Starting in vaudeville, she became one of the most lauded singers in opera history
Houseplants changed Hilton Carter’s life; now, he’s their loudest spokesperson
With hundreds of gigs on his resume, Mike Rowe has charted a path to passion, pride, and prosperity—through the skilled trades
Is this a time to be cloudy and sad,
When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad,
And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?
There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky; The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den,
And the wilding bee hums merrily by.
The clouds are at play in the azure space,
And their shadows at play on the bright green vale, And here they stretch to the frolic chase,
And there they roll on the easy gale.
There’s a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,
There’s a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There’s a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.
And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray, On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he’ll smile thy gloom away.
A waterfall flows through Umnak, one of the islands in the Aleutian archipelago of Alaska.
Features
8 | Into the Wild Can exploring the wilderness be a life-changing experience? Mule packer Chris Eyer gives a resounding yes.
12 | Pillars of Resilience
Marine veteran Chad Robichaux forges an approach to support veterans’ recovery from trauma.
20 | The Charming Pat Boone He captured the hearts of many during the 1950s with his sweet voice and family values. Now 88, he still fiercely believes in the power of doing good.
24 | Front-Rowe Seat
Viewers labor vicariously in “dirty jobs” through America’s favorite apprentice, Mike Rowe.
32 | Why I Love America
A man raised on baseball and patriotism creates nine truisms based on the intrinsic values of America’s pastime.
34 | Family Roots
A family legend recalls how cousin Chuck caught America’s most wanted and protected the vulnerable.
36 | Aging With Wisdom
Actress Suzanne Somers on embracing the future with gratitude and grace.
38 | Wars and Westerns
Actor John Wayne became the face of America by starring in films that promoted the nation’s greatness.
44 | Creating Charlie Brown
Charles Schulz’s beloved “Peanuts” comic strip was the result of decades of dreams and perseverance.
48 | The Patriots of April
The first shot fired at Lexington Green signaled the birth of America’s revolution.
52 | ‘Our American Rose’
Singing to pay off her parents’ debt, Rosa Ponselle was an untrained vocalist who became the nation’s best-loved prima donna.
56 | Quick-Witted Quips
Some of our nation’s leaders were quick on the draw with their sharp wits.
58 | Golden Age of Musicals
Blending poetic lyrics with a sophisticated plot, Rodgers and Hammerstein redefined the era of American musicals.
62 | Book Recommender
Meticulously researched, “Union General” is the first biography of the nearly forgotten Civil War general who never lost a battle.
64 | Mary Had a Small Business Empire Five Marys Farms, an 1,800-acre family ranch in Northern California, is powered by entrepreneurial spirit.
74 | The Life-Changing Power of Houseplants
Interior stylist Hilton Carter on making space in our homes and hearts for houseplants.
82 | America in Bloom
Where and when to see the country’s most spectacular wildflowers.
84 | California Cruisin’
For 20 years, Mike Rowe has been shining the spotlight on the skilled trades and the hardworking people who keep American homes and businesses in fine working order (page 24). As we currently face a serious labor shortage for millions of available jobs, Rowe’s storytelling and his foundation’s work ethic scholarships are powerful vehicles for changing the stigmas that sometimes accompany these essential jobs.
In our history section, we get acquainted with the patriotic side of John Wayne (page 38), an actor whose convictions led him to choose films that promoted America’s greatness—primarily Westerns and war movies. During World War II, he felt he would do more good by working in Hollywood than on the frontlines of battle. Till the end, he would remain America’s cowboy.
We also explore the musical universe of Rodgers and Hammerstein (page 58) and enjoy some presidential wit and humor from our nation’s leaders (page 56)
PUBLISHER
Dana Cheng
EDITORIAL
Editor-In-Chief
Managing Editor
History & Literature Editor
Lifestyle & Food Editor
Arts Editor
Editor-At-Large
Production Manager
Production Assistant
Channaly Philipp
Annie Wu
Sharon Kilarski
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CREATIVE
Lead Designer Designers
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CONTRIBUTORS
Dustin Bass, Kenneth LaFave, John J Monteleone, Paul Prezzia, Brett Chudá, Rachel Pfeiffer, Jeff Minick, Stephen Oles, Andrew Benson Brown, Mark Lardas, Hazel Atkins, Pamela Beiler, David Coulson
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The wonders and challenges of a little-known occupation in the wilderness
WRITTEN BY Annie Wu Chris Eyer and his pack of mules travel through the Danaher Meadows in the Bob Marshall Wilderness region.Out in the roughly 112 million acres of land that are designated as “wilderness areas” by the federal Wilderness Act of 1964, no motorized vehicles or “mechanical transport” are allowed to operate—not even a wheelbarrow. That’s where mule packer
Chris Eyer comes in. Together with his pack of 10 to 15 hardworking animals, he helps to transport supplies for the U.S. Forest Service and outdoor guides who bring people out on wilderness trips. It was a lifelong dream: When he was about 14, he went on a mountaineering school trip to the Sierras in California, and he spotted a man with a pack of mules. That moment was seared into his mind and sparked a desire to one day embrace the Wild West archetype.
Along the way, Eyer served in the Marine Corps during the first Gulf War (“I had a strong sense of garden variety patriotism and a real love for freedom”), went to university, started an electrical contracting company, and began crafting saddles. The mule packing is mostly a volunteering endeavor born out of the love for the outdoors. He lives in a pocket of wilderness in Ovando, Montana, nestled in the northern Rocky Mountains, known as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex (“I live in a spot where I can ride out my front door and go all the way to Canada”). Today, he sits on the board of directors for a foundation that maintains the wilderness complex and runs programs that bring people to explore the area.
Eyer spoke to American Essence about what mule packing entails and the deeper meaning behind connecting with nature.
American Essence: What is a typical day like for you?
Chris Eyer: I would wake up at 5 a.m. I would have all of my loads already made. So everything would be all put together and wrapped up in what we call manties [tarps]. I make coffee and start to wrangle all my stocks, get them loaded up into the trailer, and I’d head to the trailhead. I drive up there, unload, and then I go through a process of brushing everyone, making sure everyone is sound and looking good, put pads on them, saddle them all, get them all ready to go. I take these heavy loads, which are usually about 75 to 90 pounds per side, so anywhere from 150 to 180 pounds per animal, which for them is really not heavy. We always keep it to less than 20 percent of their body weight. If everything goes really smoothly,
I’ll be on the trail by 9 a.m. A typical day for me would be riding anywhere from 18 to 25 miles, at which point I would stop and drop all the loads. And then I would take all the saddles off. Then I would start the process of turning my stock loose for the night, so that they can graze and water all night unimpeded.
I’m normally in bed asleep by 8:15. And then I wake up in the morning and do it all again, whether I come out empty or move heavy things to the next destination.
AE: Why do you do what you do?
Mr. Eyer: For most people who take part in this wilderness area, they’re highly transformative [experiences]. Facilitating that is something I’m really interested in. Being back in a place where you are no longer on the top of the food chain, you’re traveling through areas full of grizzly bears and wolves and all sorts of different hazards—that’s actually an experience that’s more accurate to who we are as humans. Staying warm, staying hydrated, being fed, doing some work—that’s actually a very root experience for humanity. And I think it’s something that in this world we currently live in, where we’re just absolutely laden with technology, and we have all this information at our fingertips—to be able to come off the top of the food chain, to be able to go into
‘‘We all have certain kinds of fears and anxieties … But when you get down to the root of that emotion— which is easier to do when you are in the wilderness—you realize that all these different fears that you experience on a day-to-day basis are actually masks.’’
—CHRIS EYER, MULE PACKER
our public lands, that’s just a really important salve for the postmodern mind. It’s allowing yourself to take part in the moment-to-moment change that’s happening around you, and not in a way that’s resisting it.
AE: What are the dramatic transformations you’ve seen in people?
Mr. Eyer: When you can watch people, especially people who are newer to the wilderness, develop a new relationship with themselves, and in particular, develop a new relationship with what it means to be afraid. We all have certain kinds of fears and anxieties: It might be about your job. It might be about your chil-
dren, your future, your past, whatever it may be. But when you get down to the root of that emotion—which is easier to do when you are in the wilderness—you realize that all these different fears that you experience on a dayto-day basis are actually masks.
When you really are able to let go, you see yourself nested in a system, an ecosystem of relationships of which you are a part. In other words, you’re not back there dominating, or taking control of the wilderness, you’re actually taking part in the wilderness. You’ll begin to see that if it’s true that you are nested in a web of relationships, that to act any other way but compassionately towards all of the life that we’re surrounded by—would just be to act self-destructively.
Many people return [home] and talk about how they engage with work differently, they engage with their family differently, they see things for what’s really important: sustenance, but also community, connection, and being able to rely on individuals in the communities we’re involved in, wherever that might be.
AE: What’s the most hairy situation you’ve been in while mule packing?
LEFT PAGE Mules are intuitive animals that can communicate with their human companions through nonverbal cues, Eyer said.
ABOVE Eyer’s great-grandfather had a homestead in the same area of Montana wilderness that he now explores.
Mr. Eyer: I can remember a pack trip I went on where I was leaving camp, it was in October, and there was a light snow. And earlier that morning, we’d seen one of the largest grizzly bears I’ve ever seen, he skirted the boundaries of our camp. And then a couple hours later, when we were leaving, he popped out of these willow bushes and spooked the whole pack string, and the whole pack string took off at a full gallop. I ended up holding my horse, but off of him, about 10 to 15 feet away from this giant grizzly bear, face to face. Thankfully, he wandered into camp, and was interested in exploring whether or not we’ve left any food behind and was not interested in attacking me. There’s just countless stories like that. •
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chad Robichaux went into a deep, dark place after coming home from serving in the Marine Corps. But a faith-driven healing journey gave him the strength and wisdom to help others like him
WRITTEN BY Dustin Bass
On August 21, 2010, Chad Robichaux stood in the middle of the Toyota Center before thousands of cheering fans. He had just finished a fight for Strikeforce, the second-largest mixed martial arts (MMA) organization at the time. The three judges submitted their scorecards. It was a split decision. After the third scorecard was read, he was still undefeated at 13–0.
From the outside looking in, Chad Robichaux seemed to have the world on a string. This moment in the octagon seemed the emblematic story of his life: enduring a hardscrabble childhood, joining the Marines and quickly rising to its special unit Force Recon, starting his own highly successful MMA gym, and now marching through his competitors one-by-one. But that was on the outside. That was the man on paper. It was not, however, the man himself.
Since World War II, the Robichaux family has given 84 years of service to the American military. His family has bled patriotism since before he was born, but the family has bled in other ways too.
“When my father came home from Vietnam, he was a train wreck and was until the day he died,” Robichaux said. “He was a very angry guy. A very violent guy. But the one thing that made him light up and made him proud was the fact that he was a United States Marine.”
Robichaux and his brother, who are a year apart, decided as teenagers to become Marines. They devoured books about 3rd and 4th Recon Companies and Special Forces in Vietnam. Robichaux said the very idea of becoming Marines helped them escape the dysfunction of their childhood.
But just one year into their decision, his brother was killed after an argument with
their stepbrother. Though it was never discovered if the killing was accidental or intentional, it was ultimately the tragic product of a dysfunctional family. The tragedy drove his mother to pursue psychiatric help, though she would never recover. His father left to work overseas. At 15, Robichaux moved in with his older sister.
The death of his brother hardened his resolve to become a Marine. As a high school athlete, he did his best to maintain his strength and conditioning, not for sports, but for his future in the military. He worked long hours while attending school. Pragmatically, though, he knew he was never going to graduate. At 17, he pleaded with his Marine recruiter to let him join the Marines earlier than usual. The recruiter eventually complied and helped Robichaux write a letter to the U.S. Marine Corps explaining his circumstances, with Robichaux pledging his loyalty to service, and also to get a GED, which he did. He would later attain a master’s degree in business. “I’m very fortunate looking back that I had that
opportunity, took advantage of it, and made the best of my situation,” he said.
That situation took a turn on September 11, 2001. He had already been in the Marines for eight years and was a sergeant in the 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company. He was also married with children. “When I saw those planes fly into those buildings I knew my life was about to be different,” he recalled. “I wanted to go and serve. I wanted to go and make that wrong right for our country and for our national security.”
Over the course of four years, he would be deployed eight times to Afghanistan as part of the elite Joint Special Operations Command. Robichaux would find himself constantly in the heart of combat. He would witness not just the death of comrades and enemy soldiers, but the evil and cruelty of his enemies who relentlessly tortured and killed innocent civilians. He and his fellow soldiers would be tried by fire in the heat of battle and emerge closer and stronger together. The vulnerability of friendship in battle, however, would lead to emotional devastation, as he buried 15 friends, including his best friend of 10 years. “It’s hard for that not to shape you,” he said. “Either you grow from it or it crushes you. I think ultimately I grew from it. But in the interim, it crushed me.”
The crushing began with feelings of anger and frustration, but those emotional issues went unaddressed and soon developed into physiological symptoms of anxiety and stress. One of the physical symptoms Robichaux experienced was numbness. His arms would go numb. His face would go numb. He would experience severe panic attacks where he would feel like he was on the verge of asphyxiation.
He remained silent about his symptoms. He feared his peers would consider him weak and that if he admitted himself into the military’s mental health resources, it would compromise his security clearance and ultimately remove him from special forces. While he struggled with the ever-worsening symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), tragedy struck when one of his teams was captured by the Taliban and killed. His shelter in Afghanistan was later blown up by a vehicle-borne IED (improvised explosive device) by the same Taliban members. “I kept trying to operate in that environment, but ultimately I had to speak up,” he said. “I was brought home, just as I feared, diagnosed with PTSD and removed from my job.”
He was given medicine to treat his symptoms, but he said the medicine turned him into a “zombie.” He added that he also felt immensely embarrassed and ashamed to have been removed from his duties.
His wife Kathy and his counselor advised him to get into Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He began competing in the martial art and turned professional. He rose through the MMA ranks and won a world title, ultimately ranking 19th in the world for flyweight and 11th for bantamweight. His success and popularity led him to open a Brazilian jiu-jitsu academy that quickly blossomed to 1,000 students.
“When I got on those mats, it took my mind off of Afghanistan and those bad memories,” he said. “I took something that could be good for me and I dove into it. I was successful at it, but in that success, I never got well.”
Robichaux said he still suffered from severe panic attacks and continued to struggle with the medicine prescribed by the Veterans Affairs system. His marriage quickly fell apart after an affair. “I was a completely toxic human being to my wife and kids,” he said.
