolis (which has been far more extensive and has deeper roots than many realize) during the next in our rotating series about ethnic immigration.
The IndyCar season has ended, but doesn’t widespread interest continue year-around among many Hoosiers in all things related to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway?
So rather than making a pit stop, Hoosier History Live will explore the evolution of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, which has been located near the south entrance to the Speedway off W. 16th Street since 1976. About 20 years earlier, the museum had opened (in a much smaller version) in the administrative and ticket offices for the world-famous racetrack.
When it kicked off in the mid-1950s, the museum displayed six race cars. Today, visitors can check out 34 winning cars of the Indianapolis 500, plus other history-making autos. Dozens and dozens of other historic cars are stored in the basement, which periodically can be seen on special, guided tours. The museum also houses non-auto collections including trophies, artwork, driver artifacts and a trove of documents.
Even by the spring of 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic had created enough medical and social history in Indiana for Hoosier History Live to explore it in a show. Since then, additional history has unfolded, so we will follow up with another show that will touch on everything from the overwhelming challenges that confronted Indiana hospitals last fall and winter to the resistance to vaccinations.
"Vaccination, especially for children, has turned out to be a hard sell," says Shari Rudavsky, the health and medical reporter for the Indianapolis Star, who has covered the Covid pandemic since the earliest cases were reported in Indiana. Shari, who has a PhD in the history and sociology of science, will return as Nelson's guest to share insights about various aspects of Covid history since our previous show, which was broadcast just as initial vaccinations were being made widely available.
"Even with vaccines, Covid maintains power to be a major societal disruptor," Shari says. She adds: "In the past year, the virus has mutated, getting better at ducking vaccines even if you are vaccinated. But vaccines do greatly decrease one's risk of hospitalization and death."
Just as cities and small towns in Indiana have evolved during more than 200 years of statehood, so have their cemeteries. Hoosier History Live will explore that evolution, particularly the changes in the ways cemeteries have been designed and landscaped.
This will include a look at the Rural Cemetery Movement that began in the mid-1800s and involved creating professionally designed cemeteries in park-like settings. Several of the largest cemeteries in the state, from Indianapolis and Fort Wayne to Terre Haute and Evansville, were created as part of the Rural Cemetery Movement.
Before that movement, graveyards in the early 1800s were much different, says Jeannie Regan-Dinius, director of historic preservation at Crown Hill Heritage Foundation in Indianapolis. She will be Nelson's guest to share insights about the evolution of cemetery design as well as challenges that currently confront cemeteries across the state as, in her words, they "struggle with the historic landscape, the upkeep of tombstones, mausoleums and the natural environment. The debate over which is more important, the landscape or the tombstones, pulls on funds, volunteer time and decisions made."
As many Hoosiers begin to focus on the picturesque county in far-western Indiana that touts itself as the "Covered Bridge Capital of the Country", Hoosier History Live will spotlight colorful and trail-blazing historic men and women from Parke County and the nearby area. Our guest will be a popular author, storyteller and photographer based in Parke County, which hosts an annual Covered Bridge Festival every October.
The historic characters will include an eccentric, homeopathic doctor who (according to folklore) buried his money around his Parke County property before he died in the late 1940s; Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown, a farm boy with a mangled hand (from two accidents, including a mishap with a corn thresher) who went on to become the star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs in the 1908 World Series, and a glamorous Broadway and silent movie actress who ended up penniless. When Valeska Suratt died in 1962, she was buried in an unmarked grave at Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute; a headstone was finally erected a few months ago after a local fund-raising campaign.
You can find everything from the original Indiana State Constitution drafted in 1816 to casino applications for Donald Trump and a poster that cult TV personality Sammy Terry autographed to then-Gov. Ed Whitcomb more than 45 years ago.
For more than 20 years, the Indiana Archives have been housed in a warehouse on the eastside of Indianapolis that's long been described as inadequate. Earlier this year, state leaders announced a site for a new, $35 million building downtown for the archives.
So Hoosier History Live will follow up a show from seven years ago, when officials were hoping that a new home for the archives collection of historical records would be built as part of the 2016 celebrations of Indiana's bicentennial. The project never happened then, but now that a new state archives building finally is about to become a reality (construction is set to begin in spring 2023), we will revisit the topic to spotlight the details.
Could the White River make the new city of Indianapolis a major center for shipping in the 1820s? Could a steamboat arrive and depart in the 1830s, or would it get stuck on a sandbar? And, nearly 200 years later, has the depth of the waterway changed in the Indy metro area?
Hoosier History Live will plunge into these and other issues about the White River. Its west fork flows through Indianapolis, which was created in the wilderness of the 1820s to be the new state capital city. Many historic accounts discuss how state leaders assumed the White River would be navigable for a range of watercraft. When a steamboat called the "General Hanna" (its owner was Robert Hanna, a military commander) got stuck in 1831 on a sandbar just south of the city, where it remained for six weeks and became an object of ridicule, the challenges with navigability were obvious.
When the summer began in June, Hoosier History Live explored offbeat aspects of the corner of the state often called "The Region". Now that the season is drawing to a close, we will return to Northwest Indiana to delve into a wealth of other sites, existing and bygone, including some in Hammond, one of the largest cities in The Region.
Our spotlight will be on one of the tallest of the Indiana Dunes, which was the site of a near-tragedy in 2013; shipwrecks beneath Lake Michigan, and a beloved, bygone department store with a connection to a classic movie. In fact, we will salute another site (a quirky one) in Hammond that pays tribute to the city's link to "A Christmas Story" (1983), the movie based on the writings of Jean Shepherd, who grew up in the city.
How do you come up with a “voice” for a historic figure who has been dead for more than 150 years, and who lived before sound recordings? What if the character was taller than you? Where do you find appropriate clothing and props when recreating a famous person from the 19th century? And why would a classically-trained performer decide to devote his career to reenacting historic figures?
Those are among the topics that Hoosier History Live will explore with acclaimed, Indiana-based historic reenactor Danny Russel, who is well known for his portrayals of Abraham Lincoln, “Hoosier Poet” James Whitcomb Riley and frontiersman Daniel Boone. Danny will join Nelson for a show that “pulls back the curtain” on historic reenactors, including insights about how they develop their characters who, as in Danny’s case, have appeared at festivals, schools, museums, bicentennial galas, historic homes, parks and an array of other sites and events across the country.
Even folks who complain about "bugs" are apt to say they love two insects. Fireflies and Monarch butterflies have captivated generations of Hoosiers, who swap anecdotes about memories of the insects dating to their childhoods. Lately, though, a different breed of anecdote is making the rounds: Observations that the number of fireflies and Monarch butterflies may be dwindling.
"Where are all of the Fireflies?" was the headline atop an article in the Indianapolis Star last month that featured a swarm of anecdotal accounts that the numbers may be dwindling of the beloved insect, which often is called a "lightning bug".
To address this and other issues related to fireflies and Monarch butterflies, a nationally known entomologist (who happens to be based on Hoosier turf) will be Nelson's guest. Dr. Tom Turpin, a professor emeritus at Purdue University and founder of its annual "Bug Bowl" competition, will share insights about the two popular insects.
Probably the best way to swoop in and do a show that explores birds of prey in Indiana is to invite, as a guest, a wildlife expert who travels across the state accompanied by an assortment of live birds for educational purposes. Mark Booth, the director of Indianapolis-based Take Flight! Wildlife Education, will be Nelson's guest to share insights about various species of birds of prey. And to dispel misconceptions about them.
Hawks, falcons, owls and vultures will be among the birds that we spotlight during our show with Mark, who does outreach programs at schools, museums, clubs and nature centers. This month he has been making appearances, along with some of his birds of prey, at the Indiana State Fair.
"Are they in a bad mood?" Mark asked his audience during a recent presentation, referring to the glaring stare that's often associated with hawks. As Mark spoke, he was accompanied by a red-tailed hawk, which did seem to be, well, glaring. "No, it's not a bad mood. Hawks find food by their eyesight. They look like that (glare) to keep the sun out of their eyes."
Having lost a parent in what historians have described as the most cataclysmic event of the 20th century, they call themselves World War II orphans. Many were young children, under 12 years old, when their fathers were killed in action. Some were not even born yet when their fathers died.
For another Hoosier History Live show in our continuing exploration of the impact of World War II, we will focus on these children, now men and women in the 70s and 80s. Some are members of a national, non-profit organization, American WWII Orphans Network, known as AWON.
It's president, Indianapolis resident Walt Linne, a retired U.S. Air Force command pilot, will join Nelson to share insights about the impact of losing a parent during the war. Walt, who also is retired from a career in telecommunications at IUPUI, was just 2 years old when his father, Walter John Linne of Indianapolis, was killed six weeks before the end of the war in Europe.
Walt's father was 32 years old and a tank commander for the U.S. Army's 14th armored division when he was shot by a German sniper while loading wounded soldiers on his tank to take to a medical station. Having been wounded himself in an earlier battle, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, one posthumously.
During a show four years ago, Hoosier History Live explored the connections between Indiana and Ellis Island, the gateway to America for generations of immigrants. The receiving center for aspiring Americans in New York Harbor opened in 1892 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, the only president elected from Indiana.
As a kind of prequel to that show, we will delve into the immigration scenario that led the federal government to open Ellis Island, including controversies at its predecessor, Castle Garden on lower Manhattan in New York City. The country’s first official immigration center, Castle Garden was operated by New York officials.
We also will explore the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which Harrison opposed as a U.S. senator from Indiana. The Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended the immigration of skilled and unskilled Chinese laborers, passed without Harrison’s support. According to Nelson’s guest, Harrison was labeled the “pro-Chinese candidate" of the Republican Party in his presidential campaign of 1888.
Hard to believe, but many families are beginning to contemplate the upcoming school year. For some, a return to teachers and classrooms begins in just a few weeks. In celebration, or just acceptance of the inevitable, Hoosier History Live will take a look at some Hoosier educators who made an impact when our host, Nelson Price, is joined by a historian colleague for another of our call-in shows.
It so happens that Nelson's co-host, Ray Boomhower of the Indiana Historical Society, had an unlikely driver's ed teacher during a summer session at Mishawaka High School in the late 1970s. More than 20 years earlier, Marvin Wood had been in the spotlight as the coach of Milan High School, the tiny school in southeastern Indiana that captivated the country by winning the state high school basketball championship. The 1954 victory, known as the "Milan Miracle", involved a legendary, buzzer-beating shot by one of Coach Wood's players, Bobby Plump; it served as the inspiration for the classic movie Hoosiers (1986).
Buckle up for a bumpy expedition through an era of sports history and the life of a champion race driver that had been mostly forgotten for decades after the Great Depression.
The Gold and Glory Sweepstakes was, as our guest has written, "a freewheeling, dust-raising, 100-mile grind around a one-mile dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis . . . (It was) an annual sporting event so grand it attracted the attention of national news agencies as well as thousands of spectators."
During the 1920s and ‘30s, the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes was the showcase event of an Indianapolis-based professional racing circuit for African American drivers and mechanics with events in Chicago, Detroit, Dayton and other Midwestern cities. During an era of racial segregation, the circuit showcased competitors who were not welcomed by the American Automobile Association, the national sanctioning body of auto races that included the Indianapolis 500.
A bushel of challenges have confronted family farmers in recent decades. At the same time, farmers markets have sprouted up in towns and neighborhoods across Indiana, the popularity of their "buy local" appeal undeniable.
Nick Carter, 39, is knee-deep in both family farms and farmers markets. He grew up on a multi-generational family farm near Russiaville; today, he lives with his wife and three young children on a farm in Marion County.
Dig this: More people gardened last year than at any time since the 1940s, according to recently released research. Our expert guest will describe reasons this boom is likely underway, how garden centers and growers are struggling to keep up with demand and other topics during a show that will explore a range of intriguing topics under the gardening umbrella.
Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, the Indianapolis-based writer, editor and speaker known as "The Hoosier Gardener", will be Nelson’s guest. Jo Ellen, past president of Garden Comm: Garden Communications International, will also share insights about plant diseases, insect resistance and myths.
The myths include various homemade "cures" widely circulating on the Internet that actually harm plants and the soil.
“We are being bombed.”
Carmel resident Svitlana Ramer, 35, received that frightening text message from her mother in February. Svitlana had immigrated to the United States in 2008 from Ukraine. Her mother and her 91-year-old grandmother continue to live in Kyiv, the capital city of the country that’s been the focus of international attention since its brutal invasion by Russia.
Svitlana and other Hoosiers have founded the Ukrainian Society of Indiana and held events to raise awareness of Ukraine and celebrate its heritage. According to the International Center of Indianapolis, where she is the vice president of development and external affairs, about 8,700 Ukrainian Americans live in the Hoosier state. About 2,150 of them are immigrants.
Snicker if you must, because that’s an understandable reaction to an annual tradition in Northwest Indiana. At the Pierogi Drop every New Year’s Eve in the city of Whiting, a 10-foot tall version of the dumpling associated with Polish cuisine is dropped into a boiling cooking pot at the stroke of midnight. And in the summer, the Pierogi Fest in Whiting sometimes draws more than 350,000 enthusiasts.
Also in Lake County, a historic former courthouse in Crown Point that was known for decades as a “marriage mill”. Hollywood celebrities like silent movie star Rudolph Valentino, sports icons such as Muhammad Ali and Joe DiMaggio and other notables trekked to Crown Point for speedy weddings. No waiting periods, residency requirements or blood tests were required then. Now known as the Old Lake County Courthouse, the former “marriage mill” structure, which was built in 1878, is a tourist destination that houses a museum and distinctive retailers, including antique shops as well as merchants who sell vinyl records and vintage clothes.
On Memorial Day weekend, Hoosier History Live will follow up previous shows that featured World War II veterans. This time, we will focus on children and teenagers, now in their 80s and 90s, who dealt with special challenges during what many historians consider the most cataclysmic event of the 20th century.
Nelson’s guests will include a retired teacher in Carmel who spent World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans. She will be joined by an author, chaplain and World War II historian who, in addition to interviewing veterans, has been collecting the stories of Hoosiers who were “children of war”. They include a Carmel resident who, as a 7-year-old girl, witnessed the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and a Zionsville resident whose Polish family fled both the Nazis and the Soviets.
Doctors, nurses and ambulances have been part of the scene at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since the first auto race in 1909, a disastrous, five-mile competition that resulted in the deaths of drivers, mechanics and spectators. (The inaugural Indianapolis 500 was not held until two years later, in 1911.) Medical, sports and social history began unfolding lickety-split at the world-famous racetrack. Hoosier History Live will explore the eras involving the Speedway’s first three chief medical officers, a 50-year span ending in 1959.
Helmets for Indy 500 drivers did not become mandatory until the mid-1930s. The first chief medical officer was overruled in 1914 when he disqualified a driver who had visual challenges. And the second chief medical officer resigned in 1951 when a beer tent was erected at the racetrack, saying he did not want to have to treat “drunks”.
For a deep dive into the histories of Geist Reservoir and Morse Reservoir, which supply much of the water for residents of the greater Indianapolis area, Hoosier History Live will plunge into several questions. Were you aware that a historic village called Germantown, which was founded during the 1830s and flourished for more than 100 years, was subsumed to create Geist?
Do some of Germantown’s structures, which included houses, a post office and a mill, remain underwater in the reservoir located in northeastern Marion County and southern Hamilton County? Geist Reservoir was created in the 1940s, although the Indianapolis Water Company began a push to develop it more than 20 years earlier.
First off, it should be noted that Native Americans lived in the dense forests and marshlands of the land that became Marion County before any settlers of European heritage arrived. In particular, the Lenape tribe of Indians (called the Delaware by white settlers) had established villages in the central Indiana region.
Then other people began to filter into the wilderness of Marion County circa 1820. At some point in early 1819, a basket maker named Ute Perkins wandered through and built a cabin. He didn’t stay too long; historians say he felt lonely and isolated in the dark woods and left to settle in Rush County.
During the 1950s and ‘60s, a Hoosier from Crawfordsville could not tell people where he worked. His employer was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which Benjamin Evans only could reveal beginning in 1970 when he was named executive secretary of the agency and no longer undercover.
Before that, his assignments included a post in Cuba during the rise of Fidel Castro. And in the aftermath of World War II, he was based in Japan as a military officer and part of the U.S. occupation force. By then, Evans had been trained in psychological warfare, known as “psywar” and a major focus as the Cold War era began.
“Cold War traumas are on many folks’ minds (currently),” notes Douglas Wissing, author of Gentleman in the Shadows, a biography of Benjamin Evans. Doug will be Nelson’s guest as Hoosier History Live explores the life and CIA career of Evans, who died in 1987.
“I traveled from the time I was 14 until I was 18. The moment the idea hit to go somewhere, and it always did in the spring, I was off. St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dodge City, Cincinnati . . . anywhere the next freight train happened to be going.”
So said perhaps the most unlikely Hoosier to become an international business tycoon. His name endures because he created an unusual small town that’s surrounded by the city of Lebanon in Boone County.
Hoosier History Live will take a dual look at industrialist Henry Ulen, who quit school after the fifth grade to ride the rails, and the town of Ulen that he founded in the 1920s not far from where he had grown up.
Henry Ulen
Bears at Riverside Park in Indianapolis? Not for the last century. But for nearly two decades beginning in 1899, a bear pit was among the most popular attractions at the park near the White River.
Consisting of a fenced, circular pen with two arched doorways that allowed the bears to enter a sheltered den, the bear pit at Riverside was featured on thousands of postcards that have become collectibles.
And the Riverside bear pit, although the longest-lasting and most significant local animal attraction during the era (it even sometimes was casually referred to as a "zoo"), wasn't the only collection of wildlife on display in Indianapolis parks.
After decades of being mostly forgotten, there have been recent rediscoveries, thanks to history detective work, of a symphonic music composer from Carmel and a painter from the Noblesville area who became the patriarch of a group of Hamilton County artists. No photos, not even head shots of either composer Frederick Hunt or painter Granville Bishop have been unearthed yet, but that doesn’t mean they were insignificant. And both men were connected in very different ways, to nationally famous illustrator Franklin Booth, a Carmel native who moved to New York City. To share insights about Hunt (1906-1967), the classical music composer, Nelson will be joined by two guests.
This show will follow up previous Hoosier History Live programs in two ways. We showcased the founding and evolution of the legendary Indianapolis-based department store L.S. Ayres & Co. during a show in 2013. And just last week, we focused on Jewish immigration to Indiana from 1840 through the 1920s.
Our follow-up show will spotlight the two department stores that rivaled Ayres for about 100 years: William H. Block Co. and H.P. Wasson & Co., known conversationally by generations of Hoosier shoppers as “Block’s” and “Wasson’s”. In addition, we will explore L. Strauss & Co., which also was based in downtown Indy and specialized in high-quality clothing. Jewish merchants founded or built all three retailers in the late 1800s, with multiple generations of Jewish families overseeing the businesses for much of the 1900s. (The Ayres family was Protestant.)
From the small city of Ligonier in northeastern Indiana to major cities including Indianapolis and South Bend, waves of Jewish immigration had, in a range of ways, an impact between 1840 and the 1920s on their communities. Immigrants came to the Hoosier state from various homelands, with a Jewish teenager who fled the Austro-Hungarian empire eventually becoming one of the founders of the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation and a brigadier general for the Union Army during the Civil War.
Our guide for a statewide exploration of Jewish immigration will be Michael J. Brown, executive director of the Indiana Jewish Historical Society. Michael is the host of IN-Jewish History Podcast, a series that delves into the Hoosier state’s Jewish heritage. He has recently worked for Israeli start-ups and is a board member of Sinai Synagogue in South Bend.
In Seymour, she is known first and foremost for her outdoor mural of John Mellencamp. The eye-catching mural in the rock star's hometown is 35 feet tall and 52 feet wide.
In Greenfield, artist Pamela Bliss has drawn attention for "Tall Tales", a mural that also is 35 feet tall. As a salute to the agricultural heritage of Hancock County, the mural depicts three generations of Hoosiers at a farm fence, with an older man in overalls gesturing as he shares a yarn with two younger listeners.
In downtown Indianapolis, Pamela is known for several outdoor murals. Her most recently completed artwork includes larger-than-life depictions of Reggie Miller, the former Indiana Pacer, and the late Eva Kor, the Holocaust survivor who crusaded for forgiveness during the final years of her life.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, our spotlight will be on one of the state's best-known contemporary novelists. She's almost equally well known for nurturing generations of aspiring writers ranging from high school students and young children to residents of retirement communities and prisoners at the Indiana Women's Prison.
Barbara Shoup, the former executive director of the Indiana Writers Center, is the award-winning author of eight novels for adults and young adults, including several set in Indiana and some with teenage protagonists. Before her long tenure at the Indiana Writers Center, where she continues to be the "writer-at-large" she was a beloved teacher at the former Broad Ripple High School in its Center for Humanities and Performing Arts.
Amid the build up to the Academy Awards ceremony, Hoosier History Live will delve into a range of Hoosiers, from stars and directors to cinematographers and composers – who have been nominated for (and, in some cases, won) Oscars since the awards began in the late 1920s. In fact, one of the nominees for Best Actress at the first Oscar ceremony in 1929 was a veteran performer born in Evansville who has been mostly forgotten.
Because so much attention has focused on some stars in Indiana who became household names. like James Dean and Carole Lombard were both nominated for Oscars, we won’t dwell on them during this show. We will make an exception in the case of Steve McQueen, who was born in Beech Grove and lived with his mother on the near-eastside of Indianapolis during his early childhood. Many listeners may not be aware that McQueen (1931-1980) was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in “The Sand Pebbles” in 1966.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month, we will explore several places, people and events in Indianapolis that had a significant impact during the 19th century on African American life in the Hoosier capital.
Nelson’s guest will be Indianapolis-based historian David Leander Williams, the author of a new book, “African Americans in Indianapolis”. The book covers more than 200 years of city history, but we will focus on the 1800s to explore influential episodes, people and places that have not been the focus of our previous shows about African American heritage.
On the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and during a show when our host, Nelson Price, is joined by a co-host known for his fascination with the 16th president, you might assume some Lincoln anecdotes will be among the topics.
But when Indiana historian and author Al Hunter participates in our periodic series in which listeners are invited to call in throughout the program with any questions about Indiana’s heritage, the anecdotes won’t involve Lincoln’s youth, when he lived in Indiana from ages 7 through 21.
Without mountains, Indiana isn’t known as a mecca for winter sports. So the state’s historic connections with the Summer Olympics are much more extensive than with their winter counterparts. Even so, there have been links for more than 40 years, which Hoosier History Live will explore following the international hoopla with the opening ceremony tonight of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
A bobsledder from Indianapolis competed in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, then became a firefighter before his untimely death. A figure skater who grew up in Bloomington captured a bronze medal at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Also at those Winter Olympics in Calgary, a brother and sister from Marion, Ind., drew national attention because of their hard-luck story and their hometown’s efforts to support their dreams.
Simply put, the National Road opened up settlement for the state, then considered part of the "West". Construction of the first part of the National Road in Cumberland, Md., which is on the Potomac River, began in 1811. That was five years before Indiana became a state. In addition to George Washington, key figures in the push for the National Road included presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, along with Albert Gallatin, who was secretary of the treasury in both of their administrations. Gallatin corresponded with John Badollet, secretary of the Indiana Territory; their letters document the push for the National Road and the challenges involved.
The Indiana National Road Association celebrates the heritage of the road, both during the 19th century and its U.S. 40 era.
Does it seem like a CVS or a Walgreen’s can be found on every street corner? In Indiana for much of the 1900s, the drug store scene was much different, and dominated by two locally-owned rivals.
Hook’s Drug Stores opened its first store in 1900 in Indianapolis in what’s now the Bates-Hendricks neighborhood, then considered part of Fountain Square. Haag Drug began even earlier, with the opening of a pharmacy in 1876 on Massachusetts Avenue in downtown Indy.
The captivating history of these competitors, which included Hook’s becoming the country’s 12th largest drugstore chain, and the two brothers who founded Haag being accused of bootlegging during Prohibition will be the focus of our show. Although both the Haag and Hook’s names had vanished from retailing by the mid-1990s, the legacy of the latter is celebrated at the Hook’s Drug Store Museum at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
Nelson’s guest will be Indianapolis civic leader David Steele, a board member of the museum. David has crusaded for a historic marker that will be dedicated later this year on the site of the first Hook’s store at South East and Prospect streets.
Did you know the official "pin-up girl" of the U.S. Army during World War II was a native Hoosier? Selected because of her wholesome image, Margie Stewart, who grew up in Wabash, Ind., appeared on 12 different posters with a combined distribution of more than 90 million copies to soldiers (both overseas and in this country), potential recruits and civilians in the homeland.
Margie Stewart, who was an Indiana University student and a model before her selection as the official pin-up girl (that's the phrase used then for her designation), also had other distinctions. In addition to touring in World War II bond drives and USO shows, she became one of the first American civilians to enter Berlin after Germany's surrender. Stewart (1919-2012) also had small roles in Hollywood movies.
She is among the World War II connections to Wabash County in northeastern Indiana that we will explore during our show. Others will include an engineer who got his start at an early truck assembly plant in Wabash before being hired by the Chinese government to launch their auto and truck industry in the late 1920s. During World War II, he remained in China, which then was an ally of the U.S., before returning to Wabash.
Where do you start in describing a staggering collection of hundreds of rare items of Indianapolis memorabilia and ephemera? A private collection owned by antiques dealer Charles Alexander includes miniature models of iconic structures like the Soldiers and Sailors Monument; he owns two replicas created as the landmark was being constructed during the 1880s and '90s. The historic models differ in appearance because the monument's design was still evolving.
Could the spelling bee craze that swept the country beginning in the 19th century have been kicked off in Greensburg, Indiana? The city in Decatur County claims to have hosted the first citywide spelling bee. And there's a direct link to "The Hoosier Schoolmaster", a best-selling novel in 1871 that was set in the county and includes a riveting episode with a spelling match; it is credited with causing the popularity of bees to boom.
The Green Book was an annual guidebook for African America motorists during an era of widespread discrimination. Published from the mid-1930s through the mid-1960s, the Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gasoline stations and other sites that welcomed all travelers.
Because sites across Indiana were included in most editions of the book that became known as the "bible of Black traveling", Hoosier History Live will explore them with a popular guide for Indiana history tours. Sampson Levingston of Through2Eyes will be Nelson’s guest to share insights about the impact of The Green Book and about the Indiana sites, many of them long gone.
Strange, but true: A clog dancer on the vaudeville circuit became mayor of Indianapolis in 1910. Mayor Lew Shank resigned three years later and returned to vaudeville as a humorist, paired with a trained horse. In 1922, he easily won re-election as mayor of the Hoosier capital.
More strange, but true: The second governor’s residence in Indianapolis was blamed for making the state’s "first families" seriously ill beginning in 1839. Two of Indiana’s first ladies died in the posh house, which had replaced a never-occupied governor’s residence built at the center of what became Monument Circle.
It's been 60 years since a native Hoosier became the second American to go up in space. His journey, which began amid much excitement in 1961, concluded in a disappointing manner. But Gus Grissom - one of the original seven U.S. astronauts selected by NASA- went on to success after the Liberty Bell 7 mission, becoming the first American to travel in space twice. He also encountered tragedy, perishing in January 1967 during one of the worst accidents of the space program.
When Indianapolis based TV and radio personality Jimmy Mack recently passed away at the age of 99, many tributes referred to him as "Indy's own Dick Clark". That's because during the 1960s and late '50s, Jimmy Mack was the popular host of teen dance shows "Bandstand 13" and "Teen Twirl" that were modeled after Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
In 1907, a national "first" occurred in Indiana, but it wasn't for an achievement that would be regarded with historic pride. Indiana passed the first state eugenics law in the entire country, mandating the sterilization of some men and women in state custody.
Indiana history teacher matt Barnett gives hands on learning to his students. Matt, who lives in Peru, Ind., will be Nelson’s guest to share ways to spark interest in Indiana history among young people. In recognition of his inspirational teaching, he has won multiple honors and awards, including from the Society of Indiana Pioneers.
After the discovery that she had been embarking for years in the early1900s, on one of Indiana’s most gruesome murder sprees, Belle Gunness has been considered among the most notorious female killers in U.S. history.
Many aspects of the life and crimes of Belle, a Norwegian immigrant, remain a mystery, including the total number of her victims, who included men, women and children. Experts suspect that more than 40 victims, including the dismembered bodies of Norwegian men who responded to a "lonely widow" advertisement that she placed in newspapers, were buried on her 43 – acre farm near La Porte in northern Indiana.
The soldier who fired the first American shot during World War I was a Hoosier. Because initial reports from France did not include the soldier’s name, they only indicated that he was from South Bend. A media frenzy ensued in October 1917 to determine his identity, with widespread misinformation that was repeated for years.
Also in 1917, a nurse who had been born on a farm near Elkhart signed up with the American Red Cross to treat wounded soldiers at a military hospital in France. She became accustomed to nursing soldiers who had been injured by gas, a new form of warfare in World War 1. About 60 percent of the hospital’s patients suffered from gas-related injuries; in many cases, their lungs and respiratory systems were barely functioning.
About 700 residents of Wabash County in northeastern Indiana once donated locks of their hair to create a harp. Well, an intricate artwork in the shape of a harp. That sounds weird (or at least offbeat) today, concedes, T.J. Honeycutt, director of archives and outreach at the Wabash County Museum, where the "hair harp" is among the exhibits that continually astonish visitors.
A mysterious illness killing songbirds swooped in over the summer and became front-page news across Indiana. Concurrently, the Covid-19 pandemic that's been so devastating for people apparently has had a positive impact on the hobby of birding. Hoosier History Live will do a deep dive into those and other issues related to our feathered friends. In September, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources lifted its moratorium on feeding birds in about a dozen counties after several months during which Hoosiers took down their bird feeders and bird baths in efforts to stop the spread of the mysterious illness.
In advance of the 20th anniversary of what has been called the most historic event of the 21st century so far, Hoosier History Live will welcome phone calls throughout our show from listeners.
We invite you to call the WICR-FM studio (88.7) at 317-788-3314 and share where you were when you learned about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or describe the ways, small and subtle or significant, that the tragic event changed your life.
Indiana’s population has increased by 302,000 during the last 10 years, but more than half of the state’s 92 counties lost people. All of the five fastest growing counties border Marion County in central Indiana.
Hamilton County, where the population has increased by 26.6 percent, continues to post the largest gains, “with a growth rate faster than the state of Texas,” reports Carol Rogers, co-director of the Indiana Business Research Center at IU’s Kelley School of Business.
Carol, who will be Nelson’s guest to discuss the results of the 2020 U.S. Census, serves as the Census liaison to Gov. Eric Holcomb.
Our show will follow up on a program in 2020 (May 2, 2020) in which Carol’s colleague, demographer Matt Kinghorn, joined Nelson to discuss trends in advance of the Census results. Hoosier History Live also has explored ways that Census information can be used for historic research (Nov. 9, 2019).
During the past decade, the Indianapolis metro area grew by 223,000, accounting for 74 percent of the state’s growth, Carol says. According to a report in the Indianapolis Star in August 13, 2021, 49 of the state’s 92 counties – including most of the rural counties – have lost people over the last decade.
The Star also has reported on August 14, 2021 that the city of Westfield, where the population increased from 30,068 in 2010 to 46,410, led Hamilton County’s four cities in growth, climbing by 54.4 percent. The other three cities of Carmel, Fishers and Noblesville all grew by more than 25 percent.
Concurrently, Hamilton County and the Hoosier state in general, continues to become more diverse. According to some reports, the state has gained 72,500 Asian residents since the 2010 U.S. Census. As has been discussed during previous Hoosier History Live shows, Indiana is the home of the largest Burmese population in the country; in particular, immigrants from the country now known as Myanmar have relocated to the southside of Indianapolis, Greenwood and Fort Wayne.
