Coming up next on Wisconsin Life :
- The history here is absolutely fabulous.
- I guess you could call it very highly-representational art.
I use explosives. I use flammables.
- My main goal in life was to become a physician.
- Just a bunch of good ol' boys
sittin' around, Northwoods of Wisconsin,
middle of winter, what the heck else do you do?
(engine revs)
(upbeat music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- My name is Melinda Roberts
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(dog barks)
- The sun is barely up.
[Melinda to dog] Come on.
But, Melinda Roberts is already hitching up her trailer,
(car engine starts)
hitting the road,
and heading north.
It's the beginning of a four-day trip
from her home in De Pere to Lake Superior, then back again.
(relaxing music)
The first leg of that trip
takes her to the town of Spirit in Price County.
- Our first stop today is Spirit Memorial Park,
where there's a replica of an arch stone bridge
that was built in 1910
over the North Fork Spirit River.
The community has brought this replica here
and created a lovely park with a playground
and a picnic area, and two markers
that tell the story of the stone arch bridge.
- Melinda and her dog, Dexter,
are hunters of sorts.
For the past few years, they've sniffed out
hidden pieces of Wisconsin's past.
It's a passion that began shortly after
Melinda moved here for work.
- I grew up in Southern California,
Orange County area.
I left California in 2005 and moved
to Westchester County, New York,
where I lived until I moved to Wisconsin in 2011.
I got here in June, and in November
I was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer
and given a two-year window.
A job that I had let me go,
and so I went through my cancer treatment here in Wisconsin.
While I was on chemo and off work,
my doctor suggested I do something fun
because we didn't know how much time I had.
So, I happened to find a state historical marker on a trip
and looked them up and found out there were 532.
I decided to visit all of them
in the remaining 18 months I had of my window.
- That was more than three years ago.
Since then, Melinda's health has improved dramatically.
Along the way, the miles have added up.
- This year alone, I've probably already put in
about 8,000.
Honestly, I've been to a lot--
- While Melinda plans her trips well in advance,
she often comes across surprises
like this German immigration historical park.
- There was a basket factory
just a couple miles down the road.
- One, two,
- But for Melinda... - Smile!
- ...just visiting these historical sites,
or markers, isn't enough.
She wants to share them with others,
something she does through her website.
- [Melinda] I usually take 15 or 20 photos at each site,
and I have to sort through those
and find the best, the one I like the best.
If the marker's nowhere online, I have to transcribe it.
- At last count, Melinda's site
included more than 4,400 markers, memorials, and sites,
and it's attracted plenty of visitors.
- I've been contacted by students,
high school students doing research projects,
all the way to universities wanting
to use my photos in exhibits.
- On this day, Melinda's trip ends in Mercer,
home of a one-ton talking loon.
(loon calls)
Melinda says her exploring can be tiring,
but she says it's also been exciting.
Maybe even life-saving.
- Well, the best part about it initially, was
it kept my mind off of cancer.
For that reason, I think that's why
I got past the cancer.
It's been more than that two-year window.
It'll be four years in December.
- At the same time,
it's helped her find joy in her adopted home state.
- I really came here thinking this was going to be
an absolute cultural wasteland.
What I discovered was, the history here
is absolutely fabulous.
Every bit as rich, if not more sometimes,
than anything on the west coast and the east coast.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Eric Lee, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- Our garages are busy.
They're home to bands and band saws,
places to practice handiwork, or avoid housework.
(dogs bark and howl)
On a quiet street in Eau Claire,
there's a garage that's home
to Eric Lee's lifelong passion.
- I've become very fond of it out here.
I actually really miss it if I'm not working out here.
It's just a dedicated space where I know I'm coming to work
to do something.
(wrench ratchets)
- His passion?
Art.
It's a love affair that began in grade school.
- Drawing, you know, like any kid.
Just draw a lot.
Then I just never stopped doing it.
I really learned from drawing "Transformer" boxes. (chuckles)
I actually traded with kids to get
their boxes from them, not their toys,
so I could learn how to do
what they were doing on the boxes at the time.
- Throughout high school,
Eric's love for art blossomed into admiration
for painters of the Northern Renaissance,
and 20th century surrealists.
- [Eric] After high school,
I ended up moving to Superior.
That was a real eye-opener for me.
- Eric was fascinated by the city
and its industrial architecture.
- [Eric] Superior gave me what I ended up working with
in painting for the next 10 to 15 years.
It just seemed like an entirely different place altogether.
The big grain elevators, the docks,
the neighborhoods were completely different.
- Eric eventually moved back
to Eau Claire where he'd gone to high school.
