AE Vol. 4 Issue 3–Preview

American Essence

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FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES THIS COUNTRY

Building a Superbrand Kathy Ireland knows that trust is everything. It’s how the former supermodel built her multibillion-dollar business empire— and she’s just getting started

Granger Smith Finds a Purpose Beyond Music Gregory Peck’s Dignified Persona, On and Off Screen

w e i event r P nt o d C

Li

teelected i m S of

Mount Oberlin and Mount Cannon Glacier National Park, Mont.

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May-Flower

By Emily Dickinson

Pink, small, and punctual,

Next to the robin

Aromatic, low,

In every human soul.

Covert in April,

Bold little beauty,

Candid in May,

Bedecked with thee,

Dear to the moss,

Nature forswears

Known by the knoll,

Antiquity.

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CONTENTS 28 | Cheating Death

First Look

Despite constant danger, a former Secret Service agent learned to live without fear.

12 | Wild Blooms

The best places to view wildflowers amid breathtaking landscapes.

Features 14 | Kathy Ireland’s Midas Touch

How did the former supermodel become one of America’s richest self-made women?

20 | A Moving Performance

Country singer Granger Smith shares the faith journey that has set him on a new path beyond music.

24 | We Can Do It

An entrepreneur from Memphis wants to raise “an army of normal folks” with the fortitude to tackle the country’s toughest problems.

32 | In the Land of the Free

One woman tells her family’s story of escaping Nazi Germany and making a new life in America.

36 | For the Bibliophiles

Just outside Los Angeles, a unique outdoor bookstore attracts curious minds.

38 | A Fulfilling Mission

Veterans find renewed purpose through learning the ins and outs of sustainable farming.

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42 | Fueling Dreams

A nonprofit teaches youths, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, the skills to develop their own business ideas.

History 46 | A True Leading Man

Gregory Peck’s moral convictions defined the type of roles he wanted to play on screen.

52 | Fact and Fiction

Creating characters who shared her love of nature, novelist Gene Stratton-Porter became one of America’s most popular authors in the early 20th century.

56 | The White Chief

Lawyer William Holland Thomas’s impassioned defense of Cherokee rights earned him the honor of becoming tribal chief.

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Arts & Letters 62 | Lessons From the Past

Brian Kilmeade probes deep into U.S. history and reveals new perspectives on familiar figures.

68 | Book Recommendation

Author Edward Segal details how numerous politicians from Theodore Roosevelt to JFK dealt with the challenges of campaigning by train.

70 | Why I Love America

A reader’s story of family reconciliation reflects what makes America an exceptional place.

72 | Family Roots

How one mother passed down her curiosity and love of learning to her future generations.

74 | The Painting That Almost Wasn’t If artist James McNeill Whistler’s muse hadn’t fallen ill, perhaps he would never have painted that famous portrait of his mother.

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Lifestyle 82 | Garden of Eden

100 | Good Upbringing

88 | A Roadmap to Mental Wellness

102 | Wilderness and Beyond

How an event designer unexpectedly became a world-class rosarian and created an empire of roses on her historic property.

Etiquette instructor Bethany Friske’s primer on how parents can teach their children to be well-mannered.

Mental health expert John Delony teaches us a rational, non-anxious approach to handling the challenges life throws in our way.

92 | Sizzling Burgers

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Take notes from Food Network star Eddie Jackson, who breaks down all the steps, from selecting the bun to getting the right sear.

96 | Power Ranger and Super Mom

From playing a superhero on television to homeschooling her children, actress Jessica Rey strives to be a positive influence.

Alaska’s capital city is a place where nature, history, and rich Native culture are on grand display.

108 | My Special Canine Friend

Writer Tim Cotton’s dog is reliable and trustworthy, just like the Volvo station wagon she arrived in.

114 | Parting Thoughts

Neurologist Dr. Richard Restak’s tips for keeping our brains sharp, healthy, and active.

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American Essence FO R E V E RYO N E W H O LOV E S T H I S CO U N T RY MAY – JUNE 2024 | VOLUME 4 | ISSUE 3

PU B LI S H E R

Dana Cheng E D I TO R I A L

Editor-In-Chief Managing Editor Lifestyle Editor History Editor Arts & Letters Editors Editor-At-Large Production Manager

Channaly Philipp Annie Wu Crystal Shi Sharon Kilarski Sharon Kilarski Jennifer Schneider Tynan Beatty Astrid Wang

C R E AT I V E

Lead Designer Designers Photographers Illustrator

Marie H. Sunny Lo Karen Tang Samira Bouaou Adhiraj Chakrabarti Biba Kayewich

MARK E T I N G & SA LE S

Marketing Manager Marketing Assistant Sales Director Sales Assistant

Brett Chudá Jennifer Tseng Ellen Wang Onon Otgonbayar

CO N T R I B U TO R S

Sandy Lindsey, Tim Johnson, Ben Laurro, Hazel Atkins, Jeff Minick, Deena Bouknight, Krista Thomas, Rudolph Lambert Fernandez, Dean George, Andrew Benson Brown, Dustin Bass, Kerry Berman, Bob Kirchman, Lorraine Ferrier, Eric Lucas, Kevin Revolinski, Annie Holmquist, Tim Cotton American Essence (USPS 24810) is published bimonthly by Bright Magazine Group at 5 Penn Plz. Fl.8, New York, NY 10001. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, NY. Postmaster: Send address changes to American Essence, 5 Penn Plz. Fl.8, New York, NY 10001.

General Inquiries: AmericanEssence.net/help Advertisement Inquiries: ad@americanessence.com Submissions: editor@americanessencemag.com

www.AmericanEssence.com

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Crafted With

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Editor’s Note Dear Readers, It might be said that Americans embrace entrepreneurship like no other nation on Earth. We are a nation of tinkerers and problem solvers.

Supermodel Kathy Ireland is one of them. Over the years, she has leveraged her brand and her ability to listen and respond to customers’ needs into a remarkable, multi-billion-dollar private company (page 14).

Stories of resourcefulness abound all around us. On his podcast, “An Army of Normal Folks,” Memphis businessman Bill Courtney recounts the stories of unsung heroes who are making a difference in the lives of others (page 24). Meanwhile, some inventive young entrepreneurs get the chance to test and implement their business ideas, thanks to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (page 42).

In this May/June issue, we also invite you to learn more about actor Gregory Peck (page 46); explore the world of roses at Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn’s beautiful Rose Story Farm (page 82); and visit a quirky bookstore that has thrived for 60 years (page 36).

Wishing you a wonderful summer.

Editor-In-Chief Editor@AmericanEssence.com

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SOCIAL CALENDAR Cultural Crescendo

Summer Solstice

SPOLETO FESTIVAL

42ND MIDNIGHT SUN FESTIVAL

Charleston, S.C. May 22 – June 9

PORTLAND ROSE FESTIVAL

Established in 1977 in Charleston as an American incarnation of Spoleto, Italy’s Festival of Two Worlds, this is 17 days and nights of multiple venues hosting 150 performances from worldrenowned opera singers and emerging talent, theatre actors, and dancers. The air positively rings with symphony, chamber music, choral, jazz, folk, and more. SpoletoUSA.org

Grand Floral

PORTLAND ROSE FESTIVAL

NATIONAL CHERRY FESTIVAL

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Fairbanks, Alaska June 22 Break out the sunscreen.

From noon to midnight, downtown Fairbanks transforms itself into a multi-block street fair to celebrate 24 hours of daylight. This 12-hour party features musical guests, tasty treats, community activities, and hundreds of exhibitors and vendors, earning it the title of Alaska’s largest single-day event.

MidnightSunFestivalFairbanks. com

Sweet Times

Portland, Ore. May 24 – June 23

NATIONAL CHERRY FESTIVAL

Memorial Day Weekend is a time to “Dream Forward,” the theme of the 147th Portland Rose Festival. It will feature performances by local groups and regional artists, plus fair food, energetic runs, and other wholesome family fun, including three breathtaking parades, and its iconic fireworks display.

Traverse City, Mich.

June 29 – July 6

RoseFestival.org

Over 500,000 people visit the National Cherry Festival across its eight days celebrating the Michigan staple, including midway rides and attractions, entertainment on the center stage, and cherry-picking opportunities.

There are over 100 events, many of which are free.

Hoist the Sails

CherryFestival.org

ANNAPOLIS TO BERMUDA OCEAN RACE

Pure Americana

MANDAN RODEO

Annapolis, Md. June 7

Mandan, N.D. July 2 – 4

Traversing 753 miles, the Annapolis to Bermuda race is the longest ocean race off the U.S. east coast, and it offers both inshore and ocean challenges. It welcomes yachts over 30 feet, with divisions for seasoned regatta regulars and more casual cruisers.

Don’t miss the pre-race parade in Annapolis Harbor.

Mandan Rodeo Days began as a simple Fourth of July baseball game and pony race in 1879. Bronc riding was added in 1882, and a fair in 1895. Now one of the oldest rodeos in the world, the event is three days of hoof-pounding excitement, with a parade, great eats, an art fair, and much more.