“Indiana’s Hispanic population grew by 42.2 percent and now makes up 8.2 percent of the population,” according to The Star’s analysis. Black residents make up 9.6 percent of the state’s population.
The drop in people in more than half of the state’s counties reflects a national trend, Carol Rogers says. She reports that more than half of the counties across the country are smaller than they were in 2010.
In advance of the 20th anniversary of what has been called the most historic event of the 21st century so far, Hoosier History Live will welcome phone calls throughout our show from listeners.
We invite you to call the WICR-FM studio (88.7) at 317-788-3314 and share where you were when you learned about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, or describe the ways, small and subtle or significant, that the tragic event changed your life.
For this special show, Nelson will be joined again by Tom Spalding, who was the public safety reporter for The Indianapolis Star when he accompanied Indiana Task Force 1, the rescue team that was deployed to Ground Zero in New York City. On a show from this past July, Tom was a guest along with Dave Cook, a battalion chief for the Indianapolis Fire Department who was among the 62 professional rescuers from Indiana and their 12-member support crew dispatched to search for survivors.
During the 20 years since the tragedy, Tom has been re-interviewing many of the task force members for an upcoming book; they ranged from firefighters, emergency medical technicians and structural specialists to search-dog handlers. Many of them have described where they were when they learned about the tragedy and wondered, as a task force member from Boone County asked, "Would this change me forever?"
A squad leader with the Warren Township Fire Department - which has since merged with IFD - described for Tom how he watched the terrorist attack unfold on TV with his family. As he canceled a planned trip to Montana and quickly prepared to head to Ground Zero, he recalled the reaction of his 9-year-old son: "For the first time he understood my job was dangerous."
When the Hoosier rescuers arrived in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center and surrounding buildings, many encountered still-smoldering underground fires. During our show last month, Tom described how several Hoosiers barely escaped being burned alive when a 50-foot wall of fire shot up while they were searching for survivors underground.
Most Hoosiers, of course, did not have to face that kind of imminent danger - although the extent of what might happen across the country was not immediately apparent.
"People who weren't deployed have the most vivid memory of where they were when they got the word about the planes striking and the Twin Towers falling," Tom says. "[The Indiana task force] was able to respond - do something - so the moment isn't as raw for them."
We want to hear your recollections of that raw historic news and its impact on your lives, particularly in ways that have not been obvious, such as tightened security at airports. Speaking of that: Our host, Nelson, was at Indianapolis International Airport, preparing to board a plane to New York City, during the suicide hijackings of the airplanes that crashed into the 110-story Twin Towers of the trade center. So he will describe the scene at the Indy airport during our show.
Also during the show, Tom will describe two memorials that have been erected to honor victims of the 9-11 tragedy. He has visited the Indiana 9-11 Memorial in downtown Indianapolis that was dedicated on the 10th anniversary. The public is invited to 20th anniversary commemorative events Sept. 11, including a rededication ceremony beginning at 1:30 pm at the memorial near the Indiana Central Canal.
The memorial includes engraved granite tablets that describe remembrances of the 9-11 events. The tablets are flanked by two steel beams from the World Trade Center; one of the beams is topped by a bronze American bald eagle sculpted by Indianapolis firefighter Ryan Feeney. Ryan, who also sculpted the statue of Peyton Manning at Lucas Oil Stadium, has been a guest on Hoosier History Live for a show called Sculpting famous Hoosiers show.
Tom also has visited the National September 11 Memorial and Museum on the former site of the World Trade Center. A day-long series of events is planned for Sept. 11 at the national memorial.
During the decades when Indianapolis and its downtown were far from vibrant, Naptown was frequently used - along with "India-NO-Place" - as a derisive nickname for the lackluster Hoosier capital.
But the actual origin of the Naptown nickname is much different than the negative connotation it later came to have, and the original intent was not to insult or disrespect the city, according to Steve Barnett, Marion County Historian.
Steve says the nickname was coined during the 1920s by African-American jazz musicians and performers who visited Indianapolis. As a creative and even affectionate way to refer to the city, they began stressing the fourth syllable in the city's name, and that usage of "Naptown" was picked up by GIs stationed in the city during World War II.
In addition to serving as a board member of the Marion County Historical Society, Steve is the executive director of the Irvington Historical Society, and will be Nelson's guest to discuss the history and evolution of nicknames for the Hoosier capital. They have included Indy (by far the most popular in the 21st century), Circle City, Crossroads of America, Amateur Sports Capital and, during the 19th century, Railroad City.
Steve also will share insights about historic nicknames for neighborhoods in the Hoosier capital. These monikers - some of them discarded decades ago - have included Stringtown, Vinegar Hill, Cottontown, Irish Hill, the Levee and Brickville.
Stringtown continues to be used to describe a neighborhood across the White River just west of downtown. With the coming of the National Road (now U.S. 40) to Indianapolis during the 1830s and the building of a bridge across the river, many houses were "strung" along both sides of the roadway, according to Steve's research.
As Indianapolis grew during the 19th century, neighborhoods often were given nicknames by the police "for easy identification," Steve says.
Some nicknames for the city benefited from a push by civic and business leaders. In 1926, the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce adopted "Crossroads of America" as the organization's promotional nickname for the Hoosier capital, according to a column Steve recently wrote for the Weekly View, a newspaper that covers the eastside.
During the early 1970s, when "Naptown" had become widely used as a disparaging term, civic leader Frank McKinney Jr. announced an advertising campaign intended to promote "Indy," according to Steve's column. By that point, "Indy" already had been adopted by race drivers, mechanics and other auto enthusiasts. McKinney, a bank president, expressed the hope that broader usage of the nickname would "polish the image of the city."
For our 600th show, Hoosier History Live will explore an aspect of our heritage that's, well, notorious.
During the 1870s and '80s, outlaw gangs terrorized some Hoosiers, particularly merchants and farmers, in an area of southwestern Indiana sometimes known as the Lost River region. It encompasses Martin County, Orange County and parts of Dubois County.
"The dynamics of the gangs ... were typically built around an individual family, often brothers or a father and his sons, with other relatives and a few local followers," says historian Randy Mills, a professor of social science at Oakland City University in southwestern Indiana.
Randy Mills, who will be Nelson's guest, is working on a book about the notorious Indiana gangs of the late 19th century. They included the Archer Gang, which primarily was based in Martin County, where, according to Randy, their crimes included "burning houses, robbing neighbors and travelers alike, stealing livestock and murdering those who crossed them." Several members of the Archer Gang were lynched in 1886.
During the same era, the Reeves Gang in Dubois County started with petty thefts and horse stealing, then robbed stores in small towns. The gang, which was led by two brothers, George and John Reeves, eventually murdered two deputy sheriffs.
The gangs often were pursued by vigilantes, and some vigilante societies that formed to fight the outlaw gangs became criminals themselves. Called the White Caps because of their distinctive hats, these vigilante groups especially terrorized residents of Orange, Crawford and Harrison counties. According to Randy, several local political leaders became White Cap members.
Randy Mills and his wife, Roxanne, were among the Hoosier History Live guests in 2017 for a show that explored Hoosier perspectives on the Vietnam War. Books written by Randy and Roxanne Mills include Summer Wind: The Road from Indiana to Xom Bung, which features letters sent by a soldier from Princeton, Ind.
During the show about outlaw gangs, Randy will discuss why the criminals seemed to thrive in the Lost River region, which was isolated for much of the 19th century. Randy describes the region this way:
"It is a hilly landscape of caves, sinkholes, beautiful flowing springs and curious monolith formations, such as Raven Rock and Hanging Rock."
Outlaw gangs of the 19th century in Indiana also included a notorious band of brothers that Hoosier History Live explored during a show in 2018. The Reno Brothers, a gang of train robbers that primarily was based around the town of Seymour and other areas of Jackson County, made national news with their crimes.
During the 1860s and '70s, "colored schools" (the term used during that era) began to open in Indiana. State laws required Black students to be educated in schools separate from their white counterparts.
In 1886, the ceremony for the first graduate of Vincennes Colored High School in southwestern Indiana sparked a national controversy when whites boycotted the event, according to an article in the spring issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, the magazine published by the Indiana Historical Society.
The article's author is acclaimed journalist, historian and researcher Eunice Trotter, who will be Nelson's guest to share insights about the ways Indiana cities handled the education of African American youth during the late 19th century.
During the 1870s, the first African-American student graduated from a predominantly white high school in Indianapolis. Mary Rann graduated from Indianapolis High School (later renamed Shortridge High School) in 1876. While much about her background and the milestone event is unknown, "it did open the way for others," Eunice writes.
The high school graduation 10 years later of Vincennes resident Grace Brewer was much more widely publicized because of the boycott of the citywide commencement by many white residents. They included pastors of local churches and business leaders as well as their teenage sons and daughters who were scheduled to graduate from Vincennes High School.
Although Grace Brewer became the first African American to graduate from a high school in Knox County, Eunice writes, "Many local Blacks [previously] had received individual education through schools tied to churches and went on to African-American colleges before Brewer's time."
In Vincennes and other Indiana cities, Black families had been complaining about the inadequate facilities and resources at the "colored schools." In her commencement address, Grace Brewer courageously described many of these challenges.
Also in 1886, a Black student in the Ohio River town of Vevay had completed her high school studies at a white school, but school board members "refused her the privilege of graduating with members of her class," according to Eunice's article. In Washington, Ind., objections from white students to including a Black classmate in their graduation exercises meant that two commencements were held.
Our guest Eunice Trotter has had a long and distinguished journalism career that has included serving as the first African-American editor at the Indianapolis Star (her jobs included assistant city editor and assistant business editor) and a stint as publisher of the Indianapolis Recorder. In 2017, Eunice was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
Although she grew up in Indianapolis, Eunice has deep ancestral roots in Vincennes. In 1821, her ancestor Mary Bateman Clark and an attorney sued her employer to gain release from a long-term "indentured servitude" contract that courts ruled was, in actuality, slavery. Eunice coordinated efforts to get a historic marker at the Knox County Courthouse in recognition of Mary Bateman Clark's precedent-setting case. In 2010, she discussed the landmark case on a Hoosier History Live show about slave trials during the 1820s in Indiana.
A bushel of challenges have confronted family farmers in recent decades. At the same time, farmers mаrkets have sprouted up in towns and neighborhoods across Indiana, the popularity of their "buy local" appeal undeniable.
Nick Carter, 38, is knee-deep in both family farms and farmers markets. He grew up on a multi-generational family farm near Russiaville; today, he lives with his wife and three young children on a farm in Marion County.
Nick, who will be Nelson's guest, is the CEO and co-founder of Market Wagon, a rapidly-growing, Indianapolis-based business that creates online farmers markets. The enterprise, which has created web-based farmers markets in more than 25 cities across 14 states, enables consumers to browse and buy online from growers and vendors in their region.
The rapid growth of Market Wagon has generated a flurry of media interest in the business. In interviews with the press, Nick has noted that, beginning during the 1970s and '80s, family farmers increasingly faced pressures to sell to corporations or consolidate. In other words, "Get big or get out," as Nick has summed up the dilemma faced by family farmers.
He told the Indianapolis Business Journal - which last month listed him among its 40 Under 40 roster of emerging young leaders - that his grandfather built the farm where he grew up. But his family's farming roots stretch even deeper: Six generations of his ancestors have farmed in the Howard County area.
During our show, Nick will discuss how the industrialization of farming has changed the ways that consumers purchase food.
He also will talk about the importance of locally grown food, which has motivated so many communities to establish farmers markets. In central Indiana, they include the Carmel Farmers Market, Broad Ripple Farmers Market, Garfield Park Farmers Market and the Original Farmers Market near Indianapolis City Market downtown.
"I think consumers are hungry to know where their food is coming from and how it's produced," Nick told Winsight Grocery Business, an online magazine that covers grocery retailers.
He has emphasized that Market Wagon isn't a competitor of farmers markets, but instead augments them by providing online access to consumers who are unable for a range of reasons - from proximity to schedule conflicts - to shop at a local farmers market.
Asked by the IBJ how he enjoys spending his downtime, Nick replied that farming is his refuge:
"When you spend your day in meetings, working on financial forecasts and meeting with investors, there is something therapeutic about shoveling manure out of a chicken coop, or weeding a garden bed, or picking sweet corn."
One persistent myth about Strawtown is that the village in Hamilton County near the White River came close to being designated the new state capital of Indiana more than 200 years ago.
Other myths involve Chief Straw, the supposed namesake of the village who has been described as an early Native American leader in central Indiana. Even though a 10-foot monument to Chief Straw was built in the 1920s in his honor, historians now doubt that he ever existed. The monument to Chief Straw, who was said to be a leader of the Lenape (or Delaware) tribe during the 1780s, is now on private property.
Still other myths concern a slaying in 1821 that probably was the first murder in Hamilton County. The victim, an early white settler of Madison County, was allegedly killed at a tavern in Strawtown by Native Americans during a clash with an ax-wielding mob of farmers. But historians now doubt several aspects of the narrative about the murder that have persisted for generations.
To sift myths from facts about Strawtown, Hamilton County historian David Heighway will be Nelson's guest.
David has been a guest on several other Hoosier History Live shows, including a program in 2017 about the violent early era of Fishers. David's popular presentations about the rough-and-tumble chapter in Fishers history of the 1870s continually surprise those who regard the suburban city as a sleepy farm town before its explosive growth in recent decades.
Strawtown certainly never has experienced booming growth, but it was a "lively place" during the early 1820s as a convenient stopping point for travelers, David says. Early businesses included taverns and a horse racing track.
Despite the bustle, David emphasizes the total lack of evidence that Strawtown ever was considered as the site for the capital when the southern Indiana city of Corydon, which was the capital when Indiana became a state in 1816, was deemed inconveniently located. State leaders ultimately chose the wilderness site that became the city of Indianapolis.
Notes and records from meetings of state officials - including a consequential session at the cabin of William Conner (the namesake of Conner Prairie Interactive History Park) - do not mention Strawtown, David says. According to persistent myths, Strawtown missed being designated as the capital by a single vote because one of the state commissioners decided to go fishing rather than attend a meeting.
"It's a cute story, but completely untrue," David emphasizes.
Along with other historians, he doubts the existence of Chief Straw. According to folklore, the chief established a Lenape village at Strawtown in the 1780s. (An engraved plaque on the base of the monument identifies 1787 as the founding date.) Those dates began to raise questions among historians, who note that, if Chief Straw truly had arrived then, he would have been one of the first Lenape leaders in the wilderness that eventually became Indiana.
In a 2014 show, Hoosier History Live explored Lenape heritage in the woodlands of central Indiana, which generally lasted from the 1790s until the 1820s. Sometimes called "the most-moved people in American history," the Lenape had been living in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and other east coast states prior to being shoved to the Indiana wilderness. During the 1820s, in what has been called a "forced migration," the tribe was moved from Indiana to Kansas - then, later, to Oklahoma.
Nelson's guests on that show included the executive producer of The Lenape on the Wapahani River, a documentary about the tribe's era in Indiana. "Wapahani" is a Native American name for the White River.
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks, this month marks another milestone involving Indiana Task Force 1, which was among 28 elite rescue teams dispatched to Ground Zero in New York City to search for survivors. Thirty years ago, in July 1991, Indiana Task Force 1 - which includes firefighters, emergency medical technicians, engineers, search-dog handlers and other highly trained specialists - was being formed to respond to catastrophic events.
Hoosier History Live will explore the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, when 62 professional rescuers from Indiana and their support crew arrived at the still-smoldering ruins. Some of the Indiana Task Force 1 members were among the first "boots on the ground" from across the country at Ground Zero after the suicide hijackings of airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center's 110-story towers.
To explore what unfolded - as well as earlier and subsequent missions of the Indiana responders since the formation of the task force - Nelson will be joined by two guests:
- Tom Spalding, who was the public safety reporter for The Indianapolis Star when he accompanied the Indiana task force to Ground Zero for an "up-close and personal" look at their overwhelming mission. Tom, who left the Star in 2011 to become a public relations manager, is working on a book that will include a chapter about Indiana Task Force 1's search efforts.
- And Dave Cook, a battalion chief for the Indianapolis Fire Department (IFD), who served a critical function with Indiana Task Force 1 at Ground Zero because of his expertise as a structural specialist. A Ball State University-educated architect as well as a firefighter, Chief Cook was a captain with the Washington Township Fire Department (before its merger with IFD) in September 2001. He joined the Indiana task force in 1995 and continues to be part of the professional rescue team.
At Ground Zero, some of the Indiana Task Force 1 members arrived amid still-smoldering underground fires. Several of the Hoosiers barely escaped being "burned alive" when a 50-foot wall of fire shot up during an underground search for survivors, our guest Tom Spalding wrote in a subsequent account for Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, the Indiana Historical Society's magazine.
When the Indiana Task Force 1 rescuers returned to Indianapolis after their 10-day assignment at Ground Zero, they were greeted by a cheering crowd of 3,000 on Monument Circle. In downtown Indianapolis, a permanent memorial to the 9-11 victims was dedicated after the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
Earlier that month, Tom Spalding was one of the guests on Hoosier History Live for a show marking that milestone. Since then, Tom has visited the National September 11 Memorial and Museum on the former site of the World Trade Center.
In addition to Indianapolis-based firefighters and emergency medical technicians, the Indiana Task Force 1 team members dispatched to Ground Zero included search dog handlers from South Bend, Fountaintown, Newburgh and Lebanon.
The beginnings of Indiana Task Force 1 can be traced to July 1991, a deadline posed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for teams across the country to submit applications to be part of the emergency response system.
During their mission in the aftermath of the 9-11 tragedy in New York, the Hoosier rescuers, along with Tom Spalding and other Indiana-based journalists, stayed in tents at the Javits Convention Center.
During our show, we will explore concerns about subsequent health problems experienced by some of the Hoosier rescuers. In sifting through the Ground Zero debris, they were exposed to fuel from the jets that struck the Twin Towers and other potentially toxic material.
"In the subsequent year, I thought the [Hoosier] task force members would become celebrities, but they did not," Tom wrote in his Traces account. "They simply returned to the old jobs they had left."
Last week, about 80 members of Indiana Task Force 1 traveled to Surfside, Fla., to help with search and rescue efforts after the collapse of a condominium building.
Although our guest Chief Cook is not among those deployed to the site of the tragedy in Florida, he has served as a structural specialist on more than 20 missions since he joined Indiana Task Force 1 in the 1990s. He is among only a few members who have been on the team since its earliest years.
Even specialists in African-African history could be forgiven for drawing a blank at the mention of the name of Indianapolis native James Baskett. In spite of being the first black male actor to win an Oscar - for a role in which he sang a song that also won an Academy Award - Baskett's place in the annals of African-American history seems to be largely forgotten.
That's because the role for which Baskett won his honorary Oscar was that of Uncle Remus in the much maligned, now virtually banned film Song of the South. The Disney musical was a modest hit when it was released in 1946, but changing sensibilities about race over the past three quarters of a century have made the film toxic to the image-conscious studio.
Disney chose not to release the film for home viewing during the 1980s VCR boom; nor did they cash in on a DVD release in recent decades. With the 2019 advent of the Disney+ streaming service, Song of the South once again found itself locked out of the Magic Kingdom.
And not without good cause. Film critics and historians have condemned the film's sweetly nostalgic portrayal of the social hierarchy of Reconstruction-era South. As Guardian film blogger Xan Brooks put it recently, "the film trades in a dubious form of myth-making - implying that African-Americans stuck below the Mason-Dixon line were a cheerful bunch who liked nothing better than going fishing, spinning tall tales and looking after white folks' kids."
The very title of the film and its focus on song can be viewed as perpetuating a racist myth. As 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass - who himself escaped slavery - commented, the singing of enslaved people in the Southern United States was not evidence of their contentment or happiness.
"It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake," Douglas wrote. "Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy."
But does the film deserve to be virtually banned, especially when a novel like Gone with the Wind and its 1939 film adaption - with all their racial stereotyping, glorification of white privilege and perpetuation of the myth of the "happy slave" - are still held up as classics?
Does Song of the South have anything to offer the modern viewer? Does the legacy of Hoosier James Baskett deserve to be reevaluated?
These are the questions explored by Hoosier History Live associate producer and guest host Mick Armbruster in this encore of a show that first aired in January of 2020. Mick is joined in studio by two guests:
- Film historian Eric Grayson, who specializes in the collection and preservation of vintage films;
- and Ophelia Wellington, director of Freetown Village, a living history museum she founded in 1982 out of a desire to teach African-American history.
The show also looks into how Baskett's portrayal of the Uncle Remus character might teach us something about the role of folklore in African-American culture, and explore how the content of his tales - with their focus on the archetypal trickster Brer Rabbit - can be traced back to folklore found among native cultures in Africa.
And while the discussion may not leave listeners whistling "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah," we hope it does give them an appreciation of the legacy of Hoosier James Baskett and a more nuanced understanding of the film he starred in.
A fishing village founded on the northern shores of Lake Michigan during the 19th century and a Florida resort city on the Gulf of Mexico are miles apart both geographically and culturally, but share a distinction by virtue of their Indiana connections.
Hoosiers have long flocked to both towns as seasonal destinations, with the cottages of Leland, Mich., popular during the summer, while many "snowbirds" have escaped during Indiana's winters to Naples, Fla., or nearby locales including Marco Island and Sanibel, where thousands also have moved when they retired.
The entrepreneurial Ball brothers of Muncie and their families led the Hoosier migration to Leland during the early 1900s, followed by the extended family of Indianapolis novelist Booth Tarkington. A neighborhood in the village even became known as "Indiana Woods."
Although Naples also traces its beginnings to the 19th century, the influx of Hoosiers didn't begin until the late 1960s and '70s, when real estate developers targeted central Indiana residents with sales pitches about the construction of condominiums, apartments and houses. After retiring as a pro basketball player, Larry Bird was living in Naples when the Indiana Pacers reached out in 1997 and asked him to become the team's coach. Members of the Hulman family - long associated with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - also are among Hoosiers who have owned or rented properties in the Naples area.
To explore the extensive Indiana links to Leland and Naples - both of which have neighborhoods listed on the National Register of Historic Places - Nelson will be joined by a guest who has deep connections to the two getaway destinations.
Indianapolis historian, educator and civic leader Jim Fadely plans to spend part of this summer in Leland for the 29th consecutive year. Jim, who is a former board president of Indiana Landmarks and the Society of Indiana Pioneers, is no stranger to Naples, either. The family of his wife, Sally, owned a condo there beginning in 1974; Jim and Sally Fadely inherited the residence and eventually sold it.
So many Hoosiers began spending part of the year in Naples and Marco Island during the 1970s that the former Indiana National Bank opened branches in the area. With an economy based heavily on tourism, Naples touts its "pristine white sand beaches," restaurants, historic Naples Pier and shopping opportunities.
Leland is more quaint and low key, noted for its historic cottages, cherry trees and vineyards, Jim Fadely reports. But he adds that in addition to the streams of Hoosier visitors and part-time residents, Leland has something else in common with Naples: the Lake Michigan water at Leland, which is on the Leelanau Peninsula, is aqua, just like parts of the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean Sea.
The harbor area of Leland, called the Fishtown Historic District, has "shingled shanties with a Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard look," Jim Fadely says, adding that an "understated aesthetic prevails in Leland." Susannah Mayberry, the great-niece of Indianapolis novelist Booth Tarkington, wrote about some of the area's Indiana connections in a book titled Of Love and Leland: A World War II Generation Memoir (1997).
For much of the early and mid-20th century, Naples and other locales south of Fort Myers on the Gulf of Mexico coast remained secluded. Visitors could travel to Naples only by boat until train lines arrived in 1927. Later during the 1920s, the Tamiami Trail road was built across the Everglades and connected Naples to Miami.
Since the 1970s, new construction has continued at a rapid pace in the Naples and Marco Island area. With the influx of Hoosiers to the region, many Indiana-based organizations, including the Indiana University Alumni Association, have established chapters in Naples.
Not only did he recover from a harrowing helicopter crash that almost struck Speedway High School in 1977, he also had to cope earlier that year with the suicide of his mentor, Sid Collins, the original "Voice of the Indy 500" on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network.
Veteran motorsports broadcaster Paul Page - who was inducted into the IMS Hall of Fame last month - will be Nelson's guest to share insights from his eventful life, including his close friendship with three-time Indy 500 winner Bobby Unser, who died in May at age 87. Unser periodically had been Paul's sidekick in the broadcast booth on both radio and TV.
Paul, 75, who semi-retired in 2016 but still can be frequently heard on the airwaves (sometimes billed as the "Voice Emeritus"), had a multi-faceted career that stretched beyond commentating about auto-racing and other sports. As a news reporter in April 1968, he was standing only a few feet from Bobby Kennedy when he made a historic speech in Indianapolis about Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.
These episodes - including his stint as a licensed paramedic (he participated in many emergency runs) - are described in Paul's new autobiography, Hello I'm Paul Page: It's Race Day in Indianapolis (Cardinal Publishing).
The book opens with the plummeting of the helicopter - a news chopper for WIBC Radio - in 1977 with Paul and two others aboard. Although all of them survived the crash of the aircraft onto the football field at Speedway High (the helicopter narrowly missed the school building), Paul suffered severe leg injuries and endured a long recovery.
After his return to broadcasting, he landed gigs with national TV and radio networks - including NBC Sports, ESPN and ABC Sports - and covered sports ranging from fencing to Sumo wrestling.
First and foremost, though, Paul always will be identified with motorsports broadcasting, particularly the Indy 500, which, he writes, has been his "obsession" since he first visited the Speedway as a 15-year-old in 1960.
His enthusiasm has never waned, even during the 1973 race, generally considered one of the most disastrous in Indy 500 history. With massive crashes, two driver fatalities (as well as the death of a pit crew member) and weather delays that meant it took three days to complete, the 1973 race is described in Paul's new book. He also writes about his unexpected friendship that developed four decades later with the daughter of driver Swede Savage, who was among the 1973 fatalities. Paul escorted Savage's daughter, Angela, when she visited the Speedway in 2014, including to the site of her father's horrific crash.
During our show, Paul will discuss the 1973 race as well as his interviews with iconic drivers, including four-time winner A.J. Foyt, who is renowned for being, as Paul puts it, "intimidating." But he also describes episodes - including an incident that unfolded at Foyt's ranch in Texas where Paul was a houseguest - that demonstrate the driver's compassionate side.
In 1977, Paul and a colleague discovered the body of his mentor, Sid Collins, who had taken his own life. During the early 1950s, Collins had developed the concept for the IMS Radio Network and was able to convince long-time Speedway owner Tony Hulman of its merit.
In his book, Paul praises Hulman (1901-1977) for his kindness. He also celebrates the inclusive spirit of the Indy 500:
"It's a place for everyone: the wealthiest sponsors, owners and stars; the middle-class ticket holders, and the blue-collar fans in the infield."
| Saturdays, noon to 1 p.m. ET on WICR 88.7 FM. Or stream audio live from anywhere on WICR Online! You can listen to recent shows by clicking the podcast links below, or check out our extensive archive of past shows available as podcasts. | | June 12, 2021 Moravian heritage of Hope, Indiana - Encore Click here to listen to the podcast.
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Columbus, Ind., in Bartholomew County, south of Indianapolis, is known as a "Modernist Mecca" for its striking examples of midcentury architecture, which draw visitors from far and wide. The nearby small town of Hope in the county's northeast Haw Creek Township is much less well known, but has its own distinctive cultural heritage, which we explore in this encore of a show that originally aired in September of 2016. The show is guest-hosted by Hoosier History Live producer Molly Head. Hope was founded in 1830 by Protestant Moravian Martin Hauser. Like many persecuted religious minorities seeking autonomy and religious freedom, Moravians moved into different parts of Europe and on to America, where they settled mostly in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. German was the language spoken by Moravians coming to America. As Hope was originally founded, the church owned and ran the town. Somewhat similar to social experiments in New Harmony with communal property, the "congregational town" concept ended in Hope in 1837 when the town was opened up to individual property ownership, and non-Moravians also were allowed to settle there. Some early residents of Hope were descendants of the settlers of the ill-fated Moravian Mission that operated near Anderson, Ind., along the White River, from 1801 to 1806. The mission's purpose was to bring Christianity to the Native Americans in the area. The mission members and its Native American "converts" were met with strong resistance by local tribes, and in particular by The Prophet, or Tenskwatawa, the brother of Shawnee leader Tecumseh. The Prophet, full of his own religious zeal, carried out "witch hunts" against converted Native Americans, and the Moravian missions in the area eventually disappeared. The Hope Moravian Church, founded in 1830 and originally housed in a log cabin on the town square, remains the only Moravian Church in Indiana. Many of its traditions continue today, such as display of the "putz," or elaborate Christmas scene in miniature, in the church at Christmastime, the tradition of hanging Moravian stars, and the making of Moravian sugar cakes, a type of sweet, raised coffee cake widely sold at local festivals. Since the 1830s, Hope Moravians have also gathered in God's Acre, the historic section of the Hope Moravian Church Cemetery, for the Easter Sunrise Service, which includes a trombone choir and a processional by all church members that involves singing songs and watching the sunrise. Molly's guests include two retired Hope elementary school teachers who also are great storytellers: Barb Johnson and Beth Newman. Both Barb and Beth have taught 4th-grade Indiana history and also have played the role of schoolmarms at the Simmons School, which is a brick one-room schoolhouse that was moved from its original location in the country to the back yard of the Hope Elementary School in 1989. Guests Barb and Beth are also involved in the Yellow Trail Museum, the history museum located on the town square. Much of downtown Hope and surrounding residential areas is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Editor's note: Since the original airing of this show in 2016, Barb Johnson has passed away. |
Brownsburg resident Bob Palma has a nine-car garage that houses his treasures: a 1973 Mustang convertible; four 1964 Studebaker Daytona models; a 1956 Packard Clipper hardtop and other cars manufactured more than 40 years ago.
As Hoosier History Live explores the world of Hoosier car collectors like Bob, we won't focus exclusively on "classic" autos; that term has a specific, limited definition with some clubs for owners and enthusiasts, often referring to cars manufactured before the late 1940s.
Instead, with Bob as our guide, we will take a broad look at Hoosier owners and clubs (or local chapters of national groups) with a span from Model A Fords (the Model A was a successor in the late 1920s of the innovative Model T) through enthusiasts of Corvettes, Mustangs and other cars designed in the 1960s and '70s. Bob is a life member of both the Studebaker Drivers Club and the Antique Automobile Club of America.
Where do owners get replacement parts? How do they buy and sell? And with automobile technology having advanced so much in recent years, why do they prefer to hit the road in cars that initially rolled out of showrooms many decades ago?
There are more of these enthusiasts in Indiana than you may assume. The Indiana Region Classic Car Club of America, which was founded in 1959, has more than 125 members who own Duesenberg sedans, Stutz roadsters and other cars made in Indiana during the 1930s or earlier; a 1932 Cadillac, and a 1937 Packard convertible, among other prized possessions.
That group meets monthly, as does the Mustang Club of Indianapolis. About 205 owners of Mustangs and related Ford Motor Company products participated two years ago in the club's Race to Indy, its major annual event.
At least half a dozen Corvette clubs - including Corvette Indy - can be found in Indiana. An online registry of car clubs on the Old Cars Only website lists dozens of other car collector groups, including Indiana chapters of a national club for Model A Ford enthusiasts.
Our guest Bob Palma is the technical editor of Turning Wheels, the monthly magazine of the Studebaker Drivers Club, which has about 10,000 members. Bob, who also is a columnist for Hemmings Classic Car magazine, was a guest in 2020 on a Hoosier History Live show that explored the Studebaker brothers and the company they founded, which became the largest employer in South Bend until the last car was made there in 1963.
Bob is retired from a career that included teaching auto mechanics at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis and editing textbooks. He emphasizes that obtaining replacement parts for older model vehicles is easier than many people assume.
"You can even buy a complete, brand new reproduction of a 1957 Chevrolet or 1969 Camaro body if you want," he reports.
