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Coming up in Wisconsin, a door county highway project
reveals a road to the past.
The man who has shaped much of Milwaukee takes a look back,
and the veteran of World War II recalls leaving life
in Jamesville to nurse soldiers on the western front.
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Every week in Wisconsin examines life in our state.
Tonight we look back to our past, and in the
case of our first story, the very distant past.
Art Hackett reports that archaeological discoveries
in door county are causing some scientists
to reconsider how long humans have been in
this part of the world.
This is the story of the digging that takes
place before the digging.
Every time the depressive transportation builds a highway,
like this one in Door County, archaeologists go
before the road builders to figure out who was
here before we were here.
Researchers from several Wisconsin universities have
been studying multiple sites along this corridor between
Sturgeon Bay and Green Bay.
In a routine survey for a highway project,
archaeologists go down about two and a half feet.
That's where they find most of the evidence
of human occupation.
But in the case of the Door County site, things they found
at the two and a half foot level led them to dig
three times that far.
The younger than 2,000 years is all restricted to
the plow zone up in here.
Mark Kent University archaeologist James Clark says,
"Unless early occupants dug into the ground,
much of what they left remained in the top few inches of soil.
It takes major geological events like floods or glacial
periods to bury things deeply."
Mark Kent professor Jim Overstreet has laid out a
sample of artifacts on a table.
Pottery items from the top layer of soil are nearest to him.
They were left by the Woodland Indians.
As you move down the table, things get
older, much, much older.
When we got below this and trying to find the
underlying sediments that are known as Glenmore Till,
which should floor all human occupation here, we found
these water-ruled artifacts.
There's a, you know, spear points and some waste flakes
and they're clearly tumbled like in a rock polisher.
Well, the last time that the water level was this
high was 10,600 years ago.
10,600 years ago is when humans were first thought to be making
their entry into North America.
They weren't supposed to be in Northeast Wisconsin.
The digging continued in researchers found additional
stone chips and arrow points.
This was really exciting.
I mean, this was off the graph and it said,
"My God, there's a real component here that
predates 10,600 years ago.
None of that stuff was supposed to be up in
the door of Peninsula."
Overstreet has made other surprising finds involving
Wisconsin's prehistoric era.
In Kenosha County in 1987, he uncovered a woolly mammoth
sculpt in which appeared to have been butchered by
humans over 13,000 years ago.
Nothing from door county has matched that.
All I can tell you is this stuff is somewhere slightly
younger than about 12,000 years.
Everything from here down was totally unexpected.
It was kind of rewriting our understanding of
door county archeology.
The Marquette researchers are digging next to the
boss tavern, a long time roadhouse near Dykesville,
which the Department of Transportation purchased as
part of a highway right of way.
A crew from UW-Milwaukee is digging in some
woods about a mile away.
It's like, "Well, this is somebody making tools."
You know, two thousand years ago, it's cool to find that.
And even that little tiny piece.
UW-Milwaukee graduate student, Lisa Sowers of
Cedarburg, says archaeological work is painfully slow.
But exciting, when you find something.
"Somebody like me was handling this with someone
making a tool or maybe they sat down here for a while
and maybe they had a camp here.
And I like to speculate about that."
Artifacts found by the UW-Milwaukee group were also
older and deeper than expected.
Archaeologist Brian Nichols.
"Paces of chip stone that come from the manufacturing of
formal tools like projectile points or scrapers or drills
or something like that."
This says the evidence shows someone set up shop here and
worked making stone tools, leaving a scattering of
chips but little else.
"People are coming in.
There are small groups of people
coming in, setting up camp for one night or two nights
and they're moving out.
So they don't leave large pieces or large evidence
of cultural activity."
Material found by the UW-Milwaukee researchers
has been more difficult to date than the artifacts
found by the Marquette crew.
Nonetheless, Nichols says it appears to be
around 10,800 years old.
Marquette Professor Overstreet says these sites
and others point to a pattern of civilizations.
"All of these sites in East Wisconsin are linked together
in spite of the fact that there may be 2,000 years difference
because what's documented here is the ice sheets retreating
and the ice sheets advancing and the people moving right
along that ice marginal front.
Overstreet says it was once thought that humans
didn't arrive until the ice had melted away.
In reality, people were living right at the edge of the ice."
"We just had this perception that that was a cold and
inhospitable environment and we tend to think about
once the ice sheets move north and the landscape
recovers and is re-vegetated, then the people come in.
