(instrumental music) - [Jim] Struggling restaurants, hungry people, pandemic problems with a pandemic solution.

- [Aaron] There's no more of an important time than now for us as a community to give to each other.

- [Jim] He talked General Motors into lending him a brand new Corvette for a brand new show on a brand new public TV station called KETC.

It was a turning point in our history and in his very long life.

- It was an adventure.

It really was an adventure.

It was the new game in town.

(upbeat music) - [Jim] His interests were as wide ranging as his artwork.

I look at the Pulitzer Heart Foundation's recent exhibit of the work of Terry Atkins.

That and cute kittens, what's their story?

Well, it's all next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr and we're gonna start off with a what if story.

Actually Gabrielle Hays story is about a woman who saw a couple of pandemic related problems and wondered, what if?

What if struggling restaurants and hungry people (instrumental music) - [Gabrielle] When COVID-19 hit like many cities across the country, the streets of St. Louis city and County became virtually empty.

That's thanks to stay at home orders aimed at stopping the spread.

It also meant millions of service workers would not be at work.

Something that didn't sit right with Elizabeth Kniep.

- It was Thanksgiving actually.

I knew that we were gonna have a nice meal and I had been really concerned about my restaurant friends, people I've worked with for a long, long time.

I started thinking, what can I do to help them?

And I also started thinking about the folks who didn't have Thanksgiving coming to their table.

- [Gabrielle] Original plan was pretty simple.

- What if I took what I would normally do as a charitable donation for the year and I would like buy out the restaurant for an evening and pay them what they would normally make and have them deliver food.

- [Gabrielle] But over the course of several weeks, that idea blossomed into Community Carry-out.

- Community Carry-out is actually a fund, a charitable fund that's being hosted by the St. Louis Community Foundation.

The fund itself provides grant opportunities for restaurants and caterers who were struggling during the pandemic.

- [Gabrielle] The restaurants then take the funds to help with operating costs.

But half goes to making meals for people in the community.

- Kingside dinners, one of several restaurants who are taking the funds and making more than 100 meals for those in need.

And that is each week.

- When you can get... You're given a way to give back to your community and it also helps your employees, there's nothing better - [Gabrielle] Owner Aaron Teitelbaum says it was a no brainer.

- When it comes to giving back I mean, there's no more of an important time than now for us as a community to give to each other.

- [Gabrielle] With nearly one in four families experiencing some type of food insecurity during the pandemic, Aaron says that support is important now more than ever.

- It's the right thing to do.

That is just how I was raised.

- [Gabrielle] Each week for four weeks, his restaurant in Clayton made meals like these to donate to a local organization.

They cook the food, packet it and deliver it.

One group Community Carry-out benefits is the Eagle's nest.

- So our organization is a transitional living facilities for homeless male veterans.

We have a congregating area that we can house up to 26 veterans.

- [Gabrielle] The pandemic meant that number dropped to 15.

It also meant getting food would be hard for several months.

- People were afraid of not having.

And so as a result of that as a transitional living center, we ended up not having some of the things that we needed because there was nothing that we could pay for.

- [Gabrielle] Director Gina Walker says the most expensive item on their budget was food.

So getting accepted into Community Carry-out really helped.

- We had our first dinner actually last Thursday and it was Mostaccioli, and they gave us way more than enough to feed 30 people.

- [Gabrielle] But for her residence, it's more than just a meal.

- When you can hear the veterans in the dining room area laughing and talk, but to just hear them laughing and joking over food.

- [Gabrielle] It's a moment that gives them all a sense of normalcy.

- It gives them normalcy.

It gives them a sense of what family is, cause we are a family.

This is their community.

- [Gabrielle] And together they find purpose in what's on their plate.

- [Gina] We're holding hands and we're connecting.

- [Gabrielle] Connecting is something Gibron Jones.

says is necessary.

But for him the mission goes a little deeper.

- I've I've always kind of known that there's been a need for healthier food in the city.

- [Gabrielle] He's the founder of HOSCO Shift.

And given the amount of people they help weekly.

- We're up to about 5,000 meals a week now.

- [Gabrielle] Getting a little help, makes a big difference.

- There's been an increase in the amount of need for food or at least we've uncovered additional need for food.

- [Gabrielle] So how important is Community Carry-out?

Well, to answer that question you have to acknowledge the power of food.

How it keeps us alive.

- Need for food is great here in the city, but the need for quality food is actually even greater.

- [Gabrielle] How it brings us together.

- It kind of it reminds you of what a holiday is like every day.

- [Gabrielle] And how much better it makes us want to be.

- And if you're a person in this town who can boost someone up, you might as well, it feels really good.

(instrumental music) - I don't know if Sonny Fox qualified as the most interesting man in the world, but I count him as one of the most interesting man I ever met.

