(light music) - Production of Applause on Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation.

The Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

(light jazz music) - Hello, I'm David C. Barnett.

Welcome to Northeast Ohio's award-winning arts and culture show, Applause.

A recent Medina High School graduate is paying homage to service members who died in his hometown.

- [Narrator] Over 45,000 local veterans are buried at the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery.

United by their ties to the area, their service to our country, and by this tranquil place in Seville that serves as their final resting place.

Among those who come to pay these service members their respect is 18-year-old Hudson Louie, who just graduated from Medina High School.

He may seem like an unlikely visitor, but this teenager feels a deep connection to these men and women.

- It's very humbling, because each step you're walking into the, a new area of people who have just, again, laid down their lives to keep us free.

And sometimes I even forget what they've done, and I hope that your everyday American can at least take the time and understand what they went through.

And when we think we're going through hardships, just think about what they went through.

- [Narrator] Hudson's admiration for these veterans, and curiosity about who they were, has evolved into a passion project.

Over the last several years, he's researched and learned the stories of thousands of veterans from Ohio.

He's researched Devin Grella of Medina, who at the age of 21, died in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004.

- Devin was a Private First Class in the US Army.

Right out of high school he enlisted in the US Army, probably right after 9/11.

And he graduated from Medina High School in 2002, I believe.

He was in a convoy in Iraq and they were hit by an IED and he was one of the few that were killed there.

He has earned the Bronze Medal Star, the Purple Heart, and he was killed in action.

- [Narrator] Hudson wants to make sure people like Grella are honored by their alma mater.

So he went to Medina High School administrators with an ask.

Could they help him get plaques made for Grella and every service member who went to Medina High, who later died in service.

- He will have a plaque in the hallway of the high school, right in front of the library.

And he already has a picture there, but it's just a small picture.

And I just wanted to make it bigger so that when students walked by, they realized that he was one of, he was someone like us, you know, walked the same life as we did.

- In total, Hudson has prepared the plaque information for 24 Medina High veterans that died in service since World War I.

He's researched their lives, their military service, how they died, what medals they earned.

And he's found old photos of these veterans, either from family members or through archives.

And he's colorized the black and white military portraits.

Max Eaken was a Navy Sailor who served in World War II.

He trained at Great Lakes Naval Center in Chicago and enlisted right before he graduated from Medina High.

He died at the young age of 18, aboard the USS Bunker Hill, after two Japanese kamikaze planes bombed the ship, then crashed into it.

- The Commander, Captain Sites, I think, wrote to Max's father.

And he said that Max was one of the best Bluejackets you could have on board.

He was everyone loved him.

He always made everyone smile.

- [Narrator] Hudson takes comfort in knowing that although Eaken was buried at sea, somewhere in the Pacific, he's memorialized at the Western Reserve Cemetery and will be honored at his old high school too.

Over the years, Hudson's labor of love has demanded countless hours at the computer in his bedroom.

Pouring over different websites and archives and registries, even finding information through history videos uploaded on YouTube.

He's strung bits of information together to draw a more complete picture of who these people are and the time periods they hail from.

And Hudson has a special affection for the 1940s.

- It was a very interesting period.

I'm in the jazz band at my school, and my dad was in as a jazz drummer.

So he, I, I don't know if it came from him, but I'm very interested in like jazz music.

And I wouldn't say it's nostalgic, cause I haven't actually lived through that period.

But like, it's just the, I don't know, the old-time feel just sounds, it feels really cool just to be like, what if I lived back then?

It would be cool.

♪ Pardon me, boy ♪ ♪ Is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?

♪ - [Narrator] One of his all-time favorite tunes is Chattanooga Choo-Choo, by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

As for the look from these different eras, Hudson's learned the colors and styles of the uniforms and knows what the medals signify.

All of this detail has helped him turn old black and white photos of service members into colored ones.

It's a painstaking process that takes a lot of layering and about two hours to colorize one of these photos.

And with years of practice, Hudson's turned it into an art form.

- The nice thing about our son is that he, when he gets focused on a project, the amount of detail that he can go into and the amount of focus, the time that it takes to colorize a photo.