BermudaOceanRace.com

SPOLETO FESTIVAL

By Sandy Lindsey

MandanRodeo.com

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C U LT U R E S H O R T L I S T ‘Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence’ Vintage Books, 2006 Paperback: 224 pages

Most of the well-known patriotic heroes who revolted against the British monarch in the 1700s are male, but a handful of notable women played roles as well. In an engaging style, author and history educator Carol Berkin reveals the little-known but vital actions of brave women, such as Margaret Corbin, who manned a cannon at Fort Washington, and Deborah Champion, who hid Continental Army dispatches under her food in a special saddlebag compartment.

These pages are in the p ‘Frank Chance’s Diamond:

‘California’ This epic stars Ray Milland as Jonathan Trumbo, an adventurous soul hired to lead a wagon train out West during the onset of the California Gold Rush (1848–1855).

Along the way, Trumbo meets headstrong gambler Lily Bishop (Barbara Stanwyck). However, she takes up with Capt. Pharaoh Coffin (George Coulouris), a ruthless exslave-boat captain who has built up his very own fiefdom in a town named after him.

This film is enjoyable because while it has lots of drama—as

Trumbo and Coffin maneuver for Lily’s affections—we learn of two political movements that begin to emerge: one for California’s statehood, and the other with a more tyrannical vision.

DIRECTORS

John Farrow STARS

Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, Barry Fitzgerald RELEASED

1947

STREAMING

Available on Amazon and YouTube

‘Warhorse One’ During the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Master Chief Richard Mirko’s (Johnny Strong) SEAL team is redirected from its original mission to rescue an American missionary family. Unfortunately, thanks to coordinated Taliban attacks, little Zoe is the only surviving family member and Mirko is the only SEAL left to save her.

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DIRECTORS

Johnny Strong, William Kaufman STARS

Johnny Strong, Athena Durner, Steve Mokate, Raj Kala RELEASED

2023

STREAMING

Prime, Peacock, Hoopla

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The Baseball Journalism of Ring Lardner’ Lyons Press, 2024 Paperback: 360 pages

Lardner was a prominent humorist and newspaperman of the early 20th century and is remembered today for humorous short stories.

This anthology of his sports reporting and newspaper columns on baseball recaptures the game as it was played between 1907 and 1919: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and the Cubs of the old refrain: “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Great fun to read a master writer.

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Ka t h y I r e la nd

MEANS BUSINESS Dogged persistence and a relentless focus on putting others first have made Kathy Ireland a trusted brand—and a force to be reckoned with in the business world

By Channaly Philipp

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Kathy Ireland is the chair, CEO, and chief designer of her private company, kathy ireland Worldwide.

Her business success has earned her a spot in the Licensing Hall of Fame and American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame.

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Ms. Ireland and businessman Warren Buffett at the annual newspaper-throwing contest at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. “He’s got a few years on me, but he’s really good,” Ms. Ireland said.

Both had newspaper delivery jobs when they were young.

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t all started with selling rocks. When Kathy Ireland was 4 years old, she collected rocks, painted them, and, with her sister, took them door to door in a little wagon. The going price was 5 cents apiece.

That entrepreneurial drive “was in my DNA,” she told American Essence. With her parents’ encouragement, she ran with it, putting up lemonade stands, washing neighbors’ cars, and designing jewelry—whatever she could find to do.

At age 11, she got her first serious job: a newspaper delivery bike route, up and down the hills of her Southern California town, with 100 customers.

Her dad told her to give it 110 percent—if customers expected the papers in their driveway, he said, put it on their porch. That lesson in under-promising and over-delivering stayed with her ever since.

To some, Ms. Ireland is best known for her modeling work in the 1980s and 1990s. She graced many magazine covers, including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour. Sports Illustrated featured her in its swimsuit issues 13 consecutive times, including its best-selling 1989 swimsuit issue.

Many ask how she pivoted from modeling to business, but to Ms. Ireland, it wasn’t a pivot.

Modeling simply helped her save money for college and fund her entrepreneurial ventures.

Even during her modeling years, she was trying her hand at various businesses—and failing a lot, too. But as any entrepreneur knows, failure is an education in itself. In that respect, “I’m very well educated,” she has said in other interviews, with a knowing smile.

Ms. Ireland believes her early jobs contributed

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to her fearlessness. “I always worked, and I’m grateful because as I grew, it gave me confidence that I could walk away if the circumstances were not good. … I knew I could do anything else for a living.” She’d experienced so much rejection in the modeling business that she became accustomed to it.

These pages are in the p Growing Her Company In the early ’90s, as Ms. Ireland neared her 30s, modeling work grew more scarce. She got to thinking of business ideas that could leverage the appeal of her household name.

Swimsuits were an obvious choice—too obvious for her liking.

But she liked the idea of socks.

The idea was sparked when a request to model socks came her way. Someone else might have turned her nose at the offer. But Ms. Ireland liked the quality of the socks, and she liked the people who got in touch with the request—John and Marilyn Moretz of North Carolina—even more.

In the end, she partnered with them, working with her team to put in sweat equity and lend her design flair to the socks; Moretz Mills would manufacture and distribute them.

The choice of product might seem unglamorous, but for Ms. Ireland, it was strategic. The kathy ireland socks served as a litmus test for her brand.

“Whatever little smidgen of celebrity I might have had back in the days when I modeled, I knew it wasn’t enough for a brand and that women were too smart to buy something just because it had my name on it,” she said.

If she could earn the trust of women—specif-

ically busy moms—by offering a product that combined quality and value, then she knew her brand had a chance of succeeding in the long run.

It turned out that socks were just the beginning. Ms. Ireland’s brand licensing company, kathy ireland Worldwide, launched in 1993. As c0-founder and chair emeritus, Ms. Ireland took feedback extremely seriously, “taking marching orders from [women],” listening to their needs and coming up with solutions to make moms’ lives better.

She expanded her customer base and diversified the industries she worked in. After developing her line of socks, she went into home furnishings on the advice of Warren Buffett, who told her that home products enjoyed more stability than fashion. These were followed by office furniture, event planning, jewelry (Elizabeth Taylor mentored her), apparel, and real estate, among other industries.

Ms. Ireland’s name now lends its Midas touch to over 17,000 products and services. Those include partnerships with MainStreetChamber Holdings, Your Home Digital, BMG, and Philip Stein Watches; and with retailers spanning from HSN, Camping World, and Nebraska Furniture Mart, to Bed, Bath & Beyond, Macys.com, Macy’s Backstage, and many more.

Because kathy ireland Worldwide is a private company, owned solely by Ms. Ireland, business numbers aren’t shared publicly. Forbes estimated it generated $3.1 billion in retail sales in 2021. In 2022, Ms. Ireland was inducted into the Licensing Hall of Fame.

As she expanded into various fields, she met

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with plenty of skeptics and naysayers. “I never liked limits,” she said.

“People said fintech was also an area that we couldn’t move into though nobody had a good reason why, so today we work in the area of credit card processing.”

What makes ireland Pay different from other such services, though, is that 51 percent of the company’s revenue goes to nonprofit causes.

Making a commitment to nonprofit causes is a requirement for any company that kathy ireland Worldwide partners with.

“Something that we do insist upon is that you’re giving back, and we have a list of 10 initiatives that cover everything from supporting our military veterans and their families, fighting human trafficking, working to eradicate disease, hunger, and poverty, [as well as] environmental issues.”

It doesn’t need to be a financial contribution, Ms. Ireland explained, but could be a commitment to spread awareness or volunteer staff time.

“We just want to know that if we’re going to invest the time and resources to work together, that we will honor our vision statement—to teach, inspire, empower, and make our world better.”

Ms. Ireland foresees significant growth in the next few years, focusing on products “that might not necessarily have the biggest profit margins but [are] more frequently purchased.

“As we’re learning about the needs and daily struggles that people have,” she’s asking: “How can we make a difference here?”

“Even though we’ve been in business for a very long time, I really feel we’re a baby business,” she said. “We’re just getting started.”

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Ms. Ireland said actress Elizabeth Taylor taught her a lot about jewelry: “She really educated me so much, looking for the quality inside, outside, every angle.”

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Bill Courtney believes that ordinary Americans can make a real difference.

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Problem Solved

Bill Courtney has an idea for tackling the country’s toughest social issues—by putting a spotlight on the ordinary Americans who are working on the solutions

By Annie Wu

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usinessman and pastor Lee Robbins knew how hard it was to return to society after prison. After a company employee committed financial fraud, Mr. Robbins took the fall and was sentenced to prison. Upon release, he encountered numerous obstacles in reestablishing a normal life. He knew he had to do something to help ex-offenders in even more difficult circumstances get back on their feet.

So he set up Vital Signs, a program that provides life coaching, housing, employment, and transportation so that ex-offenders can thrive and not end up in prison again. It partners with employers to get tax incentives for hiring ex-felons, while teaching the program participants how to manage a budget. Eventually, after participants get salaries, they pay program fees—essentially allowing the program to pay for itself.