He and Kathy sold their house, and he moved into an apartment. While he turned to partying and competing in martial arts as means to cope with his PTSD, Kathy began attending a local church. “She began praying, ‘God, let me see Chad the way You see Chad. Let me love Chad the way You love Chad. Let me forgive Chad the way You forgave Chad,” he said. “She was fighting for me spiritually.”
It was during this time that Robichaux won the Strikeforce fight at Toyota Center. When he returned home that night, he lay in bed contemplating his life. While the world viewed him as an unquestionable success, he knew the world was wrong. “This thought came over me that of all the people I had blamed for everything, I was the problem. I was the common denominator,” he remembered. “My family was so devastated and I thought that if I wasn’t in their lives, it would
He gave his life to spirituality and began healing the wounds he had suffered and those he had inflicted.
be better for them. Maybe they would be sad without me, but they would be better off.”
For several weeks, Robichaux began contemplating suicide, at times sitting in his closet holding a Glock in one hand and a family photo in the other. In one of those darkest moments, Kathy knocked on his door.
“I remember I was so mad that she had interrupted me killing myself—which sounds twisted—that I started yelling at her,” he said. “She’s not a very calm arguer, but in this moment she was, and she asked me a question that became this axis point in my life. She asked me ‘How can you do all of this—recon, MMA schools, training for fights, deployments—and when it comes to your family, you’ll quit.’ And she was right.”
Her words cut and echoed in Robichaux’s mind. To be called a quitter and to know it was true was enough to create a mind-shift, and he decided in that moment to work toward putting his life back together. He began formulating a plan. He had been living a life without accountability. The people who had been in his corner had only been telling him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear.
He asked Kathy if she knew anyone whom he might talk to about his plan and whom he could be accountable to. She mentioned a man from her church by the name of Steve Toth. He wasn’t a veteran or into MMA. But he was outside of Robichaux’s circle, and he was a brutally up-front person. When Robichaux slid a piece of paper over to him that outlined his plan to change his life, Toth didn’t even look at it. He simply slid it back over to him and told him he would fail if God was not in the plan. God was not. “There is probably nothing more powerful that I could have heard in that moment because I knew deep down inside I had tried everything,” he said.
Robichaux said that for the next year, Toth discipled him, which is a Christian method of mentoring through accountability, biblical study, and prayer. He gave his life to spirituality and began healing the wounds he had suffered and those he had inflicted. He and his family reunited, and by one year’s end, he and Kathy had formed a nonprofit called Mighty Oaks Foundation to help veterans
who struggle with many of the same issues he did. The foundation is based on Robichaux’s personal experience with what works in the healing process.
“I don’t think God did those things to me,” he said. “But He has the ability to protect me from those things, so why wouldn’t He? I think the answer is that He trusts at times with these situations. He trusted what I would do with this. And I’ve taken the hardships in my life to not just help me, but to help others.”
Since the organization was launched 12 years ago, Robichaux has spoken to nearly half a million active duty troops. He is only one of two speakers to speak at the Marine Corps boot camps. He has authored and co-authored eight books, the latest one about the rescue mission to save his interpreter in
Afghanistan after the 2021 U.S. withdrawal. He has donated approximately 350,000 copies of his books to troops. He has spoken before Congress numerous times in support of faithbased approaches to dealing with PTSD. His foundation has established five ranch facilities around the country to help veterans suffering from PTSD. Approximately 4,500 have graduated from the program, including active duty military, veterans, first responders, and their spouses. These programs are conducted free of charge, with the number of graduates steadily increasing to about 1,000 per year. Mighty Oaks is now spreading its programs throughout the world with military allies.
Robichaux and his team developed a method for helping veterans recover and heal, based on what is known in the military as “the four pillars of resilience.” Mighty Oaks Foundation focuses on a veteran’s mental, physical, social, and spiritual needs.
“I believe we are created to be holistic human beings. We cover at Mighty Oaks the spiritual side, but I don’t think that is all you need,” he said. “If you were only dealing with the spiritual side, you would have an imbalance. When I’m speaking to the troops, I point to their chairs and tell them that those four legs represent each of those pillars of resilience. If that chair has a weak leg it could probably remain standing, but the moment
“When I got on those mats, it took my mind off of Afghanistan and those bad memories. … I took something that could be good for me and I dove into it.”
—CHAD ROBICHAUX, MARINE VETERAN AND CO-FOUNDER OF MIGHTY OAKS FOUNDATION
you sit on it, you’ll go crashing down. I think that’s our life. On the surface, we look like we have all four of those pillars, but if one of them is weak, as soon as the weight of life comes on it, we’ll come crashing down.”
Robichaux noted that it was his spiritual pillar that was weakest for him. He said it left a giant hole inside of him that he filled with hate, rage, anger, and bitterness, which allowed room for anxiety, depression, guilt, and hopelessness to engulf him. Robichaux’s rise from what he calls “a darkness” has enabled him to do what he has done for so long: serve. In a way, he still serves his
country by serving his fellow countrymen, specifically those in the military.
“I don’t think I get the platform because of the successes I’ve had,” he said. “I think the platform I have is because I’ve been at the high and at the very low and I have felt the need to be honest about that.” He regrets that he didn't have someone to show him how to be vulnerable when he was struggling. “I wish someone would have been that honest with me about their hardships and struggles because I know that would have helped me. I’m thankful I was allowed to endure those low points because it gives me an opportunity to speak to others.” •
Throughout the years, 1950s crooner Pat Boone has held fast to the importance of family values
“Ionce shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up,” the actor and singer Dean Martin once said.
Call it the “Pat Boone Effect.”
Example: In 1997, hard rock and heavy metal were at their peak. Their sound was the
epitome of doom, their lyrics the essence of defeat. Enter an artist from the ’50s and early ’60s, with 38 Top 40 hits to his credit, a singer known for tuneful songs, sung in the smoothest possible way—the very antithesis of hard rock/heavy metal—Pat Boone.
The album, “In a Metal Mood: No More Mr.
Nice Guy,” featured Boone’s crooner vocal stylings against a lush background of big band saxophones and brass sections. A complete deconstruction of the hard rock/metal genre, “In a Metal Mood” uncovered surprising melodic richness in such unlikely sources as Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, Alice Cooper, and Deep Purple. Boone’s version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” married the song’s opening guitar riff to a salvo of trumpets, while Boone’s heartfelt delivery gave new life to the dismal lyrics.
Heavy metal didn’t have a chance against the “Pat Boone Effect” and its founding creed: Everything, even the onset of the darkest conditions, can be resisted and tamed. The “Pat Boone Effect” continues today, as its namesake writes books, makes movies, and finds new songs to sing at the age of 88.
An Icon of the ’50s Pat Boone was long ago a name to speak in the same breath as Elvis Presley. In the ’50s, the two of them vied for the top of the pop charts, with Boone often winning. A writer for Time Magazine extolled the young phenom dressed in white shoes in a 1956 article: “Pat Boone, 22, was just another hillbilly singer from Nashville 18 months ago. Today, nobody who hears him in person ever hears the first or last few robust notes—they are always drowned in squeals of bobby-sox delight.” In addition to recording those 38 Top 40 hits between 1955 and 1963 (13 of them gold singles), Boone acted in more than a dozen movies, including “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and the 1962 remake of
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “State Fair.”
Along the way, he exemplified a pristine image of restraint and hard work. In a lecture to young people, Boone once warned that “kissing for fun is like lighting a lovely candle in a room full of dynamite.” Unwilling to exploit what he assumed was temporary fame, Boone got his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1958, the same year his biggest single hit, “Love Letters in the Sand,” came out, with the intent of becoming a teacher. But fame persisted, allowing him to marry his sweetheart, Shirley, who would be his wife for more than 60 years until her passing in 2020.
And then—the world stopped turning and commenced to spin in the opposite direction. In 1964, the year Boone turned 30, the British invasion brought the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to American shores, and in their wake, a striking change in the cultural weather.
“Drugs and promiscuous sex,” Boone answers immediately to the question, “What prompted the cultural changes of the mid- to late ’60s?” Whatever it was, the change meant that Boone’s milk-and-cookies image suddenly became yesterday’s newspapers. So he moved on, never changing his beliefs nor his singing style, and never judging the new wave (he called Alice Cooper and John Lennon friends), but persisting. He continued to perform and record, finding an audience just outside the one that surfed the mainstream, while tilting occasionally against contemporary culture in a semi-humorous mode that kept one second-guessing: Was he serious about those metal covers, or was that an elaborate joke to expose the thinness of the material? Boone never quite gave a straight answer.
Boone’s latest enterprises, “If: The Eternal Choice We All Must Make,” a book-length essay on his lifelong spiritual beliefs, and “The Mulligan,” a faith-based movie that follows up on his recent acting appearances in other faith-based movies, confirm his dedication to the same values that first made him famous.
“The word ‘if’ is of utmost importance. ‘If’ you believe. ‘If’ you choose. ‘If’ you act,” Boone said of his book’s theme. The book guides the reader in navigating choices that Boone insists “are not religious, but matters of life and death.” He said he felt compelled to write it. “I even designed the cover, which looks like the burned edges of a piece of paper, with the single word ‘if’ in the middle,” he added, to convey the feeling of urgency. The choices as answered in the book lead the
reader to the Christian faith that Boone has held from childhood.
“The Mulligan” likewise explores his faith, from the standpoint of second chances: “A ‘mulligan’ in golf is a second chance, so why not a second chance in life to correct the mistakes we all make? It’s a gospel theme with a secular plot, set on a gorgeous golf course.” The film was released in select theaters in April 2022.
Boone’s faith has led him to feel an urgent need to bring Christianity and Judaism together. “One of the biggest mistakes ever made was dividing the Bible into Old and New Testaments. It’s a single testament. One part needs the other.”
Boone’s regard for Judaism and his empathy for Israel once led to an especially demanding challenge. On Christmas Eve, 1960, Boone sat listening to the musical
ABOVE
theme to “Exodus,” a film based on Leon Uris’s novel about the founding of the modern state of Israel. It wasn’t just for pleasure. The piece was wildly popular due to an instrumental version by the piano duo Ferrante and Teicher, but it had no lyrics, and without them its significance as a paean to Israel’s founding was blunted.
Several lyricists had tried and failed to fit meaningful words to composer Ernest Gold’s soaring melody. Now, the task was given to a popular singer with deeply Christian beliefs. Could he do it? Boone wasn’t even principally a songwriter. His biggest hits were written by other people: “April Love” was penned by a professional songwriting team for the 1957 movie of the same name; “Ain’t That a Shame” was a Fats Domino cover; and Boone’s biggest hit of all, “Love Letters in the Sand,” was a neglected ballad from 1931.
“I sat listening to the music over and over and
I told Shirl”—his nickname for his wife—“nothing was coming to mind. Then I just heard the first four words: ‘This land is mine.’ I grabbed a Christmas card on a nearby table and started to write.”
Finding the first four words opened up the floodgates of creativity. “God gave this land to me,” and the rest of the lyrics, crowded onto the back of the Christmas card.
“It’s like a second national anthem in Israel,” Boone said. “The director of Yad Vashem,” which is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, “asked if I would will the original manuscript of the lyrics to them. I said, ‘You can have it now, but it’s on the back of a Christmas card.’ They were fine with that.”
A superstar in his 20s, and a persistent figure in entertainment ever since, Pat Boone goes on believing that the bad in the world can be, must be, overcome. The Pat Boone Effect could do the world a world of good. •
Mike Rowe, the host and executive producer of “Dirty Jobs,” dishes out job advice and celebrates the skilled workers who keep our country running
WRITTEN BY Channaly PhilippMike Rowe, America’s perpetual apprentice, has been giving viewers a front-row seat to our country’s dirtiest jobs for nearly 20 years.
The episodes of his show, “Dirty Jobs,” are a veritable archive of the various icky substances in earthly existence—sludge, slime, gunk, and grime—that he’s either had to clean, wade through, extract, or pick away at, often in the dirtiest, hottest, and smelliest of conditions.
Encounters with the animal kingdom are a category unto themselves. Given the close degree of proximity, these engagements are unpredictable: Rowe has gotten bitten by some creatures—ostriches, catfish, snakes, sharks—and gotten up close and personal with others—such as beavers, which he’s had to sniff to determine their sex.
OK, there are clean jobs, too. The yuck factor may be absent, but cue in the petrifying situations, such as scuba diving to the ocean floor and releasing fish blood and guts for “Shark Week.” (Don’t worry, Rowe was wearing a stainless steel chain-mail suit— which helps, he found out, when you’re being shaken like a rag doll by a group of sharks.) Or what about when he walked up 24.5-inch-diameter cables on the “Mighty Mac” bridge in Michigan to change light bulbs atop its towers, 552 feet up, only to realize that he was no longer safely clipped in?
But the stunts are not the point. The premise of “Dirty Jobs,” with no actors, no scripts, and no second takes, is all about
showing America what it’s like to do a job that’s needed, a job that’s hard, and often messing it up in the process. The show ran from 2003 to 2012 and returned for a season in 2022. In between, it has never stopped airing.
In all, Rowe has performed more than 350 jobs, learning under the tutelage of hardworking Americans and having fun in the process.
“Dirty Jobs,” as Rowe says, is ultimately a tribute to someone he was very close to: his grandfather, Carl Knobel.
Though he had only been schooled until the seventh grade, Knobel had built his own home and was a master electrician, plumber, steamfitter, pipe fitter, and welder—a master jack-of-all-trades.
“He saw great dignity in all jobs,” Rowe said. “He understood, intuitively I think, that we’re all connected to work, and the way we’re connected to where our food comes from, and where our energy comes from.”
Early on, Rowe was convinced he’d follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He tried his hand at shop classes in high school, only to face an inconvenient reality: “I didn’t get the handy gene,” he explained.
His Pop gave him a dose of wisdom: “You can be a tradesman—just get a different toolbox, because what comes easily to me is not coming easily to you.”
So Rowe set off in a new direction—writing, singing, acting, and narrating. He belted out songs at the Baltimore Opera for years and
worked the graveyard shift on the QVC home shopping network selling merchandise. He hosted an evening show on Channel 5 KPIX in San Francisco, a “cushy little job” that took him to downtown museums and Napa Valley wineries.
And then one day, his mom, Peggy Rowe, called.
She said, “Michael, your grandfather turned 90 years old today—and he’s not going to be around forever. And wouldn’t it be terrific if, before he died, he could turn on the television and see you doing something that looked like work?”
“It made me laugh because it was so true,” Rowe said.
Her message was delivered with love and
humor, and Rowe, who was 42 at the time, decided to take it as a challenge.