Many of the car clubs in Indiana organize events such as caravans (sometimes called "parades") of owners' vehicles for trips across the state - and beyond - to see notable collections and visit historic sites.
Despite the implications of the "Race to Indy" title, the annual event organized by the Mustang Club of Indianapolis is not a competition. It's a stationary car show that's been held for more than 40 years and includes a silent auction that benefits charitable organizations.
When you want advice about the problems that invasive trees and plants can cause in Indiana, whom do you consult?
For Hoosier History Live, the obvious choice is the Hoosier Gardener, aka Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, the award-winning, Indianapolis-based journalist and president of GardenComm: Garden Communicators International. An Indiana advanced master gardener, Jo Ellen will be Nelson's guest to share advice about Bradford pear trees and other non-native, invasive trees and plants that are damaging the state's environment. She also will offer advice about alternatives to planting "invasives," which have been displacing native species.
Among the culprits are Bradford pear trees - which began blooming in mid-April, with distinctive white blossoms - and other ornamental pear trees. Jo Ellen also has written a blog post that warns about the problems caused by a popular groundcover in many Hoosier landscapes known as the "winter creeper." She explains that invasive species often have a "growth habit that out-paces and disrupts native species."
A front-page article in the Indianapolis Star last month describes Bradford pears as nearly ubiquitous in the state now, with their early blooming "giving them an advantage over native species and allowing them to take their resources... Invasive plants are wreaking havoc on Indiana's ecosystems."
And the Bradford pear trees aren't the only problem. Jo Ellen notes the Indiana Natural Resources Commission has put together a list of terrestrial plants designated as pests. Several varieties of honeysuckles, including shrubs and a vine, are on the list of plants that are prohibited from being sold or planted.
Referring to the planting of Bradford pear trees, Jo Ellen says, "This is an example of good intentions gone bad... These trees have escaped our landscapes and now displace native trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals, which disrupts the ecology."
Jo Ellen, a garden coach with an all-season container planting business, co-teaches the City Gardener Program with a Purdue University-Marion County horticulture extension educator. Nelson plans to open the phone lines early during our show so listeners can call in with gardening questions. Jo Ellen also is the owner of Write for You! LLC, a freelance writing and editing business.
Jo Ellen's Hoosier Gardener blog posts are available as an email newsletter.
Even though 17 years have zipped by since their last visit, no one is putting out welcome mats for the periodical cicadas that are about to take Indiana by swarm. The Hoosier state is considered one of the country's major hot spots for the 17-year emergence of the type of cicadas known as Brood X.
"The bugs will show up pretty much anywhere there are mature trees, and the males will unleash loud mating calls that will fill the late spring with buzzing music," the Evansville Courier-Journal reported in a heads-up article about the insects that are typically considered pests, to say the least. According to the Courier-Journal, early pioneers of European heritage, alarmed by the swarms, incorrectly assumed that cicadas were like locusts and would ravage their crops, giving cicadas their "first jolt of bad publicity."
So who can separate fact from myth about these critters?
Hoosier History Live is summoning a top national insect expert who happens to be based in our own backyard.
Dr. Tom Turpin, the Purdue University professor emeritus of entomology who created the annual Bug Bowl competition (touted as "the world's largest insect-themed event") on the West Lafayette campus, will be Nelson's guest. For decades, he wrote On Six Legs, a popular column (and starting in 2008, podcast) for the Purdue Extension service.
Among the questions about cicadas that Dr. Turpin says he plans to tackle: Why do so many emerge at the same time? Will eating periodical cicadas kill my dog or cat, or make them sick? and How long will periodical cicadas be singing?
"Singing" isn't the word most people use to describe the loud, persistent noise made by the 17-year cicadas. According to a recent analysis in USA Today, experts standing a few feet away from swarms have measured their sounds at 96 decibels, "slightly higher than a low-flying airplane, which can hit about 80 decibels."
In any case, Dr. Turpin has a long track record of exploring insects that are regarded as annoying or even repulsive. Cockroach races and cricket-spitting contests have been frequent events at the Bug Bowl.
"People are conditioned not to like insects," Dr. Turpin said in 2017 upon his retirement from the Purdue faculty.
Also in 2017, he was a Hoosier History Live guest for a show titled Insect heritage: The As to Zzzzzs. He has shared insights about insects with ABC News' Good Morning America, Time magazine and other national media.
During our show, Dr. Turpin will describe what cicadas eat. For 17 years, Brood X has been living underground, usually attached to the roots of trees. (Another brood of periodical cicadas emerges in 13-year cycles.)
Their emergence is part of a mating process, as are their distinctive sounds. After mating with male cicadas, females lay their eggs on twigs and branches in trees.
That means areas thick with mature trees tend to be where swarms of cicadas emerge. In central Indiana, Eagle Creek Park, the Geist Reservoir area and Fort Harrison State Park are likely sites for heavy swarms. Elsewhere in the state, Shades State Park, McCormick's Creek State Park and the Hoosier National Forest are probable hot spots, according to a recent report in the Indianapolis Star.
Feeling a little creeped out at the thought of the cicadas' return?
Take solace in the fact that the periodical cicadas - which date back to the dinosaur era - will have a fleeting presence. After one month or six weeks at most, Brood X cicadas will no longer be above ground - at least not for another 17 years.
Never mind that he's done videos about historic sites in nine other states. Home turf for the creator of the multimedia project History in Your Own Backyard is Indiana.
With a motto that advises motorists to "travel slowly and stop often," Satolli Glassmeyer has ventured from his home in the small Indiana town of Sunman in Ripley County to make short documentary videos about historic locales across the state. His subjects range from so-called "phantom" bridges and towns so small they don't have a single stoplight to a former movie theater that now houses the city hall in Rushville and a YMCA built in Greensburg in 1915 that's been renovated into senior apartments.
And then there's Howe Military Academy, the prep boarding school that opened in the 1890s in LaGrange County and closed in 2019.
They are among the sites that Satolli will discuss when he joins Nelson to explore destinations featured on History in Your Own Backyard, a project that includes a YouTube channel, a newsletter and an extensive website.
He's particularly intrigued by phantom bridges, which, Satolli explains, are located on "ghost roads," i.e. county roads that have been closed or are no longer maintained. Many now are on private property.
During our show, Satolli will share insights about phantom bridges in Indiana that are particularly noteworthy, including the Triple Whipple Bridge near Aurora, nicknamed "the Queen Mary of all bridges." Built in 1878, the Triple Whipple spans a creek in Dearborn County and is the only bridge with its distinctive design that is still standing in the country.
With Satolli as our guide, we also will explore the phantom bridges at the Jefferson Proving Ground, the munitions testing facility near Madison that was established in a wooded area during the World War II era. At the proving ground, which was closed in 1995, Satolli was escorted by security officials to view the bridges (which are off-limits to the public) and see other historic sites.
A more typical phantom bridge, the Sparks Ferry Bridge that spans the East Fork of the White River in Jackson County, is the focus of one of Satolli's newest History in Your Own Backyard videos.
He also has featured the Princess Theatre in downtown Rushville, a cinema house built in 1915 that closed after more than 100 years. The building, still often called "the Princess" by locals, has been renovated and reopened as a city center, with the mayor's office on an upper floor that has ceilings 20 feet high.
Also in Rush County: scenic East Hill Cemetery, which Satolli notes is the burial site of 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. Created in the 1850s with a "garden cemetery" design concept, East Hill was planned by a Prussian immigrant who had been the head gardener for one of the czars, according to History in Your Own Backyard.
Towns without a single stoplight that have been the focus of our guest Satolli Glassmeyer's videos - and that we will explore during our show - include Saint Paul (Decatur County), once the site of a major goldfish farm, and Dillsboro (Dearborn County), where a sanitarium was patronized by guests who savored its mineral waters and spas.
A former sheet metal worker, Satolli says he became fascinated by historic sites during weekend bicycle trips from his home when he was a teenager. His long cycling ventures, up to 100 miles round trip, would take him to neighboring towns, "where I began to fall in love with the buildings and bridges constructed in the late 1800s and early 1900s."
| Saturdays, noon to 1 p.m. ET on WICR 88.7 FM. Or stream audio live from anywhere on WICR Online! You can listen to recent shows by clicking the podcast links below, or check out our extensive archive of past shows available as podcasts. | | April 17, 2021 Bear pit at Riverside Park and other bygone animal attractions Click here to listen to the podcast. Bears at Riverside Park in Indianapolis? Not for the last century. But for nearly two decades beginning in 1899, a bear pit was among the most popular attractions at the park near the White River. Consisting of a fenced, circular pen with two arched doorways that allowed the bears to enter a sheltered den, the bear pit at Riverside was featured on thousands of postcards that have become collectibles. And the Riverside bear pit, although the longest-lasting and most significant local animal attraction during the era (it even sometimes was casually referred to as a "zoo"), wasn't the only collection of wildlife on display in Indianapolis parks. The popularity of the attraction at Riverside led to a public exhibit of bears at Garfield Park beginning in 1905, according to research by attorney Ed Fujawa, who will be Nelson's guest. Monkeys also were exhibited for a few years at Garfield Park - as well as, even more briefly, at Brookside Park, where visitors also could gaze at exotic birds. Ed, the creator of the history blog Class 900: Indianapolis, has written about the Riverside bear pit. An adventure lover, Ed hiked around Riverside to find remnants of the bygone bear pit, discovering the two arched doorways for the den amid trees, rocks and brush. The Riverside animal attractions - which even included deer, elk, wolves and (briefly) two sea lions, - and at the other parks long predate what is considered to be the first official Indianapolis Zoo. It opened in 1964 in Washington Park with a collection of about 500 animals, according to the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. The zoo at Washington Park closed in 1987, with a spectacular reopening later that year of the zoo at its current site in White River State Park. Of the bygone Riverside Park bear pit, Ed Fujawa writes: "While the bears and other animals were popular with visitors, the conditions in which the animals were kept were not ideal." He describes letters of complaint in 1900 to Indianapolis newspapers. Ed elaborates on the poor treatment of park animals at the time, calling them "disgraceful, especially when compared to modern standards. The animal pens were too small, especially for the bears, and the staff of the parks often did not take action to protect the animals from outside influences, such as visitors to the park, or natural disasters." His blog post recounts floods of the nearby White River that resulted in "close calls" for the bears, who "climbed trees and logs placed in the pit to escape the encroaching water." According to Ed, a female bear at Garfield Park named Minnie died in 1905 after being fed buckeyes by the public. Local newspapers speculated that buckeyes were poisonous to the bear. With his Class 900 blog, Ed focuses on unearthing Indy history that's often been overlooked or forgotten. In 2020, he was a Hoosier History Live guest for a show about tree-planting crusades in Indy that began in the 1850s. Even then, city residents were worried about the loss of tree canopy in the urban area. During the early 1900s, greenhouses at Garfield Park were used in the winter to house some of the animals from Riverside Park, including the monkeys, Ed says. Bears remained at Riverside, sheltering in their den during the winter. In 1904 the bears managed to survive a flood of the nearby White River by climbing trees and logs (Ed describes the local newspaper accounts as "heartbreaking"), but some of the smaller animals and birds at Riverside drowned. The impact on the bear pit of the Great Flood of 1913, the worst flood in Indiana history, is unclear, Ed says. When the last remaining bear at Riverside died in 1917, the animal display closed. The arched doorways of the den and other remnants of the bear pit are challenging to find today, Ed reports. "The site of the bear pit was later converted into a rock garden, which likely explains the numerous rocks spread throughout the site when I visited." Like many other Indianapolis history lovers, Ed initially learned about the bygone bear pits at the parks by discovering vintage postcards depicting them. He reports that postcards of the animal exhibits are regularly sold on ebay and other sites featuring city memorabilia. |
The Covid-19 pandemic obviously will be the focus of work by future historians. But enough history has unfolded already for Hoosier History Live to explore the beginnings of the health crisis in Indiana, including the first diagnosed case and the first death in the state.
During this show, we also will compare the spread in urban and rural areas, describe early challenges in contact tracing and explore other aspects of the emerging epidemic. Nelson will be joined by a journalist who has covered the impact of Covid-19 in Indiana since it entered public awareness.
Shari Rudavsky, the health and medical reporter for the Indianapolis Star, wrote a front-page story last month that described the earliest Hoosier cases of Covid-19 that "provided a harbinger of dark days." Shari, who has a PhD in the history and sociology of science, wrote about the state's first case, which was diagnosed in early March 2020. A patient at Community Hospital North in Indianapolis, the man (whose name has never been released) "was well enough to ride out his illness in a hotel quarantined from his family," Shari reported.
Much less fortunate a few weeks later was Roberta Shelton, 69, a beloved employee of a car rental company in Indianapolis and a tireless community volunteer known as "Birdie." She died at Community Hospital East and became the first coronavirus fatality in Indiana.
Also in March 2020, Shari wrote about the challenges that suddenly were confronting hospitals in rural areas and small cities, including Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes.
During our show, Shari and Nelson also will discuss an early outbreak in Logansport at a Tyson Foods meat-packing plant, the largest employer in Cass County.
Shari also will share insights about, as she puts it, "the challenges of explaining new terminology and new science - such as coronavirus, spike protein [and] other terms - that previously were unknown to most readers, including myself."
Last April, the state of Indiana signed a $43 million contract with Maximus, a health and human services provider, to assist state and local health departments in contact tracing. Analyzing the efforts several months later in an Indianapoli Star article, Shari wrote: "What effective contract tracing most requires is sufficient staff to reach out and conduct in-depth interviews with all touched by a virus. Until recently Indiana, like the rest of the nation, was woefully short-staffed."
Shari also reported on why simple preventative measures to stop the spread took a long time to get through to much of the public. Drawing a comparison with the push years ago regarding seat belts in cars, analysts noted to her that many people "fought back when public health officials first started recommending everyone buckle up."
Some Covid in Indiana history facts:
- The Hoosier diagnosed with the first case in the state "already suspected he had the virus" before he was tested at Community North, Shari reported. That meant the hospital staff could take proper precautions when he arrived.
- The extensive volunteer activities of Roberta "Birdie" Shelton, the first Hoosier to die from the coronavirus, included helping organize fund-raisers to assist the families of two girls from Delphi, Ind., who were murdered in 2017. The case, which continues to draw national publicity, remains unsolved.
- More than 12,840 people in Indiana have died of Covid-19. Since March 2020, more than 710,600 Hoosiers have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Even though we're just past **Women's History Month**, it's never a bad time to spotlight the impact of an Indiana architectural trail-blazer who had both pizzazz and spunk.
Beginning in the 1950s, when women home builders were a rarity, Avriel Shull designed and built mid-century modern homes in Carmel, Indianapolis and other Hoosier cities. National periodicals eventually distributed the house plans of "Avriel" (she often was referred to by her first name only), with orders for her home patterns continuing long after she died in her mid-40s in 1976.
"Years before branding became an essential component of business success, Avriel was both a well-known company brand and a synonym for modern design," according to our guest, Connie Zeigler, owner of C. Resources, on this encore of a show originally broadcast in 2019. A historian, researcher and preservationist, Connie prepared the nomination for the National Register of Historic Places of the Thornhurst subdivision in Carmel, where Avriel designed 21 mid-century modern homes.
Connie also prepared a National Register nomination for Ladywood Estates, an apartment complex (now condos) in Indianapolis designed by Avriel that opened in 1967.
Just as Avriel's homes created something of a stir - with their floor-to-ceiling windows, sliding glass doors, vertical cedar siding and walled patios during an era noted for basic ranch houses - red-haired, charismatic Avriel drew attention on a personal level as well.
In 1951, Life magazine devoted a multi-page photo spread to her splashy wedding, during which Avriel entered amid a release of white birds; at 2 a.m., she lifted her white gown to perform the can-can.
Her husband was one of Indiana's best-known journalists of the era. An irreverent TV columnist for the Indianapolis News (and, before that, for the Indianapolis Times), R.K. Shull also answered reader questions in "Shull's Mailbag," which appeared in 260 newspapers across the country.
None of that overshadowed his wife, who, as Connie has written, "lived life at breakneck speed."
According to Connie, Avriel "often laid the stone herself on the houses she designed." As for an enduring architectural legacy, Connie notes that "At least 100, and probably more, of her houses are still standing in central Indiana."
But Avriel was not an architect. In fact, although she studied at what was then the John Herron Art Institute during the 1940s, Avriel never earned a college degree.
In all of her Thornhurst subdivision houses - which were the focus of a 2017 home tour organized by the Carmel Clay Historical Society - Avriel featured modern fireplaces, some of which she built herself.
In a cover story about Avriel for a 2012 issue of Traces magazine published by the Indiana Historical Society, Connie notes that many of the fireplaces "had two-sided hearths opening into two different rooms."
Connie writes that for home interiors, Avriel chose vinyl-topped stools, tripod-legged lamps and sofas with hairpin legs, "unlike the ruffled sofas and overstuffed chairs of earlier eras." In many of the bathrooms, she painted murals - and added an elaborate "Avriel" as a signature to her work.
By the mid-1960s, Avriel landed contracts to design homes in upscale neighborhoods on the northside of Indianapolis including Avalon Hills, Crow's Nest, Meridian Hills and Sunset Lane. In the final years before her death just shy of her 45th birthday, Avriel was building houses in Brownsburg, Kokomo, Westfield and Evansville.
Our guest Connie Zeigler, after a long, influential career focused primarily on Indianapolis-area history and architecture, moved last month to Providence, R.I.
"I'll continue to do research and writing on a variety of design and architecture-related subjects," she reports, "including a book on several unheralded women designers married to well-known architects from the mid-20th century."
Indiana wants me
Lord, I can't go back there.
Those were the opening lines of a pop song that became a hit in 1970, rising to No. 5 on the Billboard Top 100 list. True crime author Andrew Stoner uses the song, Indiana Wants Me, in his newest book as an entree to exploring fugitives and prison escapees throughout more than 100 years of Indiana history.
To discuss several of the cases described in Wanted in Indiana: Infamous Hoosier Fugitives (The History Press) - including the assassination attempt in 1980 of a national civil rights leader in Fort Wayne that returned to the headlines this month - Andrew will be Nelson's guest. A native of Goshen and a former civilian spokesman for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Andrew now is an associate professor of communications studies at California State University in Sacramento.
During our show, we will explore two cases connected to the FBI that illustrate advances in techniques for tracking down criminals. An escapee in 1919 from the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City was not found until the 1940s, when the FBI's fingerprint detection techniques finally resulted in his identification after a traffic stop in California. In 1960, a robber of banks in Logansport and Hamlet, Ind., made the FBI's Most Wanted List - and was captured just 24 hours later.
In 1980, racist Joseph Paul Franklin committed two shootings in Indiana (one of them fatal) before attempting to assassinate Vernon Jordan, president of the National Urban League, during his trip to Fort Wayne for the organization's annual meeting. Using a hunting rifle, Franklin shot Jordan in the back.
Following a long recovery that made national news, Jordan survived and continued as a close advisor to U.S. presidents, including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. During our show, Andrew will describe how Franklin was tracked down after several months and more shootings. When Jordan died this month at age 85, the horrific episode in Fort Wayne was recounted in his obituaries.
Also during our show, Andrew and Nelson will explore the cases of:
- Leslie "Mad Dog" Irvin, a notorious killer who escaped from the Gibson County Jail in southwestern Indiana in 1956. One of the cases involving Irvin, who was accused in multiple shootings, made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it set a precedent involving pretrial publicity.
- Two women who escaped, separately, from the Indiana Women's Prison when it was located on the near-eastside of Indianapolis. One of the women was not found for 35 years; the other spent many years living, crime-free, just a few blocks from the prison.
- And a 15-year-old from Tippecanoe County who fled in 1942 after being accused of several crimes. Even though Floyd Loveless was a juvenile, he eventually was executed in Nevada after shooting a constable; the case illustrates the differences in the imposition of the death penalty since the 1940s.
As a break from exploring the violent crimes, Andrew and Nelson also will discuss the colorful history of the 1970 song "Indiana Wants Me." Written and performed by Toronto native R. Dean Taylor - it was his only hit, according to Wanted in Indiana - the song remained on Billboard's charts for 15 weeks. Later, it was included on a list of the "52 Most Depressing Songs You've Ever Heard."
She was the victim of one of the most lurid crimes in Indiana history, the brutal rape in March 1925 by D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, that led to her eventual death after a suicide attempt. The deathbed testimony of Madge Oberholtzer, a resident of the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis, resulted in the eventual conviction of Stephenson of second degree murder, a pivotal episode in the downfall of the Klan in Indiana during the 1920s.
For several years, Charlotte Ottinger, a registered nurse who has lived in Irvington for more than 20 years, has been working on a biography of Madge, digging up new information about the 28-year-old state employee and former teacher. Madge Oberholtzer was raped during a train trip to Chicago with Stephenson, who also lived in Irvington. One of his associates accompanied them on the trip.
Charlotte, who is convinced Madge did not willingly go on the train trip, will be Nelson's guest to discuss her extensive research. She has interviewed four grandchildren of Madge's brother, who have given her family documents, photos and other artifacts never seen by the general public or used by other researchers. Some of the material is now in the archives of the Irvington Historical Society; Charlotte is a former board member.
There's even a Women's History Month aspect for our show. According to Charlotte's research into Madge's youth, she was mentored by several Indiana suffragists. Madge graduated from Manual High School in 1914 and attended Butler University, which then was Butler College and located in Irvington. According to Charlotte, the talent in painting and drawing that Madge displayed at Manual earned her scholarships to study at the Herron School of Art.
During our show, Charlotte will describe the impact of Madge's tragic death on her family. Madge's mother, Matilda Oberholtzer, was a short-term patient in a sanitarium in Martinsville after her daughter's death.
An American Sign Language medical interpreter as well as a nurse, Charlotte says her medical background helped her sort through the treatment provided to Madge, the autopsy results and the extensive medical testimony at Stephenson's sensational trial. After her brutal rape in Stephenson's private train car, Madge swallowed poison in a hotel room in Hammond.
Hoosier History Live has discussed the frightening power of Stephenson - who once declared "I am the law in Indiana" - during previous shows. They have included a show last September in which Nelson interviewed James Madison, author of The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (IU Press).
Charlotte's book, tentatively titled The Life and Times of Madge Oberholtzer, is scheduled for publication in October.
At the time of her death, Madge was working at the Indiana Statehouse as the manager of the Young People's Reading Circle, a lending library program for teachers organized by the Department of Education (then called the Department of Public Instruction). Madge was living with her parents in their home in Irvington. That house, as well as the residence of D.C. Stephenson, are still standing and privately owned.
According to Charlotte, other women had been physically and sexually assaulted by Stephenson (1891-1966). "None of them came forward to expose him," Charlotte notes. "Madge was the only woman who publicly exposed him."
A native of Texas, Stephenson already had abandoned a wife and daughter in Oklahoma before arriving in Indiana in 1920, according to Grand Dragon: D.C. Stephenson and the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana (Purdue University Press, 1991) by William Lutholtz. Stephenson, Lutholtz wrote, was a chronic liar who "told so many lies so often that it's difficult to know the truth" about his early life.
Following Madge's death in 1925 in her family's home - where Stephenson had her returned after the train trip - his trial for second-degree murder was held at the Hamilton County Courthouse in Noblesville. Charlotte Ottinger notes that Madge's father died two years later, "some say of a broken heart."
Both were pioneer aviators and heroic World War I fighter pilots from Indiana, and both were killed while flying aircraft overseas.
And Weir Cook and Paul Baer once were the namesakes of the airports in the two largest cities in their home state. Today, although those airports are officially called Indianapolis International Airport and Fort Wayne International Airport, the terminal buildings at each still carry the name of these two great airmen.
To explore the lives of the aviators who earned national acclaim for their valor during what once was known as the Great War, Nelson is joined by two guests in this encore of a show originally broadcast in 2018. The guests are:
- William Bell, an Indianapolis-based writer and retired law enforcement officer who has researched Hancock County native Weir Cook (1892-1943), recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross in World War I. Cook also was hailed as a hero during World War II even though he was well into his 40s when he returned to the Army Air Corp and flew combat missions over the Pacific.
- And Tony Garel-Frantzen of Fort Myers, Fla., the author of Hoosier Aviator Paul Baer: America's First Combat Ace (The History Press, 2017). In his biography of Baer (1894-1930), Tony contends the Fort Wayne native became the first American to shoot down an enemy plane in combat and the first to earn the title of "combat ace." Tony writes that Baer's historic achievements often have been overlooked because he flew for a French squadron prior to the United States' entry into World War I.
The designation of "combat ace," which both Cook and Baer achieved, is given to pilots who accomplish five aerial victories during warfare.
After World War I, Cook helped develop the first municipal airport in Indianapolis, which opened in 1931; he also became its first manager. Following Cook's reenlistment during World War II, he commanded air bases on islands in the Pacific.
After Cook was killed while flying a combat mission, the Indianapolis airport at Indianapolis was named Weir Cook Airport. In 1976, its name was changed to Indianapolis International Airport, outraging many veterans groups.
When the city's newly constructed airport opened at its current site in 2008, the mid-field terminal and the roadway leading to it were named in Cook's honor.
In Fort Wayne, Baer had grown up as a shy but adventure-seeking youth, according to Hoosier Aviator. After France declared war on Germany in 1914, Baer was among a few American volunteers who signed up to fight on the side of the French; America did not declare war until 1917. As a combat pilot, Baer flew missions for both France and the United States.
While working as a commercial pilot for a Chinese airline in 1930, Baer was killed in an aircraft accident near Shanghai. In his honor, the Fort Wayne airport was called Baer Field until the early 1990s, when it was renamed Fort Wayne International Airport.
Like Baer, Weir Cook received his initial flight training in France. He was born Harvey Weir Cook in the small Hancock County town of Wilkinson, where a community park has been named in his honor. Cook grew up in Anderson, graduated from Anderson High School and attended both DePauw University and Washington & Jefferson College before moving to France at the outbreak of World War I.
During the war, Cook downed at least seven enemy aircraft and was promoted to flight commander of the 94th Aero Squadron, a pursuit (fighter) unit of the U.S. Army Air Service. After the war, Cook undertook many roles in the civilian aviation industry and helped bring the first municipal airport to Indianapolis. He was killed during World War II in a crash while flying a P-39 Bell Airacobra fighter plane over the Pacific island of New Caledonia.
During World War I, Baer achieved his first aerial victory in March 1918, shooting down a German fighter plane while flying for a French squadron. That victory - which was quickly followed by others - made Baer the first U.S. pilot to shoot down an enemy plane in warfare, according to Tony Garel-Frantzen's biography.
By mid-April 1918, Baer had felled five enemy planes, making him the first American combat ace, Tony writes.
In May 1918, Baer's plane was shot down. Although he escaped serious injuries, Baer became a prisoner of war and spent time in several German prisons.
"True to his reticent nature," Tony writes, "Baer rarely spoke in detail while he was alive about the day he was shot down or about the months he spent in captivity."
As Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, we will explore a range of aspects associated with women who have served in the Indiana General Assembly and as state and federal officials from the Hoosier state.
What questions have been asked of women candidates for public office that have not been posed to their male counterparts? What's been the percentage of female lawmakers at the Indiana Statehouse? Why has Indiana's lieutenant governor frequently been a woman during the last 20 years, but a woman never has served as governor?
Not only will we delve into those questions, we even will look at the number of women honored with statues and marble busts at the Indiana Capitol Building, compared with those that commemorate men.
The latter issue was the focus of a column a few years ago by the acclaimed, retired political journalist who will be Nelson's guest in this show on women's history in Indiana. Beginning in 1991, Mary Beth Schneider covered every session of the General Assembly for the Indianapolis Star until 2013. She also covered national political conventions, presidential debates and the caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and other states.
During her career at the Star, which began in 1979, Mary Beth covered a variety of other beats and served as an assistant city editor; in 2019 and 2020, she wrote a weekly political column and edited stories for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news service run by Franklin College students.
According to state legislative records, women lawmakers make up about 21 percent of the current General Assembly. Of the nine members of the U.S. Congress from Indiana, two are women. Since 2003, when Gov. Joe Kernan appointed Kathy Davis, a Democrat from Indianapolis, as the first women lieutenant governor in Indiana's history (her successor, Becky Skillman, a Republican from Bedford, became the first woman elected to the position, serving two terms under Gov. Mitch Daniels), the state's No. 2 post has been held by a woman except for about nine months in 2016. That's when current governor Eric Holcomb had the job.
Not only hasn't a woman ever served as governor of Indiana, a woman has never been mayor of the state's largest city. Since 1995, three women have been nominated by the major political parties for mayor of Indianapolis, but all of them were unsuccessful. In 1999, Sue Anne Gilroy, a Republican, was defeated by Bart Peterson. Melina Kennedy, a Democrat who was deputy mayor under Peterson, lost her mayoral campaign in 2011 to incumbent Greg Ballard. Back in 1995, Z. Mae Jimison, a Democrat, also lost to the incumbent mayor, Steve Goldsmith.
When Gilroy ran her campaign for mayor, she was serving as Indiana's secretary of state. The current secretary of state also is a woman. Last month, Connie Lawson, a Republican from Hendricks County, announced she will be stepping down to, in her words, "focus on my health and my family."
Lawson, who has been in the post since 2012, is the longest-serving secretary of state in Indiana history. Before becoming secretary of state, she served for 16 years in the Indiana Senate. In 2006, Lawson made history by becoming the first woman to serve as a majority floor leader in the senate.
Some history facts:
- In 1920, the year that women achieved the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the first woman was elected to the Indiana legislature. She was Julia Nelson, a Republican from Muncie.
- The first woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Indiana was Virginia Jenckes, a Democrat from Terre Haute. Hoosier History Live discussed Jenckes, who was elected in 1932, during a show last March that focused on Hoosier women who advocated for suffrage.
- In a 2019 column for TheStatehouseFile.com, our guest Mary Beth Schneider noted that the second floor of the Indiana Capitol Building has seven busts, all of them men. All of the eight busts on the third floor also honor men except for one, a bust commemorating the late U.S. Rep. Julia Carson.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month, our focus will be on a massive movement of an estimated 6 million people during a span of nearly 60 years. Beginning during the World War I era, African Americans migrated in unprecedented numbers from the South to cities in Northern states, including Indiana.
According to an article published in Smithsonian magazine, the waves of 20th century migration began with a move of Black families during the winter of 1916 from Selma, Alabama, to the North, a little-noticed start to powerful demographic shift that also encompassed a transition from agriculture to factory work. By the time it ended in the early 1970s, "a rural people had become urban."
Some historians use the term Great Migration to apply to the entire span. Others refer to the era from the 1910s to 1940 as the First Great Migration, and describe the 1940s to 1970 movement as the Second Great Migration.
To explore a range of factors and ramifications associated with this consequential migration, Nelson will be joined by Jakobi Williams, Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of African American and African Diasporas Studies and the Department of History at Indiana University.
Jakobi, who was born and grew up on the south side of Chicago, will discuss ways that state and local governments in the South attempted to restrict African Americans from leaving. He also will describe the challenges that confronted them in Northern cities after they resettled.
Since the early 1970s, demographers have documented a "reverse migration" among the U.S. Black population. As USA Today explained in a 2015 analysis, in recent years more African Americans have moved to the South than left it, returning to metro areas such as Atlanta and Charlotte.
Our guest Jakobi Williams, the author of From the Bullet to the Ballot (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) , suggests the PBS series Eyes on the Prize as a resource for those who want to learn more about the Great Migration.
Describing the beginnings of the Great Migration, the Smithsonian article notes: "To fill the assembly lines, companies began recruiting Black Southerners to work in the steel mills, railroads and factories. Resistance in the South to the loss of cheap Black labor meant that recruiters often had to act in secret or face fines and imprisonment."
The article describes attempts by public officials in the South to retain African Americans "by arresting them at railroad platforms on grounds of 'vagrancy' or tearing up their tickets."