I don't think that anybody would have suggested that there was
any occupation in Wisconsin before about 11,000 years
ago at the maximum extent."
"Do we have any idea?
Do you have any guess as to where
these people came from?
Probably from down south, obviously
from warmer climates, but as...
because the record is so sporadic and there's only
small pockets of these sites and they'll come across
every once in a while, it's difficult to make those
types of interpretations."
"Federal law requires archaeological work be done
in consultation with Native American tribes from the area.
In this case, it's the Manominee tribes' historical
preservation officer, Dave Greenow.
He has no doubts about who these people were."
"We have traced our history way back to the ice age
and the Manominee people have been here that long.
In fact, our creation story took place across
the Bay, over at the mouth of the Manominee rivers."
That's only about 25 miles by water from where the
archaeologists are digging.
"So if anything that is found here, of course, is associated
with the Manominee people are affiliated, so we have a good
concern for those artifacts."
"The radio carbon dates are kind of bouncing around
from about 900 AD to 1300 AD, but there's...
I guess there's certainly a good
chance that this may be one of the prehistoric
expressions of the Man."
As the dig at Bostavrin was nearing the end, Marquette
Professor Jim Overstreet sat down with Greenow and showed him
the accumulation of artifacts.
"The notable thing about this component, we have like
200 refuse pits, and we got carbonized corn, and in the
bottom of one of the pits, there was this big flat amblestone
like they have in the South West for grinding corn."
"Oh yeah."
"I don't know as I thought this.
I have never seen a complete one from Wisconsin."
"This is my favorite artifact, Dave, pretty impressed, I
think it's a woodworking tool in H.A.S.
and I also strongly suspect that these people
working these post-glacial lakes were making dugout canoes
and moving around by water craft as, you know, certainly
10,000 years ago and earlier."
Overstreet says there are links between the monomony
people of today and the more recent artifacts found at
the site.
The older items are harder to connect with
the members of modern tribes.
"They all have differing ideas about their antiquity and where
they came from, some believe they emerged right here.
Others have migration stories that in the distant past, they
came from the South or the East or the West or the North.
But we can't link anything below this point to any
Native American group."
So far, the digging's been done where the highway project
required it to be done.
There are other independent sites
in Dorock County where the research is only beginning.
Overstreet's crews will move there when work on the
highway corridor is complete.
Since we visited Dorock County, the dig at Boss Tavern has
been completed and that area will become part of the
expanded highway's median strip.
Archaeologist Jim Overstreet says the other site he's
exploring in Dorock County, independent of his work with
the DOT, has yielded some interesting artifacts and will
be explored further next spring.
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Well, compared to human history of 10,000 years, our next
story is much more recent.
During World War II, more than 300,000 Wisconsin men and women
served in the US military.
Some of their experiences are shared for the first time in a
new Wisconsin Public Television documentary called World War
II Stories, Part 2, Europe.
Tonight, we have a preview.
It's the story of a nurse from Jane'sville, an ametic from
Superior who found themselves in the thick of the action.
We were the first nurses back of the lines.
We got off at the Utah Beach, transported to an
open field where there were cows and we set up our hospital.
All the ambulances drove in.
These are your patients.
Some of them were pretty well and others had passed
away in the ambulances.
We had them placed all around the tents to put those
bodies until another holding company could come in and
take these bodies away.
I thought, "This is what it's like."
Then the jerrys were flying over and the
buzz bombs we called them.
We'd think, "I thought I'm not going to last very long here."
I was the first aid man for a G company.
When you're out there, everybody's looking at how's
the medic doing.
Is he okay?
You're always afraid.
Everybody's afraid.
But you reach, at least I reach
the point where it would.
It doesn't make any difference whether I'm afraid or
not. I got 40-50 guys that are depending upon me and
I don't have any choice.
I remember one day bombing an area of light in northern
Wisconsin. Somebody yelled, "Medic," and everybody's dug
in. So I get up and I start running and I'm going to buy it.
I could just see everybody was looking to see how good is right
going to be here on all this.
I was born and raised in J.S.ville and to think here
I am in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium.
We were moving all the way along.
Moving on to the next field.
The ambulances were very small.
There'd be six nurses in each ambulance and you
had little windows in the back and we'd all try to peek
out to see where we were.
We were sitting on these narrow benches all the
time, riding hours and hours of those through mud.
Then we'd get there and it was dirty and muddy and
the floors and the doctors and the enlistment we
all said, "Let's clean up this place and get going."
There's amtus waiting out there now with the patients.
