[Music]
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories from around the state.
This week we bring you three
very personal stories of people who have been
inspired to action.
Meet this Milwaukee-spoken word
artist who's trying to heal a terrible heartbreak by
motivating others.
Follow this couple through a
three-year journey as they take a big risk to create a new
life and find out what this mother of three does that
leaves her probably just a little more exhausted than
the average mom.
We'll bring you these stories plus a
colorful spectacle in the sky that takes place
every winter in Wisconsin.
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of a
lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
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on the web.
A young mother in Milwaukee will soon
mark her baby's birthday but not with cake and candles.
Instead she's hosting a memorial fundraiser because
her infant son Chase who would have been one
year old this month died of a congenital heart defect
this past summer but as Frederica Freiberg reports,
Dasha Kelly is turning her grief outward to help other
families. I can't help but wonder if people can read
the one-line poem on my face the lyrics of four Waterlogged
Words my son died today my son.
It was surreal.
You're being seated by the cardiologist and
he's a specialist in in a particular heart to defects
and I want to speak with you.
He's going to need a heart transplant and every
cliche you hear from novels and from movies where
the room goes still and your heart stops and you can
hear your blood pulsing in your ears all of that
happened that really happens and you're trying to
process that I hear in real life.
No that's an ABC after school special not me
really. But it was her.
Doctors had told Dasha Kelly that her plump and
outwardly healthy newborn had a rare and serious heart defect.
He was such a big well-grown young man it was very
difficult to and certainly for the parents to comprehend
that he had this degree of heart abnormality that
required immediate listing for heart transplantation.
Even with their newborn on the heart
transplant list Kelly says the family concentrated on just
being hopeful and they had reason to hope.
Baby Chase sailed through tests and
surgery to maintain him while he awaited a donor heart.
Doctors too believed he handled the stress of
surgery well and was out of immediate danger and so while
waiting for a new heart he was flourishing at home
to the point where the family started trying to
return to a normal schedule but that was not to be.
When he died suddenly really at
his daycare it was it was quite a shock.
Chase died of a sudden cardiac arrest.
A risk everyone knew about
but hoped would not happen before an organ became
available. He was just over four months old.
My son he was four months too young to sing with
angels or dance inside the circle of the ancestors and
I look into my palms and see what stretches to the
sky and I have four waterlogged words and these
are the words that scratch tick marks into my tongue
just to see how many times my soul might fall apart and
slap it till back together.
Dasha Kelly is a writer she put her grief into words
before a recent audience at the club she owns with
her husband.
Also signed my name into a lifetime membership
whose dues are burned into my flesh.
They're burned into my flesh.
A morse code tapped into the heavens
series of numbers and symbols to 18-628-2004.
Dash I love you.
Dash I'll miss you.
Dash I wish you could have stayed period.
Chase's doctor says a heart transplant
would have saved him.
We're in the business of trying to
help families and when you disappoint a family in this
fashion and feel that your hands are tied because of
the inadequacy of donor organs it leaves you
feeling very empty.
Cluck the fox on my life lines I stretch my skin
into my dreams.
Dasha Kelly tries to fill and heal
that emptiness not just with words but action.
It fuels me because it gives
me it gives my grief a sense of purpose you know it
gives it makes it for nothing it makes it for
nothing it makes the pain and the tragedy and the tears
and the fears and all the other things that came with
that experience and made that into nothing because
this one opportunity is greater than all of that
and I just grateful.
The opportunity that helps erase this mother's grief
comes by way of helping others working with children's
hospital of Wisconsin Kelly established Chase's
gift a memorial fund in his name money raised will
help spread awareness about pediatric organ donation
no matter what we're doing and no matter how good we're
trying to do it we still lose about a fourth to a
third to a fourth of the kids because they are so sick was
not enough organs to go around and they're not going to
get an organ in time to prevent something bad from
happening. Dr.