This is just one of the many stories told on the podcast “An Army of Normal Folks,” hosted by Bill Courtney. A businessman in Memphis, Tennessee, Mr. Courtney seeks to highlight the work of people making a difference.

Mr. Robbins is doing just that. Recidivism

rates for ex-state prisoners average 68 percent for rearrest within the first three years after they are released, but of the 1,800 people who have participated in Vital Signs, only 2 percent have been rearrested.

“I tell people I don’t believe in second chances. … I’ve come to understand that they need better chances,” Mr. Robbins shared on the podcast. “You can give them a second, third, fourth, 90th time, and they’ll keep going to prison. Why? Because some of them never had a first chance.”

Mr. Courtney wants listeners to hear from these unsung heroes in the hopes of inspiring people to emulate their work, wherever there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. “The essence of America has always been … we the people built this place and we the people can fix it,” he said.

Finding a Way It’s not surprising that Mr. Courtney set out on this path; over a decade ago, he spent six years volunteer-coaching a high school football team in a rough north Memphis neighborhood, hoping to instill discipline and nurture talent in teens who

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ʻUndefeatedʼ (2012)

Mr. Courtney and the football team he coached at Manassas High School are the subjects of this Oscar-winning documentary.

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Mr. Courtney’s first passion is coaching football.

He is influenced by the many sports coaches who mentored him during his formative years.

come from unstable family environments.

Having himself grown up fatherless while his mother remarried several times, he knew what that life was like. “Where I came from, I’m a lot more like those kids than my own kids,” he said. Mr. Courtney received loving mentorship from football coaches while playing the sport in school, and it inspired him to become a football coach himself. “When I graduated college, coaching football was more than just liking football; it was a calling, because those were the men that meant so much to me in my life,” he said. But when he and his wife welcomed four children into their lives, the schoolteacher salary was no longer enough to support the family. He started his own lumber company and did volunteer-coaching in his free time.

Mr. Courtney wanted to show the boys on

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the Manassas High School football team that somebody cared about them and their success.

Filmmakers documented their underdog journey from repeated losses to entering the district playoffs, and the resulting film, “Undefeated,” won the 2012 Oscar for best documentary.

In 2022, a journalist interviewed Mr. Courtney for a national radio show about the impact of the “Undefeated” film, asking him the question: What should we as a society be doing to break the cycle of poverty and despair in America’s impoverished communities?

The question got him thinking. “There are roads and overpasses in every major city in the United States, that when you drive by them, you think, don’t let my car break down here. It’s not where you want a flat tire … because you’d get mugged.” Instead of just lamenting the situation,

Mr. Courtney believed that “We’ve got to tilt that rearview mirror 15 degrees and look ourselves in the face and say, you know, maybe we ought to do something about that one day, because the government has proven woefully inadequate at caring for the most disadvantaged among us.” Six months later, the podcast producer called Mr. Courtney and proposed, what if they went out to look for the people who are actually doing something to address those social problems?

They got to work, and they found moving stories in every corner. The “Army of Normal Folks” podcast launched in June 2023, and it reached a peak during which there were 225,000 downloads in one week, making it among the top 10 most downloaded podcasts on Apple. Listeners soon began contacting Mr. Courtney with ideas of inspiring people to interview.

Each episode delves into the specifics of why the interviewee’s project worked. They act as a “blueprint” for whomever wants to replicate the proposed solution in one’s own community, Mr. Courtney said. The interviewee sometimes leaves a phone number so that interested listeners can be in touch.

The hope is that if a listener has the passion and skill to tackle the issue, he or she now has the tools to get started. “You no longer can say, ‘Hey, I’d like to do something good in the world, but I just don’t know how.’” That is how Mr. Courtney envisions they can literally grow an “army of normal folks.”

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Ripples of Change Mr. Courtney is continually surprised at the creative solutions people come up with. One recent story came full circle. On one of the episodes, he interviewed Luke Mickelson, who founded an organization called Sleep in Heavenly Peace to provide beds for children who live in poverty and don’t have their own bed. Mr. Mickelson found out by chance how prevalent this issue was.

While trying to get his kids off the couch one day, he decided to start a hands-on woodworking project with them and make a bunk bed for fun. He then decided to post on Facebook to offer the bed to whomever needed it. To his surprise, several people replied to his post, explaining that their children didn’t have a bed to sleep on. Mr. Mickelson then pulled together a group of volunteers to help build more. Since he started Sleep in Heavenly Peace in 2012, the organization has expanded to more than 300 chapters in 44 states,

and it has delivered more than 140,000 beds to children in need.

A Florida pastor heard the podcast episode and shared it with a man he knew who ran an orphanage in Haiti—who in turn became inspired because his orphanage had a wood shop; the children at the orphanage started making beds for other children in Haiti who had no bed to sleep on.

There’s no special criteria for determining whether a person can be featured on the podcast— other than that he or she must be an ordinary American, not someone with influence and power.

“We normal people deal with cancer, sickness, sadness, child death. … Each of these people we profile deals with one or more of those things,” he said. Despite their struggles, they choose to continue to serve others.

Mr. Courtney believes that that spirit is deeply rooted in how this country was founded. “It is always going to be about ‘We the People,’ an army of normal folks, not doing stuff because it’s easy, but exactly the opposite—doing stuff despite the barriers we have to overcome.”

He hopes this spirit—amplified through the podcast—can help us as a nation collectively move past the current divisiveness. “Can you imagine what our culture would look like if that was the narrative about us, rather than the narrative that’s coming out of D.C. and the national news?”

Mr. Courtney invites people from all walks of life onto his podcast show.

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A Pathway to Freedom Barbara Feigin tells her story of fleeing Nazi Germany with her family to America, a place where she could dream big and work hard to achieve whatever she put her heart to

By Jeff Minick

“The thing that really impressed me as I was growing up was first of all their great elation and joy in being in a place where there was freedom,” said Barbara Feigin, speaking of her parents to American Essence. “Freedom was a tremendously important thing—freedom to be who you want, to do what you want, to read what you want, to say what you want. They had come from a place where that didn’t exist at the time, and so that was hugely important.”

In her recently released memoir, “My American Dream: A Journey from Fascism to Freedom,” former advertising executive Barbara Feigin, who lives in New York, begins with her family’s flight from Nazi Germany. In 1940, when she was 2, her parents, Eric and Charlotte Sommer, took her and a few personal belongings and fled the country of their birth and the growing persecution of Jews.

Facing hardships all along the way—a lack of adequate food, cold and creaky railway cars, caring for a toddler for weeks in transit—they spent 17 days crossing Russia and Siberia, boarded a ship to Japan, and, from there, sailed for another two

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weeks across the Pacific—first to Canada and then to Seattle. There, a group of Quakers working with a Jewish organization helped to settle the family in the small town of Chehalis in Washington state.

Life in the Land of Liberty Though Ms. Feigin remembers little of this desperate journey, in 2013, her sister Carolyn called with some amazing news. She’d found a journal belonging to their father that detailed the prelude to their escape and the obstacles they’d encountered on their flight from oppression and death.

This treasure, along with copies of letters written to relatives in Germany describing their new life in Chehalis, inspired Ms. Feigin to begin writing her book.

“They arrived in Seattle with $10.50 for the entire family and the clothes on their back,” Ms. Feigin recollected. “They had no connections, no money, no job, no nothing. My parents did not speak English, but they found my dad a job in the Sears Roebuck Farm Store. His job was to uncrate these big stoves and put the pieces together, and

Ms. Barbara Feigin at her home in Manhattan, New York.

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to her during her adolescence: “Dream big; work hard; never quit.” As she writes in her autobiography, “My parents continue to emphasize how important it is to be in America because America offers freedom to be what you want, to do what you want, to strive for what you want to achieve.

They remind me of the importance of education, telling me again and again that education is the key that opens the door to opportunity.”

Ms. Feigin took their words of wisdom to heart and made them a guiding light in her life. After graduating from high school, where she served as assistant editor for the school’s newspaper, she entered Whitman College on a scholarship.

In 1959, her academic success and her mother’s advice to “dream big” led her across the country to the Harvard–Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, where she embarked on what she described as “the most profound experience” of her life, “one that will completely transform my sense of the world and my mindset,” she writes in her memoir.

While her academic studies prepared Ms. Feigin for her career in advertising, the city of Boston also served as her classroom, introducing her, she writes, “to people with intellectual energy and curiosity” and to “cultural and historical wonders and experiences I’ve never known.”

Cocktail parties, regular forays to listen to the Boston Symphony, friendships formed with men and women from very different backgrounds, and simply living day-to-day in a city “electric with excitement”: All these and more brought an education all their own.

And it was here, too, that she met Jim Feigin, who was enrolled in the Harvard Business School.

The two eventually married, had three sons, and remained in love until the day he died.

These pages are in the p Ms. Feigin at around 4 years old, with her parents in the town of Chehalis, Wash., where they first settled down.

that’s how we came to Chehalis.”