The next day, with TV crew in tow, he was back in action—this time in the sewers of San Francisco, profiling a sewage worker. The footage, he said, was “inappropriate” for his show, but he put it on the air anyway.
Then, something interesting happened. Letters started pouring in, with messages like this: “Hey, if you think that's dirty, wait ’til you meet my brother, or my cousin or my dad or my uncle or my grandfather or my mom. Wait ’til you see what they do!”
That launched a regular segment, “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.”
Rowe’s grandfather got to see one episode of it.
“He was very nearly blind by the time he died. He was 91. So, he knew I had gone into this direction ... and I’d like to think he approved. I’m pretty sure he did,” Rowe said.
The segment eventually led to “Dirty Jobs.”
The Discovery Channel show meant being on the road for much of the year, lots of showers, and even a change of attitude.
“I’ll tell you, honestly, I had to humble myself when my mom made her off-the-cuff suggestion I’d been impersonating a host for 15 years,” he said. “I was pretty good at hitting my mark and saying my line and creating the illusion of knowledge where it didn’t really exist, pretending to be an expert.”
Looking back, Rowe says during those early days when “Dirty Jobs” was on the air, it was jarring for audiences to see a guy who didn’t have the answers but was willing to “look under the rock” and bring viewers along.
“I stopped being a host; I started to become a guest. I stopped being an expert and started to be a full-time dilettante,” he said.
“And so, to the extent people might trust me, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt, I think it comes from the fact that they’ve seen me try and fail for 20 years, they’ve seen me crawl through a sewer. And when you see a guy covered with other people’s crap, you know, that guy’s not gonna lie to you.”
Resume
Mike Rowe
Age: 61
Location: Marin County, Calif.
Apprentice
Freelancer (a few hundred jobs)
Opera singer (baritone)
Experience
Host, “Dirty Jobs,” “Deadliest Catch,” “How America Works,” and more
Podcaster, “The Way I Heard It”
Author, “The Way I Heard It”
Founder, mikeroweWORKS Foundation
Founder, Knobel Tennessee Whiskey
For the longest time, Rowe’s dream job was to host “The Daily Show.” He worked long and hard, with his eyes on the prize.
“They hired me twice to do that job. And each time, something went wrong—comically it just went wrong and didn’t work out.” He contemplated how close he had come. “But the truth is, looking back, not getting that gig was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Life had other plans for Rowe.
A few years into “Dirty Jobs,” the recession hit. People were asking where the good jobs had gone. And yet, Rowe knew, they were out there. On every job site where he set foot, he saw “Help Wanted” signs.
On Labor Day 2008, he launched the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which was essentially a PR campaign for the millions of unfilled jobs desperate for skilled workers. Over the years, the foundation has given $6.7 million in scholarships to nearly 1,500 people with a strong work ethic and the desire to pursue a career in the skilled trades.
Through his show, Rowe was showing the public what it was like to be a skilled trade worker: that in between going to work clean
A small selection of jobs (out of more than 300): Alligator Egg Harvester, Reindeer Farm Dentist, Well Digger, Concrete Chipper, Spider Venom Extractor, Storm Drain Cleaner, Brick Maker, Elevator Repair Technician, Lobster Fisherman, Road Kill Remover, Septic Tank Cleaner, Worm Poop Rancher,
Air Force Fuel Tank Cleaner
and coming home dirty, they brought pride and passion to their work; kept America connected with good roads and infrastructure, happy with indoor plumbing, and warm or cool depending on the season; and in the process, made a pretty good living, too.
Still, there’s the perception that dirty jobs are not jobs worth doing. As to how to change it, “that’s the million-dollar question,” Rowe said, “and if there were an easy answer, we wouldn’t have 11 million open jobs right now, and 7 million able-bodied men between the ages of 25 and 54 not only not working, but affirmatively not looking for work.”
To some extent, Rowe knows what doesn’t work: “Lectures, sermons, scoldings. Men my age standing on their porch, shaking their fist
“There’s dignity in every job. And there’s opportunity around every corner.”
—MIKE ROWE
at the heavens, and complaining about Gen Z and millennials.”
“The real way to challenge these stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions is to hit them squarely on the head. You need to show people that you really can make six figures. You need to show people that a good plumber today can make as much as he or she wants, and you can set your own schedule,” he said.
Now heading toward its 15th year, the foundation follows up with its scholarship recipients, documenting their successes, and Rowe shares their stories with nearly 6 million friends on social media.
“We can complain about the snowflake culture and the snowflake mentality, but we’re the clouds from which the snowflakes [came], and I think it’s incumbent on us baby boomers—the people who are my age—to hit the reset button. And we have to provide people with better examples of what success
looks like.”
One example is Chloe Hudson, a welder at Joe Gibbs Aerospace in North Carolina. Her ambition in high school was to become a plastic surgeon, but a price tag of upwards of $350,000 was not appealing. Instead, she got a welding scholarship from mikeroweWORKS and now makes a six-figure salary.
“She’s living her best life,” Rowe said. “I talked to her the other day, and she’s like, ‘You know, I am kind of a plastic surgeon, except I’m not dealing with flesh and bone. I’m dealing with metal and steel and complicated compounds.’”
The road to prosperity doesn’t end at mastering a skill, either. For example, take a welder who hires an electrician, a plumber, and an HVAC worker. That becomes a $3 million mechanical contracting company—not bad for starting out with a $5,000 or $6,000 certificate.
Rowe added, “If you’ve mastered a useful skill, if you’re willing to think like an entrepreneur, and if you’re willing to go to where the work is—then I don’t think there’s ever been a better time in the history of the country to be looking for work, because the opportunities are everywhere.” •
Years ago, Rowe wrote a Facebook post, which made the rounds online, about a good friend of his. This woman had been single her whole life and could not understand why. She was attractive and successful. Rowe suggested a dating service but she said no. He suggested she branch out across town, and try the museums, libraries, bars, and restaurants there. She declined again.
He said: “You’re not only looking for your soulmate; you’re looking for your soulmate in your own zip code. You’ve got a long list of qualifications: what they should look like, how much money they should make, how they should dress, where they should be from. So you just got all of these obstacles that you’ve put between yourself and the person who you believe can make you happy.
“And we do the same thing with work. We identify the job that’s going to make us happy, get the certification or degrees that we need, line up the interviews, etc., [but] we’ve got it backwards. We ask kids to imagine the job they want, long before they’re capable of doing that, and really, in many cases, before they have a good understanding of what their actual abilities are.”
Just as it happened to him, “you might realize that the thing you prepared yourself for is simply not the thing you’re going to do.”
“Everybody wants job satisfaction, and everybody wants happiness in their personal life, but if you start your quest with the notion that there’s a dream job, and you can’t be happy unless you get that job, it’s going to be a hard road—just as it’s going to be very difficult to find happiness in your personal life if you think there’s only one person on the planet walking around who’s capable of making you feel that way.”
Everyone Rowe met on “Dirty Jobs” was passionate, but few were doing the job they had in mind when they were young adults.
As Rowe says: “Don’t follow your passion— bring it with you.”
The young, 8-year-old Andy eyed the baseball arching high in the air, down the right field line into foul territory, as it left the sandlot playing field. The wayward ball sailed 35 feet into a bordering cornfield and rested approximately 300 feet from its origination: home plate.
For most of the crowd watching the baseball game that Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1926, the ball was out of sight and out of mind.
But not for Andy. The nascent baseball enthusiast was currently a temporary truant of St. Michael’s Orphanage, which housed more than 400 children on 340 acres of farmland. The orphanage bordered the borough of Hopewell, a small town of 2,000 residents and seven working farms, nestled in the valley of central New Jersey’s Sourland Mountains.
One child, Andy, was missing—his absence yet unnoticed—but for good reason. Andy was on a mission. He and his baseball buddies
needed a ball for their daily pickup games. This foul ball was the fortuitous moment he had been patiently waiting for.
Andy rose, his eyes tracking the ball’s flight. “Yes,” he silently declared, “this is it.”
He sprinted into the cornfield, disappearing among the multiple rows of the 10-foot stalks of corn. Spying the ball, he snatched it, jammed it into his front pocket, and then ran as fast as his legs could carry him back to the orphanage.
Game on!
Andy loved baseball—long considered America’s pastime. He passed that love of the game, and the game’s guiding principles, on to his family, friends, and the many players he coached through his life. Andy was a melting pot child of early-20th-century America: a product of immigrant diversity. His father was Italian and his mother was Irish. Andy and his three younger siblings ended up in St. Michael’s soon after the untimely death of their mother, before her 30th birthday.
But this is not a story of lifelong disadvantages. Rather, it’s a quintessential American story of how baseball and its national game melded values into Andy. A story of how a rural, small town in America, inculcated with old-fashioned patriotism and a hardscrabble work ethic, served Andy a slice of Norman Rockwell’s America and forged for him an America worthy of love, veneration, and preservation.
Andy never returned that errant baseball. However, he did return to Hopewell as a 24-year-old adult to raise a family, start and operate a retail gasoline business, and help found the local Little League Baseball as well as organize/coach a local baseball team. In fact, Andy was considered by many to be the Branch Rickey (American baseball player, coach, and civil rights leader) of the neighboring Hunterdon County Baseball League. Andy introduced the first black players to league play in the 1950s with his Hopewell town team. In World War II, he joined the U.S. Navy, leaving his wife and two children behind, and served in the Pacific Theater aboard a PT-Boat (patrol torpedo boat)
that sunk two Japanese destroyers, during combat, in the waters of New Guinea and the Philippines. For Andy, America was not just worth loving, it was worth fighting for.
The intrinsic values of baseball and the community cohesiveness of Hopewell are captured in the following nine truisms that Andy espoused and lived by. They spring mostly from the great American playbook that is baseball and are rooted in the smalltown sensibility that was Hopewell. They’re what makes America great. They make America worth revering, worth heralding, worth celebrating, and worth loving.
No one bats a thousand, but never stop trying. Failure is not condemnable, but failing to try is.
Run 90 feet. Home plate to first base is 90 feet. Give 100 percent effort: Run 90 feet.
When you get your pitch, jump on it. Don’t let opportunity pass you by.
Take two, hit to right. Hit the ball where it will do most toward achieving success. In baseball that means scoring runs. In life, you achieve success through completing your assigned task.
Let your bat and glove do your talking. Perform deeds, not (boastful) words.
Hustle, always hustle. Give every endeavor your best effort.
Recognize the meritorious efforts of others. Give credit to others. Your competitor or your fellow worker are trying to be the best they can be as well.
Look for two, look for two. Look for the opportunity to go for the next base. One’s reach should always exceed one’s grasp.
Make something happen. Both baseball and America reward tireless effort and perseverance. In order to succeed, you must do more than show up: You must make something happen. •
Why do you love America? What makes it worth celebrating? What moves you about the people and places that make up our country? Tell us in a personal essay of about 600 to 800 words. We welcome you to send your submission to: Editor@AmericanEssenceMag.com
It was nighttime in Sherrodsville, Ohio, August 1960. A car drove up to a house and parked. Two police officers got out and walked up to the front door. A woman appeared. The men asked if she knew the whereabouts of the notorious thief, jail-breaker, and FBI’s most-wanted at the time: Spunky Firman. She replied no. One officer tipped his hat and started walking back toward the car.
Her response must have been a hesitant “no,” or there must have been some other tip-off, because my cousin Chuck (son of my great-uncle), the other police officer, just deputized a few hours before for the manhunt, knew that it was his duty to search the house. He proceeded to do so. He walked upstairs and came upon a bathroom. Out sprang a man with a hand-held sickle. Out came Cousin Chuck’s gun. The sickle struck Chuck’s hand; the bullet hit Firman’s knee. So ended a manhunt that began a month earlier, when Spunky Firman had escaped the Coshocton
County Jail. At the same time, something else began: a family legend that encapsulated what a great man my cousin was.
When Charles Amato died a few years ago, his son Nick made a very similar point by bringing this incident up. He mentioned the public recognition Charles Amato received for his bravery: a commendation from the then-FBI director himself, J. Edgar Hoover. Then, Nick mentioned how he had asked his dad years later where the citation was. Cousin Chuck, sitting down at his desk in the real estate office where he worked part-time, probably drinking coffee and smoking—things he enjoyed doing when not catching criminals—shrugged his shoulders and said, “You can go and get it, but that stuff doesn’t matter. It’s the people you serve.” Spoken like the policeman he had become—better yet, spoken like the man he already was when he caught Firman.
Chuck’s life was a rich picture of other virtues and acts of service. He attempted to join the police force full time soon after he made national headlines for catching Firman. One would expect that the police of Wellsville, Ohio, would welcome a man who had proven his bravery. But they did not, because of a strange fact that is now little recognized or remembered: There was serious ethnic tension between Irish and Italian Americans in those days, and cousin Chuck was Italian, while the mayor was Irish. For the first couple years of his service, Chuck walked the worst beats and took on the lowliest jobs in the department, all because of his ethnicity. He took this position because he took seriously the idea of putting service first. Eventually, he did move up in the police force, becoming a police captain.
There is one story that particularly illustrates his complete embodiment of what a police officer should be. He once arrested a mother, nicknamed “Tootsie-Dootsie,” at a nightclub, because she had left her four young children in the car. Afterward, he took the kids to Johnny’s Lunch for a meal and bought them shoes at Russell’s Store and some jeans. “Protect and serve” seems to be a motto that
particularly fits this policeman. He displayed all the virtues most necessary: perseverance, bravery, unselfishness, and attentiveness.
It seems only fitting to cap off the description of a man who treated everyday life as an adventure with one more story: As mentioned above, Cousin Chuck had to literally walk the worst beats at the beginning of his career. His police chief would not even give him a car; instead, he was dropped off at remote locations to walk lonely country roads.
One day, there happened to be a festival in Wellsville: It was August 16th, the feast of St. Rocco’s. It is an important day for Italian Americans, and Wellsville had a fair share of Italian Americans, so it was a day of celebration for townspeople. One Italian American citizen who was not celebrating, however, was cousin Chuck, since he was out walking his country beat.
Meanwhile, two thieves decided it was the perfect time to rob a bank. The robbery went smoothly, and the getaway was going just as well. They were miles ahead of pursuit by the time the police radio dispatch went out.
Then, they turned onto the very country road that Cousin Chuck was walking along. Chuck had been listening to his radio. He had no car, but he had a feeling the very road he was walking on would be perfect for the culprits: a little-traveled country road that could get one to a lot of different places. He set up a makeshift barrier of brush, hid himself in the trees, and proceeded to stop and search every car that came by.