He just died at the age of 95 and he was a former employee of this TV station.

And when I say former, I mean like 67 years ago.

Sonny Fox was one of the bright young men and yes, they were mostly men who are hired to, well, if not invent, at least figure out what public television could be.

- Hi, my name is Sonny Fox, some of you may remember me way back in 1954 when I started a program on this pioneering television station - [Jim] He wasn't in St. Louis very long, but when Sonny Fox came back to St. Louis over the years, he was always happy to talk about the early days of television.

After all, we gave him his start in TV and in some ways he helped give us our start in TV.

(upbeat music) When we first went on the air, educational television to a large extent meant broadcasting traditional classroom teaching.

But we knew we could do more and what we decided to do was an afterschool children's program.

- [Reporter] That's why he's called The Finder.

(dramatic music) - That's 4,000 years ago?

- Yes.

They invented the rocket.

- With the same kind of a principle?

- The same kind of a principle.

It looked ahead a little different shape, but let's try to look at this one.

- [Jim] Sonny Fox had answered an Ad, came to St. Louis and was hired to be The Finder.

- It was an adventure.

It really was an adventure.

It was the new game in town.

And the great thing about television in those days was nobody could tell you what you couldn't do.

Because nobody had any idea what you could do.

And there was no money involved.

There was no, you know, there was... Nobody was worrying that he would blow $5 million with a bad show, something like that.

So I left alone.

Then they said, "Okay here's the studio.

"Here's 45 minutes.

"Here's no production budget.

"Here's the cameras.

"Do a show."

- [Hummingbird] Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox.

- That sounds like Henry the hummingbird, my friend.

- I think this is probably a great definition of crossbar.

Here I am in St. Louis and it was the second year the Corvette was being assembled in St. Louis.

Caught up the man who was in charge of distribution of Corvettes in this area.

I said, "Here's the deal, "give me a Corvette for a year.

"I will feature every day at the opening "for a program that's gonna be seen on the station "that's not yet on the air "that's an educational station "and a show that's aimed at six to 12 year olds, "that's the deal."

And for some strange reason, the man said, "Okay."

I had a Corvette.

(instrumental music) - [Jim] He didn't stay long not because he wasn't good, but because he was too good.

The Finder was shared with public TV stations in other cities and he was soon hired away to New York.

He hosted CBS prime time, $64,000 Challenge game show.

And he was fired, not in the cheating scandal that came later, but for accidentally reading an answer instead of the question.

(instrumental music) He's best remembered by a generation of New Yorkers as the host of the children's show, Wonderama.

He would go on to be an NBC vice president, do all kinds of things, meet all kinds of people, too many to list here.

But the public remembers him as a TV personality.

- Well, I'm a Finder and this week is the-- - [Jim] But Sonny Fox was to a much greater extent, shaped by what came before that first TV job in St. Louis.

- I have lived through what, I've lived through a depression.

And I mean, personal depression, I mean the depression.

I lived through World War II, barely, but I made it.

- [Jim] In World War II, he was captured by the Germans in the battle of the bulge, put in a POW camp, but he was passed over when other Jewish soldiers were separated out and sent to a slave labor camp.

Many never came home.

- When I came out of the other end, I was an entirely different person because I found out enough about myself to walk out of there and say, "Okay, "you think you're going to scare me?

No."

I've gone through a career where I've had to... Where I failed many times, $64,000 Challenge being the most egregious in terms of the public perception of failure.

So one of the things I've learned is you have to be able to be prepared to fail, if you're gonna take risks.

And I advocate, if a door opens, walk through it.

Maybe there's a trap door waiting for you.

On the other hand you may find some extraordinary people and things that you would never have found if you'd stood on the outside saying, "I don't know if I wanna go there."

So my feeling is I'll walk through the door.

(dramatic music) When I took this job here at Channel Nine, I had never been in front of a camera before the audition.

I had never wanted to do children's programming, that's not where I started out to go.

So I said, "Yeah, I'll walk through that door."

And wow that it changed my life.

- Well, hi.

Well, it looks like everything's all set to show you what we found this week.

You know I spend-- - We tried stuff, it didn't work.

We tried stuff, it did work.

Some work, some worked better.

We tried to bring people in from outside and see... And we didn't... Not every moment was successful and not everything worked.

♪ On a tree by a river ♪ Our little ton tit ♪ Sang willow ♪ Tit willow ♪ Tit willow - But it gave us our laboratory and our freedom without the pressures one would feel today to get it all right.

We didn't have to get it all right.

First of all, nobody knew what all right even felt like.

So that was great fun.

That was great fun and a great adventure - [Actor] Hey Sonny, over here.

- Well, what do you know about hummingbird.