Both parents worked hard, lived frugally, and saved their money, but it was the freedom of America that meant the most to them. When Ms. Feigin was 8 years old, her parents became fullfledged citizens, breaking into tears of joy during their naturalization ceremony. They wanted to be “real Americans,” going to the high school football games, for example, and planting a Victory Garden during the war. When her father had saved enough money to buy a car, a Studebaker, it was a high point in the family’s life. “He said, here in America, even the shop girls have cars. And so a car was a hugely symbolic thing for my father.

It really symbolized becoming a true American,” Ms. Feigin said. “And of course, it was a pathway to freedom, to go wherever you wanted and to see whatever you wanted and to do whatever you wanted.”

New Adventures, Expanded Horizons Ms. Feigin’s mother often repeated these words

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Mad Men, Meet Mad Woman Following her time in Boston, Ms. Feigin moved to New York, where she began her long and successful career in advertising, one of the few women at that time in that crew of “Mad Men,” a nickname for Madison Avenue ad men. Her first triumph at Grey Advertising came when her team devised a new way of promoting KoolAid. After extensive research involving mothers and families, they recommended making KoolAid available year-round rather than just in the summers and adding Vitamin C to give it nutritional value. Once these recommendations were

followed, Kool-Aid sales surged, and for a time only Coke and Pepsi were more popular.

But the work that brought Ms. Feigin her greatest joy and satisfaction was with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Worried by the many teens who were dying or being injured from driving drunk, this government agency approached Grey Advertising and asked for its help in designing an effective ad campaign. After a deep study of teens, driving, and drinking, including the attitudes of young people toward alcohol and driving, Ms. Feigin and her team discovered the importance of friendship for them and came up with the slogan, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

“As soon as we started running this advertising,” she said, “fatalities among teenagers began to drop dramatically, and it was really such a wonderful, wonderful thing. I was so proud of it because this made a real societal difference.”

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“My parents continue to emphasize how important it is to be in America because America offers freedom to be what you want, to do what you want, to strive for what you want to achieve.”

Barbara Feigin in her memoir, ‘My American Dream: A Journey From Fascism to Freedom’

Passing the Torch Like all of us, Ms. Feigin’s life was not free of stress and tragedy. She was 11 years old when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and though she lived until 1963, her health was always a major concern. In her junior year at Whitman College, three of Ms. Feigin’s good

friends died in a car crash. On July 28, 1990—“the day my world came crashing down,” she writes in her book—Jim suffered a stroke and required care for the rest of his days.

Perhaps these hardships explain some of the words of advice Ms. Feigin offers to younger generations. She values the family as a source of strength, inspiration, and comfort. Like her mother and father before her, she believes strongly in the importance of education. She also considers optimism a valuable character trait. She then added, “I think it’s very important that people understand that there needs to be resilience. All of us in our lives face bumps in the road of one kind or another, you know, a lot of times dire, a lot of times unexpected, a lot of times confusing and confounding, but it’s so important to be resilient and to pick yourself up and move forward the best way you possibly can.”

In her epilogue to “My American Dream,” Ms. Feigin writes, “I am forever and always grateful to be an American, because only in America could the life I dreamed about and more become a reality. As my mother taught me so long ago, as all of life evolves and reveals itself, dream big; work hard; and never, ever quit.

“Let this be a guiding principle of your own lives as it has been of mine. And just one final thought: have fun and laugh every day. It will do your heart good.”

Ms. Feigin subtitles this epilogue “A Letter to My Sons, My Grandchildren, and Future Generations.” It is, in fact, wise and beautiful advice for all of us.

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Ms. Feigin’s immigration papers upon entering America.

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he startup world often emphasizes the importance of telling a story about your brand that’s personal. For 17-year-old Raneem Al Suwaidani, her food truck rental platform Lilypad starts with exactly that.

“My inspiration was my family’s dream to start a restaurant and then realizing the big capital need,” said Ms. Al Suwaidani, a high school senior. “I realized others must be held back by lack of capital and wanted to create a solution to fix it!” She came up with the concept because food trucks were prohibitively expensive and rentals were nonexistent in Providence, Rhode Island, where she and her family lives.

With this idea, Ms. Al Suwaidani clinched both the national and international titles at the 2nd Annual World Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, a competition held by the nonprofit Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which creates programming for students in under-resourced communities to develop entrepreneurial skills. The Syrian immigrant competed against 23 students from 11 different countries. With $15,000 total in winnings from both contests, she can now bring Lilypad to fruition.

Ms. Al Suwaidani experienced stiff competition in the national competition from other students with innovative ideas. Runner-up Rachel Solomon created an accessibility-focused business idea called Quick Change, a monthly subscription service which offers walkers and replacement wheels for the disabled. Ms. Solomon is an 18-year-old scholar from the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts.

At the NFTE South regional competition, high

school senior Thomas Vo presented his electric heated gloves called Reheats, a practical invention spurred from real-life experiences working outdoors in the cold for his uncle.

In an interview, Ms. Al Suwaidani said that the power of persevering, having a dream, and connecting to incredible entrepreneurial mentors and networks will help to continue her entrepreneurial journey. As part of the prize for winning the national competition, she will get a 45-minute mentorship session with Daymond John of “Shark Tank” fame, who’s also the founder and CEO of hip-hop apparel brand FUBU.

A Path to Success Finding youth who have innovative, marketable ideas and turning the ideas into real businesses is the grand mission NFTE hopes to achieve.

Geared toward middle school, high school, and postsecondary students, the nonprofit created an educational program that develops the eight core “domains” of an entrepreneurial mindset: initiative and self-reliance; critical thinking and problem solving; flexibility and adaptability; comfort with risk; future orientation; communication and collaboration; opportunity recognition; and creativity and innovation.

It’s this kind of immersive education that propels ideas like Lilypad. Equipping students with an awareness of successful business practices and concepts helps them own their futures.

This is especially vital for youth living in under-resourced, densely populated urban communities, said NFTE CEO J.D. LaRock. He added that there are two key elements for youth entre-

N U RT U R I N G T H E N E X T G E N E R AT I O N

75 $46,350 1.3 Percent

Total prize money given out at the world, national, and regional-level entrepreneurship challenges per year

Million

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of NFTE alumni report career satisfaction, while 1 in 4 say they have started or run businesses

learners reached since NFTE’s founding in New York in 1987

HISTORY W H AT I S W O R T H R E M E M B E R I N G

Actor Gregory Peck poses with a Great Dane on a dock, circa 1950.

★ Hollywood Legend

Literary Muse

The distinguished qualities in Gregory Peck that made him a star.

Nature provided endless inspiration for a popular novelist of the early 20th century.

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A publicity photo for the 1969 film “Mackenna’s Gold,” starring Gregory Peck as Sheriff Mackenna.

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A Man of Dignity Film star Gregory Peck’s hard-working and distinguished personality informed the moral authority of his handpicked roles

By Rudolph Lambert Fernandez

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hat irony that Gregory Peck’s greatest onscreen success was as a character who experienced failure. Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch, defending an innocent black man in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), loses his case. Still, Peck’s defeat becomes a victory, not only because he profits from a winning novel and screenplay, but also because he’s the one playing Finch.

When audiences stumbled out of darkened cinema halls in 1962, Finch to them was no longer just a lawyer from Harper Lee’s novel. He’d become a voice of fairness, a face of truth, a voice they heard too rarely, and a face they longed to see more of. The character was just a father teaching his children about the evils of racism and falsehood. But Peck had made Finch bigger.

Over four years, novice Peck secured as many Best Actor Oscar nominations, playing characters who succeed. As a veteran, playing Finch who fails, Peck succeeds, winning his first, and only, Best Actor Oscar.

Family Man Lee Remick, Peck’s co-star in “The Omen” (1976), once said of Peck, “He represented everything … strong, reliable, and solid.” For all that, his childhood was anything but stable. Born in 1916 in San Diego, his parents divorced when he was not yet 5. Cared for by his grandmother and later by his father, Peck pined for familial stability all through boarding school and college. It arrived late. When it did, he was ready. His first marriage, to Greta Kukkonen, lasted 13 years. His second, to Veronique Passani, lasted nearly half a century, from 1955 until his death in 2003.

Growing up, Peck slogged, selling newspapers, waiting tables, washing dishes, working as a carhop, a barker, an usher, and a Broadway extra. Instead of hitting out at everyone for being robbed of a loving family, he held it up as indispensable in forging maturity and loyalty.

When his 30-year-old son Jonathan allegedly committed suicide, grief-stricken Peck didn’t act for two years. Peck opposed the Vietnam

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These pages are in the p Peck as Atticus Finch with Mary Badham (Jean Louise “Scout” Finch) and Phillip Alford (Jem Finch) in the 1963 film “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

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War but backed the convictions of his other son Stephen, who fought there alongside thousands of young Americans. Raised Catholic, Peck had once considered the priesthood, and he long supported the missionary work of friends and family, including an audio-recording of The New Testament with Stephen.

In “The Yearling” (1946), Peck plays a doting father to a runaway pre-teen son. Upon the prodigal’s return, Peck says, “Every man wants life to be a fine thing, and easy. Well, ’tis fine, son. … But ’tain’t easy.”

