From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio.

PBS Kansas presents Harrisburg's People life's road has its ups and downs.

Sometimes it's smooth, sometimes it's bumpy, and there are joys and sorrows around every turn.

Join us for another ride along the Hattiesburg Highway, where there are lessons to be learned along every mile.

And we start with Peg Baker, a medical student on the cusp of a bright career who turned the delicate art of needlepoint to help her carry the growing weight of a world that can so easily overwhelm.

Then there's the story of Bobby Johnson.

He spent his days smoothing out rural roads while fighting a losing battle against the junk and disrespect left behind by others.

We'll also meet Dolores Dick, the determined author who refused to let the gatekeepers of the publishing world stop her from seeing her name in print.

And we visit the work bench of Glen Crow, one of the last repairmen of his kind.

Plus, the story of the flag Lady of Fredonia, whose devotion to a giant symbol of freedom took on new meaning in the wake of a national tragedy.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Larry Bird.

I'm Susan Peters.

All these classic stories from the Hattiesburg vault.

They're cued up and ready to roll.

Another half hour I've had about people start right now.

These stories are like old friends.

Their lives radiate from the screen like prophets of the past.

They were teachers, but not in a classroom.

Instead, they taught about life to those around them who cared to listen.

And I was their student.

The pursuit of a medical career is a grueling journey, one that often demands every ounce of a person's strength and spirit.

So when I met Peg Baker in 2010, she was balancing that intense pressure with the quiet solace of her needlepoint art.

It was more than just a creative outlet.

It was Peg's way of coping with the stresses of a life that felt increasingly heavy.

And she did it with a sense of humor and reflection, giving no indication of the despair that would later befall her.

That's a good space for working.

It's quiet in Peg Baker's workroom.

Quiet concentration is the norm.

I would describe it as a really warm, friendly space.

Peg is an artist who now works with cloth.

Making the artwork has been really important because it's an effort to really hold on to an important part of my life that I could easily lose touch with.

And I'm just going to have to relax and completely let me hold it up for you.

After years of work, she will become doctor Peg Baker 126 over 78.

Now she utilizes art to relax, making works of cloth like these pieces, all related to medicine, have always made things, and I'm very tactile.

I like doing things with my hands.

I find it very comforting.

In this handkerchief peg created.

There are brain cells that surround the words with an apron and a heart.

Doctor could love an arrow through the heart.

And an electrocardiogram that says, Cupid was my cardiologist.

Or how about this one?

X and Y chromosomes.

A perfect handkerchief set.

We all have ways of coping with the stress and the difficult parts of our lives.

And I'm very fortunate that for me, I had this background in art, and it's something that comes easily, and it's a very natural way for me to sort of process the rest of my life.

The rest of her life will primarily be medicine.

But before that she was a sculptor making works of art like this.

She had no background in math and science, but one day she had a conversation with a friend.

I said, if art doesn't work out, there's always medical school.

And I have no idea where that came from.

But it was the idea that wouldn't go away.

And shortly after that conversation, I started talking to friends who were in medicine saying, what do you do all day?

What do you like about it?

What don't you like?

I started doing a lot of research.

And within six months, I was taking classes to get ready for medical school.

But with her art as her creative outlet, she works in both worlds.

And a little medical humor helps cut the tension and make for good art.

I call this one Boys Night Out.

Oh, they're just a little naughty.

So with husband Larry Schwab, an artist and photographer in his own right.

Peggy continues to pursue her dreams of becoming a primary care physician while maintaining her creative outlet through art.

Art that brings focus and calm to an otherwise hectic life.

I feel that they balance each other really well and help keep me sane.

Peg went on to work as an internist.

She ran her own practice and provided primary medical care to patients in Wichita, and she did that for seven years.

Then, tragically, in 2019, she took her own life at age 47.

Now, Peg's death brought the attention of the struggles of depression and burnout that often go unseen and unspoken in the medical community.

And it's so true that doctors, nurses even are all under incredible pressure, incredible pressure.

And we as patients, we don't see that because we're only with them for a few minutes and we never see that.

But for her.

And when I was doing the story, it was no hint, no hint, no hint of anything in the story.

As you saw, she was happy.

And, you know, she did fun little things and I never detected it at all.

Unbelievable.

We do have an update from Peg's husband.

Her husband's name is Larry, and he was, of course, shocked and devastated by her suicide.

