LaGrand Nielsen - American Story with Bob Dotson
Posted: Monday, October 22, 2007 9:42 AM by Dan Fleschner
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American Story with Bob Dotson
(From Bob Dotson, NBC News National Correspondent)
I've made an effort -- all of my career -- to look behind the media mirror that reflects the powerful and find tales of people who are practically invisible.
I like to stick stories to a list of long overlooked names. People who are changing lives. Not just in their neighborhoods. Significant people who don't send out press releases.
This morning’s American Story with Bob Dotson started, as so many do, with a note from a viewer. Here’s what it said: “Let me introduce someone that you, and the rest of America, must meet. He wakes up at 5 a.m. each morning, does 80 push-ups, puts on his running clothes and is off to run 3 miles, swim 10 laps, and bike 5 miles. He then cleans up and begins working at a mortuary as a grievance counselor, and finishes his day with community service, Alzheimer's support groups, speeches at local schools and churches, and always finds time to meet new people. He is just as well known for visiting the sick, lifting spirits with his jokes, and providing food for the needy, as he is known for the races he runs in South Africa, along the Great Wall of China, barefoot in Greece, and the walls in his home covered in gold medals. You probably think I am describing a young man in his prime, but this is actually the day-to-day life of my 100 year old grandfather, LaGrand Nielsen.”
Here’s his picture:
What do I love about his story? It doesn’t present the old age cliché. No cutesy seniors playing kazoos. Just a simple report about a man who has quietly made a difference in the many lives he’s touched. WATCH VIDEO
The most successful man I ever met was in his 90’s. Fred Benson has been a police chief, a fire chief, head of the rescue squad, baseball coach, teacher, builder and President of the Chamber of Commerce. Five times.
He was eight when a farmer named Gurd Miliken took him in, and Fred still lives in the little room Gurd gave him, 82 years ago.
Five generations of Miliken’s have grown up around him. They've repeatedly asked Fred to join them downstairs where it's heated, but he refuses.
A few years back Fred won the Rhode Island state lottery. Five hundred thousand dollars. He threw the biggest birthday party anyone can remember. Invited all the children on the island and announced he'd pay the college tuition of any child who wanted to go.
Fred had always thought of his community first. In the 70s there was a housing shortage on Block Island. So, at 54, Fred went to college and got a degree. He wanted to teach high school shop. The island's four builders today all got their start with Fred.
Fred never married. Never had children. But, for 82 years, he dedicated himself to the people of this island.
We were sitting one sunset watching waves crash against the rocky cliffs. I asked him, "Why?" Fred looked past the lighthouse to the waves breaking against the rocky cliff, then turned and told me a story.
"When I was a little boy, the farmers used to meet for dinner on Saturday night. Each one would boast about their kids. Gurd Miliken had eight sons and me. I sat way down at the end of a long table." Fred paused to look at a pelican on a pole.
"Gurd rose from his chair one night and pointed a long finger past all of his boys. He pointed right at me. 'You fellas wait and see what Fred Benson does. He'll be the best of 'em all.'" Fred stopped talking for a long moment. Stared at the sunset for a while. "I hope he knows how I turned out," he whispered. Then, more intensely, "I hope he knows how I turned out."
Fred Benson has found a safe harbor. Now he shows others the way.
That's as good a definition of an American Story subject as any. They show others the way. Help them see choices. Perhaps avoid pitfalls.
We should learn to listen to people who don't have titles in front of their names. There are people of all ages -- in all walks of life -- with good ideas. Cover these people as you would the governor. Dig for what's significant. The keys to a good story are often found in unexpected places. This year, one turned up in Union, Kansas, unlocking a tale -- half a world away.
Irena Sendler saved 2,500 children from the Nazi death camps during World War Two. She saved her story -- 60 years -- for four Kansas teenagers. Maygan Felt and her friends were putting together a play for their high school history club and found a brief mention of Mrs. Sendler. They wrote her a letter, asking why she had risked her life. She wrote back:
"My dear and beloved girls close to my heart. My parents taught me that if someone is drowning one always needs to give a helping hand and rescue them."
In 1940 the Nazis walled off a neighborhood near Irena Sendler's home in Warsaw. Pressed almost a half million people into an area the size of New York's Central park -- with not enough food to keep them alive. Five thousand were dying each month. Sendler, a Catholic nurse, bluffed her way inside.
"I lost no time reflecting," she wrote. "Knowing that I and my heart had to be there to come to their rescue."
She was less than five feet tall. And yet ... she walked out of the Ghetto with children in gunnysacks. The tiny ones she sedated and put in boxes. And walked with a dog she'd train to bark, if the babies made noise.
Irena Sendler took the children to Catholic families who agreed to raise them as their own. But wrote their real names on cigarette papers. Put them in jars, which she buried beneath an apple tree across the street from a Nazi barracks.
One day, Irena Sendler was betrayed. Arrested. Both her feet and legs broken. Almost murdered. But she never revealed where she'd taken the kids. After the war, she quietly dug up the jars and -- true to her word -- began returning the children to surviving relatives.
The girls from Union, Kansas, went to Poland to meet Mrs. Sendler. She lives in a retirement home. Her nurse -- one of the babies she carried out in box.
Mrs. Sendler had a question for the girls. She wondered why they would care when they come from a place that doesn't have a Jewish family for miles and miles and miles.
Jessica Ripper replied, “Race, religion, creed, it didn't matter to them. What mattered was good can triumph over evil."
And telling the tale of a 97-year-old woman -- that might have been lost forever -- had it not been for some small town Kansas kids intent on rescuing the rescuer's story.
A lot of older people standing in the shadows are terrific stories.
Keep those ideas coming. Drop a note in my mailbox on the Today Show Web site at American Story with Bob Dotson.