In “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” (1956), Peck is an executive in the corporate rat-race who argues not against a hectic job but only for its submission to values that give the family

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pride of place. When warned that “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and its interrogation of anti-Semitism, including among privileged Jews, was too provocative, Peck doubled down and backed the film.

Uniquely for that era, Peck’s consciously non-exclusive contracts gifted him freedom to handpick roles. Most of the characters he picked exuded empathy and moral authority.

Of course, some complain that leading man Peck fought too little and avoided playing bad guys. That’s right, he used fists less often than his more pugilistic peers. It’s also a bad take. He fought more often than they did, playing men who fought their tendencies toward violence, pride, and self-pity. He knew that these fights to

re not included preview. stay good were quieter, but never easier.

Staying Good, Staying Dignified In a room full of grave men, Peck raised the gravitas quotient simply by walking in, emanating a wisdom beyond his years. In his debut year in film, in “The Keys of the Kingdom” (1944), 28-year-old Peck plays a young priest who ages into his 80s. Without formal training in film-acting (he’d been in theater a while) he radiates a meditative onscreen goodness.

Six feet, three inches tall, even Peck’s deep, commanding voice didn’t place him in the physically macho mold of a Charlton Heston or John Wayne. His masculinity was cut from different cloth, one that breathed sincerity, gentility.

Sure, impassioned directors would’ve liked Peck to “punch a hole in the wall” sometimes, but he emoted differently, using silence and his physicality. He’d cock his head, expand his massive chest, raise his spine, lower or lift his head, tighten his jaw, clench his fist, purse his lips, open (then close) his mouth, and crease his brow to show tenacity, doubt, stoicism, clarity, and intent. He didn’t believe in heroes who “never know the meaning of fear.” His monologues were never preachy. He’d just talk, sometimes to himself. But even angry, he remained restrained, rarely shouty, and almost never out of control.

He also knew his limitations. Perhaps his dignified earnestness precluded outright action or screwball roles; when he did try them, it’s the

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A scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird” in which lawyer Finch (Peck) defends the wrongfully convicted Tom Robinson (Brock Peters).

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The Bird-Loving Novelist An impassioned naturalist, Gene Stratton-Porter became famous through her romantic novels that wove nature into the storylines

By Dean George

A

t the time of her death in 1924, Indiana’s Gene Stratton-Porter was one of America’s most popular novelists.

Her publishers estimated she had more than 50 million readers in the United States and many more internationally. During the last 17 years of her life, her fiction and nonfiction books sold at a rate of 1,700 copies a day.

Stratton-Porter was a natural storyteller, a gift she inherited from her father, who had “the ringing delivery of a born-again evangelist” and could tell tales that were part fact, part fiction. His colorful repertoire profoundly affected his youngest daughter.

Born and raised a northern Indiana farm girl, Stratton-Porter’s love of nature and the outdoors served as the backdrop of all her early-20th-century novels. She wrote about what she knew and created characters in her books who shared that love and respect for nature. Literary critics panned her novels as too virtuous and unrealistic, but she bristled at that criticism.

“A thing utterly baffling to me is why the life history of the sins and shortcomings of a man should constitute a book of realism, and the life history of a just and incorruptible man should

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constitute a book of idealism. Is not a moral man as real as an immoral one?” she wrote in a 1916 article for the Ladies Home Journal.

Twelve Makes a Dozen Geneva Grace Stratton was quite the surprise to her 50-year-old father Mark and 47-year-old mother Mary. Born August 17, 1863, and later nicknamed Gene, the youngest of the Strattons’ 12 children spent considerable time outdoors as a preschooler amusing herself roaming the farm while her parents and siblings were busy doing chores. As long as she appeared on time for family meals, she was permitted to explore her surroundings. That began her fascination with birds, flowers, and plants.

One day, her father winged a chicken hawk and was preparing to club it with his rifle when Gene begged him to spare it. With her mother’s help in treating the bird’s injured wing, within a month the hawk was eating from Gene’s fingers and following her around like a puppy. Soon, she had a personal zoo of birds she cared for and studied.

Gene’s passion for ornithology didn’t apply to schoolwork or making friends. With her parents aging and her mother seriously ill, the Strattons

Stratton-Porter’s love of nature served as the backdrop for all her early-20th-century novels—eight of which became Hollywood films. A photograph of Stratton-Porter in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles County, Calif.

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Porter’s different business interests required much of his attention and required him to travel often, leaving Gene with much time on her hands.

An ambitious woman, Gene occupied herself for a time with music lessons, painting, and a course in fine needlework, but she soon grew restless and passed her time exploring a 13,000-acre wetland area named Limberlost Swamp. She spent hours birdwatching, making sketches, and photographing local wildlife.

The unusual sight of an unaccompanied, khaki-clad woman tromping across the countryside and taking pictures of birds created a buzz among locals, especially since Charles had built himself and Gene a beautiful two-story, 14-room cedar log home after oil was discovered on one of his properties.

“No normal woman would leave the comfort of such a fine home to drive a drafty buggy through swamp and field in all kinds of weather on such strange business,” Stratton-Porter biographer Judith Reick Long wrote in her 1990 book “Gene Stratton Porter: Novelist and Naturalist.”

These pages are in the p An illustrated plate of a barn owl that Stratton-Porter wrote was “blinkingly peering from her front door to learn if it were too early to go hunting,” from “What I Have Done With Birds,” 1907.

made the decision to leave the farm and move to town. Four months later, her mother died, and 12-year-old Gene struggled even more adjusting to city life. It wasn’t until her sophomore year at Wabash High School, where she presented a book review at a school assembly, that she discovered her descriptive talent with words and characterization.

That brief episode lit the fuse on her imagination and storytelling abilities and was the beginning of her metamorphosis from country farm girl to literary talent.

From Farmer’s Daughter to Bird Woman In 1886, Gene married Charles Porter, a successful businessman who owned three drugstores, among other interests, and later co-founded a bank in Geneva, Indiana. Gene kept her family surname and added her husband’s name once married.

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Nature books like ‘Birds of the Bible’ and ‘Friends in Feathers’ were her passion, but novels were her pathway to literary acclaim and financial independence.

The locals were right when describing “The Bird Woman” as unusual, but what they didn’t know was that, like a mother bird building her nest, Stratton-Porter was gathering twigs of tales, leaves of literary imagination, and spider silk of storylines for several novels and illustrations for nonfiction nature books.

It was during this 18-year period from 1895 to 1913 that she began writing nature books with her own photo illustrations and novels. Nature books like “Birds of the Bible” and “Friends in Feathers” were her passion, but novels were her pathway to literary acclaim and financial independence.

In a compromise with her primary publisher, Doubleday, Page & Company, her publisher agreed to publish her novels and nonfiction books on an alternate annual basis.

A Book Bonanza and Movie Success Stratton-Porter published 26 books. “Freckles” (1904) and “A Girl of the Limberlost” (1909) are considered her most popular. Both books, which are still on shelves today, used the Limberlost Swamp as a backdrop to her storylines. Her novels have been translated into 20 languages and Braille.

Long notes in her Stratton-Porter biography that it was once believed that her subject was first published in 1900 with nature magazine articles, but it is now believed her first published work was a short book called “The Strike at Shane’s,” published in 1893. The book was part of a writing contest by Boston’s American Humane Education Society, and contest rules required manuscripts to be submitted under a pseudonym. Neither the publisher nor Stratton-Porter ever revealed authorship of the work, but the book bears such similarities to the characterizations and storylines in her other books that it is widely recognized as hers.

Eight of Stratton-Porter’s books were made into films, and as with all things she undertook, the energetic and ambitious author applied her literary eagle eye to that new venture. Under her arrangement with filmmaker Thomas Ince, Gene oversaw filming and personally assisted directing.

Three years later, in 1924, she incorporated a film production company of her own.

“As a motion picture producer I shall continue to present idealized pictures of life, pictures of men and women who inspire charity, honor, devotion to God and to family,” she wrote in a McCall’s magazine editorial.

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The Unconventional Traditionalist In many ways, the country girl who became a bestselling author and film producer was a walking contradiction. She preferred nature over people, but she wrote bestselling books adored by millions.

She contracted with McCall’s magazine to write editorials championing housewives, but she rebelled against that role for herself and worked

tirelessly to be financially independent.

She and Charles Porter remained married until her death in 1924, but they spent years living apart in Indiana after she built a two-story cedar log cabin in 1913 modeled after the one Charles had built for her in Geneva, Indiana. Gene claimed that frequent interruptions to her work by visitors prompted her to flee to Rome City, 82 miles north of Geneva. Charles visited on weekends until Gene chose to move to California in 1919 as she began another chapter in her life.

Gene died on December 6, 1924, following a traffic accident in Los Angeles. In 1999, two of her grandsons had her body and their mother Jeanette’s body moved to the grounds of the Gene Stratton-Porter Historic Site in Rome City, Indiana, a 128-acre tract of woods and gardens populated with 14,000 trees, shrubs, and wildflowers Gene planted herself.

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“I know of no other bird that, in the stress of matingfever, rocks, trills, lifts his wings, turns his head and so displays his passion and his power,” wrote StrattonPorter about the male cardinal. A watercolor painting from “What I Have Done With Birds.”