He took up odd jobs, studied art in college,
got married, and bought a house.
Of course, making art didn't always mean making money.
- Then, after school, the truth is,
I couldn't get work and it was a hard struggle for a while.
But one thing led to another,
I started making furniture and different things for people.
- One item in particular seemed to catch on.
- [Eric] I really started going full-blast
into the drum building.
- An accomplished drummer himself,
Eric started building specialty wooden snare drums.
- I started out real basic
and made a lot of mistakes,
made some really terrible shells
and made drums that sounded just awful.
And then, slowly worked my way up from there
and about a year into it, I made a decent drum.
- In the years since,
Eric has churned out dozens of wooden drums from his garage.
The wood comes from a familiar place.
- The Superior connection, again,
comes in with the globe elevator
which was a place I used to--
Well, I used to trespass there every Sunday
pretty much (laughs) and walk around.
When people were watching football,
I'd go in there and, yeah, that was what I would do.
But then when I moved back here,
I got to know the people
who were dismantling the globe elevator, wonderful people,
and they were selling off the lumber
for people to put in their houses
and make all sorts of things from.
And I managed to get some of the hardwood
that was used in the elevator, oak,
and started using that in the drums themselves.
- With income from his drums,
Eric pursued his passion for art.
In the shelter of his garage,
that pursuit took unique, even explosive, turns.
- I like oil painting, and I do very meticulous--
I guess you could call it very highly-representational art
but, I guess, more modern techniques.
I use explosives. I use flammables.
And what it ends up looking like
is sort of a mixture between abstraction
and very sharply-focused representational work.
The subject matter is coming almost entirely
from my experiences in Superior.
My work up 'til now has kinda' focused on collapse and cycles,
life-cycles of towns and cities and people,
how generations start something
and maybe it doesn't continue, maybe it does.
I'm really hoping that people who see this
and aren't sure what they're seeing
will have a reaction similar to the one I had
when I first laid eyes on things that, I guess,
drove me to make this stuff in the first place.
That's kind of what I'm trying for.
It's just to be honest in that
it will resonate in others.
- And, it seems, Eric's work
is resonating with others.
His pieces have been shown at openings
around the Midwest,
like this one in Eau Claire.
But with success comes change.
- I'm sort of stepping into new directions now,
new... new things.
It'll still have a lot of things in common with this work,
but I see myself as going into the next,
the next phase.
- As his work changes, so is his work space.
Eric is moving, leaving his old garage behind.
- We just needed more room.
This place'll have a restored barn,
so I don't have to worry about
shorting the house out when I start a saw.
It's, yeah, it's gonna be great.
- Still, Eric says he'll miss this garage.
The light from its windows, the stories on its walls.
But he'll take something else with him,
a bit of wisdom about work.
- If you can stand out in what you're doing,
and you believe enough in what you're doing
that you're willing to put in the time and the work,
I see no reason whatsoever
a person can't do exactly what they want to do now.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Bill Bunnell, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(engine rumbles)
- This is race day.
- [Bill] It's our 50th anniversary
of the Merrill Ice Drags.
Fastest 1/8th mile on ice.
- The track?
- [Bill] Lake Alexander, Merrill, Wisconsin.
- For years, this lake's frozen surface
has been home to a white-hot tradition.
(engines roar)
(fast-paced music)
- I think it was '64 was the first actual race,
and then they incorporated in '77
to make it Merrill Ice Draggers, Incorporated.
(engines roar)
Just a bunch of good ol' boys
sittin' around Northwoods of Wisconsin,
middle of winter.
What the heck else do you do?
So they come out and they plowed some lanes
and started running.
(engines roar)
- On this January day,
dozens of drivers haul their cars onto the ice
to test their machines and their mettle.
Each car comes under the eyes of Bill Bunnell,
president of the Merrill Ice Draggers.
- We just check safety items,
carb springs, drive shaft lube, fire extinguisher.
On all of our money classes,
we actually have class rules that the cars have to meet.
It's a whole different ball game.
I have to really tear into the cars to take a look to see.
- And there are all kinds of cars.
(quirky music)
- I got a '65 Nova.
It's got a big block in it.
- It's a '79 Camaro.
It's all home-built.
I bought it about, oh, 12, 13 years ago
for a couple hundred bucks.
We decided just to cut it all apart,
build a frame and a cage
and put a big engine in it
and see what we could do.
- On ice, I'll reach 140-plus miles an hour in 1/8th mile.
- Some rides are understated,
like Linda Krebsbach's 2014 Malibu sedan.
- My brothers raced for 10 years,
and I've always been a girl that liked fast cars,
and so I tried it, and it was fun.