According to the USA Today analysis, the three states with the largest population of African Americans at the end of the 1890s were Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. "By 1970, New York, Illinois and California had the most African Americans."
The reverse trend that began in the 1970s - the move of African Americans to the South - generally has been led by young, college-educated professionals and retirees, according to several sources.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month - as well as the Bicentennial era of Indianapolis - we will explore the life of the first woman of color to move to the new Hoosier capital in 1821.
Little had been known about Chaney Lively (1800-1858?), who came to the Indiana wilderness from Kentucky, until our guest researched her life for a cover story in 2019 for Nuvo, the alternative newsweekly. Laura McPhee, the former editor of Nuvo, will join Nelson to share details of her research about Chaney Lively, who arrived as the clerk and housekeeper for surveyor Alexander Ralston, who created the design for Indianapolis.
After Ralston died in 1827, Chaney Lively became the first African-American woman to own a house in the Hoosier capital. At that point the city consisted only of the downtown area known today as the Mile Square, which Ralston designed after coming to Indianapolis in the early summer of 1821.
"When the platted lots went for sale in October, he bought two lots on the first day: one for him and one expressly for Chaney," according to Laura's article. Chaney Lively inherited the property at Meridian and Maryland streets when Ralston died.
Laura notes that although Chaney Lively arrived as a free woman of color, she had been enslaved in Kentucky. "It's not clear where or when, but...Ralston purchased Chaney as a slave," Laura wrote. "Most likely, he bought her in Louisville, a major slave trading hub at the time he lived there in the early 1800s."
By researching accounts of Hoosier pioneers, including the multi-volume diary of civic leader Calvin Fletcher, who became the first practicing attorney in Indianapolis, Laura has determined that Chaney Lively was a highly regarded, well-liked resident of the city.
Hoosier History Live explored the life of Ralston, who had been born in Scotland, for a show in 2013; during a show in 2016, we delved into the life of Fletcher, a New England native who, in addition to becoming an attorney, was a banker, state legislator and the owner of vast tracts of property in central Indiana.
By the time Ralston died and Chaney, who lived with him, "moved into her own home in 1827," Laura wrote, "there were less than 60 people of color - men, women and children - living in Indianapolis out of a population of a little more than 1,000."
In addition to sharing details about the life of Chaney Lively, Laura will describe other Black residents who came to nascent Indianapolis. The population increased in the 1830s with the construction through the city of the National Road (now U.S. 40/Washington Street). When labor camps sprang up for workers on the road, Chaney Lively cooked and did laundry for many of them. She also took in boarders, according to Laura's article.
In 1836, Chaney married John Britton, a former slave who became a barber in Indianapolis. They were among the founding members of Bethel AME Church, which opened in 1841. In Laura's article for Nuvo, she concludes Chaney died in 1857 or 1858 based on a reference by Fletcher to her passing.
Since her departure from Nuvo in 2019, Laura has owned Pen and Pink Vintage, a book shop in the Garfield Park neighborhood specializing in books by women, Indiana authors and Indiana history. At Nuvo, where she was an editor and award-winning writer for nearly 15 years, Laura was known for her coverage of local news and social justice issues.
Laura says she decided to research Chaney Lively's life out of frustration at the scarcity of research undertaken by others.
She determined that when Ralston, who had no known family members in America, arrived in Indianapolis with 21-year-old Chaney Lively, she was described as "a mulatto woman." After Chaney's marriage to John Britton, she is rarely mentioned in diaries and memoirs of early settlers or in Indianapolis newspapers, Laura discovered.
But Britton, a civic leader in the Black community, was mentioned frequently. In 1845, he was a vocal supporter for justice in the death of their neighbor, a Black man who was attacked by a white mob. Britton also was an Indiana delegate to the 1848 Colored National Convention initiated by Frederick Douglass, according to Laura's research.
Chaney and John Britton had a daughter, Eliza. Since her Nuvo article was published, Laura McPhee has been searching for their descendants.
For another show in our periodic series that offers listeners an opportunity to call with questions about Indiana's heritage, our host, author and historian Nelson Price, will be joined by Charlie Hyde, CEO of the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site.
In between phone calls from listeners, Nelson and Charlie will interview each other about an array of topics, including how Benjamin Harrison, the only president elected from Indiana, handled an epidemic in 1892, his final year in the White House. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 1892 cholera epidemic has been the focus of recent articles in the national press.
During our show, Charlie will explain how President Harrison responded when a ship from Hamburg, Germany, one of the epicenters of the epidemic, was en route to the United States. The cholera epidemic began in April 1892 in India and quickly spread to Europe, all while Harrison was dealing with a health crisis in his own family: First Lady Caroline Scott Harrison was gravely ill with tuberculosis and would die later in 1892 in the White House.
In between insights from Charlie and Nelson about this episode and others, listeners are invited to phone the WICR-FM (88.7) studio at 317-788-3314 and pose questions about any aspect of the state's history; typically on Hoosier History Live, questions from listeners are limited to the final 20 minutes of the show.
As we continue to salute Black History Month, Nelson will also discuss the 28th U.S. Colored Troops, an African-American regiment from Indiana during the Civil War. Even before the regiment was formed in 1864, Black soldiers from Indiana had been fighting for the Union Army in an infantry unit from Massachusetts; that legendary regiment was depicted in the movie Glory (1989) starring Denzel Washington.
Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901), who became a brigadier general during the Civil War, initiated attempts during his subsequent political career to expand civil rights for African Americans; Charlie will describe these attempts during our show.
Charlie also will discuss the reaction in Indianapolis in 1888 when Harrison, a Republican, was nominated as a presidential candidate. It is the focus of a current exhibit at the presidential site titled The Night Indianapolis Roared.
Another topic during our show will relate to the recent dedication in Carmel of a sculpture and interactive kiosks in honor of Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981). The famous composer, who grew up in Bloomington and Indianapolis, is profiled in Nelson's book Indiana Legends, 4th edition (Hawthorne Publishing, 2005). Nelson had several interviews with Hoagy's son, Randy Carmichael, who died in 2018; Randy had been a Hoosier History Live guest seven years earlier. The sculpture and kiosks honoring Hoagy are near the Center for the Performing Arts, which includes the Great American Songbook Foundation.
Since our show in 2019 about the Indiana Medical History Museum, news has unfolded related to the museum, which is housed in a building that was part of the historic campus of the former Central State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Indianapolis that closed in 1994.
Some of the developments concern the efforts of the Indiana Medical History Museum to identify the unmarked graves of patients who were buried in a long-neglected nearby cemetery. Last November, the museum issued a public protest when utility-related construction authorized by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department disrupted the interred remains of some patients who died between 1848 and 1905.
When Sarah Halter, executive director of the museum, is Nelson's guest, she will provide updates about the cemetery project. Some aspects have been resolved, according to Sarah.
The remains of the patients affected by the utility work have been carefully exhumed by archaeologists and will be reinterred elsewhere. But other aspects of the museum's cemetery initiatives have yet to reach a resolution. The cemetery is on land owned by the city and used by the police department for its horse patrol.
The cemetery initiatives are part of an expanded focus at the museum to humanize the former patients at the psychiatric hospital that Sarah will describe during our show.
They include, she says, "a new, permanent re-interpretation of our specimen collection that emphasizes the humanity of these specimens and tells the stories of the people from whom they came."
In addition to the museum's exhibits conveying the stories of patients at Central State, many of the personal stories now can be viewed online, with new accounts added periodically.
"We hope that these projects will not only re-humanize the patients, who were too often left out of the story, but also combat stigma and foster compassion and respect for all people, past and present, who experience mental health issues," Sarah says.
The museum is housed in a brick structure once known as the Old Pathology Building. During the 1890s, brain research considered groundbreaking for its era was conducted in clinical labs in the building, which also had an autopsy room and an amphitheater for lectures to medical students.
During our show, Sarah will describe the development underway of a project called Voices from Central State. Designed to be a "memory archive/forum," it will serve as an online platform for people with a range of connections to Central State to share stories and photos as well as engage in discussion.
Like a seasoned pop music act reuniting for another sold-out tour, host **Nelson Price** and his guest **David Lindquist** will join forces once again to explore tales from David's more than 22 years of writing about pop music and culture for ***The Indianapolis Star***. But don't expect a rehash of greatest hits from **their show last December**. The two have plenty of fresh material to explore that they simply didn't have time to cover on the last go round.
The emergence of the Fountain Square neighborhood in Indianapolis as a nightspot destination, the opening of the Palladium in Carmel and the death of the owner of the Slippery Noodle Inn, one of the most distinctive venues for blues music in the country, all happened during Dave's long run at The Star, which ended last month.
So he will rejoin Nelson to share insights about those topics and others, including the increasing trend of featuring music concerts as part of major sports events such as the Final Four basketball tournament of the NCAA, races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Super Bowl that Indianapolis hosted in 2012.
Dave also will discuss one of the most challenging reviews he had to write. At the Palladium in 2011, a concert featuring country music star Glen Campbell was "mystifyingly bad," Dave wrote. He described how Campbell "came across as unprepared at best and disoriented at worst." Within about 10 days, Campbell's family revealed he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six months earlier.
During our show last month, Dave discussed his interviews with John Mellencamp, the Indiana-based rock star. This time, we will focus on a drummer who had a long association with Mellencamp and whom Dave Lindquist included in his list of Indiana's Top 25 Musicians. Kenny Aronoff studied at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and performed during the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2009. Esquire magazine called Aronoff, who played with Mellencamp for 17 years beginning in 1980, "the most famous drummer you've never heard of."
In downtown Indy, the Slippery Noodle Inn opened in 1850 and had several name changes (along with a reputation that periodically was unsavory) until it was purchased in the early 1960s by the family of Hal Yeagy, who died in November. In Dave Lindquist's report about Yeagy's death, he quoted musicians who described "The Noodle" as "a major shrine to blues and live music."
During this show, Dave will discuss the Slippery Noodle as well as other concert venues, including the Murat Theatre and the lawn at White River State Park.
Our show comes just before Dave starts a new media endeavor. He will be the host on WTTS-FM (92.3) of a new weekly music program, The Beat with Dave Lindquist. His show, which premieres at 7 pm Monday (Feb. 1), will feature "fresh music from the local independent and underground music scene and music from familiar artists," according to WTTS-FM.
Later this year, a historic marker is planned for the birthplace in Brazil, Ind., of Jimmy Hoffa, the controversial labor leader whose disappearance in 1975 remains one of the country's major missing persons cases.
Hoffa, the powerful, long-time president of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, met with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 to make a donation to social justice work. Even so, Hoffa had "a complicated relationship with the civil rights movement," according to our guest, Justin Clark, digital initiatives director for the Indiana Historical Bureau.
For the historical bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library, Justin has produced and written a video essay about Hoffa's meeting with Rev. King, as well as other aspects of the life of the labor leader, who was convicted of jury tampering in 1964 and served nearly four years in prison. He vanished after going to a restaurant in Detroit to meet with men connected to organized crime. Despite extensive investigations for several years, Hoffa's body never has been found; he was declared legally dead in 1982.
Our guest Justin Clark, who has researched labor history, notes that during Hoffa's 14 years as president of the Teamsters, the union's membership greatly expanded. Hoffa crusaded to improve "the lives and working conditions of its members," Justin says.
Born in 1913, Hoffa grew up in a hard-scrabble family of four children in Brazil. When Hoffa was 7 years old, his father died, so his mother took a series of jobs, including as a cook in a local restaurant and as a laundry service operator. In 1924, the Hoffas moved to Detroit; he dropped out of school after the eighth grade to seek full-time work.
Although Hoffa primarily was based out of Detroit for the rest of his life, he periodically returned to his Indiana hometown, sometimes to support community endeavors. During the early 1960s, the Teamsters made a significant donation to Clay County Hospital.
His meeting with Rev. King also involved a donation, although the session seemed to be an "unlikely pairing" of two newsmakers, Justin notes. "One [was] a slick-haired, brash and controversial labor leader, and the other [was] a measured, eloquent and inspirational pastor."
During the meeting, Hoffa handed Rev. King a $25,000 check to support efforts for racial equality. Even so, Hoffa's history with civil rights was decidedly uneven. In the late 1950s, newspapers reported that he had discriminated against African-Americans in a local union chapter, according to Justin's research. In 1963, Hoffa did not support the March on Washington in which Rev. King was the final speaker, delivering his historic "I have a dream" speech.
In his new memoir, he describes himself as a "meek" boy who dealt with a severe stutter when he was growing up on the northside of Indianapolis. So John Mutz, now 85, seemed unlikely to carve out a career as a political and civic leader.
But even before his two terms as Indiana’s lieutenant governor (1981-89), he was playing a key role in many facets of the modern history of his hometown, including the birth of Unigov, the consolidation of most aspects of city and Marion County governments that was considered revolutionary in the late 1960s.
When Mutz and other emerging political leaders, including Richard Lugar, started brainstorming about ways to invigorate their hometown - which in the mid-1960s was "regarded as a sleepy backwater," as Mutz puts it - their vision was not to unify city and county governments. According to An Examined Life: The John Mutz Story (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2020), they aspired to make the Hoosier capital the home of a public, state-supported university independent of either Indiana or Purdue universities.
To explore how that effort changed direction - as well as other aspects of political and civic history - Mutz will be Nelson's guest. A lifelong Republican, Mutz made headlines in September when he became, as the Indianapolis Business Journal put it, "the first prominent Indiana Republican to publicly rebuke Trump."
In announcing he would vote for Joe Biden in the presidential race, Mutz wrote: "I am not leaving my party. I am following my conscience."
Like Biden, Mutz has coped with a stutter that became apparent during his boyhood at Indianapolis Public School No. 84 and Broad Ripple High School, where he was a member of the class of 1953. In An Examined Life, he describes the city then as "insular" and the northside neighborhoods where he lived as lacking in diversity, noting he had only one Black classmate at Broad Ripple.
After achieving success as a political and civic leader, Mutz was asked to speak to camps and support groups for children who were, in his words, "trying to conquer their stutter." He adds, "These experiences were some of the most moving of my life."
In addition to his involvement in what became Unigov, Mutz also was among a group of leaders in the 1970s - eventually known as the City Committee - that settled on emphasizing sports as a strategy for spurring rejuvenation in downtown Indy.
Acknowledging in An Examined Life that almost all of those leaders then were men, he writes: "I am amazed that our society has still not recognized the untapped potential in women's leadership."
The Hoosier women whose leadership he praises include some who have been previous Hoosier History Live guests, such as U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker and another former lieutenant governor, Sue Ellspermann.
He calls Lugar, who was elected mayor in 1967 when Mutz was serving in the Indiana General Assembly, a "first-class intellect." In An Examined Life, Mutz describes how they, along with other political and civic leaders, met at a private home to develop ways to invigorate Indianapolis. They had noticed that Jacksonville, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn., had consolidated their city and county governments; the move appealed to Lugar, Mutz and their colleagues because they felt Indianapolis and Marion County officials were "duplicating work or not working collaboratively."
In 1969, legislation that allowed Unigov passed in the general assembly. Among its most intense opponents, Mutz writes, was his mother-in-law, who was serving then as the Marion County recorder.
A few years later, Lugar insisted that Market Square Arena, which became the home of the Indiana Pacers, be built downtown, bucking a national trend - as well as lobbying in central Indiana - to locate sports stadiums in the suburbs. The opening of Market Square Arena in the early 1970s is considered a major early milestone in downtown's revival.
After his two terms as lieutenant governor ended in 1989, Mutz became a philanthropic and business leader. That included stints as president of the Lilly Endowment until 1993, followed by president of Public Service Indiana, which then was the state's largest electric utility.
His memoir, An Examined Life, was written in collaboration with political historian Ted Frantz, director of the Institute for Civic Leadership and Mayoral Archives at the University of Indianapolis.
To mark the start of the new season for the Indiana Pacers , we will time travel more than 50 years back to explore the history that led up to their debut game against the Kentucky Colonels in the Coliseum at the State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis. The new team was part of an upstart professional league, the colorful American Basketball Association (ABA), and before any of the players had even scored a point, much civic, social and sports history already had been made.
Two previous pro basketball teams based in Indianapolis had died. One of them, the Indianapolis Olympians, went down in scandal.
Efforts at putting together the Pacers team had met a variety of challenges. Unsuccessful attempts had been made to woo household names in Indiana - including former high school basketball sensations Oscar Robertson and identical twins Tom and Dick Van Arsdale - to be part of the Pacers organization. And some of the African-American players who had been signed to the team encountered challenges finding housing in the Hoosier capital due to the racial discrimination that was unfortunately common at the time.
To explore the rich history of the early era of the Pacers - including the years immediately following the team's first game in 1967 - Nelson is joined in studio by veteran sports journalist Mark Montieth in this encore of a show originally broadcast in 2017. As a boy growing up in Indy, Mark listened to the debut Pacers game on the radio. He is the author of Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis (Cardinal Publishing Group).
In the early 1960s, Mark writes, the Hoosier capital was growing, "yet it had no national sports identity beyond the Indianapolis 500."
Civic and business leaders wanted to change that. The result was a team that won three national championships in the ABA, which eventually merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a sportswriter at The Indianapolis Star, Mark Montieth covered the Pacers for 12 of the team's NBA seasons.
Early games in the ABA often were raucous, and fighting among the players was common. Several of the early Pacers were regarded as wild characters, including fan favorites Bob Netolicky and Mel Daniels.
The starting salaries of early Pacers players? According to Reborn, one aspiring Pacer signed a contract for $10,000 (that would be about $78,000 in 2020), with the possibility of a $2,000 bonus.
The ABA was distinctive for its red, white and blue basketball and the introduction to the pro game of the 3-point shot. "The Pacers were born and raised in a league and an era unlike any other in the history of professional sports," Mark writes in Reborn.
The future of the team and of the league were considered so uncertain that Bobby "Slick" Leonard (the former high school basketball star from Terre Haute who later coached the Pacers to the national championships) was so wary of giving up a secure job as a salesman for class rings that he didn't initially seek the coaching opportunity.
Some early players were essentially being offered second chances to achieve hoops glory. In high school and college, Netolicky was "more motivated to have fun than to play basketball" and had exotic pets such as an ocelot and a boa constrictor, according to Reborn. His eventual teammate Roger Brown had taken a factory job on the night shift after his links to a gambler ended opportunities as a player in college and with the NBA.
Other Pacers history facts:
- Although Reborn indicates that it remains unclear who originally suggested "Pacers" as the team's name, initial announcements referenced the harness horse racetrack at the Fairgrounds near the Pacers' home court at the Coliseum (a pacer is a type of racehorse). Initial reports also referred to the Indy 500, which features a pace car.
- The team's colors, blue and gold, have remained the same for 50 years and are a tribute to the state's official colors - as seen, for example, on the state flag.
- Seven of the 12 players on the starting roster were African American. "That amounted to a bold statement in 1967," Mark writes in Reborn. "Most NBA teams were adhering to an unspoken color barrier that kept rosters half-white at the bare minimum. Even the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers, representing the nation's largest and most cosmopolitan cities, conformed."
As Hoosier History Live kicks off our 13th year on the air, our spotlight will turn to a historic milestone for Indiana's largest city.
Many historians consider Jan. 6, 1821 to be the official birthdate of Indianapolis (it's often called Founders Day for the city) because that's when the Indiana General Assembly approved the site selected for the new state capital. They also approved the new city's name.
So it's an ideal opportunity to present another program in our periodic series saluting the Bicentennial era that stretches from June 2020 to May 2021. The celebratory era began with the 200th anniversary of a meeting on June 7, 1820 at a cabin owned by pioneer John McCormick in what is now White River State Park. At that meeting, which also is sometimes called the city's birthdate, state officials selected the site they would recommend to the legislature.
For this show, we will explore several topics, including some related to upcoming events on Founders Day, exhibits, lost landmarks and how the legislature handled the historic act that approved the site for Indianapolis. To explore more about the latter, our guest, Indianapolis-based Jordan Ryan of The History Concierge, recommends what she calls an "underused resource:" the Indiana Historical Legislative Documents collection.
Jordan is an architectural historian and archivist who formerly served as the coordinator of the Indianapolis Bicentennial collecting initiative and exhibit for the Indiana Historical Society. In that capacity, she helped organize exhibits at the Indiana History Center related to our topics, including a "Lost Landmarks" exhibit that will open Jan. 9.
Major landmarks that have been demolished during 200 years of Indianapolis history - and that we will explore with Jordan during our show - include the following:
- The English Theater, Hotel and Opera House on Monument Circle. Built in stages beginning during the 1880s, the majestic structure, which included the largest theater stage in the state, was a showplace in the Midwest for nearly 70 years. Amid a public outcry, it was razed in 1948 to make way for construction of a JC Penney department store. Many architectural historians consider the loss of the lavish English Theater and Hotel, with its frescoed walls, massive pillars and an exterior balcony for public figures to address audiences on Monument Circle, to be the most regrettable demolition in city history. (During the 1970s, the J.C. Penney store that replaced it was closed. In recent decades, the site has been an office complex that, until last year, housed the headquarters of Anthem Inc., a health benefits provider.)
- And the Indianapolis Cyclorama, a distinctive, circular structure with a dome that was built after the Civil War with the singular purpose of showcasing a gigantic, 360-degree mural that was a public attraction. It was a painting of the Battle of Atlanta created by a team of artists who traveled to Georgia to observe the site of the bloody conflict. In 1903, the Cyclorama exhibition hall was demolished. Since then, its site at Market and Illinois streets – about one block from the Indiana Statehouse – has been used in several ways. Currently, a hotel in the Hilton chain is located on the site.
Founders Day events on Jan. 6 will include Lost and Demolished: Preservation Through 200 Years of Indianapolis History, a virtual program co-hosted by Indiana Landmarks and the Historical Society. The Historical Society also has a "You Are There" exhibit about the pageant and other festivities that celebrated the Centennial of Indianapolis in 1920. Hoosier History Live explored the Centennial celebrations - as well as the ways Indy marked its 175th birthday in 1971 - during our show kicking off the year 2020.
Some of the lost landmarks we will explore during our show - including the Cyclorama and English Theater, Hotel and Opera House - are featured in Indianapolis Then and Now (Pavilion Books, 2015 revised edition), a visual history of the city co-written by Nelson, our host, and Joan Hostetler.
Also during this show, Nelson and our guest Jordan Ryan will discuss some of the names that briefly were proposed for the new state capital before the General Assembly approved "Indianapolis." Alternatives included naming the city Tecumseh as a salute to the great Native American leader, a Shawnee chief who was based in Indiana. Even though Tecumseh and his warriors fought white settlers in battle, admiration for his leadership skills was widespread on both sides.
After the site and name for Indianapolis were approved in 1821, surveyors Alexander Ralston and Elias Fordham were hired to design the city; their plan also will be described by during the show.
Related to some of these developments in 1821, on Jan. 6 the Indianapolis Bicentennial Commission will offer a Founders Day virtual activity for students in third through sixth grades. The lesson involves the original city plat map, called the Ralston Plan, and an invitation for students to design their own city maps; details are posted online.
On the shores of Lake Michigan at the Indiana Dunes, five distinctive houses - including the legendary House of Tomorrow - are the focus of nearly as much public interest as the famous sand dunes. They also are the focus of this encore show originally broadcast in 2018. Designed as showplace homes for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, the houses were brought by barge to the resort town of Beverly Shores, Ind., after the fair closed.
During the 80-plus years since arriving at their permanent location, the former exhibit houses - which include residences known as the Florida House and the Cyprus House - have had their share of ups and downs.
That's particularly true for the House of Tomorrow, which was built to embody futurists' ideas about how Americans would live during the 21st century. With floor-to-ceiling glass walls, the 12-sided house had the world's first General Electric dishwasher, an automatic garage-door opener and central air conditioning. Its first-floor service area even included a small airplane hangar, on the assumption that personal air travel would be common in the years ahead.
"In the midst of the Great Depression, the House of Tomorrow ... offered millions a hopeful vision of a brighter, easier future," noted Indiana Preservation, a publication of Indiana Landmarks.
Perched on the Dunes, the five former exhibit houses are the only remaining structures from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, which had a "Century of Progress" theme. Since the mid-1960s, the houses have been part of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Owned by the National Park Service, the houses are leased to Indiana Landmarks, the historic preservation organization. Landmarks, in turn, subleases them to tenants who agree to maintain them.
Four of the houses - including the pink Florida House, which has patios with sweeping views of Lake Michigan - are in good shape. But not the House of Tomorrow, which fell into shocking disrepair during the 1990s and is currently unoccupied. A fund-raising campaign is underway by Indiana Landmarks to finance a $3 million restoration, with the house leased upon completion. It no longer has an airplane hangar. Some of the restoration has been done, but no work is currently underway.
Todd Zeiger, director of Indiana Landmarks' northern regional office in South Bend, is Nelson's studio guest to describe the colorful saga of the five distinctive homes in Beverly Shores.
At the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, 1.2 million people paid 10 cents apiece to tour the House of Tomorrow.
In 2016, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the house a "National Treasure," a label reserved for "significant structures in dire straits," according to a story in the Indianapolis Star. Because of their location on the Dunes, the houses take a beating from Mother Nature; wind, sand and the harsh winters of far-northern Indiana conspire to make preservation an on-going challenge.
The town of Beverly Shores was created during the late 1920s and early '30s by two brothers, Chicago-based developers Frederick and Robert Bartlett, as an exclusive resort for "affluent individuals interested in escaping their crowded urban environment," according to Beverly Shores: A Suburban Dunes Resort (Arcadia Publishing) by Jim Morrow, a preservationist in northern Indiana. The town, which has a population today of about 600 residents, was named for Robert Bartlett's daughter, Beverly.
"The House of Tomorrow's nationwide publicity made it an extremely attractive promotional addition to Beverly Shores from Robert Bartlett's perspective," Morrow wrote. "Bartlett had the house sited high on a dune overlooking the lake to take advantage of its transparent walls."
Chicago architect George Fred Keck designed the House of Tomorrow, which the press in 1933 described as "America's First Glass House."
The Florida House was designed by a Miami-based architect. The pink, Modernist-style house at the Chicago World's Fair captivated visitors, many of whom were living in houses built in Tudor, Queen Anne, Italianate and other architectural styles prevalent during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
For virtual tours of the "Century of Progress" houses from the 1933 World's Fair and their restorations, our guest Todd Zeiger of Indiana Landmarks recommends these online sources:
- A Century of Progress - overview
- Our Fair House: Restoring Indiana's Century of Progress Homes
One of his final stories for The Indianapolis Star focused on a new website full of details about more than 55 years of concerts: indianarockhistory.com
For more than 22 of those years, David Lindquist has written about pop music and culture for The Star, reviewing concerts through three name changes for the venue that opened as Deer Creek Music Center (it's now Ruoff), covering the transition from Market Square Arena to Bankers Life Fieldhouse, interviewing notables like John Mellencamp and describing the rise of Fountain Square as a nightlife destination.
In August 2011, Dave was in the audience for an outdoor concert at the Indiana State Fair, preparing to write a review, when high winds caused the stage rigging to collapse, resulting in, as he puts it, "a tragedy directly in front of me." Seven people were killed and 58 injured after a severe windstorm struck the stage and equipment just before a Sugarland concert was about to begin.
In the wake of Dave Lindquist's departure from The Star - he was among several veteran journalists who accepted buyout offers from Gannett, the newspaper's parent company - he will be Nelson's guest to share reflections about concerts, venues and celebrity Hoosiers whom he has interviewed. In addition to Mellencamp and other music icons, Dave has had several interviews with (and reported on the multi-media endeavors of) Indianapolis-based novelist John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars and other bestsellers.
Last month, Dave reported the death of the owner of one of the most distinctive venues for blues music in Indiana. The Slippery Noodle Inn in downtown Indy opened in 1850 and is the oldest continuously operated tavern in the state. Hal Yeagy took over "The Noodle" in the mid-1980s from his father and transformed the historic bar (which had about half a dozen names over the decades) into a blues music destination patronized by well-known figures like Peyton Manning.
Hal, who died at age 63 in November, was a Hoosier History Live guest in 2008 to discuss the colorful heritage of the venue; in addition its historic distinction as a tavern, the building at 372 S. Meridian St. is considered to be the oldest commercial structure in the Hoosier capital.
The scores of other venues where Dave Lindquist has reviewed concerts range from the lawn at White River State Park to the Murat Theatre (he calls it "an amazing place to catch a show") and Bankers Life, which opened in 1999 as Conseco Fieldhouse; its predecessor as a pro basketball arena and concert venue, Market Square Arena, was imploded in 2001. "Bankers Life Fieldhouse has a bad reputation for its acoustics, which is partially earned but partially an unfair label," he says.
Dave plans to continue his career in entertainment journalism following his departure from The Star. During his career at the newspaper, he created and hosted "Indy Star Sessions," a live music video webcast, as well as a podcast, "Dave's Old Interview Tapes."
The Indiana Rock History project, which includes the indianarockhistory.com website, was created by a concert organizer whom Dave calls "the ultimate live music insider:" Steve Sybesma, who co-owned the concert company Sunshine Promotions for more than 25 years beginning in 1974.
The website features attendance figures, the pay for performers and ticket sales for a vast array of Indiana concerts. They include a Rolling Stones concert at IU's Assembly Hall in 1975 that Sunshine organized (the band was paid $93,000) as well as concerts that didn't involve the company, such as a performance in Muncie by guitarist Jimi Hendrix in 1968.
Referring to his coverage of Mellencamp, Dave Lindquist says, "I think it's been fascinating to watch John Mellencamp speak out on his 'blue' political leanings when he lives in a 'red' state, and many of his long-time fans are conservative." Dave plans to share some anecdotes about this during our show.
He also will discuss a jazz music history project that was the focus of one of his final stories for The Star. A documentary is in development about the life of Wes Montgomery, the legendary Indianapolis jazz guitarist who died in 1968. After headlining at nightspots on Indiana Avenue, Montgomery reaped national acclaim, won two Grammy Awards and influenced Hendricks and generations of other guitarists.
Never mind that he died 25 years ago and that his low-budget TV show was filmed at a small public television station housed in a converted historic home.
Bushy-haired art instructor Bob Ross and The Joy of Painting series that he hosted are in the spotlight again, with CNN, The New York Times and other national media doing recent reports from Muncie.
That's because Minnetrista, the cultural museum complex and gardens located in Muncie, has opened a permanent exhibit, The Bob Ross Experience, in a former home of one of the Ball Brothers, whose glass canning business introduced the iconic Mason jar.
The Lucius L. Ball House served as the location of the studio where WIPB, the public TV station in Muncie, filmed many of the episodes of the how-to-paint series that was an unexpected, national hit from 1983 until 1994, the year before Ross' death at age 52.
In addition to the multi-media exhibit that includes Ross' easel, palette, paint brushes, original paintings and other artifacts, The Bob Ross Experience offers programming that includes painting workshops using the techniques promoted by the beloved instructor.
"Bob Ross was such as a joyful personality, and the history of his connection to the Hoosier state is charming,” says Jessica Jenkins, vice president of collections and storytelling at Minnetrista, who will be Nelson's guest.
The 40-acre campus of Minnetrista includes several of the homes of the Ball brothers, who moved from upstate New York to Muncie in the 1880s to run their business, which became the nation's largest manufacturer of home-canning jars. (Lucius, the eldest brother, became a doctor in Muncie and was not involved in his siblings' company.)
Although Bob Ross was born and grew up in Florida, he became an itinerant art instructor and developed a relationship during his travels with WIPB-TV, the PBS affiliate in Muncie. For most of the run of The Joy of Painting, Ross came to Indiana for short visits to film multiple episodes of the series; Jessica Jenkins points out, however, that he actually lived in Muncie for a few years and was involved in community events.
The Ball brothers and their descendants also were known for their civic and philanthropic endeavors. WIPB was launched in the Lucius L. Ball House because his nephew Ed Ball (1905-2000) spearheaded the campaign that brought public TV to Muncie. The Joy of Painting became WIPB's most famous program and eventually was broadcast across the country, then overseas.