Larry says she did a very good job of masking her despair, and he is hoping that sharing her story, letting us run the story, might draw attention to the tragic reality of depression and how it can affect the most unlikely of people.

Depression is one of the hardest diseases, in my opinion, because you can't go to the local doctor's office and say, give me a pill, give me something to to cure my disease or help my disease, or help the symptoms.

We're getting to understand it more, but we have to understand depression and anxiety and mental illness a lot, lot more than we do now.

We do.

And the thing is, you think you'll detect it if someone in your family or someone who you're close to, you think you'll see it.

You won't.

It just creeps up there and all of a sudden there it is.

There it is.

And it's so sad what happened to her.

She would have been a great artist.

And if you're affected by depression or you know of anyone has seek help.

There is help.

There is good therapy and frankly, there are good drugs for depression too.

So seek help.

All right.

Now on to the open roads of rural Kansas.

There are often thought of as a refuge of peace and quiet.

But from the cab of his road, grader Bobby Johnson had a front row seat to a growing problem, and he was losing his patience with the junk people left in his path.

I'm kind of my own boss.

Mad.

All it takes to do this job probably is, an awful lot of patience and a little bit of common sense.

Bobby Johnson makes your dirt roads smoother.

There's a lot of, pride in what goes in for this job out here.

Johnson's job is to take care of Gypsum Township roads.

He does, but he, like others who live and work in the country, is tired of picking up after the rest of us got another one.

Looks like.

Somebody just had a replacement and got a new water tank.

Gave us the older.

Somebody got to pick it up and I'm the guy that that gets to do that.

If I wanted to be a trash collector, I'd be riding on the back of a truck somewhere.

We might as well just ride free dumping on the on the road up there at the end of the night.

They do it all the time.

The country is supposed to be serene, calm heads, balls roasting in the autumn, sun leaves blushing at winter.

Instead, it's a couch with road rot.

I didn't start this job to be a trash man.

I shouldn't have to.

Shouldn't anybody have to pick this stuff up?

People ought to take care of their own trash.

Pay dump charges.

Like.

Like I have to.

You have to like everybody has to.

That's that's decent.

The county.

The county didn't seem to want to do anything with prosecuting anybody that does it.

I think there's fines for for littering, but I've never heard of anybody ever paying a fine for litter.

At the Gypsum Township work facility, the sign of the times is not on the wall.

It's trash talk.

Where there's a dirt road, there's always trash in the dishes.

Yeah.

Anything from refrigerators to old furniture.

It's happened.

It's happened for years, and I wish we could get some help.

Whatever people can't get rid of easily, they just take it out to the country and discard it down right?

Tires and anything that costs money to discard, even leaves and tree limbs from the city, find their home on the township's property.

Caught one guy doing it, one time.

I said, you know what?

I said?

You didn't want that in your yard.

We don't want it, NAS.

I said, you're going to clean all that up.

He said, well, maybe I am, and maybe I ain't.

I went back to greater and got a ranch.

I said, yeah, yeah he did.

People just think they can do whatever they want to.

And as long as they get away with it, they'll continue to do so.

In the years since, Bobby has testified in court and helped convict people of illegal dumping.

It happens all the time.

But that didn't keep the problem from continuing.

Bobby retired just a few years ago, and his son, Bob junior took over the job, and now he is dealing with all the junk that people are still dumping along the roads.

I mean, you come, I drive to Halstead a lot.

I see the junk on the side of the road.

Why do people do this?

I don't know.

You know what?

I think it's because it costs to dump junk at the landfill, and they just don't want to pay.

I mean, that's no excuse.

No excuse.

I know no excuse at all, but we got to thank Bobby for taking over.

His dad's doing a great thing.

Thank you.

Bobby, in the year 2000.

The dream of becoming a published author usually meant navigating a brutal gantlet of New York editors and endless rejection letters.

Well, Dolores Dick was tired of being rejected, so she took matters into her own hands.

At an age when many would shy away from the complicated early days of home computing.

She bypassed the gatekeepers and brought her novel to life on her own terms on Ahead of Her.

Tonight I receive a lot of letters from people, people who have hopes, people who have dreams, people who want to accomplish something with their life.

Well, we thought we'd do this a little differently tonight.

I want to read you a letter from Dolores Dick.

She's an aspiring writer, and she writes, Dear Mr.

Hatteberg picture a typical little old lady whose far fetched ambition was a story of her own devising being accepted for publication as a popular novel.

I see a lot of typos, a real uphill struggle all the way.