- [Jim] In those early days, doing The Finder there were no ratings to tell you who, if anybody was watching and after they'd been on the air a while they decided to do a sort of field trip and invited kids and their parents out to join The Finder at Onondaga cave - And found that there were maybe five or 6,000 people out there at the Onondaga caves, all our minds were boggled.

We really did not know.

It was the first time I understood number one, that we had an audience but more importantly, that we had the power to move people.

We had the power to get them out of their homes away from their television sets and actually make them go somewhere of a nature like the Onondaga cave.

That was the beginning of what I think is a sort of a lifetime arc of a challenge of how to use the power of television for more than just selling products.

- [Jim] Sonny Fox died in January of COVID related complications.

He was 95.

He'd led a full life, a fascinating life.

He had done so many things, but in his short time in St. Louis, he had taken on a challenge and he helped define a commitment that continues today.

- Oh yeah, we were the pioneers but in effect, you're still pioneers here.

(gentle music) - The pandemic has forced a lot of cultural institutions to temporarily close their doors.

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, for example had devoted its space to the work of a prominent African-American artists.

And it extended the run and allowed small groups by reservation to see it.

But a lot of people missed it.

Fortunately Ruth Ezell was not one of them.

(instrumental music) - [Ruth] The art of Terry Atkins is a symphony of form, film, history and more.

Atkins was also a musician.

And he referred to his projects as recitals.

So it's only fitting this exhibit at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation is titled Terry Atkins resounding.

Stephanie Welssberg is the Pulitzer's associate curator.

- He said in his work that his quest was to make sculpture as theorial as music was and music as physical as sculpture is.

So that idea plays out in many, many of his works.

- [Ruth] Works like last trumpet created in 1995.

A tribute to his late father, last trumpet is actually four trumpet like sculptures Atkins called Acraphones.

- They're 18 foot long horns that are made from a combination of parts of sousaphones and trumpets.

And they were played many times throughout Atkins life by members of his performance group called the Lone Wolf Recital Corps.

- [Ruth] A lone Wolf bass drum is part of a sculpture inspired by a civil rights March in New York city more than a century ago that had a connection to East St. Louis.

- The work muffled drums is from a recital dedicated to W.E.B Du Bois and the title references the silent protest parade of 1917 which the New York times described thousands of people marching through the streets, demanding equal rights and racial justice to the beat of muffled drums.

And that protest was in part inspired by the 1917 East St. Louis riots in which numerous black residents were killed at the hands of a white mob.

In addition to the 40 some works by Atkins that we have on view, we're also really excited that we were able to bring together over 100 objects that he collected and lived with that informed his thinking and his artistic practice.

So we have almost 20 instruments that he collected from around the world.

He was an avid collector of musical instruments.

He often played these instruments and lived with them in his home.

And we also have dozens of his books.

He collected books in multiples and was incredibly inspired by them.

Often times use them as a point of departure for his works.

- Atkins created his 1993 sculpture high point from rusted railroad steaks and plates he found near Greensboro, North Carolina.

The piece was inspired in part by Atkins interest in the network of trains that transported goods from the regions furniture, textile and coal industries.

Along the train route is the North Carolina city of high point where one of Atkins musical idols, John Coltrane grew up.

The legendary jazz saxophonist is paid tribute in Terry Atkins piece, titled Infinity, which includes dozens of copies of one of Coltrane's albums nestled in a vintage trunk.

Atkins works have been exhibited at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and other notable museums.

The Washington DC native died of a heart attack in 2014 at the age of 60.

At the time, he was a highly respected professor of fine art in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

- I really miss working with him on his projects and-- - [Ruth] Matthew Neff directs the undergraduate programs in fine arts and design at university.

Neff was a colleague of professor Atkins and a former student of his.

- He would describe his research as an artist as a way to kind of, sort of open up history and sort of bring to life these varied histories.

- [Terry] This is a piece called divine mute.

- [Ruth] That's the voice of Terry Atkins speaking at the Smithsonian in 2013 about this sculpture inspired by one of America's most prominent abolitionists.

Divine Mute was exhibited both at the Smithsonian and the Pulitzer.

- [Terry] What I tried to do is to make a symbolic body of work in installation setting that pays tribute to the aspects of John Brown.

So I guess you could say it's an abstract kind of portraiture.

- [Ruth] It's that perspective that has cemented Terry Atkins legacy in the world of modern art.

(instrumental music) - There's obviously still a lot going on with this pandemic, the vaccines, jobs, schools, the economy and then there's the pet population.

Kara Vaninger stories is about people who are volunteering to open their homes to adopt and to foster cats and dogs.

It's about the challenges.

And it's about the benefits.

- I started volunteering with Tenth Life, initially I was just going to clean the kennels and be at the space where the public would come in and talk to them about the cats and when COVID-19 happened, they sent out kind of an urgent email asking for anyone that would be willing to take in cats.

And we took in Chicken and Duck.

