- Coming up next on Wisconsin Life ...
- I'll grab whatever the Creator puts down on the ground,
and use it and make something out of it.
- We started out with practically nothing.
Four kids, three Clydesdales, and had to start over.
- This is definitely a dream job.
- I mean, I grew up on eating hamburgers.
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
-Hi, my name is Jon Greendeer.
[speaking in Hocak] Maasuusga hiigaire ''''
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- Jon Greendeer is a Renaissance man.
And in so many ways, he is self-taught.
- This is where I work.
I grab whatever the Creator puts down on the ground
and use it and make something out of it.
I love turning.
It's fun.
When I do a bowl,
this is what I do for fun.
There's a bit of yourself that goes into each of these.
If you do more than preserve,
if you perpetuate,
you revitalize,
you rekindle,
you re-inspire,
then you're doing something.
In Ho-Chunk, we'll call them
waasge, waasge sorós. [dish] [bowl]
They're to put something in.
- From ancient ways to high-tech tools,
Jon explores the natural world around him.
- I got a drone.
I'm a licensed operator of the craft.
- And he has Wisconsin's Ho-Chunk heritage
at his fingertips.
- One of the things I've always been enamored by
are old traditional cultural properties.
I like to see the topography of our hunting grounds,
of our homestead.
I tend to envision the history
that lies underneath what we all see.
- And this is a vantage point like no other.
- I really do see Wisconsin as our homelands.
- The ancient ways are a stark contrast
to the life Jon had experienced as a young man in a rock band.
- I was a musician. I played the Fox Valley circuit.
["Let Her Cry" Hootie & the Blowfish] * I say that I don't care
* I just run my hands through her dark hair
* And I pray to God You gotta help me fly away
Typical rock star life: drinking, drugs, cigarettes...
* And just let her cry ...rock 'n roll, not much sleep.
I was working at the casino dealing cards.
- That's when Jon realized
he didn't like the cards life was dealing him.
- Wow, I could do so much better.
So in 1998, I took my... my last drink.
After some time away from alcohol and drugs and tobacco,
the appropriate thing to do would be go to school.
I applied, reapplied,
called the Admissions Office.
And they just said,
"Jon, you have to stop calling here."
- He was denied admission
to the University of Wisconsin-- Stevens Point.
- That wasn't the only thing I was struggling with:
having a child,
not being in school for ten years,
being a person of color.
Things were getting tough financially.
- And Jon was also struggling with his self-image.
- Being 360 pounds...
I don't know if you know what that's like,
but you can't fit in a typical desk.
You have to make it look like it's not a problem.
It's a problem.
- That's when UW-Marathon County
gave Jon what he wanted most:
a chance.
- I still hold that two-year campus in the highest regards
because they admitted me.
They took the risk.
- Two years later,
Jon transferred into UW-Stevens Point.
The same school that had earlier denied him admission.
- There was a pull toward policy
and politics and public administration.
- After graduation,
he was appointed to the UW-Stevens Point Alumni Board.
- When you take a look at
the academic success rate of Native American males,
it's a very rare thing to be in that spot.
- As the years passed, Jon heard a steady stream of voices
encouraging him to run for tribal president.
- I started getting these text messages saying,
"Run... run... run... run..."
- Jon was elected president of the Ho-Chunk Nation in 2011.
- We came in like a wave, and I was very young.
- Representing the Ho-Chunk Nation,
he's met world leaders.
- The picture you see right there
was when I went to go see President Obama.
- By this point, Jon had turned his life around,
and had overcome his addictions
and lost more than 140 pounds.
- I know that I speak with a lot of people
that have issues with weight.
And I'm not the "Ho-Chunk Slim Goodbody" by any means.
I have a 40-mile route to take my bike on
so I ride down to Wisconsin Rapids and I ride back.
- Motivated by his success,
Jon set new goals
and took advantage of the 75-mile commute
from Stevens Point
to tribal headquarters in Black River Falls.
- Some of the most amazing things happen
when you're by yourself in solitude.
- In solitude, Jon taught himself the Ho-Chunk language.
- That's about the hardest thing ever.
My name is Jon Greendeer,
Maasuu sga's '''' [feather white]
hiigaire. [they call me]
White Feather.
and I am President of the Ho-Chunk Nation.
-In 2012, he stood before the Legislature
to deliver the State of the Tribes Address,
representing Wisconsin's 11 sovereign tribal nations.
- For all those listening today, I say: [ thanks in native languages]
Waewanen [Menominee]
Yaw ko [Oneida]
Miigwech [Ojibwe]
Anushiik [Stockbridge-Munsee]
I gweyen [Potawatomi]
Wa'iniiginapwi ''' ' [Ho-Chunk]
and finally, thank you
from the tribes of our great state of Wisconsin.