Every time I look at something, I think, oh gee, this not very well put.

A lady who, after tons of fruitless work following the disappointment of numerous rejections by trade publishers here and abroad, elects to undertake the matter of book production herself.

I'm not, computer savvy, and I had to have quite a lot of help.

Eons of frustration later, she continues to write.

I thought, you see and heard people on the television and the radio making millions.

I never anticipated being able to do that, but I thought, gee, I could write a better story than that one.

Her letter continues using the pen name Elizabeth Allen.

This Kansas grandmother boldly presents her magnum opus, the novel Miles Tay Dundee, after a song and a poem of the same name.

This is chapter one.

God help us.

What a day this has been.

Hardly had she descended two steps before the bell shrilled again.

Hence the beginning of what she called second Century press and a trail of short run, low priced penny farthing paperbacks.

The writing when I was doing it wasn't all that difficult, but when trying to figure out what to do with the narrative, trying to sell it as another thing at length, she decides such an outcome is unreliable.

Well, it's a jolt to your ego.

Among other things, the story of Three Loves revolves around news events in 1870s Scotland.

Those few people who have both bought and read it said, Dolores, you've got a good story here.

And she closes.

Should such an unusual effort on the part of a senior strike a responsive chord, please scan the volume included here and see what you think.

I think it was.

Was it worth doing and and worth the effort?

Yes.

There's a feeling of accomplishment.

So by golly, I finally, finally got it done.

It was great meeting you.

And you know, you're like all of the other people out there who have those hopes, who have those dreams and just want somebody somewhere to listen.

Don't quit your day job.

Well, you're you're trying to succeed at this business.

It's a hard road, but a road well traveled.

Before becoming a writer.

Dolores had served as a non-combat army medic in World War two.

That's amazing.

She also lived for five years and in the UK.

Okay.

Dolores ended up writing two novels, never attracting interest from the big time publishers, but still getting a great deal of satisfaction out of her efforts.

And she passed away in 2024 at the age of 100.

See, she lived a long life and she wanted to write.

And she did, despite the fact she was never discovered.

You know, she never had a book published, but that doesn't matter.

She was doing what came from her heart.

She got so much joy.

And in our later years, we need to get joy out of creating or whatever we tend to get joy out of.

That's right.

And if we don't do it ourselves, sometimes it doesn't happen.

Congratulations to her.

I'm sorry she has passed away, but she lived her life the way she wanted to.

And writing probably made her live to age 100.

You know what I mean?

Creative writing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, this next story comes from 2005.

It's about Steve and Jan Fry who were able to mold a lifestyle that they love.

Yeah, they pursued a centuries old profession, earning a living.

But not concerned about fame or getting rich.

They simply enjoyed their work and their simple lives in a quiet Kansas community.

A lazy little town where there may be more dogs than people.

We felt good being the neighbor neighborhood potter as the potter's wheel turns.

You can smell autumn down these old roads that surround Elk Falls, Kansas.

We think there's less stress here.

The sun, too lazy for high noon, sparkles through leaves worn hard from the summer heat.

We've been here since 1976.

30 years next year and this is home.

We are in the potters workshop.

We just enjoyed the satisfaction of doing something we love and doing it together and being able to support ourselves and raise a family with that.

What more could we ask?

If you don't do anything, you shouldn't be doing your greatness.

What?

Some people think you come to small town to hide.

You know, if you go to a city to hide, a small town, everybody knows your business.

And if that bothers you, then you better not be here.

And in a twist that only comes from deep commitments, these two entrepreneurs are hoping the world doesn't beat a path to their door.

One reason is they might step on the guinea hens who are trying to get into the ugliest things, but they are the prettiest feathers.

They know they're safe and they don't run, but if they come over every morning just cracks me up.

They have shunned a website and have almost no advertising.

Now, it's not that they turn down business.

Of course they don't.

But they really don't want more than they can handle.

And we know and understand that it's not the norm.

But I think there are other people, too, that realize there's more to life than how much you can make.

Sometimes we almost try to discourage people, from doing an order because we'll, you know, try to say, this is going to take a while.

We never did get too worried about exhibits or trying to make make a name for ourselves in our work.

We were more happy to to make things that people take home and use.

We're happy being potters, not necessarily clay artists.

Definitely more of a homebody kind of people.

Elk falls suits us.

I don't know where we'd be happier.

Well, now, Stephen, Jan have been at it for 50 years celebrating their golden anniversary in 2026.