- We got a class for everybody.
We got, actually, 15 different classes.
From rubber-tire, two-wheel drive,
from the soccer mom van to the full-blown rails.
- Preparations can be intense.
Some crews drive screws through their tires
hoping for extra traction on the track.
(engine revs)
When the prep ends, the show begins.
(rock music)
- I know I get a big rush out of the competition.
Some years there's more competition than others,
but it's exhilarating.
- Not all the excitement comes behind the wheel.
- The people, probably, just, you know,
talkin' to people you don't get to see that often.
That's what I like.
The racing's, you know, it's fun and everything,
but we can race in the summer, too.
- What really got me hooked was,
I was spectating the first year I come out here,
and one of the rails took off from the line,
it was one of the fast cars,
and about halfway down he hit the nitrous and backfired
which made me, you know, really look,
and when the nitrous kicked in, he lifted the front tires
off the ice about a foot and a half.
That's halfway down the track, on ice.
I'm like, wow.
It was just, (chuckles) I was hooked.
That was it, that was all it took.
- Bill Bunnell has stayed hooked for years now,
but there's one thing
the president of this club hasn't done.
- I have never been in a car drag race.
I drag race asphalt.
I've been in racing figure-eight, off-road.
I've never run a car down here yet.
Never been down the track except for in the plow truck. (laughs)
(engine revs)
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ,
get to know Madison from behind the wheel
with cab driver Philip Ashby.
- [Philip] Now, I feel part of the lifeblood of the city,
seeing it as a living being.
I know when it's sleepy, when it's awake,
where it suffers, where it's healing,
and when it feels hopeful.
- Find out the craziest thing
that's happened in his cab, later on Wisconsin Life .
(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Tina Sauerhammer, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
("The Swan" by Camille Saint-Sa?ns)
- Tina Sauerhammer's life
is playing out like a classic, composed just for her.
- I competed for Miss Green Bay,
won the Miss Green Bay pageant.
- It wasn't the first time Tina made headlines.
Before beauty, it was her brains that got her noticed.
- By the time I was done with my eighth grade year,
I had already completed my high school curriculum.
I had already completed calculus and advanced chemistry.
At the age of 14, I started as a freshman at
the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay.
It was interesting, because my mom and dad had to
drive me to classes every day.
- Tina Marie Sauerhammer.
- At age 18, (audience applauds)
Tina became UW-Green Bay's youngest graduate ever...
- But it is up to you to take that first step
and make things happen.
- ...and gave the 1999 Commencement Address.
Tina went on to medical school.
The academic pressures were mounting.
- By my second year of medical school,
I felt like I really needed a change of pace.
I went from being top of my class
at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay,
to being average in Madison, and that was a huge hit for me.
- In addition to medical school,
Tina turned to the Miss Wisconsin pageant.
- I actually placed third runner-up, so I didn't win.
I had no intention of ever doing it ever again.
- But that very same night,
it's the heartbreak away from the spotlight
that would alter Tina's life.
- My father, when I was in college,
he was put on the kidney transplant list at UW.
On the night of my Miss Wisconsin pageant
when I was representing the city of Green Bay,
and my parents were in Oshkosh, cheering me on.
When they went home, there was a message
from UW Transplant Center.
They had a donor for my father,
only it was too late by the time he received the message.
I never knew about that night until
after the fact and much later.
And my last year of medical school,
my father passed away.
- The loss of her father hit hard for Tina.
- My dad worked in a paper mill all his life
and my mother came from Korea.
Everything that they had, they invested in me,
in my education and experiences, like cello lessons.
At that point, I was ready to quit medical school.
My mom really encouraged me to finish
because that's what my father would have wanted.
- In honor of her dad, and at the age of 22,
Tina became the youngest person ever to graduate
from the UW medical school.
- I finished, but I wasn't ready to quite move on
to the next step in my career.
- And she focused on one mission.
- I wanted to give organ and tissue donation
a national voice.
- That's when Tina did something
she thought she'd never do again.
- I decided to take a year off and do Miss Wisconsin .
- Tina Sauerhammer!
- I didn't want to become Miss Wisconsin ,
I wanted to become Miss America
so I could give my dad a national voice.
- That night, like everything else...
- We are down to two.
- ...Tina excelled.
- Miss Wisconsin is Tina Sauerhammer!
(triumphant pageant music)
- Then came Miss America .
- Miss Wisconsin.
- I'm Tina Sauerhammer from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
- Now, Tina is mighty, mighty impressive.
She is only 22 and she's already
graduated from medical school.
I think that's better than Doogie Howser .