Berger says right now in Wisconsin
five children are waiting for a donor heart he says
awareness programs get parents thinking about how
they could help others if their own child were to die
unexpectedly. This thing very cold and it seems very
grotesque especially when you're looking at an infant
but the reality is there are children that are literally
dying for those organs.
I think it's phenomenal that she's doing this her
efforts will certainly save other lives and I think
it's just fantastic.
Kelly's work will not of course
help her own child but for her it means through
Chase's gift he will live on to help other children.
Burying your own child moves you to the front of that
grown-up line.
In fact it kind of moves you off to
the side where you find other silent members of this
secret club dapping each other with their eyes
wearing uniform undergarments that have been stitched in
grief and together we hum harmonies of a fight song
that we go into whenever we find our daydreams
fracturing to a mosaic of that one nightmare memory but
we still keep walking keep praying keep dancing keep
believing keep trying not to let those tears be shed
in vain we make a pledge to keep on living and I keep
those four words forever tucked beneath my tongue
I recognize that my son he was not of this place he
came the same way he left an angel so I have to
smudge away the lyrics of my one-line poem and change
it so it reads my son did not die today he just went home
two weeks from now on Friday February 18th Dasha
Kelly is hosting a slumber party for Chase fundraiser
in Milwaukee proceeds benefit the chase a Kelly
memorial fund for congenital heart disease and
education for soft organ transplants more information
on the event is posted at our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin
he'll also find more on the pediatric heart transplant
program at children's hospital of Wisconsin
we changed gears now to bring you a story that
reporter art hackett first began working on three
years ago art followed a class of UW students who had
what some would call a futile dream they wanted to become
dairy farmers Wisconsin can use them not only our
generations old dairy farms going out of business but
fewer and fewer new farms are being started up this
week we begin a two-part series in which art hackett
catches up with the students he first met three
years ago and finds out if they've achieved their dreams
three years ago the students from the University
of Wisconsin school for beginning dairy farmers
were checking out Jonathan primley's farm near blanchard
ville in Lafayette County they were there on a field
trip primley was one of the schools first graduates I
went through the school like you guys did and like I said
graduated in March and internship through July by
September 15th I was on this place with my own cows.
Primley can testify that you don't have to grow up on a
dairy farm to become a dairy farmer.
One day I said forget it I said quit my job no
more of the business career I just looked in the
local paper took a farmhand job.
One of the students John Fellers can relate to
that his story isn't that different.
My degree is in computer information
system that was a network administrator for an
accounting firm.
We hadn't even talked about getting
married anything like that we were out to dinner and
we just started talking about you know the future
and what some of our goals and future interests and
things were and that's when he told me about the
farm and the house and the hound dog on the porch and I
was I was a little surprised.
The most important thing is the land.
Another student, Hadi Laskowski grew up
on a farm near Hillsboro this is what it looked
like before the barn burned in 1991 after that her
parents raised only corn and alfalfa.
It wasn't seemed like it was a way of life
that you could even have and make a living at it so
I thought I'm gonna go to school and do something else.
But after teaching biology at a community college
and working in an administrative job at the UW Laskowski
and her husband Bill Moran wound up visiting a
farm and they what we walked around on their soft green
pasture and sat down under a tree and talked that
afternoon and I suddenly realized this is what I want
to do this is what I want to do as the course wrapped
up in March of 2002 the students dreams were
nothing more than PowerPoint presentations with this we'd
like to support a family and actually make a living
doing it will the Skowsky be able to bring her family's
farm near Hillsboro back to life will tell you on next
week's in Wisconsin this week can you find happiness
on a farm after you've seen networked computers from
two years that are so that I'll be working for somebody
this is what I plan on building up and when I start
my farm this is what I plan on having
one month after he made his final presentation to
the class John Feller's is mastering skill number
one for Daring getting up very early in the morning
yes good morning this is the parlor this is a where
we milk we get down in the pit there and then well see
the cows are back there right now he's working as an
intern on Bert Paris's farm near Belville.