The robbers were not ready for either the barrier or for a lone cop to appear out of the woods, gun held ready. And so, in this manner, two armed robbers in a vehicle were stopped by a lone policeman aided only by his feet and his quick thinking. He was a hero again—or rather, just continued to be the hero he already was. •
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
The actress is wholeheartedly embracing the gifts that come with aging gracefully: wisdom and perspective
WRITTEN BY Brett ChudáYou may know Suzanne Somers as the cute blonde, Chrissy Snow, on “Three’s Company,” a hit TV show in the 1970s, or as the entrepreneur behind the ThighMaster fitness device (yes, it’s still being sold!). But it might surprise you that Somers, now 75, has spent decades exploring breakthroughs in anti-aging that avoid chemical toxins and Big Pharma.
Fourteen of Somers’s 27 books have made it onto the New York Times bestseller list, and most of them center around natural health.
Her journey with alternative treatments started 25 years ago, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She eschewed chemotherapy and found success with natural supplements. Her cancer went into remission. But take it from her, she’s no extremist when it comes to alternative medicine. “I go natural first,” Somers said. “And I take care of my body. I feed it right, I sleep it right, I think it right, I love it right. And then if none of the natural treatments work, then [I] resort to allopathic.”
Somers also believes it’s import-
ant to have a healthy mindset. Her infectious happiness about aging stems from how she thinks positively about what's ahead of her.
When Somers was a young, single mother, her son was hit by a car and almost died. It caused terrible nightmares that led her to seek therapy for him. At the same time, the therapist helped her overcome the effects of her abusive, alcoholic father. “Maybe we have to go through this crud in life to realize all that we are. And in each of the circumstances in our lives is the basis for our wisdom, layering on itself.”
That healing process gave Somers the confidence to take on a major acting role on national television and set her on a lifelong path of self-improvement. “I looked at every negative as an opportunity and use[d] it as the next stepping stone to growth. So at my age now, when you think you’re going to start not thinking about growing, I’m thinking about ‘Wow, I wonder what’s ahead of me now? … What do I get to learn next?’ And there’s always, always something.”
Her life experience is why she’s so grateful to be the age she is now. “I almost want to say to people younger than me, ‘Wait until you get to be my age, it’s so great!’ You have the one thing young people can’t buy or have, which is wisdom and perspective.” She’s learned to shut out negativity. “I don’t think negative thoughts. … If [there are] people you’d like to be pissed off with, I immediately shut it out. And I think ‘It’s so not worth it.’ I wish them well.”
She’s excited for what the future holds. “I trust and have faith and I live a happy life. Every day I just thank God for this beautiful day. … I plan to be here till I’m in my hundreds.” •
He honored our country and became its most beloved star.
WHAT IS WORTH REMEMBERING
Without ambition and without initial training, she became an opera legend.
52 | Rosa Ponselle: The Unlikely Diva Studio portrait of American actor John Wayne wearing his signature cowboy hat and neckerchief, circa 1955.From his 1939 breakout role to his last film, the Hollywood star stood for and exemplified his country
Rarely is a man remembered for who he was when he was so overshadowed by what he did. In the case of John Wayne, however, who he was and what he did were one and the same.
John Wayne, born Marion Robert Morrison on May 26, 1907, in the very small Iowa town of Winterset, became one of the, if not the, most iconic actors of the 20th century. At 13 pounds, he was born to become a large man, destined for grand entrances and memorable exits. He was the eldest child of the Morrisons, a marriage that was etched with struggles, insults, and uncertainties. The family was poor and moved a lot, eventually landing in California in 1914.
Out in the farmlands and small towns of his
upbringing, he learned how to handle guns, having to protect his father from rattlesnakes while working untamed land. He learned to ride horses. He perfected his reading as he went through the Sears catalogs cover to cover, noting each item he wished he could afford. He learned the idea of hard work, even when it wasn’t profitable, something his father consistently experienced and was reminded of just as often by his mother. He honored both his parents, but he loved his father.
Wayne grew up strong and tall, suitable for an athletic career. His athleticism landed him a football scholarship to the University of Southern California in the fall of
WRITTEN BY Dustin Bass“He has given much to America. And he has given to the whole world what an American is supposed to be like.”
—ELIZABETH TAYLOR,ACTRESS RIGHT Wayne in the 1940 film “Dark Command.”
1925. While attending school, he worked on movie sets as a prop man and was at times a film extra, typically a football player. During this time, he met the already famous and successful film director John Ford. While bodysurfing on the California coast, Wayne injured his shoulder and lost his scholarship. His football playing days were over, but he was still tall, dark, and handsome, and he decided to join the “swing gang” at Fox Film Corporation moving props.
His relationship with Ford blossomed. The two were opposite in nearly every way, but they attracted, as opposites sometimes do. Ford and Wayne developed a kind of father-son relationship, as Wayne would often call Ford “Coach” and “Pappy.” Ford would be credited with giving Wayne his big break—twice.
Ford introduced the young actor to director Raoul Walsh, who decided to have him star in his 1930 epic Western “The Big Trail.” The film was a flop at the box office, though in defense of the film, the Great Depression had just begun. During the filming, however, the studio executives decided that “Marion” was not much of a name for a leading man. Anthony Wayne, after the Revolutionary War general, was considered. Anthony didn’t work either. One of the executives suggested John. When the film was released, his new name was on the posters. Much like his nickname “Duke” was given him by local firemen, his new name, bestowed upon him by others, stuck throughout his life.
A new name and a starring role, however,
would hardly change his film career. Throughout the 1930s, Wayne was relegated to B Westerns. As he ascended from his 20s into his 30s, he used his time wisely to perfect his on-screen persona—a persona that he assimilated off-screen as well. His choice of wardrobe, his walk, his fighting style were all tailored for himself by himself. The Duke was an icon in the making, and the making was all his creation. He just needed a true opportunity to showcase it.
That opportunity arrived in 1939 when Ford chose Wayne to star in his Western film “Stagecoach.” The director had always been a believer in Wayne. The young actor had proven to be a hard worker, receptive to directorial guidance, and willing to do many of his own stunts. Along with that, he was 6 feet, 3 inches tall, with a broad-shouldered frame, blue eyes that showed gray on the silver screen, and a strong nose and jawline. His
acting also came across honest, as if he was speaking directly to the person in the audience. There was a magnetic pull with Wayne, and Ford decided to do all he could in his film to draw viewers to him.
Wayne was a familiar name and face for moviegoers, having already appeared in 80 films by this time. Familiar, yes. A star, no.
The 1939 film revolves around seven passengers trying to get from one town to the next while trying to avoid the inevitable Indian attack. Nearly 85 years removed, “Stagecoach” remains one of the great Westerns. The movie did more than tell a great story. It did something more important. It introduced the world to John Wayne. Eighteen minutes go by before Wayne makes his entrance in the film, and it is an entrance that was created specifically for the induction of a soon-to-be American icon.
In a wide shot, the stagecoach rides up a slight incline when suddenly there is a gunshot. The stagecoach comes to an
abrupt halt. Starting with what is known as a cowboy shot (pioneered by Ford and also known as the American shot), the camera moves in for a close-up of Wayne, who twirls his Winchester rifle. The shot starts in focus, slightly goes out of focus as it moves toward the actor, and then finishes in focus. The actor stands majestically wearing a cowboy hat and neckerchief, which would soon become synonymous with Wayne. The shot was out of place not just for the film, but also for Ford. But it was intentional for reasons explained by Scott Eyman in his biography “John Wayne: The Life and Legend.”
“This is less an expertly choreographed entrance for an actor than it is the annunciation of a star.”
From this point on, Wayne would embrace his role as America’s leading man. There were other actors, of course, during his rise. Some on the decline, like Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. Some on the rise, like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Their greatness in their own ways cannot be diminished. Gable with his force of nature persona. Cooper as an embodiment of honesty and kindness. Grant as the romantic symbol of the 20th century. And Stewart, a personified symbol of truth. But Wayne embodied something else, and yet he was all of these things. He became the face of
LEFT
ABOVE “Stagecoach” was Wayne’s big break into the Hollywood movies, making him one of America’s leading actors and soon to become a star. Theatrical poster for the 1939 American release of “Stagecoach.”
FAR LEFT Wayne as Sam McCord in the 1960 comedic Western “North to Alaska.”
Cinematographer Bert Glennon (L) and director John Ford on the set of “Stagecoach” in 1939.
the country.
Authors Randy Roberts and James Olson both noted that Wayne became America’s “alter-ego.” Wayne hoisted that alter-ego upon his cinematic shoulders, which proved more than capable of bearing the load. The Duke chose films that promoted and often propagandized America’s greatness. His primary film genres were war films and Westerns.
When America entered World War II after the Pearl Harbor attack, Wayne was closing in on 35 years of age and already had four children. Film stars, like Stewart and Gable, along with directors, like Ford, joined the war effort overseas. In 1943, Wayne applied to join the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, but the spots were filled. In 1944, when there was a fear of a shortage of men, Wayne’s status was changed to 1A (draft eligible), but Republic Pictures filed for a 3A deferment for Wayne, which kept him in front of the camera. Ultimately, Wayne believed, arguably correctly, that his impact as an actor (or more cynically a propagandist) would be far greater than as a soldier.
“I felt it would be a waste of time to spend two years picking up cigarette butts. I thought I could do more for the war effort by staying in Hollywood,” he told John Ford’s son, Dan.
For all intents and purposes, Wayne, who would have been classified as a private, would have most likely remained behind the scenes doing busy work or promotional bits for the military. Though he would never be a military hero, Wayne proved more than patriotic. As Eyman wrote regarding the
type of roles Wayne chose to perform, “His characters’ taste for the fulfillment of an American imperative was usually based on patriotic conviction, rarely for economic opportunity.”
Between the span of America’s entry into the war and the end of its occupation in Japan (1952), Wayne starred in eight World War II films. He would also join the United Service Organizations (USO) overseas, where he entertained the troops and helped boost morale.
Throughout his career as America’s leading man, he never shied away from making his conservative views known, and he never wavered from opposing liberal viewpoints. He and Paul Newman, a known Hollywood liberal, regularly talked politics and shared books with each other that discussed their differing political perspectives. Wayne’s 1974 visit to Harvard University, to possibly be disparaged by the student body, resulted in both sides walking away with mutual respect.
Wayne knew what was to be expected, especially with the anti-war movement on campuses. He took verbal barbs and responded in his typical fun-loving yet pointed manner. At one point, he told the young audience: “Good thing you weren’t here 200 years ago or the tea would’ve never made the harbor.” The comment was greeted with cheers rather than boos.
As the New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick wrote, concerning the outcome of the Harvard visit, “There were many who found themselves actually—and incredibly— liking John Wayne. They still disliked his politics, of course, but was he any different from
The Duke chose films that promoted and often propagandized America’s greatness.
many of their parents?”
Eyman pointed out the actor’s quasi-familial influence on the American homeland. Wayne’s growth on-screen and off-screen proved to be near equal in its cultural weight. He reminded “people of their brother or son, he gradually assumed a role as everyone’s father, then, inevitably, as age and weight congealed, everyone’s grandfather.”
On June 11, 1979, America’s grandfather passed away from stomach cancer. He had beaten cancer once before, and it had cost him a lung and some ribs. His final film, “The Shootist,” is about an old gunfighter dying of cancer. Though he had another film lined up, his death after his final film is, still tragically, more fitting than ironic.
Wayne was America’s cowboy. He was the war effort on film. He worked to root out communists in Hollywood. He was a man who
believed in patriotism when many Americans tried to give that a bad name. John Wayne was, and, according to polls, still is, part of the American family. When Wayne was being considered for the Congressional Gold Medal in May 1979, the stars came out in support. Elizabeth Taylor told Congress, “He has given much to America. And he has given to the whole world what an American is supposed to be like.”
He was awarded the medal a month after his passing. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Of all the attributes one could give John Wayne, the one recommended to Congress by his five-time co-star Maureen O’Hara seems to be the most appropriate.
“I feel the medal should say just one thing,” O’Hara tearfully said. “John Wayne: American.” •
FAR LEFT Wayne stars as Robert Marmaduke Hightower in the 1948 western “3 Godfathers.”The beloved ‘Peanuts’ comic strip was the result of decades of Charles Schulz’s dreams and perseverance
WRITTEN BY Rachel Pfeiffer
People today likely remember the “Peanuts” TV specials better than Charles Schulz’s comic strips. He wrote the script for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” himself, and as his Christian faith was very important to him, he made the climax of the program Linus reading from the Gospel of Luke. The special was an instant success, and many families still enjoy it every year. However, it was his comic strips that brought him fame.
“My dad was always a great comic strip reader, and he and I made sure that all four newspapers published in Minneapolis–St. Paul were brought home. I grew up with only one real career desire in life, and that was to someday draw my own comic strip,” Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, wrote in his autobiography. His comic strip entertained thousands of people for decades with the adventures of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and their friends. However, his path to
becoming a cartoonist was anything but easy.
Schulz loved drawing from a young age. Since he grew up during the Great Depression and his father didn’t make a great deal of money as a barber, Schulz practiced drawing on old, leftover paper removed from scrapbooks. He studied the comics in the papers and used what he learned in his own drawings. One day in school, he drew a picture of a man shoveling snow, but then he included a funny addition—a palm tree! When his teacher saw the drawing, she declared that he would become an artist one day.
Schulz’s first work was published when he was just 14 years old. He drew a picture of his dog, Spike, and sent it to Believe It or Not! The picture ran on February 22, 1937. Though this drawing looked different from Schulz’s famous beagle, Snoopy was also inspired by his childhood pet.
“I am really a comic strip fanatic and always have been,” Schulz wrote in his autobiography. “I was a great fan of Buck Rogers, Popeye, and Skippy.”
However, even as a teenager, Schulz faced rejection. He drew some cartoons for the yearbook while he was in high school, but when he received his yearbook, Schulz realized that the teacher who requested the cartoons decided not to publish them. Though he was deeply disappointed, Schulz persevered.
After high school, he completed a program at a local art school, but he then put his dreams on hold to serve in the Army during World War II. After the war, Schulz returned to Minnesota and worked a variety of jobs to pay the bills while he continued to draw and try to sell his cartoons. His comic strip “Li’l Folks,” the comic strip that would one day become “Peanuts,” appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Unfortunately, “Li’l Folks” wasn’t immediately successful. After three years, the paper no longer wanted to publish the comic.
Though Schulz continued to face a number of rejections, a few acceptances helped raise his spirits. He even sold one of his cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post. Finally, Schulz sent his cartoons to the United Feature Syndicate. They liked his work but didn’t like the name “Li’l Folks.” Instead, they wanted to call the comic strip “Peanuts,” perhaps because “The Howdy Doody Show” seated children onstage in the Peanut Gallery. Schulz never liked the name but agreed to it to get his work in print.