You just did the work.
You didn't hesitate at all.
All of a sudden, they yelled, "Here they come!"
And holy smokes down the thing about three blocks away.
There was about 12 tiger tanks looking right down the barrel.
Well, then it's medic time.
What do I do?
The tanks are coming this way.
There's guys out there in front
and they're getting hit.
So I run over to take care of one of the fellas and
he was shot.
You know, when you get shot, you get
shot in so many places.
It's a real challenge to stop the bleeding.
And so that's what I was doing and I didn't see or paint any
attention to that battle at all.
I looked up and I saw about five or six of the German tanks all
up and smoke.
And they were then the iron and your tank gun.
They had a real tank battle out there and we had won.
You're doing your job and things happen.
You might get killed in the process.
But you're certainly not sitting there worrying about, "Oh my
God, I might get shot here."
One occasion, infantry and armor tanks pulled up and we
heard Bing Cross is going to be there with his entourage.
And I was in the operating room and I was circulating.
So I could peek out of the tents
every now and then I was waiting for his command car to come
up and sure enough it didn't.
And he said, "Hello, mercy."
Well, I was thrilled to death.
He's saying some of his songs and we could barely hear him.
But we had to stay in that operating room and keep going.
All these casualties that came in and the GI's were really
great to us.
They were so appreciative of what we did.
The U.N.
nurses are great.
And there was so much satisfaction
in caring for these men because they were giving up their lives.
All of a sudden just all hell broke loose and Bing came
in and all I remember is that I got hit in the ankle.
"Oh, did that hurt?"
Then somebody yelled "Medic" and
I crawled over and there was two other guys that were hit.
One was dead and the other one was severely wounded and
I tried to try to get him out.
I was wounded and I tried to stop the bleeding but
he was sitting so many places.
And more shells came in and I got hit again.
And I thought I don't want to get hit in the face.
I was going to my helmet crawling
down the ditch and it's wet.
And all of a sudden I look up and there's a lieutenant Doyle
and he crawled down to get me.
And he said, "Get up on my back and I'll piggyback you in."
So I did, somehow I don't know.
I said, "It all kind of a blur."
But when we got into town they were there in a Jeep.
Took me back to the AIDS station and of course all my
buddies are there and they were opening me up here.
I thought I was just scared.
And when I woke up I was in a fairly large ward and the
message to my mother said I was seriously wounded in action.
So I don't know whether there's a lot of people worse than
me but most of them weren't.
And I've seen the infantry take off into the woods which was
so disheartening to see them with their guns take off into
the woods and think, "How long are you going to be here?"
Because I'm in a pretty safe place.
I'm in an operating room in a hospital and we had big
red crosses on our helmets.
So we were kind of protected, I always felt.
It was a little security there where
the GI's, they went off.
And we waved.
My heart goes out for a no-boy.
I don't care what side of the thing.
They're not big kikis, they're not
rich, they're not anything.
They're just poor guys trying to protect their
country, everybody believed that freedom doesn't come
free. And they live like dogs and they die like dogs.
Did I ever need to try to say what I was doing?
No. Did I like what I was doing?
Yes. What I do it again?
Yes. Do I believe in patriotism?
Yes. And do I feel sorry for myself?
No. Do we accidentally kill our own guys?
Yes. That's all part of the ball game.
That's life.
And do I feel lucky?
Wow. I'll say so.
But it was an interesting time that I had.
Both good and bad.
But life isn't easy and there are ups and downs and lots
of pain that we go through.
That excerpt is from the new documentary, Wisconsin
World War Two Stories, Part Two, Europe.
It was produced by Mick Durks and premieres
this coming Wednesday, November 12th, at 8 p.m.
on Wisconsin Public Television
stations throughout the state.
In Milwaukee, the documentary can be seen on WMVS at
930 Wednesday evening.
When World War Two ended, the home front was transformed.
And in Milwaukee, the changing world led to the election of
a new mayor named Frank Zidler.
Today, Zidler is considered to be the man who built and shaped
much of Wisconsin's largest city.
I had a chance to visit with him a while ago to get
his insights into where we've been and where we're going.
He remembers Milwaukee when it had gas lamps and street
cars. Frank Zidler was born 91 years ago.
In times like these, times of political
scandal and corporate greed, when people talked of war and
flirted with electric cars.
I remember the first traffic light in the United States was
on 60th in Wisconsin.
It was in the middle of the street.
Got knocked over enough so they finally put it on the side.
