I’d like to celebrate some of the special people I interviewed while doing my weekend segments on WISH-TV in 2019.
Gregg Bell is 90 and still practices dentistry and is director of that department at Logansport State Hospital. But wait, there’s more. In 1953, Bell won the Olympic gold medal in long jumping in Melbourne, Australia. When I interviewed him, I asked to him to show me the 26-feet, 5.2-inch distance that won him first place. Greg eyeballed the floor and walked it off within a quarter of an inch.
Gary Varvel is one of the few remaining nationally syndicated political cartoonists in the country. He is now retired from the Indianapolis Star but offers his work from his website. Gary invited me to his home to see how, with the help of a high-tech software program, he creates his award-winning drawings. I seldom agreed with Gary politically, but there is no arguing with his creativity. He also did a caricature of me. I love caricatures. I don’t seem to get any older in them.
At 18 years old, Carmel resident Ashton Gleckman wrote, filmed, edited and produced an incredible documentary about Holocaust survivors which was featured this year at the Heartland Film Festival. He learned to do all this from YouTube videos. Not to brag, but from YouTube, I learned how to use dental floss to get a stuck ring off my stubby fingers.
Senior pickleball player Ralph Fowler is the star of the Monon Center pickleball league, and I was there with TV cameras to surprise him for his 90th birthday. He plays every bit as well as people half his age. He beat me in a game. I’m sure I could have beaten him if there had been a re-match, but I was too tired to play again.
Lonnie Bedwell lost his vision in 1997 when his best friend accidentally shot him during a hunting trip. The story of his adventures while blind include kayaking down the Colorado River, climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and skiing down the world’s most challenging slopes. “I wish I had my sight back,” Lonnie said during our interview, “but I wouldn’t trade the last 23 years for anything.”
Kenny Sailors died in 2016. He was credited as the player who introduced the jump shot to basketball in the 1930s. I interviewed Jake Hamilton, who produced a documentary about how Kenny Sailors changed the face (and legs) of how basketball is played. Kenny is not in the Basketball Hall of Fame, but he should be. The documentary should give him a better shot, just like he gave basketball.
Dr. Richard Moss, author of A Surgeon’s Odyssey, tells the story of how he (a Jasper head and neck surgeon) traveled across Asia — with extended stops in Bangkok, Nepal and Bangladesh — to treat the locals, operating on people with almost unspeakable deformities. Stymied by limited resources and a the challenges of diverse cultures, his story deserves a full documentary feature film, not just a 10-minute interview with me.
Finally, Mike Pappas provided me with one of my favorite experiences from my 40-year career on TV. He and his staff at Boyle Racing built an exact replica of the 1940 Maserati that Wilbur Shaw rode to victory in the 1940 and 1941 Indianapolis 500s. I drove the single-seater around the track, nearly topping 25 mph. I never got lost. I never hit the wall. And I never got out of first gear.
Most of these stories are available on the WISH-TV website or can be googled with my name and the guest’s name.