I'd actually milked at birds back in I
think it was January he let me come out and I milked
he let you milk is that kind of like time saw your letting
his friends help paint the fence yeah yeah yeah
she was sick yesterday so it's good to see her up
like this he's also tending sick calves oh she's good
she's just about got a half going I love it she would
get used to miracle calf fast forward two years to
the spring of 2004 John Feller's and his wife Courtney
are working on Gerald Berg's farm near Cascade in
Shaboygan County after finishing my internships
through the school for beginning dairy farmers
we took a job on a dairy firm in Ohio and we worked
there for around six months but John Feller says it
didn't work out as expected I think when they initially
talked to us they painted a picture that we thought
was going to be a certain way and then when we got
there started working that's not the way that ended
up being understand that many grazers approached
daring not just as a way of feeding cattle fresh
grass love it it's a way of life they were a grazing
farm but they did other things that were pretty labor
intensive grazing means keeping cows in the field
except when they're being milked the cows feed
themselves the Ohio farm operators supplemented the
grass with mixed additives I think the the first
experience we had was kind of rough rough on us that kind
of uh-huh sourd me a little bit I guess we were in
Michigan for a while close to Courtney's parents
and we went to the grazing caverns up in Stevens
Point Wisconsin we met the Gerald who we work for now
Gerald Berg is one of the farmers who started
Wisconsin's revival of grazing cattle on grass pastures
about 15 years ago somebody that's interested in grazing
was an important part of my search for somebody
at this point the fellers had been in cascade
for five weeks they're working for salary and the use
of a house but also in the future possibly work out
an equity share so that through working we not only
have a salary but we also would earn cattle at the
end of 2004 the fellers are still in cascade tending
cows in the pasture doing the milking we have a really
a wonderful treat today John and Courtney fellers
are with us they also come back to Madison to lecture to
a new crop of beginning dairy farmers I would do not come
from a farm I grew up in the city and I worked on
a dairy farm between high school and when I started
college and I just thought that was the best job I ever
had he informs the class things are still going well
in cascade they likely won't be able to buy the
farm the owner wants to keep the land in his family
but they're negotiating to get a share of the crop
of calves which they'll be able to relocate to land
somewhere else in Wisconsin our aspirations were sure
in five years to be on our own farm from the time we
started we're obviously behind that but I think in
the long run we'll be in a better position for having
made some of the choices that we have both financially
but also with our situation in general you're
making enough money to wait for it to be worth wild you
that's the yeah some days it's questionable for
the most part yeah but the real news Courtney is
expecting a baby part of our purpose anyway and
wanting to farm was the opportunity to raise a
family on a farm because of the lifestyle that it
provides so it's really actually exciting for us
we're on a farm we're farming we're gonna introduce the
child to that lifestyle and it's really nice because
we're all there all the time we like that next week
guard hackett catches up with the other UW-Derry
student he met three years ago patty Laskowski her
dream coming out of that class was to resurrect her
family's farm tune in next week to find out
if she succeeded our next story takes us
to the city of Hartford in Washington County that's
where Heather Gullman glows a typical day for this
busy mother of three may include driving the kids
to school doing errands swimming a couple of miles
running 20 something miles biking more than 100
miles well in Wisconsin producer assistant Lindsey
Weiss found that in addition to being a wife and
mom Gullman is also an actively competing Ironman champ
Heather Gullman is a three-time Ironman champion and 30
something mother of three those key ingredients
have brought Gullman triathlon success
Heather Gullman just breathes right by the Ironman
is a triathlon of epic proportions athletes begin
with a 2.4 mile swim continue with a 112 mile bike ride
and finish with a full 26.2 mile marathon here are
defending champion Heather Gullnick Gullnick success
in the Ironman stems from a lifelong love of athletics
I've been an athletic all my life I started out
doing gymnastics but I dabbled in a lot of different
sports it was a very energetic kid I would even
go from one sport come home go to dance class and it
was usually tried to fill the evening up otherwise I
think I do I've ever gone crazy in 1988 co-workers
convinced Gullnick to run her first triathlon primarily
