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Coming up in Wisconsin, Clintonville comes to the
rescue of New York firefighters post 9/11.
A Madison author brings to life
Wisconsin's rural past.
In lacrosse a monument, a park, and a battle
between church and state, and a Milwaukee native
races through barriers and inspires kids.
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
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Welcome to our new season of In Wisconsin.
I'm Patti Lowe.
Many of us spend time today reflecting back on the terrible
events of September 11th.
The terrorist attacks two years ago struck a court of fear and
helplessness into our hearts.
In the days that followed, many people felt
compelled to do something, anything to try to help.
Some gave blood, some donated to relief funds,
and here in Wisconsin, one town came together to help
meet a very specific need.
Reporter Jerry Huffman has the story of how the
people of Clintonville came to the rescue of the
New York City firefighters.
Main street in Clintonville, because about as far as
you can get from the bright lights of New York City.
What does burn brightly in this small Wattacca County
City is a sense of commitment.
In the days after the terrorist attack, New York put out the
call to a Wisconsin company for dozens of new fire trucks.
Trucks, they needed quickly.
The biggest thing for me would be a lot of pride.
A lot of pride going into the work that we've
done and being able to follow up on a commitment
that we gave New York is just a good feeling.
We is C-grave, Clintonville's largest employer,
and one of the nation's biggest players when it comes
to building fire trucks.
And they have been at it a long time.
Back in the roaring 20s, Minneapolis firefighters
got one of their first trucks in Clintonville.
And when the glamorous Zigg Field Files needed a truck,
C-graves got the call.
Local sometimes call the plant the drive because the
company invented the first four-wheel drive system.
Trucks let plowed through the muddy backroads of
Mexico, as American soldiers, searched for the famous
bandit, Pancho Villa.
And they all sent me things, you know, pictures,
my buddy Pete Gancy.
And when he was raised like for a while, he was
killed, he was there.
Many of the firefighters who come to Clintonville
on inspection tours eventually find their way
to Cindy Bees, a popular tavern in the heart of town.
But this is when the firemen come into town.
I get their business cards and then they'll
sit around and talk.
And from the cards come the stories, and the stories forge
the bond between firefighters and the people in Clintonville
who build their trucks.
They were replacing and they were so proud that there
was actually proof that our trucks, you know, our trucks.
C-graves trucks actually saved, you know, helped
save firemen's lives because they didn't
collapse and crush them.
Yeah, there was a lot of pride, you know, they were putting
their hearts and souls into it instead of just punching
and punching out.
And after September 11th, there was a lot of work to do.
Building a fire truck from scratch as a process normally
marked in weeks, not by days.
New York City's emergency order was for 54 trucks.
Miles of intricate wiring that can only be done by hand.
Miles of individual doors had to be crafted, then
painted, and moved into their spot on the assembly line.
Through the AC.
At the drive, doing your job well was carrying more weight
than it ever had before.
Quality and speed of the work that we did,
everything went off.
We took a lot more pride in it because everybody
in the countryside saw what had happened to
our trucks down there.
And we knew we had to replace them.
There's a special medallion on each of the
54 replacement trucks, a bronze memorial that says,
dedicated to New York's bravest.
Kathy Schmalt designed the medallions that gave a voice
to Clintonville's pain.
Why was it important to do this?
Here in this little community, in this little state that's
far removed from the disaster, it was important for us to be
able to be a part of that, to be a part of the recovery.
Four months after the attack, hundreds of people turned out
early one morning before sunrise for a parade of sorts
in Clintonville.
Workers at the drive had turned out the first four trucks
faster than even they expected and the trucks were
heading to New York City.
Cindy Beary, who had befriended so many firefighters
before September 11, was there that morning.
Six o'clock in the morning, they bet to their head
be over a thousand people lying down there,
meaning street.
The cold it was cold out there that morning.
But dead silence, that truck came up the street and every
once in a while you'd hear, "God bless you,"
that type of thing.
A little bit of singing up the street, you know, like the boys
scout troops were up this thing and they were singing God
bless America, the flags and the tears and a lot of
people came out that morning.
It was a good morning.
The Clintonville Middle School Band is getting ready
for its spring recital.
Life in the town, just like for the rest of us, has moved
to one since the attacks.
You kind of see things from a whole different perspective
than I think adults can see.
