- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(relaxed music) - [Narrator] Coming up next "Off 90," join us as we visit the Aurora Diner at the Steele County Free Fair and learn more about the eatery, then learn some history with author Andrew Wood as he talks with us about his father's role in working on the g-suit: an important technological advancement that continues to aid pilots today.

It's all just ahead "Off 90."

(spirited music) (spirited music continues) (gentle music) (soulful music) - I am Angie Jensen and I am from Aurora Lutheran Church, part of the Aurora Diner.

The diner started in 1969 and it was a suggestion to our church from one of the county commissioners.

They were looking for a church or an entity to have a sit-down diner for the barns.

Especially the dairy people, they didn't have anywhere to really come and eat 'cause there wasn't anything down in this end of the fairground, so they asked us, and it was three weeks before the fair, four weeks before the fair, and we had a construction person that was associated with our church that put it all together and got it up and running, and the first morning, people came through the door, and so we said it was, you know, God's blessing, that that was meant to be, and you know, 60 years later almost, it's still here.

(lively music) (lively music continues) We own the building, but we lease our ground from the Steele County Free Fair, so every year, we pay a lease to have it here, but the building is ours, and we do all of the fixing and repairs, that kinda thing all on our own.

There has been one additional addition made about 20 years ago that made the diner just a little bit bigger.

So, we felt we needed to seat more people and it fills up.

(laughs) It was a wise decision.

We don't keep track of tickets that way as far as how many we serve.

It's just based on the plates that go through.

On Sunday morning, we do a breakfast of all-you-can-eat pancakes and we keep track usually of how many plates we do then.

It's usually about 425 we do just for that breakfast, so I would say that we are definitely seating at least 500, 600 for breakfast every day, and we do start Monday before the fair, so we're here the whole entire week.

(lively music) The preparation starts actually about four weeks before the fair.

We make our own pies, and then they are hand-rolled, filled, everything, and then they're put in the freezer, and then during the fair, they're baked, and so we do that and then we make our own food each and every day.

We roast the roasts, we make meatballs.

Yeah, everything is right up on the grill as it comes to order, and so everything's done right here.

Years ago, the church families used to be big enough that we could man our own facility by everybody helping out.

Now, that the church is kind of dwindling in size a little bit, we actually have non-profit groups that come in and help us on a daily basis.

Some work half shifts, some work a full shift, and in return, we give their benefit back.

So, this year, it is, like, $350 for a half shift, $700 for a full shift, so it's a great way for them to earn some extra money too.

Then after the fair, when we get all of our stuff together and see what we've actually made for a profit, we do donate back to different non-profit organizations within the community as well.

Last year, I think it was almost $7,000 that we donated back, so not everything stays at the church, but then it's kind of a fund that we use to gain other things.

So, say a few years ago, we needed new, pew, what do you call 'em?

Cushions, and so that was a way for us to supply the funds for that, so.

(lively music) Every Wednesday for four weeks before the fair, we are here for about two and a half hours doing the pies and I am so thankful that the ladies know how to do the pie rolling of the crust because that is not my forte.

My forte is getting the supplies here, and then everybody else has their job, and it's amazing how some, if you don't know how to do anything with the pies, you can still be here putting the pies in the plastic bags and doing the twist ties, keeping track of what pies are there.

They're all labeled, so when we go to the freezer later on to pull 'em out to bake 'em, we know exactly what we're doing for the day.

It has been a blessing.

Everybody does their thing, you know, and it's very sad some years when we have lost some of our longevity people, that, for example, Bob Thurnau, one of our managers, his mom, Gladys, was one that always was here making potato salad.

Well, when she left us, we had to find somebody else that knew that gift of how to make the potato salad because it's a certain recipe and you know, you wanna make sure it tastes the same every year, and it worked out.

You know, people stepped up and, you know, we all did it.

I think that, and probably our hot pour cut beefs, that's kind of a standby.

We do have a couple of days where we have specials.

(lively music) COVID really pulled us away from our church families, and although this isn't always church-related, it's the majority of our main characters shall we say in this building are from the church.

We love working with each other, so during COVID when we weren't able to be together, it was like not having family, and we have a diner family that works really good together, and you know what happens during family time sometimes.

We don't always agree, but you work through those things and you talk it through, and it has been the best thing for the diner because you have to work those problems through.

We changed things up, like, because we weren't able to get enough people sometimes to actually help us through our shifts.

We've had to cut back some items that were probably not as popular, so we reduced our menu.

I just love the community here of, we have families that come every year, and say it is Thursday morning.

They will meet with 12 of their family members, and at the Aurora Diner, it's a date every single Thursday of the fair.

It means so much to this community that we actually have this building here, and at the end of the fair, everybody says, "Okay, do we do it again next year?"

and you know, I don't think it's really a question that, "Do we do it?"

It's like, "Yup, how will we do it next year?"

And we always wonder, are we gonna get those groups to help us, and God provides.

He really does.

He really does.

It's a lot of work, but my background is, you work hard to get what you want, and I just think I love seeing the success of this diner.