When the 30-minute show - during which Ross typically would complete an entire painting - drew millions of fans, the host became a pop culture icon. He was distinctive not only for his eye-catching hair, but for, as Indianapolis Monthly magazine recently put it, "his whisper-soft delivery, his half-hour masterpieces and his calming insistence that everyone has talent."
Some Bob Ross paintings have been acquired by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. But our guest Jessica Jenkins notes that Minnetrista was the first museum to add his paintings to its collection, as well as the first, in 1991, to host an exhibition of his work. Today, Minnetrista owns 26 Ross paintings; some were created during episodes of The Joy of Painting, while others were done off-camera.
Some history facts:
- The name Minnetrista, a blend of Native American and English words, is translated as "gathering place by the water." The Minnetrista campus is not far from the White River.
- Bob Ross used an oil painting technique called "wet on wet." With this method, artists quickly apply layers of wet paint, finishing their artwork before the first layers have dried. Typically, Ross didn't create a sketch of his subject before he began to paint.
- Ross died from complications of lymphoma in 1995. According to The New York Times, "his works - if you can find one - have been offered for up to $55,000 on ebay."
Both in population and geographic size, it's the smallest county in Indiana. But it's considered among the most scenic.
Ohio County, located in the far-southeastern corner of the Hoosier state, along with its only incorporated city, Rising Sun, have a colorful heritage that will be the focus of our show.
One of the few harp factories in the world is housed in a historic building on Main Street in Rising Sun, where Riverfront Park is a popular destination to savor views of the Ohio River.
In the Rising Sun Historic District, the Greek Revival-style Ohio County Courthouse, which was built in 1845, is the oldest county courthouse in continual use in Indiana.
Ohio County historian Cliff Thies, a lifelong resident of Rising Sun, will be Nelson's guest to share insights about his home turf. Cliff is the executive director of the Ohio County Historical Society and the Rising Sun History Museum, which occupies a 20,000 square foot structure that was built in the 19th century as a plow factory.
The harp factory is Rees Harps Inc., which makes and ships harps around the world to symphony orchestras, amateur musicians and a range of in-between enthusiasts. Harps are hand-crafted in a range of sizes and styles, but Rees is particularly known for creating a small, lightweight version they call a Harpsicle. The harp factory was founded by William and Rebecca Rees, who moved from California to Rising Sun after being captivated by the beauty of the riverfront city.
Ohio County also has a heritage in furniture-making that stretches back to the mid-1800s. Also in the 19th century, renowned silversmith Samuel Best moved from Cincinnati to Rising Sun.
So what's the population in 2020 of our state's smallest county?
According to our guest Cliff Thies, the current estimate is 6,128.
Some history facts:
- During the 1840s, Ohio County was carved out of neighboring Dearborn County. By then, Rising Sun had long been a daily stop for hundreds of flatboats on the Ohio River. Also early on, the region experienced an influx of German immigrants.
- At the history museum in Rising Sun, the most famous artifact is the Hoosier Boy, a wooden powerboat built and raced by J.W. Whitlock, a local furniture maker and inventor. In 1924, the Hoosier Boy set a speed record for a round trip between Cincinnati and Louisville. During our show, guest Cliff Thies will explain why the record set by the Hoosier Boy never can be broken.
- Also during our show, Cliff will describe the various explanations for how Rising Sun got its distinctive name. He says some of the accounts are “romantic,” but others are not.
With percussion instruments that included a makeshift washboard and a stage routine punctuated by comic banter between their musical numbers, they were nationally known entertainers from the 1920s through the mid-1940s.
The Hoosier Hot Shots were regulars on National Barn Dance, one of the most popular radio shows in the country, broadcast on WLS-AM in Chicago. They were featured as a novelty act in Western movies starring Gene Autry and slapstick comedies with the Three Stooges. They were headliners in vaudeville venues and recorded much of their music at Gennett Studios in Richmond, Ind., which launched the recording careers of many American jazz, blues, country and gospel stars during the era.
The three primary members of the Hot Shots band were Otto "Gabe" Ward, who was born in Knightstown and grew up in Elwood, and two brothers, Ken and Paul "Hezzie" Trietsch, who hailed from the small town of Arcadia in Hamilton County. The Indiana State Museum periodically has exhibited Gabe Ward's clarinet and Hezzie's unusual washboard instrument, which he made by hand; the exhibits also have included vintage posters for some of their 21 movies.
In this encore broadcast of a show from 2018, we turn our spotlight on the colorful and quirky Hoosier Hot Shots. Nelson is joined in studio by Todd Gould, a senior producer/director at WTIU-TV in Bloomington and a broadcasting instructor at Indiana University. In working with his WTIU colleagues on a documentary about Gennett, where emerging stars like Hoagy Carmichael, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton recorded, Todd researched the Hot Shots. (Hoosier History Live explored the impact of the recording history made at Gennett Studios on a show in 2013.)
In an article about the Hoosier Hot Shots in the Fall 2018 issue of Traces, the Indiana Historical Society's magazine, Todd wrote:
"During two of the most tumultuous times in our nation's history, the Great Depression and World War II, Americans found comfort in the silly songs and crazy antics of a band from the flatlands of central Indiana ... Their sound and lyrics were unlike anything Americans in the early 20th century had ever heard before."
A sample lyric from a Hot Shots song:
From the Indies to the Andes in his undies
And he never took a shave except on Mondays
He didn't eat a thing but chocolate sundaes
'Twas a very, very daring thing to do.
In addition to Todd Gould, Nelson is joined in studio by Hamilton County historian David Heighway, who has researched the deep roots of the Trietsch family in the county. Ken Trietsch (rhymes with "beach") played the guitar and banjo while Hezzie played the washboard - as well as cowbells, horns, pie tins and, as Todd put it in his Traces article, "other assorted gear that looked more at home in a farmhouse kitchen than on a stage."
Periodically during our show, we feature brief excerpts of the Hoosier Hot Shots' recordings to give listeners a flavor of their distinctive routines.
Their signature line was a question - "Are you ready, Hezzie?" - posed by Ken Trietsch to his jokester brother just as the Hot Shots were about to kick off a routine.
Ken (1903-1987) and Hezzie (1905-1980) Trietsch came from a musical family in Hamilton County of five sons, all of whom played multiple instruments.
They met Gabe Ward (1904-1992) in the 1920s when all of them became members of the Rube Band, a vaudeville troupe known for playing "wildly extemporaneous, comical versions of the day's popular songs," according to Todd's article in Traces. After the Rube Band dissolved, the three Hoosiers eventually started performing on radio with the Hot Shots name.
Major success followed on National Barn Dance, which also launched the careers of Gene Autry, Patti Page and other entertainers. By the mid-1930s, the Hoosier Hot Shots had added a fourth member, Illinois native Frank Kettering, who played the bass fiddle, organ, piccolo and other instruments.
Among the quartet's most popular songs was Whistlin' Joe from Kokomo. According to Todd's article, the song was one of several Hot Shots' tunes featuring the names of Indiana towns.
During World War II, the Hoosier Hot Shots joined USO tours of North Africa and Italy. (Kettering, though, was drafted. He was replaced by a series of musicians who also weren't from Indiana.) The band's popularity waned by the early 1960s.
Click on the links below to listen to samples of songs from the Hoosier Hot Shots catalogue:
- The Coat and the Pants do All the Work (But the Vest Gets All the Gravy)
- I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)
- From the Indies to the Andes in his Undies
Small cities and towns in Indiana often seem tranquil, but they periodically have been the settings for murders that made national headlines. They have also been the birthplaces of suspected killers, including a notorious native of Elwood dubbed "Gun Girl" by the national press during the Great Depression.
For one of our periodic shows exploring true crimes, Hoosier History Live will delve into several sensational murder cases that drew national attention to the state between 1869 and 1950. Among the cases will be some that illuminate aspects of social history, including the use of capital punishment, the insanity defense (which frequently was used by defense attorneys during the 19th century), and attitudes about women on trial for first-degree murder.
The historic crimes are among those included in No Place Like Murder (I.U. Press), a new book by Janis Thornton, an author of true crime and town history books who is based in Tipton, Ind. Janis, who has researched the murders and even visited the gravesites of several of the victims, will be Nelson's guest to explore cases involving:
- The first two men to die in the electric chair in Indiana. On the same day in 1914, John Chirka and Harry Rasico were executed in Michigan City at the Indiana State Prison. Although their crimes were unrelated, both men were convicted of murdering their wives - and, in Rasico's case, his toddler son as well. The murders were committed in 1913, the same year the state legislature voted to have the electric chair replace hanging at the state prison. No Place Like Murder describes how Indiana's governor, Samuel Ralston, opposed the death penalty personally but did not interfere with the executions.
- The 15-year-old "Gun Girl," who in 1930 dropped out of school in Elwood to go looking for adventure. Armed with pistols, Isabelle Messmer became implicated in crimes from Pennsylvania to Texas, where the pitcher for a semi-pro baseball team was found shot to death in a tourist cabin.
- The first woman to be tried for murder in Clinton County. In 1898, Frankfort resident Sarah Shenkenberger was accused of poisoning her daughter-in-law, Belle Shenkenberger, who (along with her 2-year-old son) had been living with her in-laws while her husband was serving in the Navy.
Most of the murderers and their victims in the cases we will explore were private citizens. An exception involves a sensational killing in 1881 when the controversial mayor of Kokomo was fatally shot during what may have been a bungled burglary.
Mayor Henry Cole was gunned down in a flour mill by a posse of Kokomo business and public officials. In No Place Like Murder, Janis Thornton poses the question of whether Cole was involved in a crime or was "the victim of an assassination conspiracy." In response to the mystery, she adds, "Local history buffs are still scratching their heads."
In connection with one of her visual history books about Indiana towns and counties, Images of America: Tipton County (Arcadia Publishing, 2012), Janis has been a previous Hoosier History Live guest. She also is the author of Too Good a Girl (Life Sentences Publishing, 2018), which explores the mysterious death of her Tipton high school classmate.
The Wright Brothers are so identified with Dayton, Ohio, where they lived for most of their adult lives, that even aviation buffs often are surprised to learn that one of the legendary siblings was a native Hoosier.
Not only was Wilbur, the eldest brother, born in the small town of Millville in eastern Indiana in 1867, other Indiana connections occurred as the family moved several times in both Indiana and Ohio during their youth. Wilbur Wright even attended high school for a few years in Richmond.
Those connections explain why Wilbur Wright is among the historic and contemporary aviation trail-blazers with links to the Hoosier state who have been inducted into a newly launched hall of fame, the Indiana Aviation Hall of Fame.
During our show, we will explore the lives as well as the national - and, in some cases, international - impact of several of these pioneers. They will include flamboyant aviation promoter and record-breaking racing pilot Roscoe Turner (1895-1970) of Indianapolis and entrepreneur James Allison, who usually is associated with his impact on early auto heritage and his partnership with Carl Fisher and others as founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Allison (1872-1928) also had a significant impact on aviation beginning at the onset of World War I, when a company he formed built the first two Liberty V-12 aircraft motors. His plant's engineers developed early pistons, gear boxes and other components that became widely used throughout the aviation industry.
Others in our spotlight will include retired astronaut and Gary, Ind., native Frank Borman, now 92, who also was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, an aeronautical engineer and a test pilot. We won't be exploring several other notables with Indiana connections, including astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom; World War I aviation hero Weir Cook and Amelia Earhart, who developed a deep bond with Purdue University, because they have been the focus of previous Hoosier History Live shows.
For this show, Nelson's guests will be two board members of the Indiana Aviation Hall of Fame who are licensed pilots:
- David Newill of Zionsville, past president of the Allison branch of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust. David, who oversaw the team that collected and restored artifacts on public display about the Indianapolis legacy of Rolls-Royce (and its predecessor, Allison, which operated under various names), is a popular speaker about aerospace history.
- And Bruce Montigney of Fishers, a former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector who retired as the agency's manager of the Indianapolis district office for flight standards. During a 28-year career with the FAA, Bruce held numerous positions and is a certified flight instructor.
Earlier this year, David, Bruce and other aviation history enthusiasts launched the hall of fame, which currently exists as an online, website-based resource while organizers search for a physical site.
Some museums devoted to individual aviation pioneers have been open for several years. They include the Wilbur Wright Memorial Birthplace near Millville, which honors the achievements of the trail-blazing brother who died in 1912. (His younger brother Orville, who was born in Dayton in 1871, died in 1948.)
A museum in northern Indiana honors the achievements of aircraft industry executive Lawrence Bell, founder of Bell Aircraft Corp., which built jet-powered fighter aircraft for the U.S. military during World War II. The Bell Aircraft Museum is located in the town of Mentone in northern Indiana, where Lawrence Bell was born in 1894. Bell and his company made international headlines in 1947 when pilot Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier while flying a Bell aircraft. Lawrence Bell died in 1956.
Frank Borman, the astronaut from Gary, also made international headlines. In 1968, he commanded Apollo 8, a space mission in which Borman and two fellow astronauts became the first human beings to leave the Earth's gravity and orbit the moon.
In addition to exploring the lives and impact of Borman, Bell, Wilbur Wright and other aviation pioneers, our show will spotlight Noblesville native William "Pete" Knight (1929-2004), an astronaut, aeronautical engineer, Vietnam War combat pilot and test pilot. Among a trove of honors, Knight was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The cultural and theatrical life of the Hoosier capital suffered two huge losses during the third week of September 2020. Within the space of three days, Indianapolis learned of the death of two of its most creative, boundary-pushing directors: Ron Spencer, founder and artistic director of Theatre on the Square (TOTS), and Bryan Fonseca, who co-founded the Phoenix Theatre.
We hope to cover Fonseca and his work in theatre on a future show, but for now we turn our attention to the life of Ron Spencer, who grew up in McCordsville but attended high school in Indianapolis.
Ron Spencer's long life on the stage began as a child and extended all the way into his final years in Puerto Vallarta, where he moved after retiring from Theatre on the Square in 2014. And while he was well known as a director of shows at TOTS, he also made his mark as an actor, singer, and playwright.
Among Ron's writing credits: Dearest, a Mommy Musical, based on the tell-all book written by Christina Crawford about her tumultuous relationship with mother, actress Joan Crawford.
The camp, over-the-top production of Dearest - directed by Ron for the Indianapolis Fringe Festival and a follow-up TOTS production - was emblematic of his love for Hollywood stars of a certain age and their camp-classic films.
Under his leadership, TOTS held a "film noir" series which re-imagined revered (if sometimes ironically) cinematic gems like Mildred Pierce (1945) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) as tongue-in-cheek stage plays, with Ron reenacting the roles originated by Bette Davis and other iconic female stars of the era.
It would be a mistake, however, to consider only the amusing and camp aspects of Ron's theatrical work. As the artistic director of Theatre on the Square, he spearheaded the production of such important plays as Corpus Christi by Terrence McNally, which raised questions about spirituality and sexuality.
And it was no accident that many TOTS shows featured the perspective of members of marginalized communities. As a gay man who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ron knew what it meant to be treated as an outsider and understood the power of theatre to offer hope and change hearts.
In a memorable TOTS production of a musical featuring the work of composer George Winters, Ron sang the song "It Gets Better," a plea to LGBT youth being bullied by peers to look beyond the torment and see the rich, rewarding life that awaits them as adults.
The discussion of Ron Spencer's life will be led by Hoosier History Live associate producer Mick Armbruster, filling in for our regular host, Nelson Price. Mick will be joined by phone by two guests who knew and worked with Ron Spencer over the course of many years:
- Jeannie Logan, who worked with Ron on numerous musicals at Theatre on the Square and other local venues. For decades, Jeannie has performed as a vocalist all over the country and parts of the world. She currently works as a private vocal coach and also teaches at the Ji-Eun Lee Music Academy in Fishers.
- And Bill Book, a professional actor who has been performing in the Indianapolis area since the early 1980s. He has been directed by, performed on stage with and been close friends with Ron Spencer for over 33 years.
Mick, Jeannie and Michael will discuss Ron's early work in theatre, as well as his founding of Theatre on the Square in 1988 at its original location in Fountain Square. TOTS moved to Mass Avenue in 1993 to be part of the burgeoning arts district there. They'll explore the impact TOTS had on the cultural life of Indianapolis, as well as consider the factors that led to its demise in 2018.
Mick plans to open the WICR phone lines early in hope that some of Ron's many friends and theatrical associates will call in at (317) 788-3314 with their stories and memories.
We Hoosiers are known to be self-effacing, so there hasn't been much inclination to toot our own horn about the state's heritage of musical instrument making.
Consider this, though: the largest maker of drums and percussion equipment in the world during the early 1900s was located in Indianapolis.
And for most of the 20th century, Elkhart was known as the "musical instrument capital" of the country. Elkhart-based companies in the music instrument business include C.G. Conn, Armstrong Flutes, Bach Brass, Selmer Woodwinds, Buescher Band Instruments, Gemeinhardt Flutes and others.
For nearly 30 years beginning in 1903, Leedy Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis produced drum and percussion instruments. By the time the company was sold to C.G. Conn and moved to Elkhart in 1930, Leedy had a line of more than 900 products and was known for many "firsts" in percussion design. The company held more than 20 patents, including one for the vibraphone, which now is used in jazz bands.
Two guests will share details about the rich heritage of musical instrument-making in the Hoosier state:
- David Steele, an Indianapolis businessman and civic leader who owns The Steele Group, a management consulting business. A lifelong drummer, David is leading a crusade to have a historic marker placed on the former site of Leedy's factory on the near-southside of Indy.
- And Jim Catalano of Elkhart, a professional musician who is the retired marketing director for Ludwig Drum Company, which has had multiple changes in its corporate ownership. He also is an adjunct instructor at the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary's College.
According to Jim, C.G. Conn has the most storied history of the Elkhart-based musical instrument businesses. Founded in 1876 by Charles Gerard Conn, who went on to win election as mayor of Elkhart and eventually as a U.S. congressman, the company became the largest maker of band instruments in the world.
Because of C.G. Conn's success, other band instrument companies relocated to Elkhart. They came "to take advantage of the training and expertise that workers in Elkhart had acquired," Jim notes.
The Selmer Company, which began in Elkhart in 1920, initially made only flutes and clarinets. But in 1965, Selmer bought Bach Brass, which had been based in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Today, according to Jim Catalano, it is the country's largest maker of professional trumpets and trombones.
The drum-making heritage in Indianapolis had its origins with Ulysses G. Leedy (1867-1931), who toured as a percussionist across the country in the 1890s. He began making drum and percussion instruments in his apartment before starting his factory, according to David Steele.
In 1921, Leedy Manufacturing created an enormous, distinctive bass drum for the Purdue University All-American Marching Band. The original drum - which, when finished, was displayed in the rotunda of the Indiana State Capitol before being transported to West Lafayette - is the eye-catching instrument still used today by Purdue's marching band
In addition to drums and vibraphones, Leedy made tympani, xylophones and other percussion instruments at its Indianapolis factory. The 80,000-square-foot building, which was touted as "The World's Largest Drum Factory" during the early 1900s, still stands at Palmer Street and Barth Avenue; today, it houses Sense Charter School.
In addition to acquiring Leedy and moving its operations to Elkhart, Conn indirectly launched Buescher Band Instruments; its founder made saxophones at Conn before starting his own company in 1894. By 1901, Buescher also was making cornets.
German immigrant Karl Gemeinhardt came to Elkhart in 1928 to make flutes for Selmer, according to Jim Catalano. In the late 1940s, Gemeinhardt left to establish a flute company under his own name to compete with Selmer, Conn and Armstrong. Today, the company makes flutes and piccolos for student musicians as well as professionals.
By the 1970s, about 40 percent of the world's band instruments were being made in Elkhart, according to the Indiana Historical Bureau. The annual Elkhart Jazz Festival was started more than 30 years ago in part as an outgrowth of the city's instrument-making heritage.
Halloween festivities in 1918 were canceled in Indianapolis and other Hoosier cities because of the devastating influenza epidemic.
That's been noted during previous Hoosier History Live shows about the infamous epidemic - which is more accurately called a pandemic because the often fatal strain of influenza in 1918 and 1919 spread around the world.
Also during our previous shows on the topic - including a program that broadly explored Epidemics in Indiana history and an earlier show focused on the 1918 Influenza Epidemic in Indiana - medical historians discussed how the label "Spanish flu" mischaracterizes the 1918 health crisis. Our guests explained that contemporary experts point to sources other than Spain for the deadly influenza that caused havoc around the globe more than 100 years ago.
During our previous shows, we focused on the origins and the initial outbreaks in Indiana, leaving an unexpected and devastating "second wave" in 1918-19 mostly unexplored. So our distinguished medical historians, Dr. William McNiece and Bill Beck, will return for this show to share insights about additional aspects of the epidemic - which even included a "third wave" - as well as the eventual recovery.
Dr. McNiece, president of the Marion County Historical Society, is an anesthesiologist at an Indianapolis hospital. Bill Beck, founder of Lakeside Writers' Group, is an author who has written dozens of institutional history books, including histories of Indiana hospitals.
According to Bill Beck's research, factors that are thought to have contributed to subsequent waves of the historic epidemic include, in November 1918, the gatherings of thousands of Hoosiers cheering the end of World War I on Armistice Day (now known as Veterans Day).
The second wave, which began in September 1918, was far more deadly in the United States than the initial wave that occurred earlier in the year. The third wave ensued from November 1918 and persisted through February 1919. Even in March 1919, 70 residents of Muncie died of influenza, Bill Beck notes.
Our guests credit Dr. Herman Morgan, Marion County's top public health official for more than 30 years beginning in 1911, with saving lives by taking steps initially regarded as controversial. They included periodic mask orders, lockdowns and closing schools.
Throughout much of 1918, influenza was especially virulent in Army training facilities, including Fort Harrison in Indianapolis. Because the soldiers were living together in barracks, the spread of the flu was quick. According to Bill Beck, Camp Sherman in central Ohio - where many Hoosiers drafted during World War I were trained - registered the most deaths from influenza of any Army facility.
According to information from Dr. McNiece, 21 emergency hospitals were established across Indiana during the 1918-1919 epidemic.
The mysterious disappearance in 1913 of a 9-year-old girl in New Castle triggered a national search that continued for years. The possible abduction and murder of Catherine Winters - who vanished while walking on one of the town's busiest streets and never was found - became a haunting tale that continues to be told to this day.
Another eerie story - also rooted in history - is set at the Indiana Statehouse and involves an eccentric judge who was elected in the mid 1940s and served through the 1950s. Indiana Supreme Court Justice James Emmert, who kept a rifle in his office, was known to shoot noisy pigeons from his third-floor window. Ever since his death in 1974, security guards and Statehouse staffers occasionally have reported seeing a ghostly figure - clad in a judicial robe and toting a rifle - wandering the hallways.
And in Cambridge City, a historic town on the Old National Road (now US 40) in far-eastern Indiana, a spooky tale involves the former home of Gen. Sol Meredith, a Civil War hero who was the leader of the legendary Iron Brigade in the Union Army. A series of tragic deaths occurred in the historic home, resulting in folklore about a ghost sighting.
Historian and author Al Hunter, a columnist for the Weekly View newspaper based in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis, will be Nelson's guest to share details about these and other haunting tales that involve historic people and places. Although Al is well-known for his popular ghost tour strolls through Irvington every October, we will explore a range of spooky sites across Indiana during our show. Our destinations include several cities and towns like Cambridge City that are on the Old National Road/U.S. 40; Al has been a board member of the Indiana National Road Association.
Among our stops on US 40: Terre Haute, where generations of residents are familiar with a creepy story involving Stiffy Green, a bulldog that was the beloved pet of a local man who died in 1920. After Stiffy's owner was interred in a family mausoleum at Highland Lawn Cemetery, the bulldog persisted in running away from home to sit near the crypt, so the story goes.
During our show, Al will describe events that unfolded when Stiffy died and, apparently after being taken to a taxidermist, was placed in his owner's mausoleum. Eventually Stiffy was moved to the Vigo County Historical Society, where he is one of the most popular exhibits today.
Our show will begin with a discussion of the Catherine Winters disappearance, which prompted searches involving hundreds of Hoosiers and inspired at least two songs about the missing girl, as well as the distribution of handbills in movie houses across the country in attempts to find her. Theories about her fate pointed to possible culprits ranging from a group of gypsies seen traveling through New Castle to her father and stepmother.
During the same era that Catherine Winters vanished - the early 1900s - sisters in Cambridge City were creating Arts and Crafts-style pottery that has been exhibited around the world. To this day, the Overbeck House and Studio draws visitors to Cambridge City who want to learn about the six sisters, four of whom were the most directly involved in creating widely acclaimed pottery from 1911 until 1955.
Our guest Al Hunter says haunting folklore is associated with the Overbeck sisters' house, which was built in the 1830s. The sisters did all of their work - from designing to firing the ceramic pottery - in their home studio.
Al Hunter, who has been featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel, also has been a guest on several previous Hoosier History Live shows. They include shows that explored the notorious serial killer H.H. Holmes and his connections to Indianapolis and the Lincoln Funeral Train, which came through Indiana in 1865. In addition, Al has written a new book, The Petersen House: The Oldroyd Museum and The House Where Lincoln Died (America Through Time). Although the historic house is in Washington D.C., it has a connection to Indiana. A book launch with Al is scheduled for Halloween Day (Oct. 31) from 2 pm-4 pm at the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home & Museum in Greenfield.
Nearly 200 years before the era of ubiquitous cell-phone "selfies" - and decades before the Brownie camera introduced snapshots to the mass consumer market - photographers were capturing images across Indiana.
Clear back in the 1820s, a teenager in New Harmony was experimenting with "solar picture drawings." In the early 1840s, a professor at Indiana University became Indiana's earliest documented photographer.
For this exploration of photographers and early photography studios beginning in the early 19th century, Nelson will be joined by photo historian Joan Hostetler, founder of the Indiana Album. The organization maintains the Indiana Photographers Project, a database that records biographical and studio information about photographers who have worked in the state from the early days of photography to the present.
The two longest-operating studios in Indiana, according to Joan, are the McDonald Studio of South Bend, which was founded in 1861, and the W.H. Bass Photo Co., which is based in Indianapolis and has roots dating to 1897. Both studios are still operating today.
During our show, Joan will discuss itinerant photographers during the 1800s who traveled across the state in wagons, bringing along tents. Other itinerant photographers traveled aboard skylight boats on the Ohio River.
We also will explore the under-recognized role of women in photography. "Often wives and daughters [of photographers] were vital to the business," Joan says. "But they were not recognized, or given just a nod with a studio name such as 'Wright & Wife.' "
In 1828, New Harmony teenager James Miles Wattles experimented with what were then called "solar picture drawings." Joan notes this was a decade before photography was widely introduced.
According to Joan, Indiana's earliest documented photographer was Theophilus Wylie, an early daguerreotypist and half-cousin to Andrew Wylie, the first president of Indiana University. As an IU science professor, Theophilus Wylie (1810-1895) began making daguerreotypes in 1841. A daguerreotype is an early photographic process produced on silver-plated copper.
The Indiana Photographers Project database helps historians, genealogists and archivists with their accuracy and precision as they date historic photographs. The data also helps determine copyrights and recognize the accomplishments of Hoosier photographers.
Some photo facts:
- The Indiana Album plans to publish a book or online directory about photographers who have worked in the state and their studios. The goal is to publish within the next few years.
- Joan Hostetler, our guest, and Nelson, our host, co-authored Indianapolis Then and Now (Pavilion Books, revised edition 2015), a visual history book about the Hoosier capital.
- One of the earliest known streetscape photos of Indianapolis (see below) was taken in about 1857. A copy of the historic photo is featured in The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Then and Now and other city history books.
Typically, the 10 Most Endangered Places list of Indiana Landmarks features single sites, such as a historic church, school, hotel or bridge with an imperiled fate. But in the case of a small city on the Wabash River in far-western Indiana, the entire downtown is on the endangered list.
Attica, Ind., flourished with the building of the Wabash and Erie Canal during the 1840s and, about 10 years later, the completion of the Toledo, Wabash and Western Railroad that came through Fountain County city, where 3,245 people currently live.
Hotel Attica, which was built in 1853 (and known initially as the Revere Hotel), was the overnight lodging spot for notables including Teddy Roosevelt, Al Capone and Bing Crosby. A Masonic Temple became a popular gathering place. Houses and commercial buildings were constructed in a range of architectural styles from Federal and Italianate to, eventually, Art Deco.
Today, Hotel Attica is vacant, with structural damage that includes a partially collapsed façade. Some 19th century buildings have been neglected, resulting in significant deterioration. And the Devon Theater, a 1938 cinema house that's been a beloved landmark, is struggling to endure.
As Hoosier History Live explores Attica - where the Attica Downtown Historic District and three other historic districts are listed on the National Register of Historic Places - Nelson's guests will include Tommy Kleckner, the western regional office director of Indiana Landmarks.
Nelson also will be joined by Lexxi Haddock, president of Attica Main Street. A native of Attica, Lexxi returned to her hometown to live after graduating from college in 2014. In addition to raising her two young daughters with her husband, Andy, Lexxi is a title insurance agent and a civic leader active with the Friends of the Attica Public Library and the Covington Business Association.
Tommy emphasizes that, despite the challenges that confront Attica's downtown, the city retains several assets, including historic residential neighborhoods - some with houses dating to the canal era - as well as a 90-acre park and an area known as Cottrell Village with a church constructed circa 1850 in the Greek Revival style.
But Hotel Attica, the Masonic Temple and other downtown buildings are, according to Tommy, "imminently threatened by neglect." The hotel's west façade collapsed in 2012 during a severe windstorm; three years later, the hotel closed. The façade remains unrepaired and continues to crumble.
Many of the hotel's famous guests stayed in Attica because they were traveling through town by train. Attica was founded in the 1820s, but grew slowly until the canal and railroad era; according to Tommy Kleckner, the population grew by 70 percent during the 1850s.
By the early 20th century, the city also became a hub of brick manufacturing. Beginning in 1907, Poston Brick Company shipped bricks across the country for nearly 70 years. More than 25 academic buildings at Purdue University were constructed with Poston Brick.
In addition to downtown Attica, the 10 Most Endangered Places list includes a Carnegie library in Elwood; a vacant Presbyterian church with dozens of Tiffany stained glass windows in Richmond, and a former jail and sheriff's residence in Tipton County.
Why did the despicable Ku Klux Klan become pervasive across Indiana during the 1920s?
Who joined? And does the tendency of the general public to focus on Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson (and his lurid scandals) dilute the more insidious - if less sensationalistic - impact the KKK had on life in Indiana in the 1920s?
These are among the questions that acclaimed Indiana historian James Madison tackles in his new book, The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland (IU Press), which explores one of the most shameful eras in the Hoosier state. From 1923 through 1925, the peak of the KKK's influence in Indiana, "up to one third of the state's native-born, white Protestant men signed up," Jim Madison notes.
Jim, an IU professor emeritus of history whose honors and awards include being designated a Living Legend by the Indiana Historical Society in 2016, will be Nelson's guest as Hoosier History Live continues its mission to explore all aspects of the state's heritage. Jim Madison's other books include Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana (2014) and A Lynching in the Heartland (2001), which explored the 1930 lynching in Marion, Ind., of two African-American teenagers. That notorious episode was not connected to the KKK.
The Klan that dominated Indiana during the 1920s was the second of three incarnations of the organization in American history, Jim notes. The first, which formed soon after the Civil War, prevailed in Southern states and terrorized African Americans newly freed from slavery.
In contrast, the Klan's primary targets in Indiana during the 1920s were immigrants and Catholics, according to The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland.