Aho. [Ho-Chunk expression]
[applause]
That particular event was
way more than I could handle,
as a young Ho-Chunk person.
I felt, "My doom was awaiting."
- And he learned that after just one term as president,
it was time to leave tribal politics
in the rearview mirror.
Jon opted not to seek re-election.
- There is nothing that stands in front of me that I fear.
- From past to present,
Jon hopes to empower native communities
with his life lessons
about family,
health,
and education.
- The strongest nations are those that have
families that are standing up on their own,
that are taking care of themselves,
that are getting educated, that are working,
and that are doing their best to follow their way of life.
That's it.
That is what sovereignty will look like in our future.
*
- Hi.
I'm Judy Larson
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
Yes. [shouting] Bud, come!
You don't make me come in and get you!
- Judy Larson stands just a shade over five feet tall.
Her prize Clydesdale, Big Bud, is eight feet tall.
- Come.
- But there's no mistaking who's in charge.
- Ugh!
The thing that you have to have with a Clydesdale
is a big mouth.
And I have a big mouth.
They're more scared of my mouth than they are of me
because I am so short and so little.
By the time he's done, that's why--
you can see-- I need a bath.
How's Big Bud doing, huh?
Let's soak those feet first. [water spraying]
- Judy and her family have been working with Clydesdales
for nearly four decades.
- Over. Get over. [whistles]
- And for the last three decades,
they've been putting on daily shows for the public
at their farm outside Ripon. [applause]
- Now this was a very, very difficult...
- It takes us four hours to set up.
Two hours to break down each and every day.
[telephone buzzing loudly]
That telephone usually rings about 30 calls an hour.
- Judy says it's the knowledge that a crowd is coming
that gets her out of bed each day.
- I can't have the place a mess
and I've got to get that horse washed.
And I have to get the popcorn made.
And I have to do all the rest of this stuff
in order to have the show go on.
- She knows it sounds like a lot of work.
- Yes, it is, but we enjoy what we're doing.
Fully retired, working 13 hours a day.
Yay!
- But she can't imagine doing anything else.
- Right now, we are the only people in the United States
doing this.
But if we sold out, I know what we'd do.
We'd sit around,
go eat at restaurants every night and get fat.
Welcome to Larson's Clydesdale Ranch.
I'm Judy Larson.
- Judy was not born into this lifestyle.
She was born in suburban luxury.
- Being in Park Ridge, Illinois,
I had heated swimming pool, air conditioning since I was born,
Cadillac car.
- But her husband Cal said he wanted a dairy farm,
even though by trade he was a crane operator
and Judy was a professional organist.
- So, it was almost like "Ma and Pa Kettle."
It was really wild when we first started out.
Now I'd like to give you just a little bit of history
of what goes into hitching six Clydesdales.
After we sold out of the dairy farm,
he said he'd like a couple Clydesdales.
And I've never been up to a horse in my life.
And I thought, "Okay, Clydesdales--
versus milking cows-- has got to be better."
Six ton of horses.
We started out with practically nothing.
Four kids, three Clydesdales, and had to start over
with nothing in our pocket but $5,000.
All four of our children started driving Clydesdales
at age seven.
But we'd buy two horses.
Win with them. Sell 'em.
We buy an older wagon.
My husband would rebuild it, and we'd sell it for more money.
We are the only family in the United States that all four
of our children retired as national champion cart drivers.
When my children went to college and they left home--
the empty nest syndrome--
I went to the Governor's Conference on Tourism.
And they talked me into opening up my place to motor coaches.
Now this is Big Bud.
And Bud is [horse neighs] an eight-year old gelding.
- Judy and Cal run through the tour
with a precision that comes with years of repetition.
- You're going to pretend you're watching
the National Champion Men's Cart Class.
Bud, the mighty Clydesdale!
Let's give him a big hand! - [applause]
Now doesn't that look beautiful?
This tour business
makes me look like I'm the boss and I'm the owner.
That's a bunch of baloney.
My husband gets the horse ready.
If it doesn't behave, he gets it back, gets it ready,
and gives it back to me.
He's the brains behind the whole works.
- She may call Cal "the brains,"
but Judy is the face of the operation,
with a personality as big as her Clydesdales.
- Just happen to have a blue ribbon here for Big Bud.
Now Bud, don't step on my toes.
Hang on.
They can see on my face that I have a good time.
So when they leave me, instead of saying goodbye,
they thank me for coming to my place.
That's what I can't believe, is that:
when they thank me when they leave.
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ...
Discover how the basement of a bakery
was transformed into an old-school music studio.
*
Later on Wisconsin Life ...
*
- Hi, my name is Brent Hensel.