Moving on isn't a lesson you find in a textbook,
you will find it in the drawings and words of the
young people in Clintonville.
As us Americans reunite, the flag makes its
way towards each other and attaches and the tears
shed by us citizens to appear.
September 11, 2001 is the second day of infamy.
A day that had a surprise attack on the U.S., a group of
people trying to pull us apart, trying to show that we are a
weak country, but they failed.
The U.S.
will never fall, only rise to a higher level.
Workers at the drive did finish New York's emergency
order for more than 50 new fire trucks in record time.
They posed for pictures next to the last engine,
proof Clintonville answered the call for
help after September 11.
And the job isn't over yet.
Sea Graves is building another 50 fire trucks
for New York City, a second wave of work that
means the bond between a small Wisconsin town
and the firefighters it works to protect will continue.
One final note, this wasn't just a business
venture for Sea Grave.
The workers and some of their suppliers also made
a gift of one of the fire trucks to New York City
in memory of the fallen firefighters.
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Jerry Apps is an author who wants us to remember rural
Wisconsin as it once was.
His home spun storytelling is woven together from
memories of growing up on a washera County dairy farm.
Sometimes sad, often humorous and always insightful, App
celebrates an agricultural way of life from years past.
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It is mid-August and I'm standing at the edge of
a large field on my farm.
A slight breeze blows from the southwest.
The field where I stand is no longer cultivated hasn't
been for more than 40 years.
Yet among the wild grasses that have returned to this land that
was once prairie, big blue stem, little blue stem, Indian
grass, the remnants of cornrows are still evident.
I look across the field of waving plants and
I listen to the wind.
The wind has always been a great mystery to me, one of nature's
powerful and visible forces.
Beyond the wind I hear calls from an earlier time, reminders
of my growing up years on a farm looking to listen two miles
from where I'm standing.
When I was in grade school for whatever reason I sent off
an article on rural hunting to outdoor life magazine.
A handwritten, I had this idea that I could write as well as
those articles I was reading.
I was wrong, of course, but that was the first
thing that I wrote.
I was probably 12 years old.
I have probably 12 or 14 books now that relate
in one way or another to rural history in the land.
I'm writing about the land.
I'm writing about the relationship of human
beings to the land.
I'm writing about the source of everything that
allows humanity to exist.
That's what I'm doing.
And it takes many forms.
It takes the, sometimes the
form that looks very trivial.
And at other times it becomes very philosophical,
sometimes it's poetic.
Sometimes it's just a dumb, ha ha story.
On a rainy day and summer, after the morning chores were
finished, my father, my brothers and I often crawled up the
wooden ladder to the hemow, sprawled on the fresh hay
to talk and rest, listened to the raindrops pat her
on the wood shingled roof.
In dry weather I could see sunlight shining through
the shingles of many places.
And I always wondered why the roof didn't leak.
But once the rain started, the cedar shingles swelled
and filled the cracks.
Jerry is a master with the written word.
And along with that he is a
masterful storyteller.
So even if you come from a big city, really know nothing
at all about the Midwest, and you just by perchance would
come upon Jerry speaking and telling one of his stories, you
would be totally captivated.
The Christmas program was a community wide event.
All of the neighbors came, whether they had kids or
not, the uncles and the aunts and the cousins
from far distant places.
And Mrs.
Janks is playing the piano, has her back
to the stage, has her back to the students, has her
back to this little mous, that stuck its head
out top of the piano.
And it prayed so it stops right in the middle of
the stage, right by the naked doll, the baby Jesus.
Well, the way in the major went out with the giggles.
The front roll is "Who high?"
Mrs. Janks' neck is getting redder and redder.
She is angry and pretty soon everybody in the
school sees this mouse.
And everybody is "Who high?"
and she is fit to be tight, she whorls around in her
chair and sees the mouse and starts to giggle herself.
And people remember that as the most outstanding Christmas
program we've ever had.
For a long time I wanted to discount the fact that I had
grown up in a farm that we did not have electricity, that
we didn't have running water, that we milked caused by hand.
All of those things that I went to a country school, I didn't
want anybody to know that.
I wanted people to think that here is a
cosmopolitan young guy.
I mean, he's smart enough to graze away from college,
he surely didn't have a background like I had.
People often say to me, "Well, all you're doing is writing
nostalgia, you know, that didn't get you anywhere."