By many accounts, one of the largest Klan gatherings (or "Konklaves") unfolded in Kokomo on July 4, 1923. Thousands of Hoosiers were joined by visitors from other states for an event that featured fireworks; a massive cross that was soaked in kerosene and set on fire; a parade of robed men and women accompanied by nine bands, and the dramatic arrival of Stephenson (1891-1966) in an open cockpit biplane.
"Klan men and women saw themselves not as bigoted extremists, but as good Christians and good patriots joining proudly in a moral crusade," Jim writes. Membership rosters, he adds, demonstrate that Hoosiers who joined the Klan were not exclusively stereotypical "rubes" lacking in education or sophistication. Instead, membership consisted of "a wide range of people, most from the middle ranks of society. Respectable lawyers, Masons, police officers, churchwomen, teachers, mayors and businessmen joined the Klan in Indiana."
Klan membership cards and receipts for KKK memorabilia in Hamilton County from 1923 to 1926 - discovered during the 1990s in a trunk stored in a barn - are now at the Indiana Historical Society. The documents are available for viewing by the public by making an appointment with the historical society's library.
Opposition to the Klan did exist in Indiana. In 1924, hundreds of University of Notre Dame students protested Klan members, even pulling off their hoods and throwing potatoes at them, a clash described in The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland. Four years later, the Indianapolis Times newspaper received a Pulitzer Prize for its anti-Klan reporting. Many Hoosiers who opposed the KKK, though, opted to remain silent.
Allies of the Klan included Gov. Ed Jackson, whom Jim Madison describes as "the undisputed holder of the title of the worst governor in Indiana history." At Jackson's inaugural reception in January 1925, Grand Dragon Stephenson stood by his side. Later indicted on charges of attempted bribery, Jackson "escaped jail only on a technicality," Jim writes.
The peak years of Klan membership in Indiana were 1923 and '24. Local chapters, called Klaverns, existed in every county.
World War I, which ended in 1918, "had advanced suspicions of the foreign born . . . anyone not judged to be 100 percent American," according to The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland. The suspicions swept across Indiana, Jim Madison writes, in part because the state was more homogeneous than many others. Some of the counties with the highest per capita Klan membership had the least diversity.
In 2010, Hoosier History Live explored the Klan's stranglehold on Indiana's political and cultural life during the 1920s. Research by our guest on that show, IU professor emeritus Allen Safianow, assisted Jim Madison in putting together The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland.
As the two largest natural lakes in Indiana, they have been the scenic locations of summer homes for more than 100 years, with vacation lodging options ranging from waterfront mansions to cottages and bungalows. They've also attracted their share of celebrities and even notorious characters.
Lake Wawasee, southeast of the town of Syracuse in Kosciusko County, and Lake Maxinkuckee - with the town of Culver (Marshall County) near its shores - share glacial origins along with most of the lakes of northern Indiana. (Lake Monroe in southern Indiana is larger than either of the two, but it is man-made.) The two largest resort lakes in northern Indiana are the focus of this encore broadcast of a show that originally aired in July 2018.
Col. Eli Lilly, founder of the pharmaceutical business that eventually became an international giant, and his descendants have had summer homes at Wawasee since the late 19th century. A lavish hotel at the lake, The Spink, hosted visitors including Al Capone and Hollywood notables like Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Originally built in 1926, the Spink was sold to a Catholic order in the 1940s and remodeled to become a seminary; it later served as a boarding school and was eventually remade into condominiums in the 1980s.
At Lake Maxinkuckee, several generations of the Vonnegut family from Indianapolis enjoyed summer homes. Reflecting on boyhood summers there, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called the lake "my Aegean Sea" and "my Eden lost." Other famous Hoosiers, including composer Cole Porter and novelist Booth Tarkington, also visited friends or spent summers at Lake Maxinkuckee homes. Tarkington even wrote part of his first bestseller, The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), there.
Two Native American tribes lived along the shores of the lakes since at least the early 1800s.
Miami Indians lived on the Lake Wawasee site that later became the location of the Spink Hotel. Potawatomi Indians lived at Lake Maxinkuckee, which occupies about 1,800 acres of spring-fed water and is 88 feet deep at its deepest point.
Two guests with lifelong involvements with the resort lakes join Nelson in studio:
- Fort Wayne native Charles Braun, the attorney who hosts Legally Speaking, the WICR-FM call-in legal advice show, shares insights about Lake Wawasee. Over a span of nearly 100 years, five generations of the Braun family have rented or owned property on Lake Wawasee. For many years, Charles' mother owned a condo at the former Spink Hotel
- And Culver native Jeff Kenney, the archives manager for the Culver Academies Museum, who regularly provides historical commentary on boat tours of Lake Maxinkuckee.
"Maxinkuckee is one of the most studied lakes in the world, thanks largely to the work of biologists Evermann and Clark, whose massive, two-volume study published in the early 1920s is still taught today in classes related to freshwater biology," Jeff says.
Culver Military Academy, the private, college-prep high school, is located at Lake Maxinkuckee, but the full story of the school's history awaits coverage in a future show. We've got plenty to dive into with the resort lakes, where history continues to unfold. A cover story in the July 2018 issue of Indianapolis Monthly magazine noted that at Lake Wawasee, the historic Oakwood Resort has reopened, reporting, "The 125-year-old lodge hosts a salon, spa and the Pier Restaurant , with a great view of Wawasee's many expensive boats."
Referring to Kurt Vonnegut's affection for Lake Maxinkuckee, the magazine notes: "The author couldn't have fabricated a more scenic locale in his novels . . . Indiana's second-largest natural body of water offers shoreline restaurants, well-lit trails and a small town full of boutiques."
According to our guest Jeff Kenney, the arrival of a railroad to Culver in 1884 "launched the plethora of summer cottagers who settled on the lake . . . bringing some 7,000 visitors from across the state to Maxinkuckee on any given summer weekend." Current owners of homes at Lake Maxinkuckee include Jim Irsay, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, and a brother of Vice President Mike Pence.
At Lake Wawasee, the original Spink Hotel was built in 1926 by Indianapolis entrepreneur Edgar Spink at a cost of $350,000, according to our guest Charles Braun. The hotel was operated for several years by his two daughters, who made it a nationally known resort, with opportunities for gambling among its enticements.
During the show, Charles also discusses Syracuse Lake, which is near Wawasee and doesn't have as much of the larger lake's "abundant boat traffic," as Indianapolis Monthly puts it. The magazine refers to Syracuse Lake as "a quiet alternative."
Some history facts:
- Maxinkuckee ice was an export of the area in the days before modern refrigerators. "[It] was sold, thousands of tons of it, all over the Midwest from 1880 to 1937," Jeff Kenney says.
- A Hoosier who was among the survivors of the Titanic shipwreck in 1912 became the head gardener at Culver Military Academy.
- A musical composition called the Wawasee Waltz was written in the mid-1890s. The Syracuse Public Library and the Syracuse-Wawasee Historical Museum have posted a recording of the waltz online, along with period postcards of lakeside activities.
She started singing as a 5-year-old girl at Mt Calvary Baptist Church in Indianapolis, where her grandfather was the minister.
Soprano Angela Brown, 56, went on to become an international opera star, performing everywhere from the Metropolitan Opera in New York City - where she made a sensational debut in 2004 - to prestigious venues in Paris, London and Shanghai. She has sung the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial In Washington D.C. and at games of the Indianapolis Colts and Indiana Pacers in her hometown.
Angela, a 1982 graduate of Attucks High School who later studied at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music, has been blazing trails, including some beyond the music world.
She recently founded Freddie Mae's Daughter, a company offering such products as "handcrafted jewelry, masks and other Afrocentric accessories." The business is named for Angela's late mother, Freddie Mae Brown, an Indianapolis artist and nurse. Angela also is converting her one-woman show, Opera from a Sistah's Point of View, into a virtual program for opera companies across the country; the show includes Angela's re-telling of opera plots from a Black perspective.
Angela will discuss these endeavors - and others, including a new podcast with Classical Music Indy that she co-hosts, Melanated Moments in Classical Music - when she is Nelson's guest. The podcast showcases music composed by, for or about Black people, with commentary from Angela and her co-host, sociologist Joshua Thompson.
She also will discuss her roots in Indianapolis, where Angela still owns a house. In her hometown, she has given master classes at Indianapolis Opera.
Also in Indiana, she has created Morning Brown, Inc., a non-profit foundation with a mission that involves, according to its website, "bridging the gap between accessible, live-music programs and underserved individuals, schools and communities."
Angela, who has been acclaimed for her singing of spirituals as well as opera, grew up near Broadway and 30th Streets. According to a profile of her in 19 Stars of Indiana: Exceptional Hoosier Women (IU Press, 2009), her father, Clyde Brown, was an autoworker at a Chrysler plant for more than 40 years. Like Freddie Mae Brown, he died in 2008.
At Attucks, Angela became active in the vocal music program. Her mentor was choir director Robert Fleck; Angela has told interviewers that "his encouragement made a lasting impression." Hoosier History Live explored the music program during an Attucks High School history show in 2014, which cited Angela Brown as among the distinguished alums.
Her debut at the Met - which resulted in national media coverage from the New York Times, CNN and Oprah magazine, among others - was in Aida, an opera by Verdi. She portrayed the title role of an Ethiopian princess who briefly enjoys happiness before tragedy ensues.
"The opera ended amid cries of 'Brava!' and an immediate and extended standing ovation," according to 19 Stars. "Adoring fans rushed down the aisles proffering bouquets and throwing flowers onto the stage."
Since her triumph at the Met, Angela has collaborated with American composer Richard Danielpour on several projects. He set the poetry of Maya Angelou for Angela's voice in an orchestral song cycle titled "A Woman's Life." She has performed the piece with symphony orchestras in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Nashville, Tenn.
In 2011, Angela married Anselme Blaise Argelier, a French dancer. Their wedding was in Paris, where the couple had met several years earlier when both were performing in an opera. In recent years, Argelier has retired from dancing; as a result, the couple has been able to spend more time at their home in Indianapolis.
With the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Angela has performed at yuletide pops concerts; she also has been a soloist with the Carmel Symphony Orchestra. Her honors include induction into the Indianapolis Public Schools Hall of Fame.
Amid the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of women's voting rights this month, it's important to acknowledge the arduous, decades-long struggles that were involved in reaching that historic milestone.
It's also important to dispute myths about the women's suffrage movement that have persisted ever since the 19th Amendment became official on Aug. 26, 1920.
Hoosier History Live will challenge several of the myths during the next show in our periodic series about the suffrage movement in Indiana. Anita Morgan, author of the recently released book, We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana (Indiana Historical Society Press) will be Nelson's guest to discuss the misconceptions that have endured. Anita, a native Hoosier, is a senior lecturer in history at IUPUI.
Among the myths that she plans to challenge: the misconception that the suffrage movement in the Hoosier state primarily consisted of, as she puts it, "white, Protestant, middle-class women." Although African-American and Jewish women may have been excluded in other states, Anita's book describes their activist roles in Indiana from the beginnings of women's suffrage in the 19th century.
Legendary entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker hosted a meeting of an African-American suffrage group at her home in Indianapolis, with public school teachers taking leadership roles. One of the teachers, Francis Berry Coston, also used her position as a literary critic for The Indianapolis News to urge African-American women to vote.
In addition to Indianapolis, African-American chapters of suffrage organizations formed in Marion and Muncie, according to We Must Be Fearless. The book also describes the activism undertaken by the Terre Haute Council of Jewish Women and counterpart organizations in other Indiana cities.
Another myth, according to Anita Morgan, is that "once women had the vote, they did not use it." Anita points to research documenting impressive turnouts of women voters in the 1920 and 1924 elections, both in Indiana and nationally. She also notes that suffragists in Indiana set up "suffrage schools" so women could learn about the "mechanics of voting" and the various offices on the ballots.
History fact: Clear back in 1909, women ran for school boards in Indianapolis and Terre Haute, the only cities in the state with elected school boards then, according to We Must Be Fearless. Both female candidates won, even though they could not vote yet in national and state elections.
During our show, we also will explore myths that Indiana women did not have an impact on the national level. In fact, many Hoosier suffragists, including several Quakers who were at the forefront of the movement here, ended up in national leadership roles.
Others who attained national prominence included Indianapolis educator and civic leader May Wright Sewall, whom we discussed during a Hoosier History Live show in January. We explored suffrage strides, setbacks and the role of Zerelda Wallace, a former Indiana first lady, during a show in March.
Our guest Anita Morgan will be participating in a virtual Suffrage Centennial Block Party at 11 am on Aug. 29. More information about her presentation, which is being arranged by the Indiana Historical Society, is available online. Her presentation is among a series of events this year, with many coordinated by the Indiana Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission.
Like an almost-forgotten Hollywood classic enjoying an unexpected revival of interest, drive-in movie theaters are in the spotlight again with the Covid pandemic-related resurgence of outdoor film showings.
As if on cue, Hoosier History Live will explore the rise and fall of drive-in theaters, which boomed in popularity in the years after World War II. During the 1950s, more than 120 drive-ins flourished across Indiana, according to driveinmovie.com.
The Westlake Drive-in on the west side of Indianapolis, one of the state's most popular venues for outdoor movies, typically was jammed with more than 1,200 cars per night, according to a retrospective story on WRTV-Channel 6. In contrast, only 75 vehicles were counted at the Westlake when it closed in 1982. It was replaced on its site at West 10th Street and High School Road by a healthcare facility.
According to several accounts, about 20 drive-in movie theaters have been operating across Indiana during recent years. They include the Tibbs Drive-in on the southwest side of Indy, the only remaining one in Marion County - unless you count temporary venues for outdoor movies that have been popping up to accommodate public health concerns related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For our show, Nelson's guests will include a movie preservationist and collector who is among those converting from indoor to outdoor showings. Film historian Eric Grayson has shifted from indoor screenings of vintage movies at Garfield Park to "drive-in style" events for at least the next few months at the park on the south side Indianapolis.
With Eric joining Nelson, we will explore the factors that sparked the heyday of drive-in theaters, which featured large outdoor screens, projection booths, concession stands and, in some cases, playgrounds, picnic tables and other enticements for movie-goers.
We also will explore the genres of movies that were effective at drive- theaters - the bygone Twin-Aire Drive-in on the southeast side of Indy periodically promoted horror film marathons that appealed to cars crammed with teenagers - and the genres that did not work as well.
We also will delve into the factors that spelled doom for so many drive-ins. They included rising real estate values in cities that made summer-only land usage impractical; drive-in theaters that have endured tend to be in small towns or rural areas.
According to an article published by the Smithsonian Magazine, even in the heyday of drive-ins during the 1950s movie studios preferred to slot their top first-run releases into indoor cinemas because of scheduling flexibility that resulted in more ticket sales. An indoor theater, the article notes, "could show one film five or six times a day instead of only at night ... Drive-ins were left to show B movies."
But not always. Many drive-ins specialized in family-oriented fare. Parents often preferred drive-ins because of the ease of bringing young children (and sometimes even their dogs) in their cars. At the other extreme, some outdoor theaters went the X-rated route during their waning years.
At Garfield Park, showings of vintage movies from the collection of our guest Eric Grayson will include Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) on Aug. 22, This Island Earth (1955) on Sept. 19 and others; more details are available online.
Outdoor movie theaters in Indiana that have continued to endure include the Centerbrook Drive-in in Martinsville and the Skyline Drive-in in Shelbyville.
Those that bit the dust include the Shadeland Drive-in in Indianapolis, which, according to an article on Historic Indianapolis, closed in 1985 after a run of nearly 30 years.
The pageantry, competition and drama of the Tokyo Summer Olympics was supposed to be underway at this point, concluding with a closing ceremony on Aug. 9. Instead, the games have been postponed until July 23-Aug. 8 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic - and some analysts have speculated they may not even happen then.
Regardless, Hoosier History Live will spotlight Olympians with connections to Indiana who competed in an array of sports for more than 100 years. Rather than focusing on superstars such as Mark Spitz, the swimmer who captured a then-record seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or basketball sensation Larry Bird and others on the "Dream Team" of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, we will explore Olympians whose lives, before or after the games in which they competed, involved compelling - and sometimes little-known - personal stories.
Among the stories of Hoosier-connected Olympic athletes we'll explore:
- A gold medalist in the long jump who grew up in poverty and recently retired, at age 89, from a career as a dentist at Logansport State Hospital.
- The first African-American gold medalist in the decathlon who, after the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, became a pro football player - and, according to several accounts, was fired for marrying a white woman.
- Hoosier athletes who followed up their Olympics experiences by becoming FBI agents and, in at least one case, a Navy SEAL.
Our guide as we make our way through these inspiring stories of athletic excellence will be Indianapolis Star sportswriter David Woods, who has covered every Summer Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. (Even before that, he began interviewing Olympians in 1972 and, as a freelancer, wrote about the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics). David is the author of a new book, Indiana University Olympians (IU Press), which features profiles of 49 diverse athletes.
Among them is Dr. Greg Bell, the newly retired octogenarian dentist, who excelled in the long jump at the 1956 Olympics. As the seventh of nine children in an African-American family, he lived in a chicken house on a truck farm near Terre Haute for his first 12 years. For many of those years, the chicken house had no electricity, according to David's book. When his principal at the former Garfield High School suggested he try broad jumping (as the event, which Greg Bell never had heard of, was called then), he immediately set a school record.
Following his triumph at the Olympics in the long jump and two NCAA championships (he never lost a collegiate competition while at IU, David notes), Greg Bell attended the IU School of Dentistry. He paid his way through dental school by working on a farm near Indianapolis.
Other athletes at the 1956 Olympics included Milt Campbell (1933-2012), who was born in New Jersey but attended IU in the 1950s. He became the first African-American gold medalist in the decathlon but suffered from "a lack of recognition during much of his lifetime," David writes. Excelling in swimming, wrestling, judo and other sports, Milt Campbell played football at IU for two years. In 1957, he was chosen by the Cleveland Browns in the NFL draft, but lasted only one season.
"He was cut apparently because of his off-season marriage to a white woman," according to Indiana University Olympians. David's book points out that Campbell is the only athlete to have been inducted into both the National Track and Field Hall Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Like Milt Campbell, diver Lesley Bush grew up in New Jersey but attended IU. She was just 16 years old, new to the sport of diving, and, according to David Woods, "not on any list of Olympic hopefuls" when she captured a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. IU's former diving coach, Hobie Billingsley, called Lesley Bush's victory the greatest upset in the history of competitive diving.
Billingsley's colleague at IU, legendary swimming coach James "Doc" Counsilman, built a dynasty of Olympians during the 1960s and '70s that included Indianapolis native Mike Troy, a gold medalist at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Eventually he became a Navy SEAL and was awarded a Silver Star for heroism during the Vietnam War. Mike Troy died last August at age 78.
Decades earlier, two native Hoosier Olympians become FBI agents. Track star Don Lash (1912-1994) attended Auburn High School, which did not have an indoor or outdoor track. "He discovered his talents while chasing rabbits on his grandfather's farm," according to David's book.
Although Don Lash set world records before and after the 1936 Berlin Olympics, he did not win a medal at the games. But his prowess evidently became an asset during his 21-year career with the FBI. "He was assigned to cases in which agents thought a suspect might flee on foot so that he could catch them," David writes.
The other Olympian-turned-FBI agent was Fred Wilt (1920-1994), a native of Pendleton, Ind. He competed in track events in the 1948 London Olympics and the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. Like Don Lash, he did not win an Olympic medal, but he set world records at other competitions. Lash followed up his 22-year career at the FBI with a stint as the women's track coach at Purdue University.
No need to pity Indiana's snake population, but let's acknowledge that misconceptions abound about the reptiles that commonly evoke terror and scorn. Of the many species of snakes native to the state, only four are considered venomous.
Hoosier History Live will spotlight those four - including the most rare, the dreaded water moccasin (also known as the cottonmouth) - along with a range of others in the spectrum of snake species. We also will discuss a lizard that's often mistaken for a snake because it is legless.
The insights will come from Nelson's guest, herpetologist Nate Engbrecht of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.
Some tidbits about a few of the snakes that can be found on Hoosier soil (or in the water):
- Common gartersnake: Harmless to humans, it is "probably our most familiar local snake species," Nate says. Some Hoosiers call it a "gardener snake" or "garden snake."
- Water moccasin/cottonmouth: "A lot of people think they see water moccasins in Indiana, but the species is very rare," Nate says. "It has been documented at only one or two Indiana sites, and has not been verified in the state in over a decade. We have a number of non-venomous water snakes that are probably what most people are seeing." Documented sites have been in Dubois County and in Harrison County, along the Ohio River. But Nate emphasizes that only the Dubois County site is thought to still have the possibility of resident water moccasins – and the species has not even been seen there since the early 2000s. "So their current status in the state is undetermined."
- Copperheads: These venomous snakes are somewhat widespread in southern Indiana.
- Gray rat snake: Although it can be found statewide, the gray rat snake (sometimes called a "black rat snake" or, simply, a "black snake") also is most prevalent in southern Indiana.
- Eastern hog-nosed snake: It's not especially common, but can be found across Indiana, Nate says. "This is the most 'theatrical' of our snakes," he adds, noting its "elaborate defensive display that involves flattening its neck like a cobra, striking, hissing, vomiting, defecating and, in a grand finale, [it] will turn over on its back and play dead - mouth agape with tongue hanging out." Eastern hog-nosed snakes eat toads and frogs.
The legless lizard that resembles snakes is the glass lizard. Of the six species of lizards found in Indiana, the glass lizard is the only one without limbs. According to Nate, glass lizards can reach 2 to 3 feet in length, although their tails often comprise nearly 70 percent of that.
Glass lizards - which are found in grasslands, sandy woods and the Dunes in northwest Indiana - are so named because their tails tend to break easily when they are handled. The tails regenerate, but the replacement often is not as long as the original, Nate says.
He adds that, although glass lizards are "snake-like in appearance," they have eyelids and ear openings, features lacking in snakes found in Indiana.
Across the state, lakes, marshes, ponds, ditches and other aquatic habitats are home to the common watersnake that often is mistaken for a water moccasin. Although the common watersnake is not venomous, Nates says they tend to be "feisty when handled."
Another species that can be found statewide is the eastern milksnake. A medium-sized snake that sometimes has a brilliant red body, the eastern milksnake occasionally is discovered around farms and barns.
It is not venomous, nor is Dekay's brownsnake, which Nate describes as a small, unassuming snake that typically is gray or brown. He notes that the Dekay's brownsnake benefits gardeners by eating slugs.
Nate joined botanist Michael Homoya as a guest last November for a Hoosier History Live show about rare species of plants and animals in Indiana.
Even aside from the roller coasters at Indiana Beach, the ups and downs have been dizzying at the iconic tourist attraction on the shores of Lake Shafer at the Hoosier town of Monticello.
The heyday of the beach, boardwalk, amusement center, arcade and ballroom - where the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher and Janis Joplin performed - lasted for decades after the park opened during the 1920s. After a series of ownership changes, Indiana Beach has been continually in the news this year: In February came the stunning announcement that it would close after 94 colorful years. That was followed by another ownership change, which paved the way for the reopening of Indiana Beach earlier this month.
Hoosier History Live will explore the history that began in 1926, when founder Earl Spackman created a summer getaway then known as Ideal Beach, which initially was just a sandy stretch of lakeshore and a refreshment stand that he built with two-by-fours. By the Big Band era of the 1940s, the ballroom had become a venue for such musical headliners as Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Fireworks, water skiing demonstrations, a Ferris wheel and other attractions ensued.
Nelson will be joined by two guests, both of whom live in Monticello:
- Joy Spackman Bailey, the granddaughter of founder Earl Spackman, who began working at Indiana Beach as a teenager checking coats in the ballroom and helping at a soda fountain. Also during the 1950s, when the attraction was owned by her father, Tom Spackman, Joy participated in water skiing demonstrations on the lake that captivated hundreds of spectators. Later, she was a teacher at various local schools. She also is an artist and past president of the White County Historical Society.
- And author W.C. Madden, known as Bill, who is the editor of Monticello Magazine, a quarterly. He has written more than 40 books, including the newly released History of Twin Lakes (Shafer & Freeman Publishing) which includes a chapter about Indiana Beach, and Indiana Beach: A Fun-Filled History (Arcadia Publishing, 2013).
The path forward for Indiana Beach became rocky after the Spackman family sold it in 2008. Non-local, corporate ownership ensued, with much higher admission prices. California-based Apex Parks Group bought Indiana Beach in 2015, by which point many of the amusement park rides were deteriorating, according to news accounts. The announcement in February that Apex was closing the park - followed by news that Apex was filing for bankruptcy - made the front pages of newspapers across Indiana.
So did the unexpected news that Chicago-based businessman Gene Staples had purchased and would reopen Indiana Beach. The White County Commission and the White County Council offered $3 million in financial incentives to attract a new owner, according to news accounts.
Younger generations often are surprised to learn that Indiana Beach ever attracted top entertainers like Peter, Paul and Mary, the Who, Janis Joplin and the Beach Boys, who drew thousands of concert goers during the 1960s.
"Long-time owner Tom Spackman hired booking agents to bring in top acts," the Lafayette Courier-Journal wrote in a 2011 retrospective of the performers, described by the newspaper as a who's who of future Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees. "The Monticello stop was usually sandwiched between gigs in Chicago and Indianapolis."
But it's not only the celebrities that stand out in the memory of our guest, Joy Spackman Bailey.
She reflects back on her unusual childhood: "Imagine growing up amid roller coasters, carousels and cotton candy. My brothers and I would ride our bikes up and down the boardwalk, playing tag and hide-and-seek . . . I'm not alone in feeling that there was magic in the air those summers I spent at the park."
But there also were challenges, almost from the beginning. In late May 1930, hours before a pavilion at Indiana Beach - then still known as Ideal Beach - was set to host its first band and dance, a devastating fire swept through the entertainment center, completely destroying it.
Owner Earl Spackman vowed to reopen after the disaster, and according to our guest W.C. Madden, his workers were able to have a pavilion ready in just a few weeks, enabling a July 4 gala.
The park was renamed Indiana Beach in the 1950s by Tom Spackman. His daughter, our guest Joy, notes that Louis Armstrong entertained crowds there five times between 1955 and 1962. Other favorite performers included Vaughn Monroe, Brenda Lee, the Four Seasons and the Kingston Trio.
Eventually, though, the focus at Indiana Beach shifted from dance halls, concerts, swimming and sunbathing to the amusement park rides, which included a roller coaster called the Hoosier Hurricane. For decades, Indiana Beach was known for its TV commercials that proclaimed: "There's more than corn in Indiana."
The ownership changes in recent years, along with steeper daily admission prices and what many White County residents felt was a lack of creativity and vision, were disheartening. An Indianapolis Monthly magazine article summarizes the advice for new owner Staples: "Repair the relationship with the local community."
After the shock of the closing announcement, the recent reopening has made Joy Spackman Bailey optimistic. "We are so thankful to see the park up and running again," she says. "Things can only get better."
Almost like the beginning of a Disney movie, this story starts with a boy captivated by animals, but distressed by turbulence in his family.
After growing up in Indianapolis during the years following World War I - and attending Arsenal Technical High School and what was then the John Herron Institute of Art - Bill Peet went on to be generally considered the greatest storyboard artist at Disney Studios. Peet is the only artist to have created all of the storyboards for a Disney animated movie; he did that for two classics, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and The Sword in the Stone (1963). (During the era before computer-generated animation, several storyboard artists typically would create one movie.)
During and after his 27 years at the studio - where Peet's relationship with founder Walt Disney was periodically volatile - he wrote and illustrated about 30 children's books sold internationally. Almost all of his books - which include The Wump World (1970) and The Ant and the Elephant (1972) - remain in print today, nearly 20 years after his death in 2002.
Peet's books fascinated Ken Avidor as a boy growing up in New York, inspiring him to become a sketch artist and cartoonist. Ken, who now is based in Indianapolis, will be Nelson's guest to share insights about Peet, whose years with Disney included significant work on such beloved films as Pinocchio (1940) and Dumbo (1941) - as well as the early development of The Jungle Book (1967), although a rift with Walt Disney resulted in Peet leaving the studio during production of that animated classic.
After the break with Disney, he focused on his children's books, which often were inspired by his Hoosier childhood, including Chester, the Worldly Pig (1978), about a restless hog who runs off from an Indiana farm to join a circus. The books were so successful that Peet often was regarded as on par with his contemporary, the legendary children's author Dr. Seuss.
So why isn't Peet better remembered, even in his home state?
That's a question Ken Avidor will discuss during our show, along with sharing insights about the themes that reoccur in Peet's work. Cruelty within the animal kingdom - along with the impact of human "progress" on animals - were predominant storylines.
Born in the Ohio River town of Grandview, Ind., in 1915, Bill Peet was 3 years old when his family moved to the eastside of Indianapolis. Although family members lived in several houses, Peet wrote in Bill Peet: An Autobiography (1989) that his happiest years were when they lived with his maternal grandmother in what is now called the Emerson Heights neighborhood. That's when Peet's father, whom he described as a continual source of conflict, abandoned the family for 10 years.
Also during his youth, Peet explored creeks and woods near his home, sketching wildlife. At Tech High School, Peet wrote, he was failing almost all of his classes until a friend advised him to study art.
By then, he had been drawing for several years. His autobiography is filled with sketches depicting scenes from his boyhood, including locomotives at Union Station, race cars at the Indianapolis 500, the visiting circus ("but always the assembly of tent cities, never the circus itself," he noted) and fish in a local creek, including dozens killed by water pollution. At the Indiana State Fair in 1934, Peet's paintings won prizes.
After his studies at Herron, Peet was hired during the Great Depression by Disney Studios, where his work on Dumbo - the story of a circus elephant with oversized, floppy ears - impressed Walt Disney.
His impact on One Hundred and One Dalmatians was enormous. Although the movie was based on a children's book by English author Dodie Smith, Peet wrote a screenplay that expanded some aspects of the story and dropped others. In addition to doing all of the storyboards, he was deeply involved in character development, including the depiction of Cruella de Vil, the terrifying villain who attempts to steal the Dalmatian puppies for her own nefarious purpose.
During his years at Disney, Peet had his first children's book published. Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure (1959) is about a proud lion whose mane catches fire.
Many of the ideas for his books, Peet wrote, derived from bedtime stories that he told his two sons. Peet's wife, Margaret, was a native of Ladoga, Ind.; they met when she was studying art at Herron.
Ever since the selection of the original Mercury 7 astronauts in 1959 marked the dawn of the U.S. space program, it's been well known that a significant percentage of NASA astronauts, mission specialists and engineers have spent portions of their lives in Indiana. After all, Purdue University has long been nicknamed "Mother of Astronauts."
Less well known, however, is Indiana's connection to the dehydrated food that has been the chow for many of the U.S. space program's intrepid cosmic explorers.
And then there's the Hoosier state's link to the physician who treated several astronauts who became household names during the 1960s, including Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong.
Hoosier History Live will spotlight these unexpected links just as space travel is receiving renewed attention with the recent launch of a capsule by SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk that took two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The mission "ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA, the longest such hiatus in its history," according to a USA Today report. (NASA had been relying on Russian spaceships to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station).
Note to listeners who may be day-dreaming about blasting off as a civilian space traveler: Your prep could be overseen by a Purdue alum who works with civilians likely to become the first space tourists.
Our guest, Purdue historian John Norberg of Lafayette, will share details about various intriguing - but seldom highlighted - links between Indiana and the space program. A retired columnist for the Lafayette Journal & Courier who has been inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, John has been a guest on previous shows, including those that explored Astronauts and Purdue and Amelia Earhart's connections to Indiana.
So what's the skinny on the astronauts' food?
A former Indiana farm girl who studied home economics at Purdue supervised the packaging of food consumed by shuttle crews for several years, among other responsibilities. Karen Pearson Ross (Purdue class of '71) grew up on a farm in Sheridan, Ind., and eventually married popular NASA astronaut Jerry Ross.