I'm the curator for the Green Bay Packers
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- You drive up to the iconic Lambeau Field,
and this is definitely a dream job.
There's pictures of Ron...
- Brent Hensel's "dream job" is with
Wisconsin's football dream team.
- We think this is the greatest story in sports.
It's my job to make sure all the artifacts,
all the mementoes, memorabilia
is preserved properly.
- Brent is the guiding force
behind the new Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame.
- One of the more unique artifacts, in this case,
is Ray Nitschke's helmet.
During practice, in 1960, there was a big thunderstorm.
Lightning struck, hit a tower, and a piece of metal shot down,
and actually hit him in the helmet.
It basically saved his life.
- As curator of the collection,
he knows this team inside out.
- One of the more popular exhibits in the old Hall of Fame
was Lombardi's desk.
The phone has five or six messages
that play from Vince Lombardi.
- Vince Lombardi: "And let me tell you this,
Green Bay is a great town for football."
- The other addition that we made to Lombardi's office
was this interactive table.
We have scrapbooks from Vince Lombardi,
play diagrams.
This is Coach Lombardi as a young boy.
Some great photos of him on the sideline yelling .
- Brent says, "Despite his tough guy image,
Lombardi was known for his generosity.
- One of the first gifts he gave to the players' wives
was this mink stole.
A number of players were not married
and rather than give the gift to their girlfriends,
he gave it to their mothers instead.
- Like Lombardi, Brent used to be a high school teacher.
- I went back for my master's degree
and got into historical preservation.
- From there, Brent kicked off his football fortunes.
- There was an internship
at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
- He parlayed that into a job with the New England Patriots.
- I worked for the Patriots for seven seasons.
- And that's when the Packers came calling.
- I jumped at the opportunity to actually come home.
I was pretty excited.
- Surrounded by the likes of
Lombardi, Lambeau, legend and lore,
Brent is probably most proud
of the research behind this exhibit.
- Starting in 1919, we have 18 uniforms.
It's pretty impressive.
You see a bunch of different uniforms
that a lot of visitors have never seen before.
- Preserving the past and the present.
On game day, it's his job to keep an eye on the ball.
- I'm watching the game just like everybody else.
Monday night game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
There were a couple of NFL records and franchise records.
Aaron Rodgers,
I could request something from him practically every game.
It's really up to the player
whether they want to donate something.
- So what happens to all the memorabilia
that isn't on display?
- This space is where we store all of the extra artifacts.
- It's the first time television cameras
have been allowed inside the Packers' archive.
- We have Aaron Rodgers
and you'll see his captain's patch.
The Packers won the NFC Championship Game in 2010
while playing on the road at Chicago.
So we have all the jerseys from every member of that team.
- Plus, there's this wall of Packers helmets.
- This is Aaron Kampman's helmet.
We actually have his mouth guard, too.
- There's also a story behind
this nearly-shredded Eddie Lacy jersey
that they tried to fix on the sidelines with a shoestring.
- This is actually from the Minnesota game in 2014.
A defender came and ripped his jersey in half.
Clay actually is one of the few players on the Packers
that still wears the drawstring.
This is a different style
where it has the belt and the zipper front,
and these happen to be Aaron Rodgers's.
- The Packers film archives are also housed here.
- Looks like it's a highlight film from 1978
of the Packers and the Seattle Seahawks.
A lot of these films actually
were produced even by NFL Films.
- Back in the Hall of Fame
is where you'll find these crown jewels.
A championship gallery, designed with room for expansion.
- We will not only have the four Super Bowl trophies,
but the Packers have won 13 NFL titles.
We worked with Tiffany's
so we have replicas of those going back to 1936.
I guess you could say there's some serious bling in that room.
- Sometimes that bling
needs some white glove attention
and a special tool to remove the security screws.
- This is actually one of Bart Starr's.
This is the ring he won in 1965 for the NFL Championship.
- It's easy to see why Brent's job
has Packer fans a little green with envy.
And now Brent Hensel's name will go down in history
as the very first curator for the Packers Hall of Fame.
- I can remember watching a Packer game
when I was just a little boy.
I told my father at the time, I wanted to work for them someday.
- That someday is today.
*
- My name is Tessa Reina de Echeverria
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
[rock band jamming on guitars, drums]
- Music is very important.
It's a big part of my life.
A way of approaching the world.
And a way of valuing things.
My name is Tessa Reina Eccheverria
and I'm working now at Williamson Magnetic Recording
as a co-owner and sound engineer,
and I also work as a baker and marketing coordinator
at Nature's Bakery Cooperative.
[cymbals crash and resonate]
Three years ago,
I started picking up the drums and playing it.
[applause]
- Is the fader still up?
- And I had a coworker, Mark Haines, at the bakery.
He has been a drummer for his whole life,
and a sound engineer.