started I was working at GE Corporate Fitness Center
and everyone there was training for a triathlon
and I said oh sure I'll do it and really didn't know
much about triathlon and after that first race I
was hooked her love of competition eventually led
Gullnick to the ultimate triathlon when Madison
announced that it was having an Ironman I
definitely decided that that was the time that I wanted
to turn professional that was in 2002 in an upset
Gullnick won her first professional Ironman effort
in 2003 she followed up with two more Ironman
victories in Idaho and again it was constant my
heart is in Madison just because I had won the Ironman
there twice it was very hard not to do the Ironman
this year it's fun just because you know so many
people Madison is special the Gullnick but in 2004
she sat out of the Ironman Wisconsin to concentrate on
training for the world championships in Hawaii
everybody that is good in triathlon is there in the
world and ended up having a great day it's a nice
title to be the you know best American female at the
Ironman distance Gullnick was the first American female
to finish and the 13th female overall Gullnick's
husband Todd often attends her competitions anxiously
awaiting her finish yeah because it's kind of
gut-runching to be honest with you during the long day
as wondering where she's at and how she's doing but
you know just kind of being with their spirit of nothing
else and watching across that finish line with her
smile on her face is fulfilling for me as a mom it's it's
helped me a lot when I do the training makes me
feel better about myself it also gives me time away
let's say I go for an hour run you have an hour to
yourself where you can think about things organize your
schedule I think it has helped me become a better mom
a better mom with a more flexible schedule unfortunate
that it's that it's not a nine to five so I can
be room mom I can volunteer at my church I can go on
the kids field trips I can do all those things just by
kind of shuffling when I do the training instead of
working nine to five Gullnick uses her talents to train
other athletes you want to be a lover to grab water
so you can move forward I coach a large number of
athletes and my favorite is the athletes that are
that are going to do their first Iron Man just because
they're so eager to learn going up a really big hill
gene Wang Guard is one of Gullnick's first time Iron
Man clients short fast steps short fast steps how
there really has been just a wonderful addition to my
whole training program and I'm training to do the Iron
Man this year and she'll be with me side by side to make
sure that I have the right program in place did you
get your orthotics Gullnick and her clients often
race in the very same Iron Man competitions Gullnick
finds this helps her relax if I'm nervous at all
there's so much more nervous that you know they're
asking me all these questions and they're so excited
that it keeps me excited but their nervousness you
know kind of makes me laugh because I remember when I
was that nervous in triathlon's mental toughness is vital
triathlon definitely takes a lot of physical endurance
you have to train a lot and your body has to be
strong and ready but when you're out there racing it's
definitely mental work you have to be able to stay
positive and things go wrong and they always do you're
out there nine ten hours continuing through fatigue is
one of the toughest challenges in a race when I get
really tired I my thoughts often come back to my family
especially my husband just because he helps out a
lot with the children so I can go swim or go train and
then also to my daughter Jordan who has cerebral
palsy it's like she would give anything to be out
there running the doctors told us she would probably
never walk and she used a wheelchair till she was
five and then when she was six she started using a
little walker and she's even graduated and she's
starting to use some canes and take a few steps in her
own so she's a true source of inspiration
Golanx fans can count on her for inspiring finishes
post-victory cartwheels have become her trademark
she doesn't plan to stop turning them anytime soon
thank you doing the bongs it's fun sometimes you know
there's those days when I'm like I'm done we've got
and then there's sometimes right feel like I'll want to
do it forever and that's our program for this week we
leave you with scenes from kites on ice an annual
winter festival each year thousands of people travel
to Madison to spend a weekend with a riot of colorful
kites taking flight over a frozen lake kites on ice
happens this weekend and videographer Chuck France
created this video essay from the festival a few years
back for in Wisconsin I'm patty low we'll see
you again next week Yeah ...
that looks cool.
Look at that there are some hot lights.
Yeah ...
that looks cool.
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliant Energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
Thank you.