That's probably the fun part of it in the end is how successful we are and how everybody knows us.

You know, if you talk to the community, it's like, "Oh yeah, the Aurora Diner, the Aurora Diner," and it's not just a diner.

We do have a church.

(laughs) It's about five miles east of Owatonna and it's a country church, so it's just hometown there.

I have been to this, I mean, working with the Steele County Fair for a long time.

This is where I always fall back to.

This is most important to me for helping and getting, making it successful.

I've worked with the 4-H program a lot, I do work now down in the fair office as well, but if something is needed back here at the diner, this is where I come first, and it's important.

It's a very important part of me as well to make it successful.

I just hit the big 60 this year, and so, you know, you always say, but there's a lot more members here that are helping that are a lot older than I am, and for example, my mother-in-law, even though she can't physically be doing what she used to do, she's still part of it.

She's still observing.

She's making sure that what she's looking at, and, "There might be something not going on right there.

You better go get them some coffee, you better go do this," and it's great, and she still wants to be here, and like I said, she can't physically do it, but it's important that she still sees how successful this has been over the years that she's worked hard at it too.

(lively music) (lively music continues) So, I do have some people that actually travel quite a ways to actually come and work at the diner.

We had some teenage kids years past that their grandpa and grandma would come and work, and so they automatically came and they came back and washed dishes.

Well, my brother-in-law lives in Colorado now and he growing up was always at the diner, always helping, and he still comes back for the diner, and the last few years for sure, he's been helping again.

It's important to him to make it successful as well.

He comes to work it, and he does a lot with the grill and he does some washing of dishes, and he, you know, anywhere he needs to go to step in, he's here.

(lively music) (lively music ends) (relaxed music) (serene music) - My name is Andrew Wood.

Title of the book is "Life at High G-Force."

It's basically a biography and a memoir of my father, Dr. Earl H. Wood.

I wrote this book mainly because there's a lot of misconceptions about Earl.

He did not invent the the g-suit and he would've been the first one to say that, but what he did do, and his team, between he and Ed Lambert, Charlie Code, and E.J.

Baldus, they actually refined it.

(bold music) And that particular g-suit is now worn by every fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Forces.

He basically grew up on a 20-acre farm, which was just a little south and east of Mankato, Minnesota.

This is in the 1910s.

There was no running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no central heating, so it was a house that was heated by a kitchen stove and a wood-burning stove.

He grew up with five other brothers and a sister and they all had to work together to make that farm successful.

(subdued music) Ada was a Renaissance person, but also very Victorian, very proper.

She loved history.

She loved antiques.

He and my mother were on a date and they saw the movie "Dive Bomber"- (engine roars) (triumphant music) starring Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray, and the movie portrayed the difficulties that pilots were having in the newer aircraft.

Gravitational loss of consciousness, blacking out while flying the airplane.

- Give me, give me oxygen.

- So, Earl saw this and I know what went through his mind.

He said, "This isn't right."

He'd already been offered the job at Mayo, but turned 'em down.

And so when he saw that movie, the next day, he went in to his professor at Harvard University and he said, "You know, I'd like to start working on this problem at Mayo," and Dr. Cryer, who he was working with, said, "Well, Earl, if it means that much to you, go do it."

If he wouldn't have made that decision, I probably would've grown up in Boston.

Randy Lovelace, in my mind, is a hero.

He was working at Mayo in 1939.

Dr. Lovelace, he went over to Germany and he found out that there were at least 40 laboratories in Germany working specifically on aviation medicine, and he had to leave Germany early because what happened in 1939?

Germany invaded Poland.

War broke out.

(explosion booms) Randy had friends in high places.

He knew Franklin Roosevelt's personal physician and said, "Hey, we are in a world of hurt.

The Germans are far more advanced in aviation than we are," and so funding was made available, and so Mayo came up with an agreement with the U.S. government and a contract for $1 a year to do aviation research at Mayo.

Their biggest problem was to counteract gravitational loss of consciousness.

So, what happens when an airplane takes a very quick turn or it pulls out of a dive?

Pilot is sitting in a seat, okay, and the heart does not have enough force to pump blood up to head level, so if you go, oh, two to three times the force of gravity, okay, you have clear vision, okay?

Between four and five times the force of gravity, you don't get as much blood at head level and you start to lose vision because the eye is very sensitive to oxygen.

Anything above 5G, or five times the force of gravity, you will pass out, and it happens very, very quickly.

Seconds.

(subdued music) When Earl arrived, Mayo had constructed the largest human centrifuge in the United States and probably the world at that point.

It was 37 feet in diameter, okay, and on one end, they had a cockpit where they had the experimental subject, okay?

Other end, it was counterweighted, and this thing would spin around and they had it calibrated to how many G's they would be subjected to.

What made their experiments very unique is they were looking at various physiological parameters simultaneously.

Blood pressure, heart rate, blood level at head level, and so forth.

They also tested the individual's vision.

In the cockpit, they had lights on.