- [Tina] Something amazing happens during
my year as Miss Wisconsin .
Because I was a physician, people were very interested
in my father's story.
- And I'm sure that, wherever her father is,
he's lookin' down on her and thinking, "That's my daughter."
- As the night rolled on... - Miss Wisconsin, Tina Sauerhammer
...so did Tina.
(audience cheers)
From top 10, the field was narrowed to just five.
- Miss Wisconsin , Tina Sauerhammer!
(audience cheers)
- That week at Miss America , I did some soul-searching.
- And then, there were three.
- Second runner-up,
winner of a $30,000 scholarship,
Miss Wisconsin , Tina Sauerhammer.
- [Tina] So when I was named second runner-up,
I was actually relieved I wasn't named Miss America .
My main goal in life was to become a physician,
and I just didn't want to put that on hold any longer.
- Tina would spend
the next eight years chasing her dream.
During her fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston,
Tina helped make medical history
as a member of the team
that performed the first full-face transplant.
- [Tina] Words cannot describe what it was like
just to see the transformation.
- The chance to return to her hometown
would mark another first.
- Hi guys, how are you?
I'm the first and only fellowship-trained
pediatric plastic surgeon in Green Bay.
- Today, Dr. Tina Sauerhammer
is giving young Wisconsin patients like Anthony
the chance at a better life.
- He's gonna be famous baby, right?
See you guys later.
- Now in her thirties,
Tina has already achieved a lifetime of accomplishments.
These days, Tina has an additional title,
it's newlywed, as she looks to the future
and her life with Kyle.
(cello music)
- My greatest fear is complacency,
and so, when I look back at all of my accomplishments,
I want to look back and say,
"Those were great accomplishments,
but I'm ready to do even bigger and greater things."
("The Swan" by Camille Saint-Sa?ns)
(upbeat music)
- I'm Philip Ashby, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(bass music synced with animation)
"What's the craziest thing that's happened in your cab?"
I get this question once in a while
from intoxicated college students
shoulder-to-shoulder in my back seat,
their eyes peering into my rear-view mirror,
anticipating some captivating story.
I picked up this job about two years ago
when I was looking for a weekend side job.
I planned to apply for a position
at some traditional business,
but wasn't quite connecting with any of that type of work.
Then one day, while waiting at a stop light,
I saw a taxi in the opposite direction and I thought...
"Hmm."
I had some preconceived ideas of what taxi driving was about.
My friends and family had their opinions, too.
One relative practically forbade me to continue,
out of fear of me being hurt by a psychotic passenger.
Such headlining tragedies do happen, but very rarely.
Chances are, the most pain I would endure
is cleaning up after a drunken passenger
gets sick in my cab.
For the most part,
driving people from point A to point B can be fun,
or at least interesting.
I can have a five- to 20-minute conversation
with a total stranger.
I can learn about cutting-edge research
from a university professor,
what it takes to own a tavern from a business owner,
what it's like playing in
a touring rock and roll tribute band from a guitar player,
or, what joys and sorrows
are currently in my passengers' life.
I once said to a friend,
"It's like being a bartender on wheels."
Then there are times when I get words of wisdom from a fare.
One time, this passenger and I were discussing
close relationships and the trials of them.
We shared some of our experiences,
scratched our heads, and had a laugh.
While our time was short,
that conversation still resonates with me today.
Other times, you may have
an unexpected moment with a person.
Once, an intoxicated passenger said in a confessional tone,
he had an alcohol problem.
All that came out of my mouth was,
"That doesn't mean you're a bad person."
His eyes lit up for a moment and he said,
"That was beautiful."
It's not all just about relationships with people.
My relationship with Madison has evolved, too.
Before becoming a cab driver, my mind thought of the city
as a 'Top Ten List' of reasons to live here.
Now, I feel part of the lifeblood of the city,
seeing it as a living being.
I know when it's sleepy, when it's awake,
where it suffers, where it's healing,
and when it feels hopeful.
When I get the question, what's the craziest thing
that's happened in your cab?
I smile and change the subject,
knowing that the answer is not what has happened within my cab,
but what has happened within me.
- Curious to know more
about the people featured in this week's stories?
Go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more
about Melinda Roberts, Eric Lee,
Tina Sauerhammer, Bill Bunnell, and Philip Ashby.
We want to know, what's your Wisconsin Life ?
This week, the winning entries
from our first-ever Wisconsin Life photo contest.
Amazing moments of their lives captured for all of us to enjoy.
Thanks to everyone who entered.
Visit WisconsinLife.org to find out
how you can have a chance to see
your Wisconsin Life moments featured in an upcoming program.
(upbeat music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.