The weakness of cars in the old days was the tires.
I remember going on a trip from Milwaukee
to Keywaskam and the car had three flat tires on the way up.
In the 1940s, Zidler was a unique man during unique
times. Milwaukee struggled with housing shortages,
transportation issues, and other post-war problems.
Zidler believed socialism, not capitalism, could solve them.
The common ideal that there is a common community good
is very hard to follow.
The governments in the whole
generally don't do it, although they seem to operate under
that particular pattern.
Most of the citizens can be is to work to see that
government doesn't work harshly against the individual.
So in 1948, Zidler ran for Milwaukee Mayor on the
Socialist Party ticket.
Well, I was elected in 1948 in an election where there
were 15 candidates.
And I was biased series of what I
called flukes.
I got elected.
The immediate need at the time was housing.
And then there was an immediate need
to refurbish the entire public works department.
And there was immediate need to expand the size of the
city so that there were lots of people to build on.
In Zidler's 12 years as mayor, Milwaukee grew from 46 square
miles to nearly 100.
He built 3200 units of low-income
housing like these at West Lawn.
He started the city's expressway system, landed a major league
baseball team, and aggressively acquired land for city parks.
It was important largely to the social movement of persons
who worked in their shops, and their noise and dirt, and all
kinds of adverse circumstances.
Got their relief either if they didn't have a decent yard they
would go to the parks on Sunday.
Today, Milwaukee has more than 100 parks, more
parkland per capita than any other big city in America.
Zidler successfully advanced to his socialist agenda
during an era when socialists were viewed with suspicion,
and socialism was confused with something else.
That it's communism.
Because the impression that people have
of socialism is that it's the equivalent of Russian communism.
Communism is a dictatorship of an elite who say we speak on
behalf of the working class.
Socialists have been truly democratic, not in the sense
of democratic party, but in the sense of listening to the
voice of the ordinary people.
In 1976, Zidler listened to the voice of his party and
agreed to be the socialist party nominee for president.
Later, he talked about the experience in an interview with
Milwaukee Public Television.
Nationally, I was very pleased.
We got in the ballot in seven or eight states, so we got
a fairly good opportunity to express our viewpoints,
got a lot of publicity for our ideas, and it was really
a rewarding experience.
In his 91 years, Zidler has crossed paths with many
of Wisconsin's famous and infamous Joe McCarthy.
I couldn't understand why anybody ever took Joe seriously.
I know him quite well, and couldn't understand why
anybody gave credence or sought to anything that he said.
Gold in my ear.
Very tough lady.
Bob LaFallette.
His idea was that the open primary would
solve all problems.
And did it?
No, but it was a good idea.
Frank Lloyd Wright.
He was the wizard who dressed like with his frack
coat and seemed to be a throwback to the Middle Ages.
Douglas MacArthur.
He was the true son of his father in challenging a
president of the United States and getting re-bued for it.
Spencer Tracy.
He's what the same high school I did, and he
was born in Marrow Park.
Liberace. A great pianist, even
though he had ended up.
Tommy Thompson.
Well, I think he devastated the Social
Security net of Wisconsin.
Russ Finegalt.
Very courageous senator.
Herb Cole.
A thoughtful man.
Anybody else that hails from this state that is memorable
that's not on this list, that you would want to come out on?
I don't have many women on there.
You know, I don't, do I?
Chastised, deservedly by a man for whom equality and
justice issues are paramount.
A complex man who translates Shakespeare into the modern
vernacular for fun, who redesigned the piano to get rid
of those pesky sharps and flats.
A man who says his greatest fear is nuclear proliferation and
weapons of mass destruction.
I saw such a weapon one time.
Adam Baum exploded in Yucca, Flatt, Nevada.
And since that time, I'm concerned about the cities of
the world and the inability of human beings to control the
misuse of the technical weapons that they are developing.
It's up to citizens, he says, to stay informed about
the activities of their governments, to vote and
attend public meetings, and help their governments provide
for the common good by contributing to the common good.
To continue to keep himself learning about what the progress
is, so that they can have a higher set of values at the
end than when they start.
In other words, the citizen has to often learn that his
narrow objective or earner objective does not serve
the whole public or does not serve himself or herself.
Well into his ninth decade, Frank Sideler is still
attending public meetings, still speaking out, still
contributing to the public good.
We leave you tonight with a tour through present
day of Volca Prairie.
The Prairie Savannah is located within the lower
Wisconsin State Riverway.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Have a good night.
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