Her husband liked to quip that he was the only one among his colleagues who enjoyed "home cooking" while in space. Both Karen and Jerry Ross, who grew up in Crown Point, Ind., are now retired. Our guest John Norberg collaborated with Jerry Ross on his autobiography, Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA's Record-Setting Frequent Flier (Purdue University Press, 2013).
In addition to sharing details about Karen Ross' cosmic culinary work, John Norberg will discuss Dr. Steve Beering, the former, long-time Purdue president (1983-2000) who died in April at age 87. Beginning in the early 1960s, Dr. Beering was the physician for Grissom, a native of Mitchell, Ind., Glenn, Alan Shepard and others among the original Mercury 7 astronauts.
Dr. Beering, who was on the medical staff at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas then, later gave Neil Armstrong his first physical for the astronaut program. Dr. Beering went on to become the dean of the IU School of Medicine before serving as Purdue's president.
Currently, Purdue alum Beth Moses (class of '92) is an astronaut instructor training people who will become the first space tourists. Although she works for Virgin Galactic, the company that hopes to send tourists into space, Beth Moses officially is classified as a NASA astronaut, according to John Norberg. She traveled into space on a Virgin Galactic test flight in 2019.
With various aspects of racial justice in the headlines, Hoosier History Live will explore precedent-setting legal trials in early Indiana involving African Americans and Native Americans. We are drawing upon our rich archive for a special encore show focusing on two landmark cases of racial justice in early 19th century Indiana.
The two trials: one in which an enslaved Indiana woman successfully sued for her freedom, and a second in which white men were found guilty and executed for slaughtering nine Native Americans, an infamous incident that history has dubbed the Fall Creek Massacre. The shows focusing on these milestone legal cases both originally aired in 2010.
In 1821, Mary Bateman Clark, a young African-American woman living in Vincennes, made history when her lawyer filed a lawsuit seeking her release from an "indentured servitude" contract with one of the most prominent men in the new state of Indiana. The contract required Clark to cook, clean and sew for Gen. Washington Johnston and his family for 20 years. Her only pay was housing, food and clothing.
The case, which made its way to the Indiana Supreme Court, involved determining whether such "indentured servitude" contracts violated the state's Constitution as a form of slavery. Nearly 200 years ago - on Nov. 16, 1821 - the state Supreme Court ruled in Clark's favor and ordered her employer to release her.
Sharing insights about the social history of the era and the landmark case, Nelson is joined in studio by one of Clark's descendants, Indianapolis resident Eunice Trotter. Eunice, a veteran journalist, and her sister Ethel McCane have used their research about their ancestor to do "living history performances" for schools and civic groups across the state.
Eunice Trotter was involved in the production of a one-hour documentary, Mary Bateman Clark, a Woman of Color and Courage, which originally aired on WTIU Bloomington in 2013.
Eunice and Ethel also crusaded for a historic marker in honor of Mary Bateman Clark, which was dedicated at the Knox County Courthouse in 2009. The sisters are Mary Bateman Clark's great-great-great granddaughters.
Nelson and his guest also discuss a similar case involving another young woman, Polly Strong, who also lived in Vincennes in the 1820s and sued to obtain her freedom. She had been enslaved by Col. Hyacinth LaSalle, a prominent Vincennes resident, before Indiana became a state in 1816. LaSalle challenged the new state Constitution, unsuccessfully arguing that it could not be applied retroactively.
Re-enactments of the Polly Strong case have been performed across Indiana under the direction of Corydon historic preservationist Maxine Brown, who has been a guest on Hoosier History Live for a show about her historic restoration of a segregated school in Corydon, as well as a show discussing DNA testing and family ancestry. The restored school, now known as the Leora Brown School, has been the setting for re-enactments of the court cases of Mary Bateman Clark and Polly Strong.
Just three years after the Mary Bateman Clark trial, another milestone Indiana legal case set a precedent for racial justice in the United States.
When white men were found guilty by a jury and executed for the slaughter of nine Native Americans in March 1824, it was the first time that the murders of Indians by whites had been subject to capital punishment under American law.
To explore all aspects of the brutal crimes in the swampy woods of Madison County - where the Native Americans (including three women and four children) were gruesomely murdered - Nelson is joined in studio by David Thomas Murphy, author of the book, Murder in Their Hearts: The Fall Creek Massacre (Indiana Historical Society Press).
A professor of history at Anderson University, David spent four years researching the massacre, trial and subsequent developments, including the social history of pioneer Hoosiers (Indiana only had been a state for about seven years at the time of the massacre) and of the Native Americans in the region.
"The slaughter in the soggy Indiana creek bottoms created a short-lived but serious national security crisis," David has written, referring to concerns across the country that warfare would erupt across newly developing states.
In researching the tragedy, David explored why the federal government devoted great effort and resources to prosecuting the perpetrators. David's research required that he reconcile conflicting accounts of the events (the tribal origins of some of the victims remain unclear) as well as the motivations involved in the cold-blooded crimes, which involved shooting some of the Native Americans in their backs and mutilating several of the corpses.
Following the recent dismantling in an Indianapolis park of a Confederate monument that originally marked the graves of prisoners of war who died at a Union Army camp, Hoosier History Live will explore the historic context of various aspects of the controversy.
Several guests will participate during the show: an expert on Civil War history, including the former Camp Morton and Confederate sympathizers in Indiana during the war; an IUPUI professor who has researched the history of the monument that was moved from a former cemetery to Garfield Park on the city's south side; and a civic leader who oversees presentations about African-American history in the state.
Civil War historian Steve Towne, the author of Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War (Ohio University Press) and other books and award-winning articles about the Civil War, is an archivist at IUPUI. His colleague Paul Mullins, an anthropology professor, has researched the Confederate monument, which he notes was placed initially at Greenlawn Cemetery in 1909.
Greenlawn, the first major public cemetery in Indianapolis, was located near the White River and Kentucky Avenue, a site that was prone to flooding and later became increasingly industrialized. The monument, funded by the federal government, was a mass marker for 1,616 Confederate POWs whose remains could not be identified individually. Their remains were moved to Crown Hill Cemetery, Greenlawn's successor as the city's major graveyard; the reburial site at Crown Hill is known as Confederate Mound. According to Paul Mullins, the POWs' remains were reburied at Confederate Mound in 1931.
Along with Steve Towne and Paul Mullins, our guests during the show will include Ophelia Wellington, founder of Freetown Village, a living history museum she created in 1982 to teach African-American history.
During our show, Steve Towne will share insights about conditions at Camp Morton, which was created for the induction and training of Union Army soldiers on a site near 19th and Alabama streets that previously had served as the state fairgrounds.
During the course of the war, Camp Morton primarily served as a POW camp for Confederate soldiers and sailors; by the end of the war, about 1,700 had died there. Today, much of the Herron-Morton Place Neighborhood is on the site of Camp Morton.
With the moves of the POWs' remains, many could not be identified. The relocation of the federally-funded monument (with a metal plate at the base that lists the names of the POWs) from Greenlawn to Garfield Park was advocated by the Southern Club of Indianapolis, which Paul Mullins will describe during our show.
The placement of the monument in a public park in the late 1920s has been controversial for several years. Since the June 8 dismantling, it has been stored at an undisclosed location.
It is not the only Confederate monument, memorial or marker in Indiana. According to the Indiana Historical Bureau, a state historic marker in the Franklin County town of Laurel, birthplace of a Confederate brigadier general, is under review for "misleading and inaccurate statements" as well as the lack of proper historic context on the signage. In Terre Haute, an obelisk at Woodlawn Cemetery memorializes eleven Confederates who died in a POW camp in the city.
The phone lines will be opened earlier than usual during our show for listeners' questions and comments.
The table was overloaded when Hoosier History Live served up a show on topics related to the foods of the pioneers earlier this year. So during this show, we will savor additional, fresh aspects of what and how Indiana residents ate during the 1820s, '30s and '40s.
Which members of pioneer households worked in the gardens? Did early settlers really believe tomatoes were poisonous?
How was the corn grown in the pioneer era different from what's cultivated in Hoosier soil today?
Indianapolis-based food historian Sheryl Vanderstel will discuss those and other topics that we were not able to explore when she was our guest in April. In addition, Sheryl is planning to share insights about aspects of what she calls "food etiquette," of the pioneer era, customs ranging from "tableware to table settings, serving and meal manners."
"Table manners varied by social class and ethnic groups, just as they do today," she says.
Typically, every member of an Indiana pioneer household had a prescribed role in maintaining the family garden, Sheryl notes. In addition to vegetables and fruits, the gardens included herbs for cooking and medicinal use.
A native Hoosier whose ancestors were pioneers, Sheryl is a former assistant director of education at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, where her duties included overseeing hearthside dinners and other food programs.
She has been involved in food programming at other historic sites and museums as well as educational seminars about historic foods. Sheryl is a board member of the Irvington Historical Society.
| Saturdays, noon to 1 p.m. ET on WICR 88.7 FM. Or stream audio live from anywhere on WICR Online! You can listen to recent shows by clicking the podcast links below, or check out our extensive archive of past shows available as podcasts. | | June 13, 2020 Ellis Island, immigration and Indiana: encore Click here to listen to the podcast. Ellis Island - the "gateway to America" for generations of immigrants - is located in New York Harbor, of course, hundreds of miles from Indiana. Even so, a little historical sleuthing reveals various connections between Ellis Island and the Hoosier state, and it is these connections which will be the focus of this encore broadcast of a show that originally aired in 2018. The receiving station for aspiring Americans now celebrated as an iconic aspect of our shared history opened on Ellis Island in 1892 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, so the only president elected from Indiana oversaw the lead-up to its debut. According to some estimates, about 22 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island during the years between 1892 and 1924, its peak period as the country's "door." (Ellis Island remained open as a receiving center until 1954, but during its final 30 years, limitations on immigration - and the creation of other points of entry - meant that far fewer immigrants were handled at the island.) Not only will we explore the challenges that confronted all involved during the early Ellis Island years - immigrants often endured shockingly crude medical exams - we also will look at the waves of ethnic heritage groups that came to Indiana from the 1890s through the mid-1920s. Nelson's studio guests are: Jennifer Capps, the veteran curator at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis. Because Ellis Island opened under the Harrison administration - he was elected president in 1888 and left office in early 1893 - Jennifer has researched several aspects of the planning for the major immigrant processing center. According to Ellis Island: Gateway to the American Dream (Barnes & Noble Books, 1998), "the federal government assumed responsibilities for immigration and built Ellis Island" after corruption scandals with its predecessor, Castle Garden, which was run by New York officials. * And Teresa Baer, managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society Press. Teresa is the author of Indianapolis: A City of Immigrants (2012) and Finding Indiana Ancestors (2007), both published by the IHS Press; she also is the editor of The Hoosier Genealogists: Connections*, the society's family history magazine.
According to timelines in Teresa's books and in other reference sources, the 1890s through the early 1900s in Indiana was an era of heavy immigration from Eastern European countries including Poland, Hungary and Russia, as well as such Mediterranean countries as Greece and Italy. Significant percentages of the immigrants were Catholic and Jewish. During our show, we will frame the early decades of immigration through Ellis Island by describing the waves of ethnic immigration to Indiana that preceded it, including early Irish, German, English and Scottish arrivals. Between the 1890s and the start of World War I in 1914, many waves of immigrants came from what then was the Austro-Hungarian Empire; today, after more than a century of geopolitical shifts and cartographic reconfiguration, their countries of ancestral origin are the modern nations of Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Slovakia. According to Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience (IHS Press, 1996), South Bend received larger numbers of Polish immigrants than any Indiana city during this era. Many Eastern European immigrants also settled in Lake County and other northwestern Indiana counties after U.S. Steel began operations in the early 1900s. The city of Gary was founded in 1906 and became the new hometown of many mill workers, as did Whiting, East Chicago and Hammond. Italian immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries included hundreds of marble-cutters who settled in southern Indiana, including the town of Bedford, to work as limestone carvers. Hoosier History Live explored this aspect of Italian immigration in 2010. Other shows that explored immigration to Indiana during the heyday of Ellis Island include our programs about Latvian and Lithuanian heritage in 2016 and Russian immigration in 2014. Our guest Jennifer Capps will share details about crude eye examinations - with unsterilized equipment - that were imposed on immigrants during the early decades of Ellis Island as a receiving station. Federal laws called for the rejection of those who showed indications of suffering from a "loathsome or contagious disease," but the reality was that many immigrants were turned away if they displayed any hint of illness or physical impairment, according to Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words (Checkmark Books, 1997). A fire at Ellis Island burned the first receiving station to the ground in June 1897, more than four years after Harrison's presidency ended. By then, more than 1.64 million immigrants had been processed. The fire destroyed immigrant records from 1855 to 1897, including those from Castle Garden. About 200 immigrants were on the island at the time of the inferno, but all were safely evacuated. Construction began immediately of new buildings made of materials deemed fireproof. Some history facts: The first site proposed for the immigrant processing station was Bedloe Island (now called Liberty Island), where construction on the Statue of Liberty had been completed just a few years prior, in 1886. Because of public opposition to that proposal, nearby Ellis Island was chosen instead. * The first official to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty was Harrison's vice president, Levi P. Morton. * As recently as 1997, more than 40 percent of the U.S. population could "trace their roots to an ancestor who came through Ellis Island," according to the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation*. |
As the city of Indianapolis celebrates its 200th birthday - and on the eve of what was supposed to have been a mass, public kickoff event for the Bicentennial era of the Hoosier capital - Hoosier History Live will explore a malaria epidemic during the early 1820s that almost wiped out the city just as it was getting underway.
We also will look back on the city's history at various proposals for its improvement, including some ideas that fizzled or needed to be reworked.
A Bicentennial era (2020-2021) launch had been planned for early June that involved a major public community gathering on Monument Circle. Instead, as our guest Deputy Mayor Jeff Bennett explains, civic leaders have been conferring to come up with a celebratory kickoff scheduled for June 28 that can happen amid COVID-era public health guidelines. Jeff will share more details during our show.
And listeners are invited to call in to share their visions and dreams for Indianapolis during the next 200 years. The phone number of the WICR-FM studio is 317-788-3314; Nelson will open the phone lines early during the show.
The coronavirus pandemic certainly isn't the first public health crisis Indianapolis has faced. During the summer of 1821, the new city confronted a devastating malaria epidemic that killed 72 men, women and children, according to Indianapolis: The Story of a City by Edward A. Leary. Dozens of terrified residents packed up and left.
Many victims were nursed back to health by Dr. Isaac Coe (1782-1855), a Rutgers-educated New Jersey native who was the second physician to arrive in the city. Dr. Coe scolded state leaders for choosing a swampy site as the location for the new state capital merely because it was the geographic center of Indiana. More than 20 of the children who died in the malaria epidemic were buried in Plague Cemetery, the city's first graveyard. A commemorative plaque marks the approximate site of the cemetery on the campus of today's IUPUI.
Despite that inauspicious start, the city endured. During the next 200 years, visionaries proposed various plans for Indianapolis and its historic sites. Our guest Jeff Bennett will discuss some plans involving transformations for City Market at E. Market and N. Alabama streets that never unfolded.
Nelson and Jeff also will discuss Lockerbie Fair, a proposal first suggested in the late 1950s by city planners to transform the Lockerbie Square neighborhood into a historic "theme park" with costumed reenactors. The concept gained steam as interest in history increased with the buildup to the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.
However, the Lockerbie Fair plan drew strenuous protests from historic preservationists, who wanted to protect Lockerbie as a residential neighborhood and were restoring its 19th century cottages. Opposition from Indiana Landmarks (then the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana) was a key factor in causing the Lockerbie Fair concept to be scuttled.
The proposal in 1958 from the Metropolitan Planning Commission that advocated for the creation of Lockerbie Fair also suggested demolishing City Market and historic Union Station, replacing the latter with a "modern heliport and transportation hub." The planners predicted that city residents soon would be relying on helicopters for transportation to Broad Ripple and other neighborhoods beyond downtown's Mile Square.
The planners advocated for demolition of City Market so it could be replaced "with a cube-like structure ... which would give a festive atmosphere for the market shopper."
That didn't happen at the site, which was first envisioned as the location for a food market when Scottish-born surveyor Alexander Ralston laid out Indianapolis in 1821. Initially, an outdoor market flourished there. The current City Market building, which was constructed in 1886, has been renovated several times; a substantial redevelopment in the 1970s included construction of its two wings.
Both City Market and Union Station, which was also built in the 1880s, have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. An attempt in the mid-1980s to convert Union Station into a "festival marketplace" of boutique shops and restaurants failed after a few years. Today, Crowne Plaza leases most of the historic train station from the city for use as a hotel, banquet hall and conference center.
Earlier in his career, our guest Deputy Mayor Jeff Bennett worked for Indiana Landmarks. He also was our guest last January for a show about how the Centennial of Indianapolis was celebrated in 1920 as well as the 150th birthday festivities in the early 1970s.
With the highly anticipated induction of Tamika Catchings into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame coming up this summer, Hoosier History Live is taking a look back at the challenges the Indiana Fever legend confronted during her spectacular career as a player, as well as her aspirations for post-Fever life.
Since the original broadcast of this show in 2017 - one year after she retired as a player - Tamika has been named general manager and vice president of operations for the Fever. In August, the honor that she has called a "storybook ending" is expected to unfold with her enlistment into the Hall of Fame.
She will be inducted along with other basketball superstars, including her lifelong friend Kobe Bryant, whose posthumous membership comes after he was killed in a helicopter crash in January. During this interview with our host Nelson, Tamika talks about the childhood bond with Bryant that began when they were growing up in Italy, where their fathers played pro basketball.
Tamika went on to be one of the most beloved athletes in Indiana history - and not only because she was considered to have been one of the best female professional basketball players ever. Nor is it merely because she won four Olympic gold medals.
Tamika Catchings is regarded as an inspirational figure even by admirers who never have attended an Indiana Fever game.
Born with a profound hearing impairment that caused her to be bullied as a child, Tamika established her Catch the Stars Foundation in 2004 to help young people confronted by challenges. She wrote an autobiography, Catch a Star (Revell Publishing, 2016) in which she describes how she was discouraged from chasing dreams.
Tamika, now 40, was named a Living Legend by the Indiana Historical Society in 2017. Also that year, her jersey (No. 24) became the first to be permanently retired by the Indiana Fever; her entire 15-year playing career in the WNBA was spent with the team.
During our show, Tamika talks about a range of aspects of her life and career, which included a role that surprised many: tea shop proprietor. In 2017, Tamika bought the Tea's Me Cafe on the near north side of Indianapolis after learning that the owners intended to shutter it. She had been a longtime patron and didn’t want the cafe to close.
A year earlier, she married her husband, Parnell Smith, in a small ceremony in downtown Indy. She became a commentator for ESPN's SEC network. And in 2017, Tamika gave the commencement address at IUPUI.
"If anyone can do it, you can," she repeated to the graduates as a refrain throughout her speech.
Although her father, Harvey Catchings, enjoyed a 12-year career with the NBA and then played pro basketball overseas, the WNBA didn't even exist until Tamika was 16 years old.
By then, she had moved multiple times, spending her formative years everywhere from Italy to Texas as the family was continually uprooted because of her father's career. In Catch a Star, which Tamika wrote with Ken Petersen, she describes how she was perceived at the succession of new schools:
"Tamika Catchings was still just an odd-looking girl with big box hearing aids over her ears."
She went on to lead the Fever to a national championship in 2012, win four Olympic gold medals (the most recent at the 2016 Rio Olympics) as a key player on Team USA and receive the ESPN Humanitarian Award.
"Tamika has been a shining light in the community, a tireless worker and a tremendous role model not only for young athletes, but for everyone," writes Tony Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts coach, in the introduction to Catch a Star. "She is one of the rare superstar athletes who really 'get it.'"
Tamika was drafted by the Indiana Fever in 2001 after leading the University of Tennessee's team to a national championship. At Tennessee, she had suffered a severe leg injury, but in Indianapolis she rebounded and excelled with the Fever, overcoming what Tamika describes in her autobiography as painful shyness during her youth.
"The name-calling, the put-downs, all the being singled out and set apart was too much," she writes in Catch a Star, referring to childhood teasing because of the hearing aids she wore.
When she launched her Catch the Stars Foundation, Tamika's goal was to help disadvantaged and challenged youth. In recent years, the foundation has expanded its mission to "empower youth to achieve their dreams by providing goal-setting programs that promote literacy, fitness and mentoring," as stated on the organization's website.
Even though there won't be an Indianapolis 500 this Memorial Day weekend due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we've got the green flag to explore the colorful heritage of the "greatest spectacle in racing." During this encore show originally broadcast in 2016, Hoosier History Live delves into the lives and careers of early race drivers who had deep connections to Indiana.
Here are some of the story nuggets involving "homegrown" competitors whose exploits captivated Indy 500 fans during the years immediately following the inaugural race in 1911:
- After 22-year-old native Hoosier Joe Dawson won the Indianapolis 500 in 1912, he hurried from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to his family's home at 2828 N. Illinois St. to hug his mom.
- Charlie Merz, the son of an Indianapolis police officer, survived horrific accidents early in his racing career to complete the final lap of the Indy 500 in 1913 - with his car on fire. He died in 1952 and is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.
- And in 1919, the Indy 500 was won by popular Howdy Wilcox, a pioneer race driver born in Crawfordsville. His son Howard S. Wilcox, also known as Howdy, founded the Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University in the early 1950s.
Anecdotes about those race drivers and others with Hoosier connections are shared by our guest, Indy native and lifelong racing enthusiast Mark Dill, the creator of firstsuperspeedway.com, an extensive website about auto racing, including the sport's pre-1920 history.
Mark, who is based in Cary, N.C., has worked in marketing and public relations for various high-tech companies. He also previously worked for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and, when he was an Indiana University student, as news director of Indianapolis Raceway Park. Mark and his wife Esther own Mark Dill Enterprises Inc., which helps market the rapidly growing sport of vintage auto racing.
Speaking of vintage: Many Hoosiers know a bit about Ray Harroun, a Pennsylvania native who won the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911 with a Marmon car made in Indianapolis. That race has been the focus of Hoosier History Live shows, including some with Speedway historian extraordinaire Donald Davidson. Donald also was Nelson's studio guest on April 4, 2015 for a program that explored the impact of track announcer Tom Carnegie and popular driver Jimmy Clark, the "Flying Scot" who won the Indy 500 in 1965.
For this show, we explore some Hoosiers whose legacies are not as well remembered by the general public today - as well as others such as Wilcox and Barney Oldfield, an Ohio native who, as our guest Mark Dill puts it, was "embraced by Indiana like a native son." A confidant of Speedway founder Carl Fisher, Oldfield (1878-1946) was a racing pioneer and showman who even starred in silent movies.
Although Harroun won the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911, the first lap was led by driver Johnny Aitken, an Indianapolis native whose life and racing achievements Mark discusses during our show. (According to Donald Davidson's Official History of the Indianapolis 500 with co-author Rick Shaffer, Aitken stayed in front for the first four laps of the 1911 race.)
Mark also shares insights about Joe Dawson, the winner of the second Indy 500 who went home to hug his fretful mother, an anecdote celebrated in local newspapers in 1912. Described as a "simple, modest man," Dawson (at age 22 years and 10 months) remained the youngest Indy 500 winner for several decades.
According to Mark's research, Dawson lived with his parents in a house with "the 1912 version of a man cave" that featured college football and baseball pennants.
Other early Indy 500s drivers we will explore include "Farmer" Bill Endicott, whose nickname, Mark says, derived from his ownership of a farm near Crawfordsville.
In addition to his website, Mark oversees a Facebook page on the same subjects.
Earlier in his career, Mark was vice president of Nortel and, in that capacity, worked with former Indy 500 driver Scott Goodyear on sponsorships. Mark also is a regular guest and commentator about racing for radio and TV and has been active in the SportsCar Vintage Racing Association.
Before the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911, there were several other auto races at the Speedway after the track opened in 1909.
Some of these races were won by a talented young driver, Tommy Kincaid, who had been born in Indianapolis; he drove for the Indianapolis-based National Motor Vehicle Company race team owned by Arthur Newby. Our guest Mark Dill will share insights about Kincaid, even though he never raced in the Indy 500; that's because he was killed at age 23 at the Speedway in 1910 while testing his car. (If Tommy Kincaid had been alive in 1912, Mark suspects that he - rather than Joe Dawson, who hugged his mom after the victory - might have driven the winning car, which also was owned by National.)
Barney Oldfield, who even starred in a Broadway musical, generally is considered to have been the first American auto racing celebrity. According to the website of the Henry Ford Archive of Innovation, Oldfield "helped to democratize not only racing entertainment, but also the automobile in general, as the vehicles moved out of the carriage houses and into backyard sheds."
The website also notes that Oldfield "flouted the conventions of his time, both on and off the track. He was notorious for his post-race celebrations, womanizing and bar fights."
Charlie Merz, who finished the 1913 race with his car on fire, later became a successful businessman, engineer and chief steward of the Indy 500. According to a description of the 1913 Indy 500 on Mark's website, Merz's car burst into flames just before the final lap. Instead of stopping, he "forged ahead for the final lap ... with the riding mechanic swatting the flames with his jacket."
Learn more:
- Vanderbilt Cup Races - Author Howard Kroplick's website with information, images and events concerning the Vanderbilt Cup Races held on Long Island from 1904 to 1910.
- The Old Motor - A vintage-automobile "Internet magazine."
- Motor Sport Retro - A website that celebrates "classic motorsport, racing cars, motorcycles and gear."
- "The World When IMS Opened" - The Speedway's official website takes a look back at the year 1909.
- Donald Davidson on the Speedway's 100 years - Full audio (show length 26:27) from the March 5, 2011 Hoosier History Live interview with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's track historian, Donald Davidson.
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway founder Carl Fisher's colorful life - Full audio (show length 29:42) from the May 16, 2009 Hoosier History Live show featuring Indianapolis historian Glory-June Greiff.
- Cruise-In.com - A website that celebrates Indiana car culture.
Two counties are named after Native American tribes. Many of Indiana's 92 counties have names that pay tribute to Revolutionary War heroes. And other county names salute famous Americans, including some who never set foot in the Hoosier state.
A few counties even are named after an aspect of their natural landscape. Lake County, with a northern border on the shores of Lake Michigan, is an obvious example.
For this show exploring the derivation of the names of Indiana's counties, Nelson will be joined by a WICR-FM colleague who has a passion for American history, including the origins of county names.
Charles Braun, the attorney who hosts Legally Speaking, the call-in legal advice show that airs at 11 a.m. on Saturdays, will be Nelson's guest. He's an admirer of French military hero Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) - and there's a direct connection involving our show's topic. Noting that Lafayette played a crucial role as an ally of the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, Charles points out that two counties have names that salute him.
Those two are Fayette County in eastern Indiana and LaGrange County, in the far-northeastern part of the state, which takes its name from Lafayette's French ancestral estate.
Also honoring Lafayette, of course, is the Hoosier city of that name, located in Tippecanoe County. The Tippecanoe River, for which the county is named, derives its name from a word in the language of the Miami people meaning "place of the buffalo fish." The Miami, in turn, are memorialized by Miami County just north of Kokomo.
LaGrange County isn't the only one with a name connected to foreign soil. Switzerland County on the Ohio River is named in honor of the country that was the homeland of many of its early settlers.
Knox County, which includes Vincennes, Indiana's oldest city, is among those named after a notable American with no Hoosier connections. According to Indiana Place Names (IU Press) by Ronald Baker and Marvin Carmony, the county's namesake is Henry Knox, an artillery officer during the Revolutionary War who became the country's first Secretary of War. In that capacity, he oversaw both the Army and the Navy. Knox is immortalized in dozens of place names around the country, including the famous Fort Knox in neighboring Kentucky.
Delaware County, which includes Muncie, is derived from the name given by white settlers to the Lenape, the Native American tribe that lived along the East Coast before being pushed in the 1790s to the wilderness that became Indiana. The Lenape were called the Delaware by white settlers who encountered them in the East. Hoosier History Live explored the Lenape heritage in Indiana during a show in 2014.
Described by some experts as "the most moved group in American history," the Lenape were pushed out of Indiana during the early 1820s in what's been called a "forced migration."
Our guest Charles Braun is immersed in Indiana history in ways other than his knowledge of county names' origins. At the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis, Charles is the official reenactor of the only president elected from the Hoosier state. Charles has been hosting "Legally Speaking" for 37 years, making it the country's longest-running legal advice show with call-in from listeners.
With the U.S. Census underway, Hoosier History Live is turning to a respected demographer to shine a light on trends - some recent and others deeply historic - about the state's residents and where they live.
In 2018, Indiana gained nearly 31,800 residents to reach a total population of 6.69 million, according to estimates provided by demographer Matt Kinghorn, a senior analyst with the Indiana Business Research Center at IU's Kelley School of Business. The state's growth rate outpaced those of all of Indiana's neighboring states, but, Matt says, it is "still well below that seen during much of the 1990s and 2000s" - in large part due to sharply declining birth rates.
Some other intriguing statistics: In 1860 - the year before the Civil War - Indiana was the fifth most populous state in the country, "trailing New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois," Matt says.
And, although 60 of Indiana's 92 counties gained people in 2018, some counties experienced population declines. In fact, several rural counties peaked in population during the early 1900s and have been losing residents ever since. Other counties with mid-sized cities that served as manufacturing hubs peaked during the 1960s and '70s.
Matt will be Nelson's guest to discuss population and demographic shifts, including the state's increasing diversity. From 2010 to 2013, the Hispanic population showed the largest growth of any racial or ethnic group, increasing by about 10,000 residents each year. More recently, though, the birth rate among Hispanic families has fallen sharply and, as Matt describes it, "is more in line with other groups in the state."
During the early 1990s, Hoosier teenagers were nearly as likely to give birth as women ages 30 to 34, according to Matt's research. By 2017, though, the birth rate for teenagers had fallen below that for women in their early 30s. He notes that both state and national birth rates have been declining since 2007, tracking the onset of the recession that began in 2008.
Some other statistics from Matt:
- In 2018, the Indianapolis metropolitan area had 2.04 million people, or about 31 percent of the state's total population. The fastest-growing county in the state was Hamilton County, followed by Hendricks County.
- Union County in far-eastern Indiana (the county seat is the town of Liberty) experienced the sharpest rate of population decline in 2018, while Delaware County (which includes Muncie) lost the largest number of residents.
- In 1900, 66 percent of the state's population lived in rural areas. Just 19 percent did in 2010.
Primarily rural counties that peaked in population in 1920 or earlier include several in western and southern Indiana. Benton County, Warren County, Vermillion County, Greene County, Crawford County and Pike County are among them.
Counties with manufacturing hubs that peaked in population during the 1960s and '70s - and have been declining since - include Howard County (where Kokomo is thelargest city), Madison County (which includes Anderson) and Wayne County (where Richmond is the county seat).
The population growth rate in the Indianapolis metro area outpaced those of neighboring states' metro areas including Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit and Cleveland, according to Matt's analysis. But Columbus, Ohio, had a growth rate that exceeded Indy's.
The white (non-Hispanic) share of Indiana's population dropped from 86 percent in 2000 to 80.7 percent in 2013, Matt reports. During that same period, the statewide percentage of African-Americans increased from 8.4 to 9.2 percent, with Hispanics climbing from 3.5 to 6.4 percent. "Much of the diversity is occurring among young people," Matt adds.
After the 2010 U.S. Census, Matt Kinghorn was a guest on Hoosier History Live for a show analyzing its findings. For more Indiana-specific info for various decades and demographic research, visit these sites:
- Stats Indiana
- Hoosiers by the Numbers
- Indiana Business Research Center
In 1967, Esquire magazine published a cover story with the tagline: "This man ought to be the next president of the United States."
The reference was to J. Irwin Miller the long-time president of Cummins Engine Company - today, Cummins Inc. - whose impact extended far beyond the business world, both locally in his hometown of Columbus, Ind., and nationally, where he played a significant role in the civil rights movement.