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?

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

By Andrew Benson Brown

ow n K ou Y o D

f ell o W y r e o t How s i r H ultu e h t C a? h t You meric in A

True or False

Fill-in-the-Blank

1. In 19th-century America, a young man often expressed his interest in a woman by handing her a “flirtation card.”

2. The idea of taking trips during spring break began in North Carolina.

3. During World War II, children were taught to grow and tend “victory gardens” for the war effort.

4. The first drive-in theater was advertised as a great place for young people to bring their dates.

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5. The original 1911 edition of the "Boy Scouts Handbook" describes the organization’s famous motto: “To be a scout means to be __________ to do the right thing at the right moment.”

Multiple Choice 8. Thin Mints, the iconic Girl Scout cookie, were originally known as what?

A. The Chocolate Mint B. The Mint-ilicious Biscuit C. Mint Moons D. Cooky-Mints 9. In what decade was the first Little League Baseball game played?

A. 1890s B. 1930s C. 1960s D. 1980s 10. A young woman in the 19th century might have worn any of the following spring fashions, EXCEPT: A. A straw bonnet B. A silk parasol C. A floral wool dress D. Lace gloves

6. Nathaniel Hawthorne loosely based his story “The __________ -Pole of Merry Mount,” on the first known New England festival involving settlers dancing around this object.

7. Artist Charles Dana Gibson set standards for womanly beauty and manners in the 1890s with his magazine illustrations of the “__________ Girl.”

See answers on page 113

ARTS & LETTERS SHAPING OUR MINDS AND HEARTS

An antique chromolithograph of carnations.

Observer of History

Campaigning

by Train

Painting a Masterpiece

Fox News host and author Brian Kilmeade digs deep into U.S. history and finds valuable lessons.

A new book delves into the rich history of politicians campaigning by railroad.

The story of how James McNeill Whistler ended up painting his mother in a now iconic portrait.

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Exploring US History With Brian Kilmeade The ‘Fox & Friends’ host has written 6 books that highlight American heroes who cared more for their country than themselves

By Dustin Bass

“History, to me, is so easy to sell,” said Brian Kilmeade. “If it’s done with passion, you can’t say that it’s boring and uninteresting.”

Most people know Mr. Kilmeade as co-host of the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends.” He’ll be the first to tell you he loves his job. But his passion is history. Mr. Kilmeade is the author of eight books, all related in some way to American history. His first two, written more than 15 years ago, are sports-related. His last six, however, discuss more serious historical matters.

Mr. Kilmeade has written about George Washington’s spy ring, Thomas Jefferson’s war against the Barbary pirates, Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans, Sam Houston and the Texas Revolution, the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and, most recently, the relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington.

Although the first four focused on American military history, the tune changes slightly in his last two offerings. He suggests that the change is more incidental than predetermined.

“I’m just trying to move through time, and I got to the Civil War,” he said.

“It was really about [Lincoln and Douglass] and how they got through that rough time together. Their partnership was way too short, but very effective. Then we had Reconstruction, then the falling apart of Reconstruction,

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Teddy Roosevelt speaks at the National Negro Business League (NNBL) in 1910. Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, the NNBL promoted the interests of African American businesses.

then the 20th century, and then in comes Jim Crow, and I thought how do I move through time and tell the story between two people.”

Mr. Kilmeade said he had read Washington’s autobiography “Up from Slavery” before he settled on writing about Lincoln and Douglass. The book captivated him, and then he learned that Theodore Roosevelt had been just as taken by Washington’s writing.

Roosevelt and Washington: Self-Made Men “After Teddy Roosevelt did what I did (that’s my only comparison with Teddy Roosevelt, I promise) and read ‘Up from Slavery,’ [he] gave it to his wife, who couldn’t put it down. And she said, ‘We have to meet this guy,’” Mr. Kilmeade said. “The first time they met was April 1, 1901. They immediately knew they could help each other.”

Roosevelt and Washington, despite growing up in vastly different environments, had something important in common, Mr. Kilmeade explained. They were both self-made men.

Washington, as his autobiography suggests, was born a slave nine years before the end of the Civil War. After emancipation, his family moved to West Virginia, where he worked in a salt furnace and a coal mine. Desiring an education, he traveled, mainly on foot, to Hampton

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A portrait of Booker T. Washington photographed by Christopher Ethelbert Cheyne in 1903.

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Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) in 1872.

He was provided a job as a janitor to pay his room and board, and a benefactor paid for his education. After graduating in 1875, he went back to West Virginia to teach for two years. He returned to university for eight months at Wayland Seminary in the nation’s capital. He joined the staff at Hampton, but he was soon selected to lead a new school in Alabama: the Tuskegee Normal School (now Tuskegee University), an institution to train African American teachers. Under his guidance, the school grew exponentially. Washington went on to write 40 books, became a prolific speaker, and rubbed shoulders with some of the nation’s most powerful people, including Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Teddy Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was born to an uncertain fate. Plagued by illness, including asthma, the future president was not expected to live very long. His father advised him, “You have the mind but you have not the body. You must make your body.” Roosevelt began a lifelong undertaking of sporting challenges, including hunting, hiking, boxing, and exploration. Roosevelt, along with his speeches, wrote 45 books, and he became one of the most influential politicians in American history.

Keeping the Path Seven months after their first meeting, Washington was invited to dine with Roosevelt and his family at the White House. It was the first time a black person had ever dined at the White House, and the only time for a long period afterward due to political and social backlash. This backlash came primarily from the Southern press and politicians.

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Booker T. Washington, the principal of Tuskegee Institute, poses outside what is presumably the university with other teachers and staff.

“I just want to remind people of great Americans who came from meager means who cared more about the country than themselves.”

Brain Kilmeade, author & Fox News host

“In their case, they changed their strategy, but they didn’t change their relationship,” Mr. Kilmeade said. “Roosevelt was totally shocked by it. But they kept their path together. They would have done more if they thought America was ready for it.”

Mr. Kilmeade explained that both Roosevelt and Washington continued to help each other’s causes. Whether it was Roosevelt assisting Washington’s pursuit for educational progress within the black community, or Washington assisting Roosevelt in obtaining the black vote for reelection, the two forged a bond that, as Mr. Kilmeade’s book suggests, cleared a path for racial equality.

The topic of Mr. Kilmeade’s two latest books is the idea of racial equality.

He believes the topic is timely for a moment where “we seem to be more obsessed with race in this country, now more than ever.”

A Proper Perspective “I wanted to show that you can be pro-America and still admit that Jim Crow existed. People were lynched, interracial marriage could get you

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My Family Roots

Stoking the Fire His engineer mom broke barriers and instilled in him, and future generations, a lifelong love of learning

By Bob Kirchman

om didn’t drive when I was very young, but Mom was mobile.

We often boarded the streetcar for errands as she ventured into Baltimore for everything from groceries to visits to the pediatrician. This was during the 1950s, when you could live in the leafy suburbs of a large American city and still get around by streetcar. Streetcars were amazing! In my youth, they were a magic carpet to adventure— and with Mom there, to learning, too.

One Sunday morning, Mom took me somewhere deep downtown. Perhaps we were visiting the old cathedral. I don’t really remember the destination. But I will never forget the lesson in the journey. We made our way past the great steel plant, and I must have wondered at the great smokestacks belching smoke. A few years before I was born, these plants had been a vital part of steel production during World War II. Here they were, smoking away.

“Do you know why the smokestacks and the blast furnaces are always burning, even on a day when nobody is making steel?” she asked.

It was a great question, but perhaps more than a child’s mind could wrap itself easily around. So Mom, always a great teacher, pro-

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ceeded to explain in some detail how steel was made. “Those blast furnaces are very hot!” she continued. “The firemen who stoke them can never let them grow cold. Should they ever go out, it would take weeks to get the extreme temperature back again.”

Weeks! Mom went on to describe how a blast furnace was created. A brick furnace was constructed with a colossal smokestack. Then, carpenters would build a cribbing of timber inside. A fire would be built inside the cribbing that would eventually cause the entire cribbing to burn. The fire would grow in temperature, eventually consuming the cribbing.

That is why it had to be continually fed. Even on a Sunday, even on Christmas Day, even on nights when no one else was there, a rotating group of firemen stoked the great furnaces, now with coal, to keep them hot. That is why the first shift workers could go right to work producing steel.

Mom was an amazing teacher. In fact, straight out of Westhampton College (now part of the University of Richmond), she taught school in an area she often sarcastically referred to as the “Third Battle of Manassas.” She lived in a boarding house where one of the residents

was a good hunter. It was the height of the Depression, and Mom was glad to see meat on the table, even as she and everyone else often had to pick shot (metal pellets from the shotgun shells) out of their fresh game dinner.

In an era when few rural women completed college, Mom went to graduate school for a degree in physics. She left teaching and went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She rode the streetcar to school. Then there came the World War. The Glenn L. Martin Company was designing and building seaplanes for the Pacific Theater. Mom got a job in their engineering department. If you’ve seen the movie “Hidden Figures,” you know exactly what she did.