But sometimes, sometimes, when you write something
that's nostalgia, you can bring somebody into the
story and in the process you can teach some history.
They are all around us and we take them for granted.
They are the symbols of our rural past, scattered
throughout the countryside, on farmsteads, in villages,
and at the crossroads where dusty trails once converged.
Many are easily seen, others less so, as time has aged,
rusted, and hidden them behind the icons of progress.
And a man would straddle a log with one of those big broad
axes and hew off on each side until it looked like that.
Can you imagine how much work that would have been?
We feel very strongly, and a bit chauvinistic about the
talent here in Wisconsin.
So we came up with pride of Wisconsin and Jerry Apps
is the first recipient.
It was just a natural.
He epitomizes not only just a good solid author, but
someone who values our state.
By one liner is, when we forget our histories, we forget who
we are, and we forget our histories, we forget who we are.
And today, our society is such a hurry to move on, to
always on to the next thing.
So many people sell them take time to revisit where they
have been.
There's a line I have in one of my books
that goes something like, "The best of what is next has
been here all along."
That's a powerful line.
The best of what is next has been here all along.
That requires that we know what's been here all
along. And that's why I'm so caught up with history.
The rolling hills that Jerry Apps writes so idyllically about
are not just picture-esque.
Those hills are also the perfect training ground
for a special breed of athlete, the marathon racer.
In fact, in nine of the last 14 years, the Women's
Wheelchair Division of the Boston Marathon was won by
athletes with ties to Wisconsin.
This past April, day native, Christina Rip crossed
the finish line first.
Eight other times, the title went to Milwaukee native
Jean Driscoll, an athlete who now inspires physically
challenged kids to push past traditional limits.
Milwaukee native Jean Driscoll has been a physical person
all her life.
How else do you get named number 25
on sports illustrated for women's list of the top 100
athletes of the 20th century?
Driscoll recently traveled to Wisconsin Dells to visit a
place that helped launch her on her path to the Olympics.
When I was here at Camp Wabick, it didn't matter that my
legs were not strong.
Here at Camp Wabick, I started
learning the lessons that I was talented in some ways.
And I did have abilities and I could help other people.
Other people didn't just always have to help me.
When I grew up in Milwaukee, I'm one of five kids.
I was the only kid with a disability
at my grade school.
So I always felt like I was on
the bottom of the totem pole.
Driscoll, who was born with Spina Bifida, was a poster
child for the Milwaukee Easter Seals Society.
So I was always expected to go up and get hugged and
held by strangers.
And I was so shy I did not like that.
But I got out of school for some really fun activities.
When she was at school, her favorite activities were sports.
I think a lot of kids who grow up with disabilities
myself included.
You become accustomed to sitting on
the sidelines and watching everybody else in grade school.
I loved basketball and I got to be the manager and
I loved volleyball and I got to be the scorekeeper.
Despite her leg braces, she loved physical activity,
especially swimming and biking.
Ironically, it was a bike accident that led
to her athletic career.
And when the doctor told me that I was going to have to
start using a wheelchair, I thought it was terrible.
I thought my life was over.
I thought, "What can you do if you're in a wheelchair?"
At first I saw the chair as being something that was going
to make me dependent.
But the reality was it's something
that allowed me independence.
The wheelchair also freed Drisco from a lifetime of sitting on
the sidelines at sports events.
But she was reluctant when a classmate at Milwaukee's
Custer High School invited her to try wheelchair soccer.
And I thought, "No way, it's going to be stupid and hunky,
it's not legitimate sport, I'm not going to go do it."
Well, when I got to the soccer practice, chairs were
crashing and banging bodies were flying all over the place.
I thought, "Wow, this is sport!
It was so fun."
And then, after wheelchair soccer, I found out about
wheelchair football and wheelchair ice hockey,
and tennis, and basketball, and all these different sports.
And I started to realize, "I've got some talent, maybe I can
do something with these sports."
Drisco got her started wheelchair sports in
Wisconsin, but her ability to do it was to do it.
Drisco got her started wheelchair sports in Wisconsin,
but her ability to truly excel was realized at the
University of Illinois, a national leader in
wheelchair sports programs.
From there, she launched her wheelchair racing career,
eventually winning the Boston Marathon a record eight times.
Jean Drisco also won 12 medals at the Paralympics and two
silver medals at the Olympics.
A very important lesson that people with disabilities
can learn is that they have strength inside that can
enable them to do almost anything that they want.