As a recently released biography of Miller (1909-2004) puts it, he led Cummins "from its roots as a small, family business to an international Fortune 500 company and transformed Columbus into a gem of mid-century modern architecture."
Nancy Kriplen the Indianapolis-based author of a recently released biography, J. Irwin Miller: The Shaping of an American Town (I.U. Press), will be Nelson's guest to share insights about the influential civic leader who lured prominent mid-century modern architects to Columbus to design public and private buildings ranging from churches, schools and banks to houses. Among the architectural luminaries: Eliel Saarinen, his son Eero Saarinen (designer of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis), I.M. Pei and Harry Weese.
The distinctive residence that Eero Saarinen designed in the 1950s for Miller's family - featuring a sunken "conversation pit" - has, as Nancy notes in her biography, been listed as "one of the five most significant mid-century modern houses" in the country.
Now a museum known as the Miller House, it is a National Historic Landmark owned by Newfields.
J. Irwin Miller, a Stradivarius-playing arts enthusiast, and his wife, Xenia, who eventually became a collector of oil paintings, had deep Hoosier roots. Miller grew up in a Civil War-era house in downtown Columbus built by his great-grandfather, banker Joseph Irwin.
That spacious house - where, at one point, four generations of the Irwin-Miller-Sweeney family were in residence - is now a bed-and-breakfast, the Inn at Irwin Gardens. It is known for its lavish, Italianate gardens
As a boy, J. Irwin Miller developed a lifelong friendship with Clessie Cummins, who started out as the family's chauffeur but then, using what Nancy describes as his "mechanical genius," pushed for the manufacturing of diesel engines that sparked the success of Cummins Engine Company.
In civil rights, Miller's work with presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson included chairing a meeting in 1963 at the White House of a special commission on race and religion.
Nancy's biography begins with a highly publicized trip to Columbus in 1967 by Lady Bird Johnson to visit some of the distinctive buildings that make Columbus "an architectural boomtown."
During the 1960s, J. Irwin Miller served as the first board president of Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis when it became independent from Butler University. He also was the first non-clergy to serve as president of the National Council of Churches.
In Columbus, Miller was instrumental in persuading Finnish-born Eliel Saarinen to design First Christian Church during the 1940s. In 1964, Eero Saarinen designed North Christian Church, which sometimes has been called "the oil can church" because of the 192-foot, needle-like spire that juts from its distinctive roof. Hoosier History Live explored mid-century modern architecture in Columbus and the city's history in a show in 2016.
The grounds at North Christian Church were designed by noted landscape architect Dan Kiley; he also designed the gardens at the Miller House. North Christian Church was the setting for Miller's memorial service when he died at age 95 in 2004.
In her book, Nancy notes that none of the five children of J. Irwin and Xenia Miller live in Columbus today, although their youngest son, Will Miller, continues to be involved with several local institutions that were important to his parents.
Although Sears Roebuck & Co. announced many department store closings across Indiana and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, the retailer has a deep and storied history on many levels in the Hoosier state. In this encore show originally broadcast in November 2018, we turn back the pages of history to explore the enormous impact of the Sears Roebuck Catalog 100 years ago, particularly on small towns and rural areas.
In addition to leafing through the catalog's significance in its heyday (with more than 500 pages, it has been called "the amazon.com of its era" by social historians), we also explore Sears kit homes that were built across Indiana beginning in 1908.
The mail-order catalog began earlier, during the 1890s, and offered products ranging from household appliances to hats, shoes, undergarments, sleds, dolls and baseball mitts from Sears. Rival retailer Montgomery Ward had been selling goods by mail even before that, having been established in 1872.
Nelson's studio guests are Paul Diebold of Indiana DNR's division of historic preservation and archaeology, an expert on Sears kit homes, and public historian Glory-June Greiff, who has researched the impact of the catalog.
"Sears and Ward's catalogs had a tremendous impact, particularly on more isolated rural dwellers," Glory-June says. "[The catalogs] changed advertising in newspapers, too, and eventually led to more and better products offered in previously monopolistic general stores."
Eventually, she adds, the catalogs even resulted in a clamor for improvements to county roads, "especially farm-to-market roads so that rural dwellers could more easily pick up their catalog orders. No RFD [Rural Free Delivery] then." In fact, the popularity of catalog-ordering was a major factor in establishing RFD.
Although the most prevalent Sears kit homes were bungalows and cottages, the ready-to-assemble houses came in dozens of styles. Aspiring homeowners were sent lumber and other supplies along with an 80-page instructional booklet, Paul Diebold notes.
At The Farm at Prophetstown in Prophetstown State Park in Tippecanoe County, there's even a replica of a Sears kit farmhouse as well as a restored kit home that was moved from nearby Lafayette.
The kit homes - Sears preferred the phrases "Sears Modern Home" or "Sears Catalog Home" - were available for order for 32 years, ending in 1940. The kit homes were particularly popular in cities like Indianapolis that had direct railroad connections with Chicago-based Sears, Paul says.
By 1915, when Sears opened its first retail store in Chicago, the catalog and kit homes had become iconic. According to news accounts about the bankruptcy, at its retailing peak Sears had 4,000 department stores across the country,
The closings announced in 2018 included Sears stores in Greenwood and Terre Haute. Sears had been an anchor of the Greenwood Park Mall since the regional shopping center opened in 1966. A wave of closings announced earlier in 2018 included the store at Castleton Square Mall, the only remaining Sears department store in Indianapolis.
Sears began as a watchmaking company in the 1880s. Like Sears, Montgomery Ward was based out of Chicago; it initially sold goods exclusively by mail. During our show, Glory-June discusses retail options that were available to rural dwellers before Ward and Sears -- and "how the catalog companies changed all that."
According to the New York Times, some editions of the Sears Roebuck catalog "would fatten to more than 1,000 pages" during the early 1900s.
"It educated millions of shoppers about mail-order procedures such as shipping, cash payment, substitutions and returns," according to an article published on the Smithsonian website. "It used simple language and a warm, welcoming tone."
Does history offer any lessons in taking on the challenges of a viral threat? To explore this topic that never has been more timely, Hoosier History Live will air our Epidemics in Indiana history show that originally was broadcast in 2014 amid widespread concern about Ebola and the possibility of an epidemic in this country.
Did you know a malaria epidemic swept Indianapolis just as the Hoosier capital was getting under way in the 1820s? Some doctors blamed the epidemic on the swamps and marshland that were on the new city's site, which was chosen because of its central location.
During this show, Nelson and his guests, two medical historians, explore the impact of that early epidemic, plus others that affected not only Indiana, but places far beyond our borders.
The influenza epidemic of 1918, a cholera epidemic of the mid-1800s, the polio scare that prevailed for most of the first half of the 20th century and the AIDS epidemic that caused panic during the 1980s and '90s are among the crises we examine during this show.
We also look into the devastating impact of tuberculosis during the late 1800 and early 1900s - even though "epidemic" may not be the most accurate term to describe the widespread TB cases (tune in to the show for an explanation).
And we explore episodes of panic over potential epidemics, including a swine flu scare in 1976, when a vaccination program encountered various public relations problems. Fears of an epidemic proved unfounded.
Nelson is joined in studio by:
- Dr. William McNiece, president of the Marion County Historical Society. Dr. McNiece is an anesthesiologist at IU Health's Riley Hospital for Children.
- Bill Beck, an author and historian who has written dozens of business and institutional history books, including histories of Indiana hospitals. The founder of Lakeside Writers' Group, he is treasurer of the Marion County Historical Society.
In July 2009. Bill Beck was a Hoosier History Live guest for a show about the 1918 influenza epidemic and its Indiana impact. In July 2012, we explored various aspects of the polio epidemic, including the involvement of Eli Lilly & Co. in distributing the polio vaccine during the 1950s.
In many Indiana towns, outbreaks of cholera during the 1830s, '40s and subsequent decades caused extreme panic.
Take the town of Aurora on the Ohio River, which had a population of 2,000 in 1849. Fourteen deaths from cholera were reported in one day, according to a historical account supplied by Dr. McNiece, an associate professor at the IU School of Medicine. During the next three weeks in 1849, 51 other victims died in Aurora. As a result, 1,600 of the 2,000 residents fled the town.
Also in 1849, the town of Madison reacted to outbreaks of cholera by creating a board of health with the power to quarantine residents and to impose fines on people who brought the disease into the city.
Decades before that, a malaria epidemic swept Indianapolis in 1821 just as the brand-new city was being developed on lowlands and swamps.
A burial site for pioneers who were victims of the epidemic was called Plague Cemetery; it was located on the current site of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. In recent years, a marker has been installed on the historic Plague Cemetery site - which, ironically, is near a complex of classroom buildings for IU medical students.
Some of the historic epidemics - including the reactions to AIDS beginning in the early 1980s - have involved widespread misinformation about the ways the diseases and disorders could be transmitted.
Other epidemics, including polio, were brought under control with the development of vaccines.
According to the Indiana Historical Society, the peak years for polio cases in the Hoosier state were 1949 and 1954, with, respectively, 1,147 and 1,448 new cases reported. In 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine.
The 1918 influenza epidemic, which ravaged North America and Europe, is considered to have been the country's worst flu epidemic. It coincided with - then persisted after - World War I. Both of our guests on this show have presented programs about that horrific epidemic at the Indiana Medical History Museum.
Learn more:
- "Black Cholera comes to Central Valley of America in 19th Century"
- Hoosier History Live show: "Polio epidemic during the 1940s and'50s"
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Archives, The influenza epidemic of 1918.
- Damien Center, Indiana's oldest and largest AIDS service organization
When you dig into questions of what Hoosiers ate in the 1820s, '30s and '40s, when they gathered for meals, the dining utensils they used, and related topics, you have a lot to savor.
Indianapolis-based food historian Sheryl Vanderstel will even describe what she calls "lost" foods when she is Nelson's guest for a smorgasbord of information and historical facts about the food of pioneers and their dining routines during Indiana's earliest era as a state. Misconceptions abound, including the "myth of pioneer self-sufficiency," Sheryl says.
"Even the earliest settlers were interdependent, bartering with each other," she explains. "Grocers and merchants were among the first residents of Indianapolis and could easily obtain goods from thriving, established communities like Salem or Connersville and Ohio River cities Madison, New Albany, Cincinnati and Louisville."
During the first half of the 19th century, the largest meal was eaten at midday and called "dinner," not "lunch." The evening meal, "supper," was much lighter.
Except for the spoon, Sheryl says the pioneers' dining utensils "looked much different."
In addition to explaining the utensils used by the pioneers, she will describe Jerusalem artichokes, salsify, pattypans and other food items that fell into obscurity when subsequent generations did not consume them and forgot about them. Sheryl notes, however, that some of the lost foods "are being rediscovered by foodies today."
Topics of conversation at our historical feast will include technical questions as well, such as how pioneers preserved milk and eggs.
Sheryl Vanderstel, a board member of the Irvington Historical Society, was among the guests on a Hoosier History Live show in 2013 that explored the life of Alexander Ralston, the surveyor who platted Indianapolis in 1821. In addition to researching food history, Sheryl has spent years researching Ralston, who was born in Scotland and helped plan Washington D.C. before coming to the Indiana wilderness.
A native Hoosier, Sheryl is a former assistant director of education at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, where her duties included overseeing hearthside dinners and other food programs. Since then, she has been involved in food programming at other historic sites and museums as well as educational seminars about historic foods.
Because April includes Earth Day, Hoosier History Live will take the opportunity to explore tree planting crusades in Indianapolis, which have far deeper "roots" than many folks assume.
Clear back in the 1850s - when the pioneer era wasn't even a distant memory and the Hoosier capital was not yet 40 years old - some residents were concerned about the loss of the city's tree canopy. In the spring of 1858, they organized the Shade Tree Association of Indianapolis to beautify the rapidly growing urban area with trees.
Nelson's guest, Indianapolis attorney Ed Fujawa, has researched their crusade - as well as subsequent, periodic efforts to increase the city's tree canopy - for his blog about Indy history, Class 900. Ed is vice president of the Butler Tarkington Neighborhood Association and a member of the Meridian Street Preservation Commission.
He notes the Shade Tree Association - which encouraged the planting of locust trees, maple trees and other hardy species - "fizzled as quickly as it appeared."
Even so, Ed adds: "Interestingly, locust trees are still prominent throughout downtown, including around Monument Circle."
Flash forward to the spring of 1990. That's when the city of Indy launched a Trees for Tomorrow program, a local version of a national endeavor kicked off by then-President George H.W. Bush. He visited Indianapolis to plant an American elm tree.
"It was a descendant of a tree planted in the 1820s during the presidency of John Quincy Adams," Ed writes on his Class 900 blog. "The tree was planted in what turned into Presidential Place Park, a pocket park adjacent to the present-day Julia M. Carson Transit Center. The tree is still there."
In recent decades, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful has spearheaded the plantings of thousands of trees across the city.
During our show, Ed Fujawa also will discuss 19th century tree planting crusades in other Indiana cities and towns, including Delphi in Carroll County.
In addition, he will describe the efforts during the early 1900s of Charles Deam, who served as Indiana's first official state forester. Deam (1865-1953) was born on a farm near Bluffton in northeastern Indiana. After he became a prominent botanist, several species of plants were named in his honor.
According to several estimates, more than 85 percent of Indiana was a deep, dense forest before the arrival of European heritage settlers. By 1900, most of the forest had been cleared for farming, furniture-making and other endeavors.
A sampling of history facts:
- Calvin Fletcher, the most prominent civic and business leader in early Indianapolis, was heavily involved in the Shade Tree Association.
- Class 900, the name for Ed Fujawa's blog, is derived from the Dewey Decimal classification used by libraries. History-related books typically are found in the 900 section.
- The oldest tree in Indianapolis is generally considered to be a bur oak in the eastside Irvington neighborhood. Known as the Kile Oak because a family named Kile owned the property during the early 1900s, the tree may be about 400 years old, according to the Irvington Historical Society.
Digging up details about the lives of farm wives in Indiana during the 19th century wasn't easy for historian Morgan Lee Wilson, who will be our guest as Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month.
Morgan, who lives on a small farm near Walkerton in St. Joseph County, has read diaries and letters written by rural women whose roles in agricultural life were crucial, but often unheralded and misunderstood by subsequent generations. Farm wives of the mid and late 1800s tend to be romanticized or described in "limited" ways, Morgan says.
Morgan, who works at the University of Notre Dame, says misperceptions include the notion that farm wives had isolated lives. Diaries and letters often describe, in Morgan's words, "social opportunities through trips to towns and churches."
Rather than being confined to kitchens and washbasins, farm wives of the 19th century often worked in fields, barns and gardens.
In addition to discussing misconceptions about the Hoosier women "under whose worn hands this state bloomed," Morgan also will discuss childbirth on farms during the era, as well as other issues, including the health challenges of the women and their families.
In her presentations across the state, Morgan frequently appears in the garb of a 19th century farm wife, although she does not portray a specific historical figure or a fictional, composite character.
With a fellowship from the Society of Indiana Pioneers, she undertook her extensive research, often analyzing diaries and letters in collections of the Indiana Historical Society.
History books about the state were not helpful because, as she puts it, farm wives "are not included in them."
Among the diaries and letters that Morgan analyzed were those written by farm wives in Tippecanoe County and Hancock County.
In poring over them, she says she quickly realized that, for rural married couples in Indiana, "the idea of 'separate spheres' and 'gendered roles' [was] pushed to the side in order to prioritize the success of the farm."
That's why many farm wives worked outdoors - and many of their husbands were involved in preparing meals for their families.
Morgan also advises against generalizations about 19th century farm wives: "Their work differed by region, religion and economic status."
As many basketball fans know, the sport was not invented in Indiana. It was created during the winter of 1891-92 by Dr. James Naismith, a physician and physical education coordinator at a YMCA in Springfield, Mass.
But basketball took off like wildfire in the Hoosier state and became a core part of its cultural identity. For many generations of hoops lovers, the first competitive (non-exhibition) game on Indiana soil has been identified as a game played at a YMCA in Crawfordsville on March 16, 1894. In that game, the Crawfordsville Y's team defeated a team from the YMCA in Lafayette by a score of 45-21.
In recent years, though, research by historian Chandler Lighty has raised questions about whether the "first" distinction is accurate regarding the Crawfordsville site. Chandler says he has found earlier references to basketball games played in Evansville, Indianapolis and elsewhere across Indiana in newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. References continue to be discovered as bygone and obscure newspapers are digitized and become easier to search.
As Chandler joins Nelson in studio to talk about the earliest years of Indiana basketball, the question of whether the first game was played in Crawfordsville - which often touts itself as "the cradle of Indiana basketball" - is sure to be among the topics.
But the show also will explore such questions as why the sport - often called "basket ball" (two words) in early accounts - became beloved so rapidly in Indiana. Undeniably, its popularity grew fastest in a region that includes Crawfordsville and Lebanon. In 1911, Crawfordsville High School won the state's first high school basketball tournament. Lebanon High School captured the title in 1912, 1917 and 1918.
To share insights about the earliest era of the sport, Chandler and Nelson will be joined by Matt Werner, an author and historian who lives on his family's farm near the town of Union Mills in LaPorte County. Matt has written several books focused on Indiana heritage, including Season of Upsets: Farm Boys, City Kids, Hoosier Basketball and the Dawn of the 1950s (2014).
Even Dr. Naismith, the inventor of basketball, paid tribute to the sport's exceptional popularity in Indiana when he visited the state to attend the high school tournament in 1936. After witnessing "Hoosier Hysteria" among thousands of spectators, Naismith said:
"Basketball really had its beginnings in Indiana, which today remains the center of the sport."
In the beginning, the game was played with two peach baskets and a soccer ball. In 1892, Dr. Naismith published 13 rules for the new sport in The Triangle, a national YMCA newsletter that, as Chandler Lighty notes, could have been seen by YMCA directors across Indiana nearly simultaneously.
Chandler initially described his conclusions about the earliest Hoosier games in an article in the Indiana Magazine of History. He continues to update his research as more newspaper accounts from the 1890s become accessible. As he summed it up for the Evansville Courier-Press in March 2019 :
"What I hope people understand is that basketball popped up in multiple locations across Indiana ...within months of each other."
(March 7, 2020) As Hoosier History Live salutes Women's History Month, we will spotlight Indiana suffragists - including a former first lady of the state - whom we have not previously explored.
We took a deep dive into the women's rights crusade during our Jan. 18 show, and now we delve into strides Hoosier women made in the political arena after achieving the right to vote in 1920. But there also were setbacks, including some that already had occurred by the late 1920s.
Virginia Jenckes, a widow who managed her family's farm near Terre Haute, became the first woman from Indiana elected to the U.S. Congress in 1932. During that era, Logansport resident Leonora Uhl Flynn rose to prominence on the Democratic National Committee and became a valuable ally of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Long before that, Zerelda Wallace, who served as Indiana's first lady from 1837 to 1840, was a pioneering suffragist. She also was the stepmother of Gen. Lew Wallace, author of the blockbuster bestseller Ben-Hur published in 1880.
Those women will be among the trail-blazers discussed in our periodic series as the Indiana Women's Suffrage Centennial, a statewide network of women's and history organizations, celebrates the upcoming 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment on Aug. 26, 1920. Nelson will be joined by two guests:
- Lisa Hendrickson, an Indianapolis-based editor, writer and owner of Lisa Hendrickson Communications. She has researched various Indiana suffragists and aspects of the women's rights movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Hoosiers who have celebrated more than 90 birthdays have lived through a lot of state history. Not only have they been eyewitnesses to the great milestones of the 20th century, many have remained hale and hearty far beyond the average American lifespan. Those who continue to enjoy an active life into their tenth decade undoubtedly have insights and advice to share with the rest of us.
To tap these insights - including what expectations to let go of and how to keep thriving mentally and physically - the format for this show is a round-table discussion with two guests in their 90s.
The guests, their ages when the show was originally broadcast in March of 2018, and their backgrounds are as follows:
- Indianapolis civic leader Georgia Buchanan, 91, the author of the book How to Live Beyond 90 without Falling Down (IBJ Book Publishing). The daughter of Greek immigrants who came to Indy during the 1920s, Georgia has long been active in Special Olympics and other non-profit organizations. She also was a guest on Hoosier History Live shows in July 2012 about the history of Special Olympics in Indiana and in August 2009 about Greek heritage in the state.
- And Tom Ridley, 95, who grew up near Indiana Avenue in Indianapolis. In 1927, when he was five years old, his parents brought him to opening events at what is now the Madam Walker Legacy Center. Mr. Ridley continues to be the historian and a guide at the Walker Theatre; he was our guest in 2016 to describe his memories about the early years of the theater and the heyday of the local jazz scene. He also talked about his World War II experiences, which included serving in an all-black military unit that landed on Utah Beach on D-Day in 1944.
During this show, our guests share life lessons and a range of tips about how to flourish after age 90, a demographic that is growing rapidly. According to Georgia's book, the number of Americans aged 90 and older has tripled in the past 30 years.
Georgia Buchanan's son, Bryan Hadin, was born in 1963 with special needs. For many years, he participated in various competitions with Special Olympics. Georgia is also a long-time arts advocate; her career as a print and broadcast journalist included media work in Indianapolis and in Washington D.C.
Our guest Tom Ridley, who was born in 1922, lives in the Ransom Place neighborhood, not far from where he grew up. He met his late wife when they were in kindergarten; she went on to become an IPS teacher. His father-in-law was a musician in clubs on Indiana Avenue.
Contrary to prevailing stereotypes about the elderly, our guests are active on the Internet, continue to drive and live independently. Both are widely known for their energy and enthusiasm.
(February 15, 2020) Some folks assume Kurt Vonnegut seldom visited Indianapolis after he achieved fame. Others claim the literary lion disliked his hometown - intensely and continuously - until his death in April of 2007.
Still others make assumptions about his religious and spiritual beliefs. Then there are those who think of him as a curmudgeon. And those who assume that most of Vonnegut's extended family members remain involved in the multi-generational hardware business that his great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut, founded in the 1850s.
Our show explores a range of misperceptions - as well as aspects that are much more nuanced than often assumed - related to the author of the classic Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and other bestselling books, including the semi-autobiographical Palm Sunday (1981).
We also explore little-known episodes in Vonnegut's life. Nelson's studio guest Julia Whitehead, executive director of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis, will talk about how Vonnegut and his first wife, Jane, were inadvertently involved in the cruel hoax that became known as "reverse Freedom Rides" during the turbulent 1960s. Tune in to hear details about the infamous "rides" initiated by segregationists in the Deep South - and the connection to Cape Cod, Mass., where the Vonneguts had a home.
Julia and Nelson are joined during the show by Dan Simon, founder of Seven Stories Press, the New York-based publisher of Vonnegut's final three books, including A Man Without a Country (2005). In addition to being Vonnegut's publisher, Dan was his editor and friend.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis in 1922. His grandfather, Bernard, a well-known architect, was the only one of Clemens Vonnegut's four sons not to be involved for an extended period in the hardware business.
Clemens was a local leader of the German Freethinkers, which Hoosier History Live explored during a show last June. Clemens' grandson, Kurt Sr., was the architect for a Unitarian church in Indianapolis and attended services there.
In Palm Sunday, Kurt Jr. refers to himself as a "Christ-worshiping agnostic." In other references, he describes himself as an atheist, but his works frequently include biblical references and analogies. Our guest Julia Whitehead notes that Vonnegut credited a childhood nanny for much of his early spiritual instruction.
(February 8, 2020) With what was often described as a "cloud of white hair" and a distinctive beard, Rev. Boniface Hardin would have drawn attention even if he had not emerged during the 1960s as one of the most prominent civil rights activists in Indianapolis.
As Hoosier History Live salutes Black History Month, we explore the impact of Father Hardin (1933-2012), the founder of Martin University, the only predominantly African-American institution of higher learning in Indiana. He was among the first wave of black students to attend St. Meinrad Seminary in southern Indiana during the 1940s and '50s; when Father Hardin was ordained in 1959, he was one of only 88 black Catholic priests in the country.
The nearly 50 years he was based in Indianapolis were eventful, to say the least.
Because of his outspoken support of teenage protesters during the late 1960s, some civic leaders urged the Archbishop of Indianapolis to have him recalled to St. Meinrad. When that seemed likely, dozens of his supporters at Holy Angels Parish walked out of Mass on Easter Sunday in 1969, drawing national media attention.
In addition to Father Hardin's unflagging advocacy on behalf of disenfranchised people - and his crusade to provide new educational opportunities - he was well known in later years for his public re-enactments of one of his role models: 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to whom he bore a remarkable physical resemblance.
To share insights about Father Hardin, who had a soft voice but a compelling, folksy speaking style, two guests join Nelson in studio:
- Nancy Chism, the author of a new biography of Father Hardin, Pickin' Cotton on the Way to Church (Indiana Historical Society Press). Nancy, who retired as associate vice chancellor of IUPUI, chairs Martin University's board of trustees.
- And Joseph Smith Sr., a retired attorney and former parishioner at Holy Angels. His family had a decades-long friendship with Father Hardin.
Father Hardin was born and grew up in Kentucky. He came to Indiana, as our guest Nancy Chism reports in her biography, after he was "excluded from the seminaries in Kentucky because of his race."
Father Hardin's impact on his adopted home state resulted in honors such as being named a Living Legend by the Indiana Historical Society in 2002.
Martin University evolved out of Martin Center, a non-profit organization that Father Hardin founded; it offered workshops on racial harmony, programs for leadership development among African-Americans and a clinic dedicated to testing for and disseminating information on sickle-cell anemia, a severe hereditary disease that is most common among those of African descent.
"With typical disregard for the complexities entailed," Nancy Chism writes, Father Hardin decided that founding a university should be his next mission. He named Martin University (initially known as Martin College) in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Martin de Porres, a Catholic saint who advocated for social justice.
Particularly in the early years, Martin's students primarily were adults who had not been able to attend college immediately after high school. By the 2007-08 academic year, Father Hardin's final term as president, 961 students were enrolled.
(February 1, 2020) For many generations of South Bend residents, Studebaker Brothers - which later became the Studebaker Corp. - was the largest employer in town.
It all began in 1852 when the two oldest of five Studebaker brothers - Henry and Clement - opened a blacksmith shop, pursuing a trade they had been taught by their father. By the 1880s, Studebaker was the largest maker of vehicles - wagons, carriages and sleds, at that point - in the world.
Then came the heyday of auto production, with models like the Commander, the President, the moderately-priced Erskine and the luxurious Pierce-Arrow during the 1920s; the Land Cruiser in the 1930s; Champion Regal coupes in the 1950s; and the Avanti and the Daytona during the 1960s.
Although the final Studebaker car to be assembled in South Bend rolled off the production line in 1963, thousands of aficionados around the world continue to drive them.
Among the most popular destinations for visitors to South Bend is the three-story Studebaker National Museum, where galleries include exhibits of U.S. presidential carriages. Among the crown jewels displayed at the Studebaker museum: the Barouch carriage that transported the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre on the the night of the president's assassination in 1865.
For a motoring excursion through a broad landscape of Studebaker history, our two guests are:
- Andy Beckman of South Bend, the archivist for the Studebaker National Museum and past president of the Society of Automotive Historians. The museum, which has 55,000 square feet and galleries of vintage cars and wagons, also houses the archives of the Studebaker Corp. and other South Bend businesses dating to the 1850s.
- Bob Palma of Brownsburg, who writes Studebaker columns for auto collector publications, including Hemmings Classic Car magazine; he also serves as the technical editor for the Studebaker Drivers Club's magazine, Turning Wheels. The owner of a fleet of four Astra white 1964 Daytona models (the last model year of South Bend production), Bob is retired from a career that included teaching auto mechanics at Arsenal Tech High School and editing industrial arts textbooks. During the mid-1950s, his father co-owned a Studebaker dealership.
Family connections have been part of the Studebaker heritage since the beginning. The fortunes of the wagon-making business are said to have been jump-started when John Mohler (J.M.) Studebaker, the third of the five brothers, returned from California to invest in his siblings' company. J.M. (1833-1917) had become wealthy by selling wheelbarrows to miners during the Gold Rush.
At various times, all five Studebaker brothers were involved in the business, although Clement (1831-1901), J.M. and Peter (1836-1897) were most closely associated with it. Clement's mansion, built during the 1880s and christened Tippecanoe Place, is now home to a popular restaurant in South Bend.
During World War II, Studebaker manufactured trucks and other vehicles used by the military. After the war, the company returned to making popular cars for middle-class Americans; our guest Bob Palma notes their 1947 models were touted with the slogan "first by far with a postwar car."
Other history facts:
- Perhaps the most famous Studebaker models were the "bullet-nosed" cars of the early 1950s. Bullet-nosed Champions, Commanders and Land Cruisers were manufactured then.
- Although Studebaker was based in South Bend, the Hoosier city wasn't the only site of its plants. In fact, a factory in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, continued to build cars for a few years after assembly operations in South Bend closed in 1963. During our show, guest Bob Palma explains how he and other enthusiasts obtain replacement parts for the cherished Studebakers that they continue to drive.
- Studebaker cars competed in the Indianapolis 500 during the early 1930s. For the 1962 race, the newly introduced Daytona convertible was the pace car.
(January 25, 2020) Where do you start in describing a staggering collection of hundreds of rare items of Indianapolis memorabilia and ephemera?
A private collection owned by antiques dealer Charles Alexander includes miniature models of iconic structures like the Soldiers and Sailors Monument; he owns two replicas created as the landmark was being constructed during the 1880s and '90s. The historic models differ in appearance because the monument's design was still evolving.
His private collection also includes historic photos and postcards depicting the Woodruff Place neighborhood and bygone Riverside Amusement Park; architectural sketches of the Murat Shrine Temple (now the Murat Theatre at the Old National Centre) and the World War Memorial; embossed silverware from the long-demolished Claypool and Lincoln hotels; Amaco art pottery made in Speedway during the Great Depression; and yearbooks from Shortridge and Arsenal Tech high schools.
Although Charles owns a booth at Midland Arts & Antiques Market, none of his rare Indianapolis memorabilia and ephemera is for sale there. Or anywhere else.
"I love the Indianapolis collection too much to sell any of it," says Charles, 63, who began collecting artifacts related to his hometown's heritage as a teenager in the early 1970s.
In addition to describing cherished items in his vast collection (it includes 150 dinner spoons from the Indianapolis Athletic Club, long before it was converted into luxury condos), during our show Charles offers advice for folks who enjoy hunting at garage sales, flea markets, antique booths, auctions and estate sales.
He's been a full-time antiques dealer for more than 35 years. At Midland, he primarily sells china, silverware and vintage furnishings not made in Indianapolis. He also has moonlighted at auction houses including Christy's of Indiana in Indianapolis, Heimel's Auction in Beech Grove and Burgess Auctions in Knightstown. Those gigs often enable him to get first dibs on rare Indy memorabilia to add to his ever-expanding collection.
Some listeners may recall Charles from his memorable appearance on the PBS series Antiques Roadshow when the program was filmed at the Indiana Convention Center in 2000. Charles, who emphasizes that he's not an appraiser, showed up with a rare World War I poster for which he had paid $35. It turned out to be worth an amount that Charles describes as "far, far more than that."
Fortunately, his Arts & Crafts-style house, which was built in 1917 in the Meridian Park neighborhood, has an attic, a basement and spare bedrooms for storage of his Indianapolis memorabilia and ephemera.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Charles has won the History Mystery prize several times on Hoosier History Live, sometimes drawing on knowledge gleaned while finding local treasures.
He also has put his knowledge to use at the Indiana State Fair, where he has judged 18 categories, primarily pottery and china. In addition, Charles has taught classes in antique china, pottery, glass and silver at various auction houses.
He offers up this tidbit of advice for collectors, using the popular Woodruff Place Flea Market as an example:
"Don't go expecting to find a specific item or treasure. Go to Woodruff Place to enjoy the historic neighborhood that it is. If you find something wonderful, that will be the icing."