Had a peripheral light that would be out here and when that light came on, okay, the subject had a little joystick that would turn the light off so they knew when that person was losing peripheral vision.

They also had a light in the center and if they couldn't turn that light out, they knew they've lost total central vision and were about to go unconscious.

The other guy that saw the movie "Dive Bomber," David Clark, he owned a company and he had a product called the Straightaway, which is similar to cycling shorts that you see today, and what he did is he extended it down to the calves and then put football bladders around it, and he eventually got connected to the folks here at Mayo and said, "Hey, we'll test this thing on the centrifuge."

And so Earl and David Clark worked together to refine this air-filled suit.

They also worked on valves, so as, you know, the airplane went through a dive, the valve would open up and fill the suit with air, and that particular suit was actually very effective to put pressure at the calves, the thighs, and also the abdomen, okay, and that offered protection up to about 7G.

It increased the amount of blood that could get back up to heart level.

That's what the suit did.

Let me tell you about "Top Gun."

(console beeps) - I've got a good lock.

Firing.

(rocket whooshes) (explosion booms) Whoo, splash four!

- [Andrew] My father and I observed the first "Top Gun" movie, and he did not like it.

- Watch the birdie.

- You know, it was late '80s at the time, and it was the antics that they were doing.

(air whooshes) - Rich.

- He didn't see the second "Top Gun" movie, which I did, and I have to admit, they mentioned gravitational loss of consciousness, in fact, one pilot did have it, and they did a pretty good simulation of a pilot losing his peripheral vision.

(dramatic music) He was very data-driven, you know?

He was driven by facts.

You know, that's, I think, what made him a good scientist.

He was also very goal-oriented.

Earl had this way of finding people's strengths and overlooking their weaknesses entirely, and he would find the strength and leverage it, and these technicians stuck with him for 40 years.

That's unheard of these days.

(gentle music) (engine rumbles) Outside of work, Earl was an outdoor enthusiast.

He lived for hunting and fishing.

We would drive all the way up north of Lake Nipigon in Ontario, which is north of Duluth, on these roads that were just almost impassable, and the fishing up there was just fabulous.

He would invite his technicians and fellows to come along.

They weren't trips, they were expeditions.

The one thing that people don't realize is the measurement of oxygen saturation and the development of the pulse oximeter.

That came directly off of the centrifuge.

They did a series of experiments and were able to calibrate the amount of oxygen in the blood, and so that was the development of the pulse oximeter.

If you go into an ER, or an operating room, or the hospital, they clip a little thing onto your finger.

That's a pulse oximeter.

They use it to see if you're getting enough oxygen into the blood system.

It's just absolutely huge, and I think that's, from a clinical medicine standpoint, that's probably his biggest contribution and he's not given credit for it.

(solemn music) Commitment.

He was 100% dedicated to it, and for him, it was fun.

He got up every morning at four o'clock to review scientific manuscripts because at that time, he had total quiet in the house, but he also still had time for us kids.

You know, 6:30 would roll around and you know, he'd be up in our room.

"Roust out, you guys.

Time to go to school."

(laughs) Unlike most Mayo staff physicians, we did not live on Pill Hill.

We were in a small house, basically a three-bedroom house in the Kutzky Park neighborhood.

It was humble and I'm real happy we grew up there because we were with other families that weren't necessarily Mayo staff, and I really appreciate that now.

And when we asked for something new, "Can I have a new bicycle?"

"Can I have this?"

and the answer came back, "What's wrong with what you've got?"

I think all of us Wood kids ended up being fairly frugal.

We didn't have color television until, it was about 1969.

I watched the moon landing on a black-and-white television.

- [Neil] One giant leap for mankind.

(serene music) - My parents bought 17 acres near Rock Dell and they were planning, you know, to eventually build on it.

They went in together with my aunt and uncle and then they mortgaged their house.

You know, it was 160 acres.

Initially, there was a cabin on the property and some vandals burnt it down, and so from the insurance, they said, "Okay, we're gonna rebuild it."

It looks like a cabin that would be on some British countryside or something like that.

It's just a wonderful place to gather.

About 15 years ago, we took it all out of production and it's now being restored into native prairie.

(inspiring music) Earl planted about a thousand black walnut trees so there's a black walnut plantation out there.

(spirited music) What does Cedar Ridge mean to me?

Well, it is part of my legacy.

I don't belong to it or anything like that.

I just take care of it.

I can have a horrible, rotten day at work, but when I get to that gate and open it up, the stress goes away, you know, and I'm doing something different.

I wrote this book mainly because there's a lot of misconceptions about Earl.

The other reason is that I wanted to describe his leadership style of finding people's strengths and overlooking their weaknesses entirely, and his leadership style, again, is totally missing in today's world and I'd like to have the reader at least take a look at, you know, how he led his crew to all these successes.

And then another reason is it's an act of love.

(spirited music) And then last but not least, I wanted to prove that an aging dude with severe dyslexia can write a book.

(serene music) (serene music continues) (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (spirited music) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues) (inquisitive music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.