On October 2, 1950, “Peanuts” appeared for the
first time, running in seven newspapers. The strip only grew from there, eventually achieving national and international fame. Schulz loved his work and found much inspiration for his comic from his own life. One example is Lucy’s prank of pulling the football away at the last second, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back.
“It all started, of course, with a childhood memory of being unable to resist the temptation to pull away the football at the kickoff,” Schulz wrote in his autobiography. “We all did it, we all fell for it.”
Newspapers published “Peanuts” for decades, but after nearly 50 years, Schulz retired due to health reasons. He passed away on February 12, 2000, and his final comic strip appeared the next day. For five decades, Schulz held the job he had always dreamed about and, as he explained in his autobiography, in some ways felt was inevitable. “To me it was not a matter of how I became a cartoonist but a matter of when,” he wrote. “I am quite sure if I had not sold ‘Peanuts’ at the time I did, then I would have sold something eventually; even if I had not, I would continue to draw because I had to.” •
Summoned by riders from Boston— William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, and the more-renowned Paul Revere—in the early morning hours of April 19, 1775, a motley crew of armed farmers and shopkeepers gathered on Lexington Green to face hundreds of British regulars marching out from Boston.
The British had come to confiscate or destroy the militia’s stores of arms and powder in nearby Concord. The 77 American colonials opposing them were intended more as a show of force than for combat, and they were under orders to disperse if a weapon was fired. To this day, no one knows who fired the first shot, but in the ensuing melee eight Americans died and nine others were wounded. One British soldier was slightly wounded.
The British continued their march to Concord, burned the few supplies they found—the Americans had already relocated most of their munitions to another hiding spot—and then engaged the colonials in a battle at Concord Bridge. As they withdrew back to Boston, the Americans pursued them, sniping at the Redcoats from behind trees, houses, and rock walls. That retreat turned into a debacle for the forces of King George III, and the British soon found themselves besieged in Boston.
And so was born the American Revolution.
Poets later celebrated the events of that April day, with Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” and Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” being the best known of these verses. Generations of school children memorized or read these poems, depositing in their hearts and minds lines like these by Emerson:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world.
Though this momentous date was never forgotten, especially in Massachusetts, not until 1894 did Massachusetts Governor Frederic Greenhalge declare it a state holiday. In 1897, the Boston Marathon became a part of this celebration, and today it is the nation’s oldest and most revered race of its kind. Some 60 years later, the Boston Red Sox also became a part of the Patriots’ Day tradition. “I can hardly conceive of (the Red Sox) not playing on Patriots’ Day,” former Red Sox historian
and sportswriter Gordon Edes once said. “It’s all about watching morning baseball before watching the marathon. That’s what makes this such a quirky holiday in New England.”
Such homage is right and just, but we should also remember and honor the men who fell at Lexington Green. Samuel Hadley, for example, was a farmer who left behind a wife and two young children. Issac Muzzey, age 31, was a descendent of one of New England’s oldest families. Asahel Porter, approximately 23, was married, had one child, and worked as a clothier. Legend has it that Jonathan Harrington, mortally wounded, dragged himself to his nearby home and died at his wife’s feet. Capt. John Parker, head of the militia on Lexington Green, was a veteran of the French and Indian War, but he made his living as a farmer. In short, these were ordinary men who answered a higher calling.
On Lexington Green stands an obelisk marking the militia’s line on that April day. Erected in 1799, it is the oldest war memorial in the United States. In 1835, seven of the dead from that battle were exhumed from
their graves in the local cemetery and buried beneath this memorial. The inscription, which also contains the names of the dead, begins this way:
Sacred to Liberty & the Rights of mankind!!!
The Freedom & Independence of America, Sealed & defended with the blood of her sons.
We cannot ascertain with any certainty the individual motives of these men and their compatriots who fought on this day. Some of these Minutemen, as they called themselves— meaning they were ready to fight at a minute’s notice—doubtless snatched up their muskets and fought for what they regarded as a just cause. Others may have joined these ranks on account of their friends or in search of some grand adventure.
Whatever their motives, the skirmish at Lexington and the Battle of Concord had enormous ramifications. The blood shed that day
ABOVE LEFT
Reenactors honor the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord, in Lexington, Mass., on April 17, 2006.
ABOVE A handcolored survey and plan of the town and harbor of Boston for the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Siege of Boston. Published in London on July 29, 1775, and penned, “Humbly inscribed to Rich. Whitworth Esq. member of Parliament for Stafford by his most Obedient Servant J. De Costa.”
signaled the transition from negotiations with the British king and government to violent action, which in turn led to a Declaration of Independence, a document in many ways unique at that time in world history, and to a revolution for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which has since served around the globe as a banner for freedom.
This April, we might pause and remember those long ago events, honoring those early patriots and all other Americans who paid the price of liberty with their blood or who have devoted their lives to securing our independence and freedom. The majority of Americans living today have never stood with a weapon in hand facing an armed and determined enemy, and it is unlikely we shall do so. Nevertheless, we can defend those God-given liberties affirmed in our Declaration and Constitution by our words and deeds, as vigilant and courageous as those men who stood that April morning on Lexington Green. •
The year was 1918. Enrico Caruso, the Metropolitan Opera’s biggest star, had chosen a newcomer to be his leading lady. Her name was Rosa Ponselle, she’d just turned 21, and her debut sent critics scurrying for adjectives. She “made a sensational impression and was sensationally received.” She showed “incomparable charm and dramatic ability.” Her voice was “rich, sensuous, … capable of all the lights and shades of operatic expression.”
Who was this musical marvel? Most of the
Met’s singers were foreign-born, and all had learned their art and musicianship in Europe. Few in that opening night audience knew that Rosa had never been to Europe. She’d also
RIGHT Ponselle poses as Mathilde in “William Tell,” a French-language opera by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. The opera was revived in America at the Metropolitan Opera in 1923, starring Ponselle and Italian tenor Giovanni Martinelli.
never performed in an opera house or had much vocal training. Only a few years earlier, in fact, she’d sung popular songs in a movie theater for $25 a week.
Rosa Ponzillo was born in 1897 to Italian immigrant parents in Meriden, Connecticut. Her father was a tradesman and her mother ran a bakery. Her older sister Carmela dreamed of becoming “a great singing actress,” so at age 21 she moved to Manhattan to study voice and make connections. Rosa had no such ambition, but she loved to play piano and sing and was known in school for her excellent sight-reading.
Rosa was singing at a café in New Haven, to supplement the family income, when its owner, James Ceriani, told her she belonged in opera, not in a restaurant. He offered to make arrangements and pay all her expenses to go study in Europe, but Rosa declined. She wrote later: “I had no ambition. … I didn’t want to get on a boat and go to Italy. I didn’t want opera.”
She did let Ceriani take her to New York to visit Carmela and see her first opera. She liked it, but opera was Carmela’s dream, not hers.
In 1915, Carmela learned that her parents had fallen so far behind on their mortgage that they were about to lose their home. She told Rosa it was up to them to support the family. Carmela had a vaudeville gig lined up, so she asked her manager to add Rosa to the act. He took one look at the shy, chubby teenager and nixed the idea.
Undeterred, Carmela got them both hired to sing at Lorber’s Restaurant, an elegant establishment across the street from the Metropolitan Opera House. The Met’s staff and stars came in often, so she added a couple of arias to their
repertoire of popular songs, certain that in no time she and Rosa would be discovered.
The sisters sang beautifully, receiving countless compliments and tips, but no one from the Met spoke to them. No meetings, no offers, no discovery.
Carmela’s agent finally came through with a vaudeville contract for both sisters. Billing themselves as famous sopranos from Italy, they toured the nation, singing everything from “Swanee River” to the Barcarolle duet from “Tales of Hoffmann.”
The sisters were an immediate hit with audiences, and with theater managers who felt they added class to bills featuring jugglers and dog acts. They got sterling reviews, and their status and income rose on the vaudeville circuit. They were able at last to pay off their parents’ debts.
By 1917, Carmela and Rosa were earning $1,000 a week, appearing at the best venues— even at the crown jewel of vaudeville, the Palace Theater in Times Square. But Carmela still had her eyes set on opera. She began studying with an eminent voice teacher, William Thorner, and talked him into taking on Rosa as well.
Thorner often invited friends to hear his pupils sing. One day, the friend turned out to be the most famous singer in the world: Enrico Caruso. The great tenor looked at Rosa and said, “Do you know that you look just like me?” He spoke to her in Neapolitan dialect and she answered right back. Their families came from the same little region! He asked her to sing. Rosa was terrified because, as she later said, “I never had any voice training, and my sister very little.”
Caruso liked what he heard.
ABOVE Photograph of Ponselle by Herman Mishkin, circa 1918–1920. ABOVE RIGHT Ponselle rehearses with composer Romano Romani, 1921.He announced to Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the director of the Met, that he’d found the perfect replacement for his leading lady, who had become unavailable.
“What experience has she had?” GattiCasazza asked.
Caruso hesitated. “Well, she’s sung in vaudeville with her sister.”
Gatti-Casazza couldn’t believe his ears, but he agreed to an audition. He gave Rosa a week to learn two difficult arias. She had never heard of them or the operas they were from. She had only seen two operas in her life. The audition began well, but in the middle of “Casta diva” from “Norma,” she fainted and collapsed. Carmela revived her and Gatti-Casazza asked to see her in his office.
Rosa was sure he was going to throw her out for wasting his time. Instead, he pushed a paper across his desk. “Sign this.” Rosa didn’t understand. Gatti-Casazza elaborated: “Your contract to make your debut with Caruso in ‘La forza del destino.’ Do you think
you could be ready by November?”
The night of the premiere, Caruso and Rosa Ponzillo—renamed Ponselle—made magic. The reviews were stellar, and Rosa went on to become the country’s best-loved prima donna. The press dubbed her “Our American Rose.”
Carmela would later sing supporting roles at the Met, but she never resented her sister’s success, which she had done so much to make possible.
Retiring from the stage in the late 1930s, Rosa coached young singers and served as the artistic director of the Baltimore Civic Opera for 30 years. She died in 1981, but her recordings remain the gold standard in her repertoire, studied by young singers everywhere.
Maria Callas is often cited as the best soprano of the 20th century, but she herself said: “Ponselle was the greatest singer of us all.” •
A cocktail of wit and wisdom from our nation’s leaders
WRITTEN BY Andrew Benson Brown ILLUSTRATED BY R.W.
During George Washington’s presidency, cabinet meetings were set to begin at exactly 11 o’clock. Alexander Hamilton would usually arrive late, look at his watch, and claim it had deceived him. After a number of such occurrences, Washington replied: “Sir, you must provide yourself a new watch, or I a new Secretary.”
In his final illness, James Madison was advised not to try to talk while lying in bed. “I always talk most easily when I lie.”
When William Henry Harrison died a month after his inauguration, Vice President John Tyler was raised to the nation’s highest office. His political enemies dubbed him “His Accidency.” Tyler, good-naturedly, demonstrated an ability to make light of this. Once, he conditionally accepted a dinner invitation in a letter, explaining that urgent duties often required him to cancel social engagements. He is “the creature of accidents,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person, “being an accident himself.”
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln once estimated that the Confederate army had over a million soldiers. When asked where he got this number, he said: “I know there are 400,000 men in the Union Army. And whenever we lose a battle, the general says he was outnumbered 3 to 1.”
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge’s nickname was “Silent Cal.” A woman once approached him at a White House dinner, saying she had made a bet that she could get him to say three words. He replied: “You lose.”
Ronald Reagan
After an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan’s aides gathered near his hospital bedside. Reagan said, “Hi, fellas. I knew it would be too much to hope that we could skip a staff
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon once said: “Congress makes so many cuts that if they had to vote on the Ten Commandments only eight would pass!”
Harry Truman
Harry Truman preferred bold advisors, “Give me a one-handed economist!” he said. “All my economists say, ‘on the one hand, … but on the other.’”
Rodgers and Hammerstein set the stage for the ‘book musical’ and defined the span of Broadway’s golden age
On the evening of March 31, 1943, American musical theater entered its Golden Age. That was the night the curtain at Broadway’s St. James Theatre rose on an old woman churning butter and a cowboy praising the beauty of the morning. It was the night “Oklahoma!” proclaimed the arrival of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II as a writing team and theatrical force.
The show wasn’t expected to be a hit. “No gags, no girls, no chance,” was the infamous response of a critic who saw “Oklahoma!” in out-of-town previews. Musicals at the time were expected to exhibit a certain degree of glitz that this one lacked. Through the magic of Rodgers’s music and Hammerstein’s words, however, “Oklahoma!” made audiences—and critics—forget all that. It ran for an unprecedented five-plus years.
“Rodgers and Hammerstein,” as the team quickly became known, went on to define the span of the Golden Age they initiated, which for most commentators ends with Hammerstein’s death in 1960. These years, 1943–1960, were the era of the “book musical,” the blending of musical, lyrical, dramatic, and choreographic elements into a seamless whole, each contributing to the tone and meaning of the story. That may seem old-fashioned in a time of jukebox musicals and pop star tributes, but in the 1940s it was the leading edge of innovation.
The American musical began as a hodgepodge of song, dance, and dialogue loosely strung together to tell a story—or sometimes not. The first example is said to be “The Black Crook,” an 1866 grab-bag of tunes and jokes linked to a thin plot. Over the ensuing decades, the American musical painstakingly crawled its way toward the integration of music, dance, and story line into a sophisticated whole. Two giant steps in that direction were “Showboat” (1927) and “Pal Joey” (1940). Hammerstein wrote the dialogue and lyrics for “Showboat”
while Rodgers was the composer of “Pal Joey.”
Prior to 1942, Rodgers had been working with lyricist Lorenz “Larry” Hart on musicals that slowly advanced the notion of an integrated whole, culminating in “Pal Joey.” But Hart was plagued with personal problems, drank heavily, and was increasingly difficult to work with. Rodgers, intent on turning a little comedy called “Green Grow the Lilacs” into a musical, knew Hart wasn’t up to it. He asked Hammerstein, whose work on “Showboat” he admired, and Hammerstein said yes.
It was a match made in theatrical heaven. Rodgers, tired of the urban style he used with Hart, turned to a more broadly lyrical, operetta-like musical language flecked with American folk elements. Hammerstein’s
poetic lyrics matched this and evoked atmosphere, character, and sensibility in a way no popular lyrics of the time did. He could dream into the hearts of a young couple and find them fantasizing about a “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” or imagine the plaint of an outcast (Judd) in his “Lonely Room.”