Engineering departments hired women who were proficient in mathematics to work alongside the (then) predominantly male designers.

Their work was essential to the rapid development of new airframes. Mom was proficient with the slide rule. There were no sophisticated computers—only some big clunky adding machines. “Computers” in those days were people.

It was the quintessential American story. My father was an engineer designing aircraft. He married his number cruncher. Mom never lost her passion for teaching. She was always one to pique her children’s observations. How cool it is to have a mother who points out beautiful airplanes! She had grown up on a farm, so she was equally excited to point out the wonders of the natural world.

I remember one sunny day when I was very young, and we sat outside at the picnic table.

Mom brought out construction paper, scissors, and glue. We built little model houses and set them in the garden. Somehow, I found that afternoon very satisfying, remembering it even to this day.

Not many people homeschooled in those

days, so my idyllic early education gave way to what was for me a rather frustrating experience in mass-produced education. I struggled in school, but Mom and Dad were patient tutors.

They got me through. Many years later, Mom confided that she wished she’d homeschooled us. I think she thought it would have simply been more efficient.

She instilled in us a love of learning (and sharing knowledge). But I think her greatest lesson for me was a metaphorical one. She taught me something of the creative process.

Even when we were on vacation, Mom was the one who often pointed out something freshly observed. She taught me how to see the world.

The most important lesson, however, was extrapolated from the blast furnaces. There is something in the creative spirit that must never be allowed to grow cold. One must always feed it. For this I say, “Thank you, Mom! It’s alive and well in your great-granddaughters!”

My children, and their children, want to know, and how they love to explain! When they’re studying ancient Greek civilization, they want to know what ancient Greeks ate back then—and then they make the food! The baton is passed; but a day with the granddaughters is often one in which that creative energy is passed right back.

We’ve built a scale model of a French castle, sailed Leonardo da Vinci’s parachute off of the porch roof, and even assembled his unique bridge design—the one that fits together without fasteners and is meant to be carried by soldiers who each carry one part. I leave an afternoon with them tired, but inspired.

The fire is in all of us. We nurture it with our summer projects together, in our conversations, and sometimes in quiet play. We toss it back and forth. Wonder is its constant fuel. I think Mom would be pleased!

Is there a family member who has positively impacted your life? American Essence invites you to share about your family roots and the lessons passed down from generation to generation. We welcome you to send your submission to: Editor@AmericanEssenceMag.com

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Whistler’s Endearing Portrait After James McNeill Whistler’s original muse fell ill, he decided to paint a portrait of his mother that garnered the artist worldwide recognition and success

By Lorraine Ferrier

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ost of us will recognize the portrait of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s mother, Anna, that he painted. It’s one of the most celebrated American paintings, and it’s the first work by an American artist that the French government bought. Yet it’s a portrait that nearly never came to be.

Whistler (1834–1903) had been painting “The Girl in Blue on the Seashore” (now known as “Annabel Lee”) when his model, Maggie, became ill and failed to show up for a sitting.

“Disappointments are often the Lord’s means of blessing,” wrote Whistler’s mother in a letter to her sister on November 3, 1871. She recounted how the incident led Whistler to paint her portrait instead, something that he’d long intended to do.

Sixty-seven-year-old Anna felt unwell, too, when she posed for her portrait in her son’s studio.

For two to three days she “stood as a statue,” hiding her sickness from her son, so as not to cause him any distress. When she could stand no more, he changed the composition and painted her seated.

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“Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1” by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871. Oil on canvas. Orsay Museum, Paris.

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Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn has loved roses since she first saw them in her grandmother’s garden at age 6.

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Dreaming in Roses How Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn, fueled by her love of roses, went from untrained gardener to world-class rosarian

By Eric Lucas

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ome might say she got carried away.

Danielle Dall’Armi Hahn just wanted to beautify her family’s new home, in the California coastal foothills near Santa Barbara. Nearly three and a half decades later, there are 40,000 rose bushes at Rose Story Farm— and counting.

“Is it time to stop? No, never. If I had more land, I’d plant more,” Ms. Hahn declared, expressing mock indignation at the idea that one could ever have too many roses. “In fact, right now I’m trying to figure out a spot I can add a couple hundred tree roses and create a rose maze.”

Most people would stop far short of 40,000 plants, but in every other respect, Ms. Hahn’s affection is about as universal as it gets in the world of horticulture. Roses are the most beloved garden plant on the planet.

Rose Story Farm is now a thriving, family-run business, one of the leading cut-rose purveyors in the United States, selling hundreds of thousands of stems of its field-grown blooms a year. Not that Ms. Hahn and her husband, Bill, ever meant to achieve that, exactly. All they wanted was a place in the country.

Scent Memories Perched on the lower flanks of the 4,000-foot

Santa Ynez Mountains, overlooking the vast azure Pacific southward, with California’s glorious oakclad foothills behind, Rose Story Farm seems a bucolically ideal setting for an empire of roses.

And Ms. Hahn is herself as elegant as the plants she grows.

Her tall, erect bearing reflects the Italian stonemason bloodlines of her father, Lorenzo Dall’Armi, whose family came from the Dolomite foothills near Venice to the Santa Barbara area in 1931 to escape the impending ravages of Mussolini’s fascism. Though he had been born in California in 1922, the family returned to Italy a few years later, only to be forced to come back to the United States just a few years after that. And it was at her grandparents’ home long ago that a very young Ms. Hahn had a life-changing experience.

Scent is considered by physiologists the most evocative of all senses: Catch a hint of the perfume a long-ago love used to wear, and you are instantly drawn back years in recollection. And who among human adults does not hold fast to the memory of a distinct childhood event that catalyzed something much later in life?

So it was for Ms. Hahn, who recalls vividly the day in her grandmother’s garden when she was 6 years old and first encountered a sensational, treasured California rose—Sutter’s Gold.

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“It has such a delightful fragrance, such a rich 10-bedroom 1880s main house. They boosted color, and every bloom is different,” Ms. Hahn their income by renting out the cottages, includrhapsodized, decades later. A family photo ing one to a friend who was a floral designer. That vividly documents that childhood discovery— friend was enchanted with Ms. Hahn’s roses and her as a young girl, flaxen hair in braids, shining began using them himself. in the sun, leaning over to catch the scent of her “I thought to myself, ‘If he likes them so much, grandmother’s rose. The photo is also an exqui- why wouldn’t lots of other people?’” she recalled. site depiction of the transcendent appeal of roses Hundreds of roses turned into thousands, in human life. then tens of thousands. One early adventure Ms. Hahn has a few Sutter’s Gold bushes now, came when they ordered 10,000 roses at once. but the flowers do not sell well for bouquets: The plants arrived almost two months earlier “Yellow isn’t a very popular color in the retail than the Hahns expected—“Lady, we ship the market, and customers don’t like the fact the roses when they are ready, not when you’re flowers aren’t all uniform,” she explained. ready,” the growers told Ms. Hahn—and they Her grandmother’s garden epiphany meant had to scramble to get them in the ground, that roses are what came enlisting 40 friends, one first to mind when she and shovel apiece, to dig holes Bill bought their 15-acre and place the plants. “It Today, they grow farm in January 1990. Bill’s was like a Laurel and Hardy family background also 160 varieties, including movie,” Ms. Hahn said. includes a rosarian grandAs with any nascent busiold-fashioned European ness, mistakes turned into mother and gardens and farms, most notably a hayand pre-1950 American learning experiences. Of and-cattle operation near the initial five varieties they ones, embracing every Ellensburg, Washington. decided to grow commerThe idea of relocating to a color in the rose pantheon. cially, one failed entirely in more rural setting from the their climate, and one only monied coastal enclave of Montecito drew them bloomed once a year. “Hard to keep cash flow up to their current property when their two boys if you only have flowers for a month,” Ms. Hahn were young. said, laughing.

“We wanted to raise our kids in a rural enviToday, they grow 160 varieties, including ronment, not in a place where their schoolmates old-fashioned European and pre-1950 American wondered why they weren’t going to Courchevel ones, embracing every color in the rose panfor spring break,” Ms. Hahn said. Their two boys theon. They sell about 90 of those varieties as cut spent their youth roaming the foothills, riding flowers. Ms. Hahn has also written a lusciously horses, doing farm chores, and learning how to illustrated book about her passion, “The Color of make their way in the world. Now, one son is an Roses: A Curated Spectrum of 300 Blooms” (2023). oncologist, and the other is an opera singer who The farm is not open to the public for walk-in splits his time between Europe and America. visits, but the Hahns recently hosted a philanthropic event in which their historic, 10-bedroom A Business Blooms house was comprehensively and gloriously decAt first, the Hahns had no intention of turning orated with roses by different designers—roses their new home’s rose garden, however lavish, everywhere, literally. “There were even roses into a business. Both had well-paying careers— spilling out of the dishwasher in the kitchen,” he is a gastroenterologist, and she had been an Ms. Hahn said. “Sounds wacky, but it was gorevent designer in the film industry after running geous. And this is what I had dreamed of all those a small chain of retail boutiques. But their new years ago: a house filled with roses from our own property brought daunting cash flow require- garden, floor-to-ceiling in every room.” ments, including four cottages along with the And what is the meaning of all this beauty and growth?