- Well, first of all, I'm just completely awed (chuckles) at the depth of his research and his grasp of the stories and the human element of it, right?

I mean, he knows it's not just, he's just not reciting facts and figures, but I mean, he knows the human story about what they were doing.

- [Narrator] All the photos and information Hudson gathers on these fallen veterans, he puts online and in archives, so that others can learn about them too.

Soon Hudson plans to merge his passions for history and video work.

He's going to DePaul University in Chicago to study film and television.

And he hopes to one day make productions like Band of Brothers, a highly acclaimed miniseries about the soldiers of Easy Company during World War II.

So maybe it's not a surprise that Hudson's quest to preserve these veterans memories started with a Disney Pixar movie called Cocoa.

In it, the characters explore the Mexican tradition of honoring the three deaths a person goes through.

One when you die, two, when your body is returned to the earth and three, when the last people who remember you are gone too.

- [Hector] He's being forgotten.

When there's no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from this world too.

- And it scared me that these guys could possibly go through the same thing.

Like Max Eaken, that we went through, he was an only child, right?

And his parents have passed away.

And I wanted to make sure that he still has someone to remember him and that maybe after I'm gone, he can be remembered as well.

- [David] A ceremony unveiling Hudson's plaques honoring these fallen service members will be held at Medina High School later this year.

The families of those veterans will be invited to attend.

(bright music) Recently, Northeast Ohio added a new museum to its vast collection of arts institutions.

It's called Wonder Cleveland.

It's located in a bit of an unconventional venue at the Great Lakes shopping mall in Mentor, Ohio.

It's an arts exhibition space built on interactive technology that immerses you in fun and adventure.

- It's a lot of motion sensor technology, whether it's you're playing pong with your Lego blocks, whether it's seeing the spaceman dance around on the stage and shoot stars out of his hands like that and emulating all of your movement.

Whether it happens to be the life-size Light Bright that takes up the whole wall.

All of those are kind of a virtual thing.

- [David] Upon entering Wonder Cleveland, you check your imagination at the front door.

As you're surrounded by sound effects, music and a collection of whimsical exhibits.

- You're here physically, enjoying it with your friends.

But of course, it's high technology.

So it's a virtual playground.

It's motivated by, how much fun can we produce in one environment?

That's why you see it's so eclectic because we just thought, oh, that sounds like fun.

Okay.

Well, can we do that?

Can we build this?

And it's all over the place for that reason.

- [David] Unlike most museums, at Wonder Cleveland, you're encouraged to touch, play and engage with the exhibits.

- A lot of hands-on activities I wasn't expecting, especially this Lego exhibit, which probably is his favorite thus far, but lots of opportunities for photo and video.

You know, I think there's a Cleveland Love sign over there.

That's always a favorite, you run into a Cleveland sign.

So lots of music, lights, just really fun and energetic.

- I like building the Legos.

And I also really like the jungle area.

- [David] The idea of an adventure museum began in 2019 when its founder, Jason Percival did a pop-up exhibit at the Great Lakes Mall, in collaboration with Cleveland's Ingenuity Fest, an annual celebration of the arts, technology, and innovation.

- [Jason] The way it began is that I actually, we opened up a Christmas themed pop-up experiential museum in 2019 and had such a positive response.

Eventually, the ownership group here approached me and then gave some good ideas.

And we said, okay, I think we can make this work.

- [David] Percival brings a background in special events to the new space.

- I've been doing events for ATP pro tennis, PGA golf, and large-scale concerts, for about 10 or 12 years.

This was something where it's indoors, it applies to everyone, every interest, every background, every age, everything, and it's open 365 days a year.

So from an event production standpoint, it mitigates risks and it just expands everything that you can do because our goal is just to have fun.

It's not to see someone hit a hole in one.

It's not to sell out all the tickets for an NBA finals game.

Our goal is just, what can we do to have the most fun with?

- [David] When COVID-19 struck, and the travel leisure and entertainment industry tanked, Percival decided it was a good time to launch Wonder Cleveland.

- I have two unbelievable partners who I've been working with for many years on our concerts.