“Oklahoma!” and the three remaining Rodgers and Hammerstein shows of the 1940s concern American characters. “Carousel” (1945) finds us in New England, witnessing the tragic yet transcendental romance of Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan. “Allegro” (1947), the only box-office failure of the four, traces the life of an American doctor. “South Pacific” (1949) considers the lives of American servicemen and women in World War II.
In the 1950s, however, the musicals moved beyond American shores. The two biggest Rodgers and Hammerstein hits of that decade focus on an English lady tutor in 19th-century Siam (“The King and I,” 1951) and a singing Austrian family fleeing the Nazis (“The Sound of Music,” 1959). Their only ’50s box office success set in America was “Flower Drum Song” (1958), considered “minor” Rodgers and Hammerstein. Their TV musical “Cinderella” (1957) used European fairy tale material.
The fading of the book musical is not surprising, given the nature of contemporary song. Traditional popular song, the framework for Rodgers’s music, was harmony-based, whereas current pop is largely beat-based and harmonically much narrower than the earlier type. Harmony was central to creating the appropriate musical language for a book show.
All the songs in “Carousel” have a certain melodic gesture in them. This gesture, based on a specific interval between notes (the augmented fourth) generates shared harmonies among the various songs. That’s why numbers as rhythmically distinct as “If
I Loved You” and “June Is Busting Out All Over” belong to the same universe: Their harmonic structures are related. But one song is an exception: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” That’s the hymn Carrie sings to comfort Julie when Billy dies, and the reason it feels transcendent, separate from the others, is that it is harmonically unique. Rodgers and the other composers of the Golden Age didn’t just make up tunes willy-nilly. A deep craftsmanship informed their art.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s catalogue is today a frequent target of critics who bandy about words like “conventional” and “bourgeois” as if the values represented by them are automatically to be dismissed as out of date. But the clock, as G.K. Chesterton once observed, is a human invention, and humans may set it back any time they wish. Perhaps it’s time to dial our musical theater clocks back to the era of Rodgers and Hammerstein. •
The first biography written on the extraordinary Samuel Ryan Curtis, America’s most successful general during the Civil War
WRITTEN BY Mark LardasMeticulously researched, "Union General: Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West" is the first written biography of the nearly forgotten Civil War general who helped shape American engineering, military, and politics.
Samuel Ryan Curtis was one of the North’s most successful generals during the American Civil War. He never lost a battle and was the victor at several key battles, including Pea Ridge. He commanded Union forces in the TransMississippi and negotiated peace with the Sioux late in the war. A nationally-known civil engineer before the war, he also helped found the Republican Party. Today, he is almost entirely forgotten.
“Union General: Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West” by William L. Shea examines Curtis’s life. Shea reveals an extraordinary man and someone important to American history. His contributions were important in three different fields: politics, engineering, and the military. The first biography of the man, it is a worthy examination of his life.
Born near Lake Champlain in 1805, Curtis grew up in Ohio. He became in turn a clerk, a civil engineer (developing water projects and later railroad rights of way), a West Point cadet, a lawyer, and a politician. During the Mexican–American War, he commanded
the Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry regiment. He served as city engineer in St. Louis, then moved to Iowa to oversee public works and railroad projects in that state.
Curtis entered national politics in the 1850s and was elected to the House of Representatives for Iowa in 1856. An early supporter of Abraham Lincoln, he helped Lincoln get the presidential nomination. Curtis sponsored the first transcontinental railroad act. When the Civil War started, he resigned his seat and took command of the Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry.
Shea follows Curtis through the Civil War, where he had an outstanding record, rising to command of the Army of the Border. The author examines the reasons Curtis never got his due as a general. Curtis served exclusively west of the Mississippi, far from the press and public attention. Although Curtis attended West Point, Grant considered Curtis to be a political general, depreciating his strategic abilities. Curtis was also an early abolitionist, a position unpopular in the war’s opening year. Finally, he died in 1866, before writing his memoirs. These all combined to reduce Curtis to obscurity.
This biography may focus some well-deserved and fresh attention on Curtis. A well-written study of one man’s life, it is both meticulously researched and a fascinating story, written in an engaging way. Shea is a worthy advocate of man deserving attention. •
“Union General: Samuel Ryan Curtis and Victory in the West” by William L. Shea (Potomac Books, January 2023).
64 | Raising a Family, and a Small Business Empire, on the Ranch
At Five Marys Farms, entrepreneurship is a way of life.
84 | California’s Highway 1
Serene vistas and scenic surprises await on the classic road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway.
MaryTeresa (Tessa) and MaryJane (JJ) Heffernan practice their rodeo skills at Five Marys Farms, their family ranch in Fort Jones, Calif.
From Silicon Valley to the Northern Californian mountains, entrepreneur, rancher, and mom of four Mary Heffernan has built a life on hard work and endless ideas
For Mary Heffernan, being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle, one that demands complete attention and commitment—and, sometimes, a willingness to sleep on the floor.
At age 44, she and her husband, Brian, run Five Marys Farms, a ranch in Siskiyou County, California, with free-range, pasture-raised Black Angus cattle, Berkshire hogs, and Navajo-Churro sheep. They also run an online and brick-and-mortar shop, a restaurant and bar, and a butchery; and they offer two online courses, teaching small business essentials to budding entrepreneurs and ranch skills to kids. Juggling all of this, while raising four daughters (all named Mary), may seem ambitious, but Heffernan has been on this journey all her life. She has had, in total, 19 to 20 businesses along the way.
“I always had this spark,” Heffernan said. “I was the oldest of four, and I was motivated by wanting my own money in the bank, and making my own decisions.” At age 9, she started a T-shirt stenciling business and had booths at craft fairs. At 13, she opened a backyard summer camp for 15 to 20 kids called Mary’s Fun Summer Camp, which she ran annually until she was 18. As a child, teen, and later college student looking for income to help pay her way through school, “I was
just always looking for chances to start businesses,” she said. “I knew that with a lot of hard work, I could make an idea happen.”
Heffernan’s biggest inspiration was her grandfather. “He was a serial entrepreneur,” she recalled. “He always had a new idea on the horizon. He would drive me around picking up checks from his rental properties and looking at empty buildings. He would say, ‘What could we put in there? We could make it an ice cream shop, or a taco bar.’ He inspired me to realize, ‘Wow, you can just think up an idea and make it a business.’”
Before the ranch, Heffernan and her husband owned a number of businesses in Silicon Valley, including a law firm and two restaurants. “It’s hard to screw up there,” she said with a laugh. “But we left the land of opportunity for the land of hard work when we moved onto the ranch.”
Working in the restaurant business, they had become frustrated with the lack of high-quality, grass-fed beef from animals raised and butchered humanely. So they decided to do it themselves. In 2013, they bought the historic Sharps Gulch Ranch, 1,800 acres of land in the mountains of Northern California, and tried to run the ranch remotely through a ranch manager and weekend visits. By eight weeks in, they realized they couldn’t do things halfway: They decided to move there and run it full time.
“We left a life of comfort in suburbia to live in a 760-square-foot house with no heat besides the woodstove, no dishwasher,
no amenities,” Heffernan said. They often slept on the floor in front of the woodstove because that was the warmest place to be.
But despite such a dramatic change in lifestyle, Heffernan and her family immediately saw its benefits. “We didn’t have that kind of satisfaction in the Bay Area working in front of computers all day,” she said. “Here, we saved a calf’s life; my daughter delivered baby lambs; we dug a ditch to divert the water to our field.” By going back to the farming roots of her own and her husband’s families, Heffernan has found it easier to teach her core values to their four daughters. “On the ranch, they see that having a skill set to be hireable [doesn’t mean] only an education; it’s knowing how to work hard, and feeling the euphoria of coming in dog-tired at the end of the day knowing that you can be proud of your work,” she said.
Heffernan is also grateful that their lifestyle still gives her opportunities to grow her family business and make a good living. They went on to open a restaurant and bar, Five Marys
Burgerhouse, in 2017, and a craft butchery shop in 2021. They published two cookbooks, sharing their favorite recipes for using their meats and feeding their family and frequent guests to the ranch, in 2020 and 2022. Thanks to the internet, they can sell meat not only to locals at their farm store in town, but to someone in New York, Hawaii, or Alaska.
“That is so meaningful to me,” Heffernan said. “I can live the life that I want, back to the land, back to my roots, while using technology to make a living. It allows me to open up a window to so many people to show them our world and what we’re doing.” She uses social
media to share her family’s life on the ranch and build a connection with her customers: “That’s partly why our business has been successful and people trust buying from us.”
Now, Heffernan is taking her experience to become a mentor for other aspiring entrepreneurs. She’s a strong advocate for taking risks and jumping in with both feet: “You need to be willing to do everything you can to make it happen,” she said. A big part of her confidence comes from the tools she has in her arsenal. “If I have an idea and I want to make it happen, I
know I can build a website myself. I can design a new logo. I know that I can get the nitty-gritty done fairly quickly: get the insurance in place, form a payroll program. Those things all seem really daunting at first to someone starting a business, and they are.”
She doesn’t shy away from talking about the financial aspect: “If you really want to build something that is going to sustain you and your family, you have to look toward profitability.”
To help equip new entrepreneurs with the tools they need, Heffernan created her M5 Entrepreneurs program, an online course structured as a “road map” through 40 different topics, from shipping logistics to social media. “Nobody’s going to teach you how to have an idea or how to work hard, but having all the tools to take your idea and make it a reality is so important,” she said. The course also includes access to an app, a community where participants can ask questions and feel like they’re not alone on their journey.
Since its inception five years ago, the program has had over 2,500 enrollments, with participants from the United States, Canada, Australia, Mexico, and the UK. Their burgeoning businesses have included flower farmers, bakeries, creameries, and saddle makers.
One success story that stands out to Heffernan is of a woman in upstate New York who bought an apple orchard with her husband and started an apple business. Last winter, Heffernan ordered their special holiday box, which arrived beautifully packaged—following the program’s advice.
A letter enclosed for Heffernan thanked her for the courses, telling her that leaving an unfulfilling job to work on the apple farm seemed scary and impossible, but the couple gained the confidence and tools to do it and now have a thriving business shipping all over the country. “The most rewarding thing as a mentor,”
Heffernan said, “is seeing people take the tools and thrive.” •
SERVES 6 After the winter, when we spend a lot of time focusing on our lambs and making sure any animals who aren’t born strong get nursed well, the spring feels like a good time to celebrate our flock’s strength. Every year after our first harvest, we remember why we chose Navajo-Churro sheep: The breed is a natural chef’s choice because it has good lamb flavor without tasting overly gamey.
Lamb cooks quickly and evenly and is naturally packed with flavor. Rack of lamb is, perhaps counter-intuitively, something I think of as a fast, easy dinner. Even when you french the bones and dress it up with mustardy, herbpacked bread crumbs, like I do here, your work is done before the oven’s finished heating. If you’ve never frenched lamb, you can always have a butcher do this for you. To do it yourself: Make a cut through the layer of fat that covers the meat, running perpendicular to the bones about 4 inches from their tips, across the entire length of the rack. Cut and peel away the fat that covers the bones. Then, using a small, sharp knife, cut away the fat and tissue between each bone.
—Mary Heffernan• 2 (2 1/2- to 3-pound) racks of lamb, frenched (or not)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup plain bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary (or thyme or sage)
• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Place the lamb on a baking sheet and season all sides with salt and pepper. Turn the racks fat side up.
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the bread crumbs, olive oil, rosemary, Dijon, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1 teaspoon pepper until evenly moist. Pat half of the mixture in an even layer over one of the racks, covering all of the lamb except the bones and tossing any crumbs that escape back on top. Repeat with the remaining mixture and the second rack of lamb.
Roast the lamb for 25 to 30 minutes, until the bread crumbs are evenly brown and the meat registers 125°F for medium-rare or 135°F for medium on an instant-read thermometer. Let the lamb rest for 10 minutes, then cut the rack into chops and serve them topped with the crispy bread crumbs.
SERVES 6 My mom grew up in Watsonville, California, south of the Bay Area in the Pajaro Valley, where asparagus farms thrive. Asparagus was also a staple at my family’s dinner table—and often just served with mayonnaise for dipping, which my own girls also love. When we want to level up a little, though, we roast asparagus and top it with fried lemons made by just cooking thinly sliced lemon over high heat in a little bit of olive oil. The rind softens and sweetens as it cooks, so you can eat the entire thing.
—Mary Heffernan• 2 pounds asparagus, ends trimmed
• 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large lemon, ends trimmed
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Preheat the oven to 425°F.
Pile the asparagus into a 9-by-13-inch baking dish and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Toss the spears to coat evenly, then spread them out in a roughly even layer. Roast for 8 to 10 minutes, or until crisp-tender.
Meanwhile, slice the lemon in half lengthwise, pick out any visible seeds, and set aside one-half for later. Slice the remaining half into 1/8-inch-thick half-moons, removing any seeds.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, and when the oil is shimmering, carefully add the lemon slices in a single layer, then toss in the garlic. Cook undisturbed for about 1 minute, or until the lemon slices turn dark brown.
Remove the pan from the heat, flip the lemon slices and garlic, and let them continue cooking off the heat while the asparagus finish cooking.
When the asparagus are ready, squeeze the reserved lemon half over the fried lemon slices, then scrape the entire lemon-garlic mixture over the asparagus and serve immediately.
SERVES 6 Clafoutis (pronounced kla-foo-TEE) may have an intimidating French name, but at heart, it’s a rustic eggy dessert that’s right at home on our ranch. Essentially a custard made with milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and whatever fruit you have on hand, clafoutis traditionally features cherries (with pits!), but it’s infinitely adaptable. While rhubarb is my favorite version in the spring, I make clafoutis year-round with any fresh berries, sliced stone fruits (cherries, nectarines, or plums), apples, or pears I have on hand—you just need enough fruit to cover the bottom of the pan. —
Mary Heffernan• Unsalted butter, for greasing the pan
• 1/2 pound rhubarb (2 stalks), sliced into 1/2-inch pieces (about 2 cups)
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt
• Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Preheat the oven to 350°F and position a rack in the center of the oven.
Generously grease an 8-inch square (or similar) baking dish with butter, then scatter the rhubarb across the bottom of the dish.
In a blender, blend the milk, cream, granulated sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla, and salt on high speed for 30 seconds. Pour the batter directly into the baking dish, over and around the rhubarb, then
bake for about 45 minutes, or until puffed in the center and lightly browned.
Dust the clafoutis with confectioners’ sugar just before serving warm or at room temperature.