“Simple,” she said. “If you really want to, you LEFT can make a dream come true.”

Ms. Hahn grows over 160 varieties on her farm.

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“If you are surrounded by loving, caring parents and grandparents ... and a community that you can feel has your best interest at heart, that is the soil from which inner wisdom is born.”

John Delony, mental health expert

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John Delony Makes the Case for Choosing Reality The show host and bestselling author charts a road map to a peaceful life

By Channaly Philipp

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ver the years, John Delony has found his calling in “sitting with people,” whether that’s counseling distraught students, comforting grieving parents, or advising brokenhearted husbands or wives.

“I want people’s days to be a little more peaceful after they’ve interacted with me than before,” he said.

On “The Dr. John Delony Show,” which reaches 200,000 weekly listeners, he offers advice to callers in difficult situations: the man who has secretly cheated on his wife for years; the middle-aged woman who’s never had a real friend.

Mr. Delony listens deeply. But he also interrupts people and dishes out, as needed, tough love or encouragement. The advice is usually simple.

Putting it into action is usually hard—but then again, so is taking no action at all.

“I’m probably the most hopeful person you’re going to find,” Mr. Delony said. He has counseled parents who have lost their children in tragic circumstances—and witnessed their resilience and

growth as they later helped bereaved parents in similar situations.

“We spent so many years talking about post-traumatic stress that we have completely not talked about the other side of that teeter-totter, which is post-traumatic growth—the extraordinary things people do on the back end of tragic moments and seasons. And so I believe in our collective ability to do really hard things.”

Anxiety Is a Smoke Alarm In his new book, “Building a Non-Anxious Life,” Mr. Delony tackles the subject of anxiety and outlines its main triggers: loneliness and disconnection from family, friends, or community; sensing you’re unsafe; an unhealthy, sleep-deprived, or overstimulated body; dealing with trauma or other concerns; and a lack of autonomy or freedom in your life.

Polls and studies indicate increasing levels of anxiety. An annual poll conducted by the American Psychiatric Association from May 2023 assessing people’s feelings about current events

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found that 70 percent of adult respondents said they felt anxious or extremely anxious about keeping themselves or their families safe—an increase of 6 percent over 2020. That same month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory calling “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation … an underappreciated public health crisis.”

Parting ways with the more conventional viewpoint that “everybody’s increasingly more and more broken,” Mr. Delony redefines anxiety as a normal function that alerts us to something gone wrong.

“We have innate safety mechanisms,” he explained. “Our bodies know when we’re not safe. Our bodies know when we’re lonely.”

When your marriage, relationship with your kids, or financial life is on the rocks, your body knows it.

He compares anxiety to a smoke alarm that alerts you when a fire’s burning.

And the first step to putting it out is to acknowledge the fire.

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John Delony believes that anxiety is a normal reaction to something that has gone wrong.

The key is knowing how to tackle it in a positive way.

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An Old Roadmap When you picture anxiety, you might think of someone drowning his or her sorrows in a few pints of beer at the bar. But people can resort to coping through different unhealthy mechanisms: the unrelenting pursuit of status and money (which can look like success on the surface); out-of-control shopping sprees; getting into fights; doomscrolling on social media; and endless worrying, among many other behaviors.

But there are positive ways to go from a reality check to a peaceful life. Those entail cultivating a life filled with connection with others, autonomy (including being debt-free), mindfulness, good health, and a belief in something higher than ourselves. It seems like common sense, but as Mr. Delony points out, in an age of self-actualization where “people chase the best feeling possible,” these principles are not always popular.

Mr. Delony’s book is partly dedicated to his grandparents, David and Addell Delony, who were

On his show, Mr. Delony takes calls from listeners and gives them the advice they need.

married for 73 years and raised four children in their 900-square-foot house. During their long marriage, they were firmly anchored in a faith community. Their home was peaceful and devoid of anxiety—though they certainly faced difficulties, such as living through the Great Depression.

“They had a tiny house and they didn’t have new clothes. But when he died, it turned out he had a whole bunch of money he left my grandmother so that she could get the care that she needed in her final days,” Mr. Delony said.

“It wasn’t about getting a bunch of money, the newest technology, or flashy things. It was about getting up and doing the same thing over and over every day, and loving those closest to you and being a member of a community and neighborhood,” Mr. Delony said. “And it’s a pretty remarkable road map.”

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His Own Journey Mr. Delony is no stranger to anxiety, and he has been transparent about his own struggles and how he’s worked to heal himself. He grew up poor and, for many years, earned many academic degrees— markers of status and security—and accumulated massive debt. In certain seasons of his life, work came first, while he fell into old patterns of neglecting his family, friends, and his own health.

For example, there was a time when his young daughter refused to hug him. At first, the way she ducked away was cute, but her persistent behavior became cause for concern. He didn’t yell at home, and he wasn’t threatening, so he was puzzled. But he came to realize, thanks to his wife’s gentle counsel, that the “nuclear reactor in his chest” was affecting his daughter. Kids can, in effect, absorb our feelings—hidden though they may be.

Mr. Delony often talks about the importance of parents and mentors as models, and he knew that he had to do the inner work and get some counseling. “​​If you are surrounded by loving, caring parents and grandparents, extended family, and a community that you can feel has your best interest at

heart, that is the soil from which inner wisdom is born,” he said.

Mr. Delony and his daughter now enjoy a close relationship, but he has become more conscious about his priorities and what he needs to do to recharge, including spending time with family, getting outdoors with guy friends, and going to a spiritual counselor.

We live in a time and age where there is no shortage of anxiety, or “smoke alarms” going off, whether in real life or online. Contemplating the state of our world through our screens can be especially paralyzing. When Mr. Delony looks at the divisive barbs that fly on social media, he said, “I don’t see a path forward for us unless we can re-engage the ability to sit down with people and laugh and carry on and have very different beliefs about certain things.”

But when it comes to our influence over our relationships and our community, the old road map his grandparents passed down held true then and holds true now. It provides a time-tested path “to make our neighborhoods better, to make our families better,” Mr. Delony said. “We’re gonna start there.” On the road of life, what better place to start, indeed?

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The Wonders of Juneau

Juneau is a unique city in Alaska that has rich history, beautiful indigenous art, and proximity to wilderness

By Eric Lucas

A whale breaches the water in Glacier Bay near Juneau, Alaska.

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An aging boat appears in Auke Bay.

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’m in one of America’s best-known state capitals, watching a black bear hoist a fat salmon from a suburban creek. Dinner!

Not a sight you’d see in most cities.

But Juneau is exceptional, as is the state in which it’s the capital, Alaska. The latter perennially shows up in the top five most popular cruise destinations on Earth. And at 32,000 residents, the city and borough of Juneau is the third most populous in The Great Land. Its sheer size—2,704 square miles—makes it not only Alaska’s third largest, but it’s also bigger than most counties in the Lower 48.

There’s a catch, yes: As a place whose immense landscape remains largely undeveloped, Alaska is not partitioned into counties. Instead, the “boroughs” enfolding its cities serve a similar function, encompassing vast swaths of land that stretch from shopping-center lowlands to austere, windswept peaks or trackless boreal forests, which are technically “urban” but are actually part of the wilderness. Outside the boroughs, Alaska is utterly “non-urban,” and if you were dropped blindfolded into raw wilderness or borough boundary, you couldn’t tell the difference.

Inside Juneau, however, you can easily detect the difference from other urban areas: This is a place where history, historicity, nature, scenery, and human culture collide. In short, Juneau is one of the most interesting cities anywhere.

Clasped between the 3,500-foot peaks lining the narrow Gastineau Channel, Juneau’s compact city center can become as densely populated on high-season days as any Lower 48 metropolitan area. With up to five massive ships in port, that’s about 10,000 visitors. More than 1.2 million travelers arrive here from late April to early October— most via boat—and when a conclave of big ships is in town, it feels like visitors outnumber residents. In some places, it can literally be difficult

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to get around, and the fact that most port calls are just one day heightens the challenge.

You can’t see it all. But a little discretion and careful planning help focus the experience considerably. Get up early, put on your walking shoes, and head down the gangplank. Luckily, most of the cruise season features the extended daylight of northern latitudes.

Grizzly bears rest by the riverbank on Chichagof Island, a boat or seaplane ride away from Juneau.

Rich in Nature Alaska gold rush history began not in the Klondike in 1896 but in Juneau in 1880, when a Tlingit chief showed a couple prospectors where to find the shiny metal in a local creek. That’s not just dead history: A massive present-day mine, the Kensington, has 28 miles of tunnels in the nearby mountains.

You can see how things were done at the dawn of Alaska’s legendary gold industry with tours to the now-abandoned AJ mine, or a guided visit to “Last Chance Basin” on Gold Creek above the city, where you’ll scrape your own “paydirt” from the frigid creek, learn the difficult art of gold panning, and be guaranteed to go home with a few flakes of humanity’s most fabled treasure.

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