So the two of us have been doing this kind of stuff together.

And then the concept for this sort of came out of the pandemic.

Believe it or not, that we were both hurting because there's no live events going on for the past year.

And we both had warehouses full of our stuff.

It was not going out.

And we said, well, why don't we build this in an environment that can be pandemic safe, where we can control the number of people coming in, where we can make sure that everyone who comes in is placed, you know, only 10 per hour or something like that.

So, made sense.

They brought a lot of stuff here.

I took all my stuff out and we just, we combined it all and built these beautiful exhibits.

And now, you know, we couldn't be more thrilled with how all this worked out.

- [David] The 17,000 square foot space includes a star-filled infinity room, selfie stations, and several motion tracking spaces, that allow you to play with games like virtual Lego building blocks and a giant Light Bright board.

- Everything's custom built.

So from the very first thing you see, the Cleveland sign out front, for instance.

We built that radio tower.

Like just took rods and bent them into shape and everything made it out of foam, created the hill scape that we wanted, and everything you see from that point on was custom built.

There's nothing in here that we bought from a catalog.

There's nothing that we said this looks cool, let's bring this in.

A hundred percent from the three of us, by hand.

- [David] Not all of the works are interactive.

Some, like the Dr. Seuss exhibit, are more contemplative.

- We have laser projection on every other pixel.

This needs to be something that you can just observe and enjoy and really get in a tranquil mood and really appreciate the art that goes into it.

- [David] To remain relevant, the museum plans to introduce new displays and bring in traveling exhibitions.

- [Jason] We want to do seasonal.

We want to do updates, and we want to do improvements all the time.

So, we'd like to grow this like trunks of a tree where every time it's more and more immersive, where you're going into another world, another dimension, every time you come in.

And so this is our starting point.

Everything here is experiential.

So I believe that's the next trend.

I think that it's going to be about the experiences.

I think it's going to be about the immersion.

So I, I feel like this is going to be the future of retail.

- [David] Coming up on the next Applause, we go looking for art, in Cleveland neighborhoods, using augmented reality.

And we give a tip of the hat to fashion designer, Mimi Holiday, who makes bonnets and fedoras from scratch.

Plus, we explore the work of documentary photographer Robert Frank, who captured 1950s America with his camera.

All this and more on the next round of Applause.

Mariners Inn is a treatment center and shelter in Detroit, Michigan, that recognizes art's ability to foster connections and heal pain and suffering.

Through art therapy, clients are given an outlet to express their feelings and embrace their creativity.

- I was in a dark place.

And as I was coming here, I could see a little light.

- We know people have problems.

They need help.

So this is a place where they could come.

We need places like this.

(gentle music) - This place always shows me how common we all are.

Regardless of age, race, background, where you grew up, it just shows you the connections we all have as human beings.

- I see the guys that come through here as people who've just been through a lot in life.

They've been through an incredible amount of trauma who haven't had the coping skills to deal with it effectively.

- [Lloyd] This is the kind of atmosphere that I wanted to be in because they treated me with dignity and respect.

- Mariners Inn helps men who are dealing with homelessness and substance abuse.

This is a treatment center and shelter.

So, they seek therapy.

Because a lot of times, words can't express what they're going through, especially with trauma.

So the art gives them a way to express what they've gone through.

- Art therapy is so important because it's a way to reconnect with the self.

We believe here at Mariners Inn that drug use and alcohol use is just a side effect of the larger problem.

We believe that the larger problem is disconnection.

And so through art therapy, through that form of expression, so much can come out.

- Well, I had a drug problem.

I had an addiction, and I was homeless and I seen myself going down, but I had the second chance to get myself together.

That's why I came here.

- I've had a problem, with addiction to drugs, for a while, and it's caused problems in my life, when I know I want to change, but that change is difficult, but I came to Mariners because I wanted help.

- Trying something new, and exposing them to the arts and art therapies, it's a risk.

And it's a way to show them like, hey, certain risks are good.

And they have an awesome payout.

- Lloyd is very sweet and he's used this creative process to really move through what he needed to get through.

- I love art therapy because I've been making masks, I've been making belts.