- [Kara] As rescue shelters all over the United States began to scale back on staff and service hours, an army of fosters stepped up to give the animals a safe place to stay until they found a forever home.

(instrumental music) - Having plenty of free time.

It just kind of gave me a sense of purpose.

I really respect Tenth Life and all the people there and I just really wanted to help make a difference and kind of ease the pain of them having to close down facility.

- [Kara] Sibling, Chicken and Duck found themselves in a foster home with three other cats and a dog.

In situations like this, giving the new additions, their own space and a slow introduction to the other cats, helps them to ease into an unfamiliar environment.

- I don't think all fosters probably will get acclimated to the home that they're living in.

You know, that's kind of not the goal.

The goal is to show them off in and help get them adopted.

- [Kara] But Chicken and Duck had other plans.

Very quickly they made themselves right at home.

And I think within like two weeks, we decided to adopt them and make them part of our big family so.

- [Kara] Tenth Life main focus is on cats with special developmental or medical needs.

And that includes orphaned or feral kittens.

This year COVID and kitten season hit at roughly the same time bringing veteran caregivers A.J.

and Ben Trujilio back into action.

- This was the right time.

There's no bad time, but this was especially good.

- Neonatal kittens tend to need extra time and that can be really difficult when we're both working full time.

This was a great opportunity because we're home.

- There're Three kittens right now, two of which are special needs and need that extra hands-on attention that we're happy to give.

- [Ben] The grove hold backwards.

So they need to be stretched.

- [Kara] And so you do a little kitty yoga.

- [Ben] So we kind of just stretch her.

(instrumental music) - They are fantastic.

We, I mean, they bring us so much joy.

A whole little individuals with quirks and peculiarities.

- [Kara] Even when your household has a basket of kittens to focus on, this season of increased togetherness does have its ups and downs.

- We're home way more than we ever were before.

So maybe we're all getting a little overexposed (laughs).

- As a team working together, overcoming some of the interpersonal challenges that arise from this joint endeavor is, I would say makes us better as partners.

(instrumental music) - [Kara] Although nurturing these tiny creatures can be a joy, it's also a challenge.

- [A.J.]

They are so fragile.

- They can be healthy and awesome one day and a few hours later, they can be in crisis.

So you really have to stay on top of them, weigh them every day and just make sure that they're on the right path.

As a foster you get to take advantage of the resources of the charity.

So they'll provide food and they'll provide veterinary care.

And you're just providing a home and making sure that you're spending time paying attention to the animal and socializing the animal.

- Socialization is vital, not only to the behavior of the dog or the cat, but to the successful integration of the animal into their adoptive family.

- You don't necessarily know what background they've come from, what traumas they've had in their life.

Don't expect to have the perfect pet right off because they need time to decompress.

I mean, they've come from somewhere that they don't know.

Now they're with people that they don't know.

They have to learn that it's a safe place.

- I can tell you when I met Bryson the first day he was ruined.

He was just so dejected.

- [Kara] Bryson was an emergency rescue and it was Matt who answered the call as a first time foster for Gateway.

Both had recently gone through some rough times.

- My wife and I bought the main house in 17.

She got sick in 18, spent 300 days in hospital.

She didn't survive it.

She passed on Christmas Eve and house was pretty, pretty big now.

- [Kara] Hoping it would ease his loneliness, Matt's daughter had encouraged him to take in a foster just as shelters were beginning to ask for help.

- He came home with me and I just love this dog (laughs) I do.

But my job was to get him adopted.

- [Kara] Outdoor meet and greets between the animal and potential adopters is an important step from foster home to forever home.

- The second one, I thought he was perfect.

Two little girls, big backyard, all fenced.

Oh man my stomach was just in knots.

I was like, "Oh my gosh, they're going to say "can we keep him?"

And they never did.

I was driving back home.

I'm like, "Oh, thank God that didn't."

(laughs) And I think within two days of that, that's when I adopted him.

Later I looked back, it was actually Kathy and my anniversary.

- [Kara] Empty shelters don't just mean empty kennels.

When an animal is given a home, it gives back.

- No matter what's going on in your life, sadness, heartache, fun, happiness, joy, they live it all with you and they bring it all to you.

- A Lots of things are stressful right now in the world and even work and being at home, it's difficult.

One thing my fiance and I talked a lot is how awesome it is to always have a cat or a dog in the room.

They're all therapy animals to me so.

- Even when your motivation might come from a place of fear or uncertainty, if you can turn that into positive action to like in the smallest way, it counts.

- It's incredible for you.

It's incredible for the pet It will be a life-changing event for both of you.

You both need each other, you just don't know it.

(upbeat music) - And that's living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Kirchherr and we'll see you next time.

(instrumental music) - [Narrator] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan Charitable Foundation.

And by the numbers of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music)