Recipes copyright 2022 by Mary Heffernan. All rights reserved. Excerpted from “Five Marys Family Style” with permission from Sasquatch Books.
For the plant and interior stylist, artist, and author, indoor greenery is transformative— in both our homes and our hearts
WRITTEN BY Crystal ShiIt started with Frank. Frank the fiddle-leaf fig, that is. When Hilton Carter bought—and then named—his first houseplant in 2014, he didn’t know it was the start of a life-changing journey into indoor greenery. Now, Frank is the ceiling-brushing star of Carter’s Baltimore home of 300-some plants, and Carter, a fine artist and filmmaker by training, has fully embraced plants as his palette.
Along with his work as a plant and interior stylist, Carter has written four plant care and styling books—“Wild at Home,” “Wild Interiors,” “Wild Creations,” and the recently released “Living Wild”—hosted a workshop series on the Magnolia Network; launched his own line of products as well as a collection for Target; and opened a plant shop, called Green Neighbor, with a partner in his hometown of Baltimore. He spoke with American Essence about his journey to plant styling, how new plant owners can set themselves up for success, and how plants made him a better person.
Hilton Carter with a Calathea setosa in a nerikomi-style pot by Fay Ray Clay.
American Essence: What are the unique challenges—and rewards—of decorating with houseplants?
Hilton Carter: There’s a lot more consideration that goes into plant styling than, say, interior styling. It isn’t just picking a corner and dropping in a plant. You’re dealing with a living element, and understanding not only how it fits in the space for now, but also how it will change and morph and grow over time. You’ve got to think about the future.
I always start with the fact that light is going to be what makes sure that plant stays happy and alive. So you lead with light. It’s difficult to go into the styling portion if you’re not well aware of the care. Let’s focus on care, get that in our back pocket, and then we can have fun when it comes to styling, and that’s where my new book comes in.
A plant is not an inanimate object; it’s a living thing that is giving back to you. It’s providing not just a “look,” but actually a lot of good energy. It’s a symbiotic sort of relationship that is happening between us and plants. We always find ourselves chasing what nature provides. All of the studies show how people become more creative and happy and relaxed and carefree when they are exposed to sunlight and nature itself, so when you find ways to sprinkle a little bit of that outside world inside of your home, there can only be good that comes from it.
AE: How many houseplants do you have now?
Mr. Carter: About 300 that I keep in the house most of the year. I will say it has become more difficult for me to keep my ducks in a row, but like everything else in your life, you have to make time for it if you care for it. I have a daughter who wants all of my time, a wife that understands that my daughter wants all of my time, a dog that definitely doesn’t understand that, and all my plants are like, “Hey, I know we’re probably number four on your list, but please, please make sure you make your rounds.” So whenever I have a moment, I’ll always set some time in my day to check in on my plants.
It isn’t like you can water every seven days
and walk away; they don’t all operate that way, especially depending on changes in the seasons, or their placement. You’ve always got to be in tune with them, and you just check in. The fact that my plants also are a part of my job makes it a lot easier for me, and I’ll totally be transparent about that.
AE: Tell us about your own journey with plants. How has learning to care for them affected you as a person?
Mr. Carter: Before, I was a very high-strung, stressed-out individual. Relationships for me were very tough; I never really had an understanding of the back and forth that needs to be part of a good relationship—the give and the take, the “nurture what nurtures you” part of it.
In the process of caring for plants, I learned a lot about how to care for the other living things in my life. I studied how to be patient— and patience is one of the biggest things you need when it comes to plant care. You’ve got to understand the small nuances, and the changes that can happen when you move a plant from one space to another; they’re all individuals. You can sample that and sprinkle it onto every other living thing that you have in your life, and you will be better off. You’ll see those things thrive. That is what plants have done for me.
I started to see it in my relationships—see that more nurturing side of myself come out. I would pay more attention to how individuals in my life operated, and where they were in their emotions, and how to be more delicate, be more uwnderstanding, be more patient. I guess it isn’t a coincidence that a year after I completely fell head over heels for indoor greenery, I met the person who ended up being my wife and the mother of my child.
People say that plants make people happy. Well, I’ve been very sad seeing a sad plant, so I can’t say plants make you happy; it’s the care you put into a plant that will make you happy, especially if the plant is thriving. And I haven’t been happier in my life since I introduced plants into it.
Ready to add greenery to your home? Hilton Carter has some advice.
Before you even consider buying a plant, Carter says, consider the quality of light in your home. Then, “get a plant that is into the type of light that you have. It’s setting yourself up for success. If you have a dark home, certain plants will never do well.” There are low light-tolerant plants, Carter notes, such as snake plants, ZZ plants, and dumb canes—“but I use the word ‘tolerant,’ and underline it, because they’re not thriving.”
Next, you’ll need to think about factors such as the best planter size and material for your plant's needs, its preferred moisture level, and how often it needs to be watered. “If you’re a novice, you’ve just got to do the work,” Carter says. “Think about it as if you are bringing in a new pet. It can’t just be an off-the-cuff decision; it has to be well thought-out.”
Contrary to common advice to start with a low-maintenance plant, Carter isn’t afraid to recommend a needier variety to a novice: “I think if something is asking for your attention every single day or every other day, you’re probably better off to do that work than to go for a plant that only needs watering every three weeks.” A beginner might simply forget—or be skeptical and overwater.
There’s another big bonus: “I love the fact that it’s making them more involved in the life of that plant. That’s how it gets easier, because now they’re more in tune with what a plant needs.”
Carter styled the living room of his Baltimore home to have a mix of light, color, and texture.Once you’ve gotten a handle on houseplant care, you can go wild with styling them in your home. Here are some of Hilton Carter’s favorite ideas.
Whether it’s sitting a large plant on top of an island, hanging one from the ceiling, enshrining it literally on a pedestal, or perching it on the edge of a bookshelf with leaves trailing down the side, “Bringing plants higher into a space, I think having those moments in the home is very fun,” Carter says.
Mounting plants on a wall adds unexpected depth to a room—you’re making a hard, flat surface “literally come alive,” Carter says. “I love the idea of breaking up a gallery wall with something that’s alive.”
For a reliably “transformative” effect, Carter prescribes a “statement plant—a centerpiece that people are just drawn to as soon as they walk in. It’s something that anchors a space.” It could be a singular plant with an eye-catching shape, color, or size; or an artfully assembled arrangement, such as a kokedama (Japanese moss ball).
For serious plant stylists, consider the “designer plant”: Carter employs these high-profile (and often high-budget) stunners with unique patterns, colors, and textures to complement pieces of home decor. Two that he predicts will be especially popular in 2023: the Alocasia Cuprea, for its “beautiful copper shimmer and unique foliage shape and texture,” and the Monstera Albo, for its “stunning marbled variegation and ability to climb tall in any space.”
The sunroom is Carter’s favorite room in the house, for having the most natural light—and thus the most plants. Frank the fiddle-leaf fig, his first houseplant, stands tall right of center.
RIGHT “Living Wild,” published in March 2023 by CICO Books, is Carter’s fourth book.
BELOW Carter’s “living wall” of plant cuttings, held in custom glass tubes in wall-mounted wooden cradles, functions as both a convenient place to propagate more plants and a conversation-starting piece of decor.
AE: Before you became a professional plant stylist, you were an artist and filmmaker. Was there a particular “aha moment” when you realized plants could be a bigger part of your life and career?
Mr. Carter: The aha moment was definitely with Frank the fiddle-leaf fig. It started with, “Oh no, this very expensive bit of decor that I thought I would buy for myself is starting to lose itself, the leaves have fallen off!” It was then through figuring out the process of care that I was just like, “I need to be more involved, I need to be more in tune with this plant, I’ve got to name you so I am now bonded to you, and if you start to struggle, I feel it.” I would be like, “What is going on with you, Frank? I thought we were in this together. What have I done wrong? Talk to me.”
With plant care, you can set yourself up for success. All the times you might feel like, “Man, I’m no good at anything”—if you’re stuck in
that position and you bring a plant into your life, you’re focusing on that plant and a new leaf unfurls, that is something you did. Because you could have stuck it right into a closet—dead. But you made the decision to put it into the right light, to pot it in the right size pot, to water it, rotate it. Your care developed a new leaf. That is that serotonin hit: “I’m good! I’m doing something good!”
For me, I was getting so many of those hits that I realized, I’m actually really good at this because of the things that I’m deciding to do. And then I decided, well, if I can do it here, why don’t I focus that energy toward my relationships?
That is when I realized that when it comes to this, I feel my true self—I feel the joy of life in me. This needs to be my world. Because I am now not only giving to someone creatively, but also giving them something that can hopefully help change them in a positive way emotionally, and not just for the moment, but throughout the rest of their lives.
That’s something you also learn as someone who tends to plants: that you then want to share that. I’m sure so many people who love plants around you are like, “You’ve got to have a plant! Take a cutting!” Those are everything to plant people. If I gave someone a piece of Frank, that’s like if I gave them one of my fingers. Someone spent a lot of time and effort to care for this thing, and now they’re like, “Here’s a piece of it.”
AE: In your new book, you have a section on styling plants in kids’ rooms. How have you raised your daughter, Holland, to care for plants?
Mr. Carter: We’re still trying to teach her how to be gentle, not just pull every single leaf off of a plant. But it’s working. She’s a very gentle individual.
I think the idea of surrounding any sort of living being with greenery is important. When
it comes to kids, bringing plants into their nurseries or their rooms can not only bring life to their space, but also create learning moments for them: patience, tenderness, care for one another, how do you stay on a schedule? How do you treat life and death? That could be a learning moment: when a leaf dies while another leaf is unfurling, talking and having that conversation.
AE: When you take on an interior plant styling project, whether you work with existing plants or bring in new ones, how do you make sure your clients give them the care they need?
Mr. Carter: I can’t really make anyone do anything, but I do leave them with a care sheet, and I do check in. Whenever you bring a plant into a new space, you’re going to see a little bit of leaf loss because they’re trying to acclimate to the space, so I have to make people aware of that so that they don’t jump to the conclusion that they are just terrible at plants. I try my very best to set people up for success, and I always make myself available.
I will say, most of them, if they do kill their plants, they’re definitely not going to tell me. I already don’t get invited to certain people’s homes because they think I’m going to judge them because of their plants. I don’t judge. I just have side conversations with the plants telling them that one day they’ll make it out of that situation alive.
I’m not here to reprimand anyone. I just drill down the fact that the plants are living things in their heads, and hopefully, at the end of the day, they’ll go, “You know what, I know Hilton’s gonna probably be a little disappointed in me, but I need him to help me.” That is where you turn someone who’s very nonchalant about plants into someone like myself.
AE: Are there any exciting new projects in the works for you?
Mr. Carter: There are, but in order to tell you, I’d have to, uh, overwater you. •
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Here are some of the most spectacular and picturesque places in the country to experience beautiful, vibrant wildflowers
WRITTEN BY Pamela Beiler
ILLUSTRATED BY rinabertha
Glacier National Park, Mont.
Glacier National Park is full of natural wonders. From April through July, visitors are treated to beargrass, purple asters, and glacier lilies from an elevation of 3,000 feet all the way up to 7,000 feet.
Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, Calif.
Vibrant colors of gold and orange blanket the rolling, desert landscape of the Antelope Valley every April when the state’s flower, the golden poppy, delights visitors with its annual showing. The blooms are nyctinastic, opening each morning and closing every night.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Calif.
Head to the 12 wilderness areas in SoCal’s Colorado Desert to experience wildflower season along the park’s canyon trails. Desert lilies, sand verbena, desert sunflowers, and blooming cacti are just some of what you’ll see from mid-February through mid-May.
Crested Butte Wildflower Festival, Crested Butte, Colo.
Nestled within the Rockies, a 10-day wildflower festival in July celebrates vibrant glacier lilies, myriad sunflower varieties, and lupines that grow in the Gunnison Valley.
Grasslands are typically hot spots for fishing, wildlife watching, and night sky viewing, but in South Dakota, if you visit at just the right time you will be treated to gorgeous wildflowers like the daisy fleabane, spiderwort, purple coneflower, and more.
If you’re visiting the picturesque White Mountains, don’t miss the small, highland town of Sugar Hill, home to numerous fields of tall, purple lupines. Fingers crossed that the Annual Lupine Fields Festival will resume this June after a three-year pandemic hiatus!
The rolling hills of the Highland Lakes region are covered in beautiful bluebonnets for six weeks each spring. Falling on Easter weekend this year, the 40th annual Bluebonnet Festival will celebrate the state flower in the Bluebonnet Capital of Texas—Burnet.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, N.C. and Tenn.
With more flowering plants than any other North American national park—over 1,500 varieties—it’s no surprise that this destination is nicknamed Wildflower National Park. Visit during the Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage to see irises, violets, trillium, and more in peak bloom.
Refuel, revel, and repeat: California’s Pacific Coast Highway takes road-trippers on twisting turns and serene stretches, in a sumptuous show of breathtaking beauty
WRITTEN BY David Coulson
PHOTOGRAPHED BY Maria Coulson
In the big cities and small towns across America, young and old alike daydream of cruising the curvaceous coast of California on charismatic Highway 1. There are breathtaking stretches etched between sheer cliffs and surging sea wind, from crystalline coves to redwood groves and from Los Angeles city lights to San Francisco heights.
Along the highway, you can refuel and revel in the dozens of coastal towns, iconic and historic edifices, parks, and beaches, all while gaining insights into the exciting driving experience.
The longest state route in California, Highway 1 extends 650 miles from San Juan Capistrano in Orange County to Leggett in Mendocino County. It’s time to pull down your visor; you’re facing the sun’s glare, with a steep drop just beyond your passenger’s right elbow. Known also as the Pacific Coast Highway, it doesn’t constantly cradle the shoreline, and segments range from rural road to urban thoroughfare.
The open-arched Bixby Bridge, completed in 1932, is famous for its aesthetic design and magnificent setting.In 1937, the highway was completed with the blasting of rock faces and erecting of aerial bridges spanning cavernous chasms. A tenuous, narrow strip along the coastline was created, with stretches of cliff-clinging, hairpin-turning roads. Whether you are cruising the tight track in a humdrum Hyundai or a snazzy Mustang convertible with the wind in your hair and the sounds of the Beach Boys’ “California Saga” in your ears, this drive uncorks clutch-the-edgeof-your-seat excitement.
You never know what’s over the next rise or around the next bend. It might be mountains that plunge nearly perpendicularly into the ocean, surf and wind that pound the rocky shore and contort the cypress trees into otherworldly shapes, or a sheltered cove harboring a tranquil sea painted in shades of turquoise and sapphire.