- We ended up talking a lot about music
and I would talk about records that I had made.
And she seemed quite interested.
- As I started forming a band and writing my own music,
started wanting to do sound engineering.
- She thought she might want to go to school
and get a degree in recording engineering.
It's not cheap to do that sort of thing.
So, for approximately the same amount of money, I said, "Well,
maybe you want to consider having a studio?"
- Are you in tune, Tom?
- And so we decided to open a studio together.
- And we discovered that the room under the bakery
sounded fairly magnificent and was the right size.
[clicks, beeps, tone]
Tessa really enjoys the idea of analog,
and I think, to her, it was an idea to begin with.
Something that she was really into as a young person.
- The ability to have access to analog is so much harder.
Digital is so easily accessible.
- So, you can take just about anything,
and just turn it into a song.
[Mark's voice in digital stutter] * ...a song
[Mark's voice singsong-y] * ...a song
[Mark's voice crisp] * ...a song
[country music]
- For a lot of musicians who really want
the essence of their music to be their performance,
analog is a great option.
- I grew up with one of those big cabinets, right.
So there was the records on one side,
and there was the record player,
and you'd sit down in front of it.
[needle drop picks up static]
I just remember that completely going away,
and it just being like, "Here's an iPod now."
It wasn't so much of an experience
of sitting and absorbing the music.
It was a background.
[clicks, guitar notes]
Not only am I excited to have this space
as a recording studio to do analog recording,
and to keep that art alive,
that style of recording alive,
but to have shows,
and create that community around
just supporting local musicians.
I see, you know, the arts maybe as being a little less treasured
than they have been in the past.
Creating spaces around arts and around music
is an important cultural aspect.
And to me it's very inspiring.
The dynamic that gets to happen
as we both push each other through the process
of co-owning a business together
and creating this space.
This is a dream come true for me.
Each week and each experience just teaches me more things.
More ways that I can push myself and the studio
to be continually better.
[hard rock guitar]
*
- Hello, my name is Paul Gokey,
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
[playful piano music]
- Prairie du Chien's downtown
looks nearly unchanged from a century ago.
And one downtown business really hasn't changed at all.
- When we hit our 100th year,
I didn't realize how many businesses
never even get close to that.
- Paul Gokey is the third generation
operating Pete's Hamburgers.
- Pete's started in 1909.
Peter was my grandfather.
It was left to my father.
I mean I grew up on eating hamburgers.
- Paul wasn't the only one.
He grew up with seven siblings.
- There's three sets of twins.
I think the earliest memories for each of us was,
you didn't get to come down here and work,
until after you peeled onions for a couple of years.
That was a rite of passage for every one of us.
- Hello, may I help you?
- Those onions are the first secret of success
for Pete's Hamburgers.
Their scent wafts over downtown.
- Oh, that smells so good.
- That's good advertising, too.
- I'll try not to eat them in the car...
[laughs] ...this time.
- And there are only two ways to have a Pete's Hamburger.
- I will take one.
- Onions? - With, please.
- With onion or without.
- Onions? [cash register ringing]
- You bet.
- Onions?
Do you want onions on those? - Yep.
- If you really need to have it your way,
you'd better come prepared.
- We've had people bring mushrooms down,
morel mushrooms, that type of thing,
just throw 'em on their burger for them,
when they're ready to eat.
- I'll take it. Hell, I'll eat no matter how.
- But Pete's keeps it simple.
- I think just the simplicity of it, it seems to go over.
- The second ingredient of Pete's success
couldn't be any more simple.
Water.
- Ninety percent lean meat that we use.
- It started when Pete had a lot of unsold burgers
he wanted to keep over until the next rush of business.
- To keep 'em fresh, he started adding water to 'em.
- The secret is: it gets better with each pan
because it makes its own broth.
So each pan tastes better than the first.
- At the end of the night, a lot of times,
people want to come and just take a jar of the juice home.
There is people that still believe that
it's something else besides water.
And it isn't.
[cash register ringing]
- It's a simple formula for success
that's made a big difference for the Gokey family.
- This business paid for, all eight of us went to college.
- And a new generation of Gokeys
is considering getting into the burger business.
Sharing the hope that, like a Pete's Hamburger,
life just keeps getting better.
- Curious to know more about Jon Greendeer,
Judy Larson, Brent Hensel,
the crew from Williamson Magnetic Recording Company,
and the Gokey family?
You can go to WisconsinLife .org
to learn more about the people featured in this week's stories.
And remember, we want to know:
What's your Wisconsin Life ?
So, send us your ideas to WisconsinLife @wpt.org.
Finally, we leave you this week in Door County
with some scenes from Peninsula State Park.
Part of our Wisconsin Life .
*
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.