"Can you get your own right there?
Nice job!"
"Go baby!
Good job, Megan."
"People with disabilities are not necessarily frail, and
they're not necessarily weak, and they don't necessarily
need to be treated special."
"Go baby!"
"Good job, sweetie!"
"Good job!"
"I have a real heart for encouraging people, I
have a real heart for encouraging kids, particularly
kids with disabilities.
When I was thinking about the comments I wanted to make to
the kids here at Camp Wabik, I was thinking of ways to help
them put their disabilities in the background, so to speak.
Help them feel some of the same things that I felt when
I used to come here to camp."
Camp Wabik, the oldest Easterseals camp in the
nation, was founded near Wisconsin Dells in 1938.
"I was remembering coming in that door and being
in one of these beds.
We probably were whispered
after lights were out."
"That's the same thing we do."
"It is amazing to me the vision that Easterseals had in creating
this camp, the vision that they had to serve people who
have disabilities and help them be just like everybody else."
"Is that sound of a good deal?
Give me a thought.
Good stuff."
"It just takes some time."
"Yeah, I'm going to have a little bit of fun."
"I'm going to have a little bit of fun."
"Let's go!"
"I think a lot of people overlook the importance of
sport and fitness for people who have disabilities,
not just from the health standpoint and the school.
"It's a good thing to have a good time."
"I think kids need to see that other people have
broken through some of those barriers and have gone beyond
some of those limitations.
"I embrace that opportunity to show kids and say,
'Look, I was there too.'
"This is how I used to think, but now I'm here and these are
the things I've experienced.
And you can do this and you can do so much more."
"You'll be the firefly."
"All right."
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Our next story takes us to La Crosse, where a small
fence is all that stands between church and state.
It's a situation not unlike the one in Alabama where a federal
judge ordered a religious monument removed from that
state's Supreme Court building.
In La Crosse, the monument is in a city park.
Art Hackett reports.
The Ten Commandments plaque in La Crosse's Cameron Square
has stood since 1965.
It was one of many placed across the
country by chapters of the Fertrunal Order of the Eagles.
The Eagles' lodge sits across the street.
But in July of 2002 Henry Zumak and to 21 other La Crosse
area residents, along with Madison's Freedom from Religion
Foundation, filed a lawsuit charging biblical scripture
in a public park, amounted to government endorsed religion.
"A long time ago I came to regard that as a property that
was dominated by an attempt to force a particular kind of
religious belief on to myself.
It is a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments.
It's a very specific version of the Ten Commandments."
Shortly after the suit was filed the city council tried
to solve the problem by selling the monument and the land it
stands on to the Eagles Club.
The club built a fence around the monument.
That apparently backfired.
In July of this year, U.S.
District Judge Barbara Krab ruled the city's effort to keep
the monument in place showed support of religious speech.
She ordered the land return to the city and
the monument removed.
A month later in front of a crowd of people who wanted
the monument to stay, the La Crosse City Council voted to
appeal Judge Krab's ruling.
Pastor Andrew LaFever of the Rivers Harvest
Church in Onalaska was in the crowd that night.
"As far as what the Constitution says is the purpose of it
was not to have a national religion like England had.
It didn't want to neglect people's right to allow
the Ten Commandments posting, for example, or
prayer and school and such.
So we just see some of these liberties being
taken away one by one."
Mayor John Medanger vetoed the appeal resolution but was
overridden later by the council.
Medangers worried about the emotional impact.
"Tonight appeal would make this issue get behind us.
But an appeal will guarantee that's the nastiness, the
ugliness and the division in this community will continue."
The mayor's concerns about divisiveness are
shared by a number of La Crosse's religious leaders.
They signed a letter calling for the monument to be
moved to the grounds of a nearby Episcopal Church.
"Those of us who are Christian in this issue should be
the first ones to consider, passionately, turning our
other cheek and saying, 'This is something that I
believe in and I cherish and yes I believe it's for everybody
but let's lay this aside.'
The city has until October 6th the file briefs with
the Court of Appeals.
"We'll keep you posted on any decisions in that case.
We leave you now with a look at one of the
memorials to September 11th.
It's a quilt embroidered with the pictures and names of
the victims of the tragedy.
The quilt toward the country and is currently
displayed in New York.
It's one way for us to remember those who were lost.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lowe.
Good night."
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