Heading northwest, the dry inland heat gives way to the cool sea air, as the tangle of metroplex traffic loosens, and you enter the embrace of the Pacific Ocean. The longest and most accessible sandy beaches along Highway 1 are found on the 95-mile expanse from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara.
Malibu has achieved mythical status among California beach towns for its sun-kissed Hollywood stars, who are drawn by the celestial-high real estate, and its perfect curl waves that attract walk-on-water surfers. Even for Malibu surfing mortals, there’s a rush of adrenaline when a breaker curls over your head, and you can see the light of day as you pass through the crest of a wave.
The Santa Ynez Mountains are a statuesque backdrop to the Santa Barbara coast, referred to as the American Riviera. The exquisite Mission Santa Barbara, known as “Queen of the Missions,” inspired the colonial style of the city. Few structures define the Spanish heritage of our nation like the 21 California missions established during the 18th and early 19th centuries, according to the National Park Service.
After its longest inland foray, Highway 1 cuts back to the coast close to Morro Bay. The
seaside town sits along a natural estuary inhabited by blue herons. The bay is notable for a solitary, 576-foot-high volcanic rock that was once a prominent landmark for mariners. On the embarcadero, sleek seals and shaggy dogs raise a ruckus barking at each other. Fishermen unload and weigh their catch; gulls squawk and flock to tossed salmon scraps.
The central coast’s diminutive San Simeon soon comes into sight with Hearst Castle standing sentry. Newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst’s fabled hilltop castle began construction in 1919 and was never completed. A magnet for Hollywood celebrities during the 1920s and 1930s, today the site attracts about 700,000 annual visitors, who are drawn to the opulent extravagance of the extraordinary estate. They marvel at the ornately decorated and furnished 124-room mansion and the three guesthouses reigning over a crown jewel coastline.
Nearly in the shadow of the castle lies the under-the-radar Piedras Blancas rookery. More than 25,000 elephant seals pile up seasonally like bloated bratwursts on a narrow crescent of rocky beach. The behemoth bulls inflate their trunk-like snouts to make a roaring bellow. The portly pinnipeds ponderously waddle in and out of the water, crowd together to sunbathe, throw sand over themselves, and erupt into brawls.
The 90 miles from San Simeon to Carmel bring you to the Big Sur region, with a wild and rugged coast and rough-and-tumble mountains. Encompassing five state parks, a national forest, and a wilderness area, Big Sur is a milieu of meadows and hillsides awash with brilliantly turned-out wildflowers and canyons crowned with magnificent redwood cathedrals. California condors, with a wingspan of more than 9 feet, soar in bright cloudless sky or amid fingers of fog.
Carmel is an enchanting and whimsical seaside enclave of fairy-tale cottages, posh art galleries, and chic boutiques that captivate
the creative set. An eminent departure is the most faithfully restored of the California missions, the Carmel Mission Basilica Museum. Dating to 1770, it houses an impressive collection of original paintings and relics, most notably “Our Lady Of Bethlehem,” a statue that migrated with the missions’ founder Father Junípero Serra to Carmel.
20th-century writer John Steinbeck immortalized neighboring Monterey in his novel “Cannery Row.” The gentrified waterfront would be unrecognizable to the writer who eight decades ago described its historical pedigree as “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” The cannery was once filled with the sounds of men whistling and hollering, rivers of silvery fish pouring out of boats, and the clangor from titanic turbine pumps. Then, the sardines disappeared from the bay in the early 1950s. Over time, all fell silent. The last operating cannery was converted into the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
It’s a short shoreline stroll to the Fisherman’s Wharf, which once served as a fish market and now is a tourist hub. Affable, 80-year-old Captain Chris Arcoleo owns and operates Chris’ Whale Watching. There’s no better than Captain Nick Lemon, who has worked for him for 62 years, when it comes to spotting whales. “This is the Serengeti [national park in Africa] out of all the oceans that I have sailed throughout the world,” seaman Keith Stenler told boat passengers gawking at a congregation of twodozen humongous humpback whales.
On the northern edge of Monterey Bay, about an hour’s drive, is Santa Cruz, celebrated for its surfing culture and laid-back lifestyle. Surfers can be seen pedaling their bicycles through town carrying their boards. The nostalgic boardwalk contains the West Coast’s last seaside amusement park. The funfor-all atmosphere is punctuated by squeals from nervous Nellies riding the Giant Dipper, a century-old wooden roller coaster. For the faint of heart, the 1911 Looff Carousel still spins a magical spell with 73 hand-carved horses, an original band organ, and rings to toss into the clown’s mouth as you whirl by.
The highway crosses San Francisco’s graceful suspension bridge—the engineering marvel fancifully described as a “giant harp hung in the Western sky” by the late USC librarian Kevin Starr in his book “Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge.” The bridge lives in the national imagination as a symbol of American enterprise and as the gateway to the Pacific. Upon its completion in 1937, chief engineer Joseph Strauss heralded the triumph with his poem “The Mighty Task is Done.” A partial stanza reads:
The Bridge looms mountain high; Its titan piers grip ocean floor, Its great steel arms link shore to shore, Its towers pierce the sky.
Once beyond the Bay Area, the road becomes less crowded, as many tourists opt for the convenient start and end points of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
This northern portion of Highway 1 is synonymous with splendor and serenity. From San Francisco, it’s about two hours to the harbor-hugging hamlet of Bodega Bay. Nearby Chanslor Stables offers guided trail rides in a
peaceful and picturesque pastoral setting. The 40 quarter horses on the 400-acre ranch are lovingly trained rescues, which saddle-savvy riders can scamper down the ocean strand with. “The most amazing experience I’ve had riding,” said 29-year-old senior wrangler Taylor Piercy, “was racing down the beach with a deer. When you’re on a horse, you’re just extra fun to a deer.”
Highway 1 treads the periphery for the next 137 miles overlooking offshore sea stacks and rock arches: sandy beaches separated by surfswept headlands. The residents are romantics: lovers of solitude and the wild. They carve out a living in precariously perched, cliffside settlements with fewer souls than seals.
Here, you can make your way down to the serrated shore and scramble out onto a ragged reef. Once you peer into the tide pools at the underwater wonders, you’ll see vibrantly colored sea anemones with flowing tentacles that emulate petals of tranquil flowers, clustered among rocks covered with white barnacles that resemble miniature volcanoes. An ochre starfish may stretch its purple arms. When you reach into the brine, you may find a two-toned spiral shell shaped like a turban; it stands up on crab legs and skitters away.
By the time the morning fog lifts from the hillsides at Fort Ross State Historic Park, the two-century-old wood-burning oven is loaded with hearty loaves of bread. Little boys clamber onto the cannons. Dancers hold hands as they circle the parade ground, singing Russian folk songs. The women and girls wear long, brightly patterned dresses, with strands of amber beads around their necks, their hair swept under colorful scarves—festive attire for a weekend gathering. The men and boys are dressed in simple white tunics, belted at the waist.
Set high on a natural escarpment commanding a stunning view of the sweeping seascape, Fort Ross was established in 1812 as Russia’s only colony in the contiguous United States. The only original building that remains is the
one-story family dwelling belonging to the enterprise’s last manager. The outpost was abandoned due to lack of commercial success in 1841.
After navigating the curves and crannies of the coastline beyond the fort for an hour, a 2-mile spur road threads the needle of land, leading to the Point Arena Lighthouse, anchored on the cusp of a crag 50 feet above thunderous breakers. Visitors can climb the spiral staircase of the state’s tallest lighthouse. It was built two years after the 1906 Great Earthquake destroyed the initial structure that had guided mariners away from perilous waters since 1870. Station keepers and their families have endured battering winds, slashing rain, and the low rumbles of the foghorn for more than a century.
Thirty-five miles farther, Highway 1 appears to lose its bearing. The quaint maritime village of Mendocino is more reminiscent of Cape Cod than California. Prim saltbox cottages are framed by red roses and white picket fences. An artisan assortment of wind chimes tinkles in the sea-scented breeze. Cozy B&Bs welcome you to curl up by the fire; fine restaurants serve freshly caught seafood and local organic wines. Meanwhile, the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, terraced on lofty bluffs, first greet visitors with waltzing wildflowers and stormtwisted conifers. Here, you can explore the tableau of manicured formal gardens, dense pine forest, and fern-covered canyons; and delight in the floral displays of rhododendrons as big as wedding bouquets, dahlias in Popsicle colors, and magnolias with the fragrance of orange blossoms.
Almost within arm’s reach are the brawny shoulders of the biggest and most vigorous town on Highway 1 north of San Francisco: Fort Bragg. With a population of 7,000, the
town operates a commercial fishing harbor tucked into forested hills at the mouth of the Noyo River. A block off Main Street stands the depot for the vintage excursion Skunk Train, dating back to 1885, when it first transported loggers and freight. Foul exhaust fumes evoked the odious nickname the company has since shrewdly embraced. “Disneyland has Mickey Mouse, we have Mr. Skunk,” general manager Stathi Pappas said jovially about their mascot.
The oft-fog-blanketed and brooding northernmost 70 miles of the highway are little traveled: motorists typically cut over at Fort Bragg to U.S. 101. The road bends inland at the halfway point just above the squall-scoured palisades of rustic Rockport.
The dizzying drive delivers the most posted 10-miles-per-hour twists. It’s mechanical poetry interweaving the countless curves in a syncopation of acceleration and braking. You coil around ridge after ridge. The road curls in on itself and rises, only to drop again. You make your way up, mimicking a ladybug trying to cross a rose in bloom.
Your last descent is near the route’s end at the erstwhile logging camp Leggett, known for the drive-through “Chandelier Tree.” The towering redwoods in this area create a spreading canopy of arching branches over the storied highway. Five-fingered ferns and delicately flowering sorrel form a lush understory along rippling creeks, with dense thickets growing over fallen, Goliath-like logs. “They are not like any trees we know,” Steinbeck reflected in “Travels with Charley,” his travelogue documenting a road trip he made in 1960. “They are ambassadors from another time.”
For 650 miles, the thin ribbon of highway stretches ahead to the horizon, capturing your attention and unleashing your imagination. It reveals the natural splendor and a timeless spirit representing land and sea’s dramatic embrace. The route can inspire a dreamer’s poetic musing and an adventurer’s intrepid quest. The Highway 1 road trip is a rite of passage, and it reminds us that it’s as much about the journey as about the destination. •
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In the story “The Modern Homesteader” that appeared in the February issue, a photo caption incorrectly described the location of Jill Winger’s homestead. The homestead is located on the Wyoming prairie. American Essence regrets the error.
Co-Founder of Apple and HPU Innovator In Residence
mentoring students at High Point University.
HPU’s environment of excellence attracts CEOs, tech titans and global change agents who love mentoring students on the campus of High Point University.
Silver-set moonstones and more than 30,000 Swarovski crystals, placed one by one onto a hand-drawn design—those were the jewels that started it all. They adorned the pageant gown Karina Brez wore when she was crowned Miss Florida USA in 2012, which she designed and made with the help of her family, including her master jeweler father. Compliments from fellow contestants encouraged Brez to start her own jewelry collection the following year, combining her love for horses and her expertise as a certified gemologist to create elegant designs that became the talk of the equestrian world. In 2021, Karina Brez Jewelry opened a retail location in Palm Beach. KarinaBrez.com
What is the most essential piece of jewelry every woman should have?
Diamond studs. I know it’s nothing I invented, but they just do something to a woman’s face that’s classic, sophisticated, and glamorous, with the versatility to wear from day to night.
What is your most prized piece of jewelry?
My heart shape sapphire and diamond ring. I was fixated on it when I was a little girl working at my dad’s shop, and asked him to gift it to me when I graduated from gemology school. I have owned it for more than 20 years, and it is just as special each time I take it out of the safe.
Where do you get inspiration for your designs?
Horses, for many of them, but I also look toward nature and current trends. My vision behind my latest collection, “Horsea,” is a shipwrecked coin from long ago.
Your father and grandfather are jewelers from Ukraine; how did they influence your career path? My father wanted me to take after generations of jewelers and keep the name going. I rebelled and didn’t want to be given anything. I decided to become a graduate gemologist—almost making his wish come true, but also blazing my own path in the dying art of jewelry appraising. But there was no creative outlet for me, so on the side, I started to design. It wasn’t until adulthood that I realized I was born to be a jeweler; it was in my blood.
You’re also an ambassador for Horses Healing Hearts, a nonprofit that provides equine-as-
sisted therapy for children affected by substance abuse; what inspired you to work with them?
I started volunteering at Horses Healing Hearts just before I won my first pageant, before I was Miss Florida USA, before I was a business owner, and after I lost a friend. I see the tremendous 180-degree turnarounds many kids make, and the empowerment, confidence, and life-coping skills they can learn from being around horses.
What values have helped you succeed as a small business owner? Don’t take “no” for an answer. My persistence and determination have become my greatest assets. If I want something done, nothing stops me— except the time it takes.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
“Falun Gong is, in my judgement, the single greatest spiritual movement in Asia today. There’s nothing that begins to compare with it in courage and importance.”
Mark Palmer FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR“What made Falun Gong stand out from other qigong exercises and meditation practices was a moral system compassion, truthfulness, and forbearance— unmistakably Buddhist in origin.”
Arthur Waldron LAUDER PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
This book expounds upon the profound principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance. It focuses on a long-forgotten term called “cultivation,” and the importance of moral character on one’s path to spiritual perfection. The book explains the role of karma as the root cause of illness and tribulations, along with many other mysteries of life and the universe.
Zhuan Falun, the main text of the spiritual practice Falun Dafa, was a national bestseller in China in the 1990s, and has since been translated into over 40 languages. Find out why it has captured the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people in over 100 countries worldwide! FaYuanBooks.com
Scan the QR code with your phone camera to open our website, or visit:
EXPERIENCE the brilliance and majesty of China’s civilization before communism.
Exquisite beauty from the heavens, profound wisdom from dynasties past, timeless legends and ethnic traditions all spring to life through classical Chinese dance, enchanting live orchestral music, authentic costumes, and patented interactive backdrops. It is an immersive experience that will uplift your spirit and transport you to another world.
Join us for a night filled with courage and wisdom, light and hope...
I have reviewed about 4,000 shows, and none can compare to what I saw tonight.”
—Richard Connema, theater critic“A fascinating insight into what China’s culture used to be and what I hope one day will be restored to China.”
“ I encourage everyone to see and all of us to learn from.”
—Donna Karan, creator of DKNY
—Paul Behrends, consultant
—Edward McMillan-Scott, former Vice-President of the European Parliament