I've been making me leather bracelets.

It's a lot of things you could do down there.

The music she plays, and the fragrance that's been going on, it just soothes you.

And you know, it puts you in a different place.

- [Karianne] You can see how they use the art media to express what they're going through.

So I can use different art media to help push them in different directions.

As far as learning more about themselves.

We did a painting all about recovery.

So they write down a word or phrase that is helpful to them.

And then we did watercolor over the top.

So that media is very fluid.

So it kind of helps them to let go of needing to control something.

- It's not just about doing art either.

It's they come together and talk about what's going on in their lives too, and how it relates to the art that they're doing.

- So when Ryan first got here, he was really reserved, and he really thrives in the art room.

He's really good at using the art media to express what he's going through emotionally.

I always want them to leave here and know this is something that they can do on their own to give them a way to move through their conflict.

- Remember who you are.

Don't slip back into senility.

Move forward in the race.

Patience, stealth, speed, and agility Carry yourself with honor.

And some sort of civility.

- [Brittany] Everyone has a story, especially our clients, that they want to tell.

And so poetry is an excellent way to get your story out, to establish a voice, to reconnect with your voice.

- You've got to speak things into existence.

So when I write, I try to write the most positive thing that I can.

- We meet in the library.

We talk about our days.

We just kind of like soak up how we're feeling at the moment.

You know, this is like my break from my mind and my little stuff that I think it's so important.

Stuff that gets me down.

I come here and kick it with bros. We all have different experiences and puts mine in perspective.

Like, you know, just appreciation of being alive.

The best poetry is honest.

So this is a place that demands that you be honest about your life.

So you can come out of here as a better person.

- I refuse to let go of my addiction altogether.

I need some motivation to my heart will I tether.

- Guys are just sharing about regret, about love, about life, about authenticity.

Which I think was the theme today, which I really felt was just telling your own story and not judging someone else's.

- Mind tripping different ways am I coming or going.

I got a whole bunch of energy when you tell me you love me.

- They spent the time expressing themselves, getting proficient, and then they learn how to do it.

And they did it, and they executed it and they knocked it out.

I think that's beautiful.

(drumbeats) - The drum circle is really cool, it's something different.

And it teaches you kind of like focus and concentration.

- It's all about harmony, balance, connection, connecting with a rhythm.

(drumbeats) Our clients are so diverse.

They come from all walks of life.

And so that drum circle is a way to bring everybody together and connect with the pulse.

- Your drum is also a healing piece.

Here, we want it to really reach into the gentleman's soul and give them some positive energy to do this.

But it's important for them to understand that they are important no matter what they have been through.

So we try to push from the drumming aspect as positive energy in their lives.

(drumbeats) - You kind of got to step back and realize it's a kind of a team thing.

And it sounds good when everybody's playing together.

And on the same page.

- What I see in terms of their growth is that they really tend to be much more confident in themselves.

A lot of times, they've just been focused on the negative part of themselves and all the mistakes that they made.

And then they realize, through connecting with the arts, that they have this amazing creative side where they're able to create this beauty.

And so there's a, it's like, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

- If you don't see humanity in someone else, you look at someone else, or they're begging, we turn our noses up.

We keep walking.

This is a person, it's a human being, with a really valid, real experience in life.

And this place reinforced the fact that these are human beings.

These are men just like me.

And it's really important that we all learn and learn from each other and learn to love each other in a proper way.

- I'm thinking clearer.

I know I have a lot of responsibility.

It's not an end to this.

It's something that I have to continue.

- The staff and the other residents here have empowered me to like, think about what I want in my life and the things that I'm good at and talented at.

- They have so much hope.

And I love that.

They've taught me a lot about, just staying strong, and that it's possible to completely change your life.

- Well, I hope by them seeing me, I can influence and let them know you can stand up and be somebody.

- Recovery is real.

And it begins at Mariners Inn.

(gentle music) - [David] Perhaps overshadowed during the pandemic is the fact that this is the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival in America, sailing aboard the Mayflower from England.

As part of that commemoration, a full-scale replica, The Mayflower II, recently returned to Plymouth after a massive restoration.

Take a look.

- [Jared] In Plymouth Harbor, Mayflower II is the embodiment of promise.

A full-scale replica of the ship that delivered pilgrims to American shores, where they expected to establish religious freedom.

- It was a Greyhound bus of its era.

It was just a ship that a group of people had hired to get them to what they thought would be Virginia and ended up being New England.

- [Jared] Today though it's an indelible part of this nation's founding and on the 400th anniversary of that famous sailing Mayflower II, has just undergone a three-year, multimillion-dollar restoration.

- [Jared] What do you see when you look at the Mayflower II?

- The American story.

That, for me, Mayflower is a memory device and it is a symbol.

For someone that has direct family ties to that ship, it may mean one thing.

For an indigenous person, it may have another meaning.

- [Jared] The ship is operated by nearby Plymouth Plantation, where Richard Pickering is deputy executive director.

The historic site recreates life during those first precarious years, as the Pilgrims settled here.

Although, Plymouth Plantation's name is changing.

- We wanted to make certain that the Wampanoag voice, the indigenous voice, was as important as the English voice.

So we have become Plymouth Patuxet Museums.

- [Jared] Back to the Mayflower II.

It gleams once again, and more importantly, it's staying afloat, says captain Whit Perry.

- When I first took the job, before we did the restoration, the bilge pump would be coming on seven or eight times a day to pump out the water coming in.

And of course, the first, first rule of any boat or ship is keep the water on the outside.

- [Jared] The ship's restoration happened at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, where a team of shipwrights and artisans restored the ship's sails, wood, and metal parts.

Sometimes even using 17th-century tools.

- [Whit] No one was just coming to work to punch a time card.

Everybody took a vested interest.

Come on board Jared.

- [Jared] Like a kid, still excited to show off his new toy, Perry took me around the ship.

Pointing out the paint colors, bright combinations chosen so sailors could identify ships from afar.

And the tween deck, where more than 100 Pilgrim passengers were relegated for their 66-day crossing.

- It's kind of like, no umbrella drinks, and a Carnival cruise for those folks in 1620.

- So quarantined, but no social distancing.

- Exactly.

- [Jared] Perry points out where restoration has happened, like on this windlass, which hoists the anchor.

And where whole sections of the ship have been fully replaced.

An expedition all its own, with wood sourced from around the world - [Whit] We actually started coining the phrase from tree to sea.

We would start right with the log in the woods.

And one of my favorite parts was going out in the woods with a spray can to pick the trees right out of the forest.

- [Jared] Steering The Mayflower was nearly as complicated.

- You can see that we can't really see much out here at all.

So how do you steer the ship?

Certainly they would have had a magnetic compass, and the helmsman would be down here.

But if you look at this hatch grading, the officer of the deck would be giving steering commands from up on the aft deck.

- [Jared] Mayflower II was gifted to the US by England in 1957.

A thank you for American support during World War II.

It crossed the Atlantic then and set sail again on the open sea this summer, as it returned from Connecticut.

Perry captained the ship with a crew of 27.

- [Jared] Is it peaceful?

- Oh yeah.

It's all of those romantic sounds that we all know and love from movies of the creaking of the rigging, the wood working against each other as the ship moves like a living thing and twists and moves, which it's meant to do.

- [Jared] There is one sound though which Perry saves for the occasional visitor, who also happened to have emceed the ship's launch ceremony in Connecticut.

- Jared, thank you very much for showing an interest in Mayflower.

I think you should ring our bell for us, the Mayflower bell.

- Do you want to get down and all into it?

- What we're going to do, it's about one o'clock.

So that would be two bells on the sailor's watch schedule.

So if you'll give it a ding, ding, that will let the sailors know that it's one o'clock.

- All right, here goes.

(bell rings) (bell rings) - [Jared] One o'clock and all is well, and as it was.

- [David] And that's it for today's show, you'll find more arts and cultural programming online at arts.ideastream.org.

I'm Ideatream's David C. Barnett see you next week for another round of Applause.

- Production of Applause, on Ideastream public media, is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, the Kulas Foundation, the Stroud Family Trust, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.