Congratulations.

And they finally did get a website.

The address is Elk Falls pottery.com.

Now, if nobody if you haven't been to Elk Falls, it's a very creative place.

It's an odd little town.

In a good way.

Yeah, and they have been there just forever.

I've been in their shop and they make this incredible pottery.

So neat.

It's so neat that they're still doing it after 50 years.

And they're evolving into a web website.

I'm on that website this evening and I'm just telling you, Elk Falls pottery.com.

It's.

Was that it?

It's Mr.

producer.

It's the place to pottery.com.

That is so cool.

All right, I'm there.

Okay.

In a toss away world, the idea of fixing what's broken has become almost unthinkable.

Well, back in 2000, I met one of the last holdouts.

Glen Crow.

Ran a one man repair shop for electric shavers.

Don't laugh.

Okay.

He was keeping the morning routines of Americans humming at a time when his specialized trade had nearly vanished from the map.

It's not the most beautiful building in Wichita is darn close to it.

It's the petroleum building in the 200 block of South Broadway.

There's been a Shaver center in this block.

I think I'm safe in saying 50 years or more on a slow but pretty winter morning.

Well, before all these people got to work.

Glen Crow is already trying to save a shaver from the scrapheap.

Oh.

This one's got a bad circuit right there.

And if it's not worth fixing, I'll tell him.

I don't think this one is, but I'll do it on a nearby work table.

Dead shavers lay like tired warriors.

A challenge is is nice.

Like this one is.

Darn thing works.

What do you know?

I have to charge him double.

It's a day where time and customers are snowed under.

Walk in traffic and you're been slow today.

Glen Shop used to be on the other side of that newspaper dispenser.

Well, they tore that building down, so he moved two doors south, where he learned about the old adage location, location, location.

It was 20 yards, from 209 to 219, all on South Broadway.

And I lost a thousand walk ins a year that could cause tension in any business.

Well, Glen takes care of that, too.

The main thing is getting something out of each day.

And so far, I've been able to do that.

See you serving kind of a purpose at the little deli next door.

He's a regular.

Oh, thank.

Oh, shoot for a sandwich of the day.

Yeah, I can do it.

All right.

Wanted to stay in his block, so I did, and I am.

I've been so doggone lucky in life.

Now, Glen ran the shaver shop for six more years and then turned it over to his son, Brian, who kept it going for a few more years.

Well, like everything, it's closed now, and Glen passed away in 2011 at age 77, and unfortunately, Brian has since died as well.

But, you know, they did what they were good at.

Yeah.

And they provided a service to the community that was needed.

You didn't have to send the shaver into, you know, God knows where.

And they could just in their little town could just go to those two guys and have it fixed.

And I bet a lot of people went to that little store just to shoot the breeze.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, catch up on the gossip.

And yeah, that's the beauty of those kind of stories.

Yeah.

Right.

God bless them.

Okay.

Well, sometimes the symbols that bind us together require a steady hand and a sturdy needle to stand the test of time.

Well, just weeks after the tragedy of September 11th, I met Barbara Vaughn.

Now, she was known to everyone in Fredonia as the flag lady for her devotion to the giant Stars and Stripes flying over her town.

It really stands out in several long ways around Fredonia.

You can't miss it from almost any point in town.

It's there.

It's perched high above Fredonia on a natural mound.

Feels like the flag is my baby, I raised it.

I feel like I ought to take care of it.

But the high flying flag didn't occur.

Since September 11th, it's been there for over a year, and it's because of this woman, Barbara Vaughn, being up here on the mound as tall as we are.

There is a lot of wind, and I just didn't think there was any way feasible a pole can stand up here.

Barbara owns a cloth shop in downtown Fredonia, and she also repairs the giant flag that is now part of the community's very lives.

That once a month, we have to cut the ends off and ream it in.

And that's about the only thing that goes wrong on it is just the the hem.

Barbara had the idea from what another town in Missouri had done.

Now the flag puts Fredonia on the map.

I guess just in my heart, I'm real patriotic.

And then when I brought it up for that, the town's really patriotic.

It is so large that just changing it takes the work of three men.

And this time, Barb, two.

Gives me goosebumps.

It.

The flag is huge.

30 by 50ft.

After the first week, I worried of flying all over.

This one has to come down so Barb can repair it.

Back up here on this mound.

The wind is always the bolts.

I got it, I got it.

I think in a matter of minutes the new flag is attached and Fredonia's pride is again waving across the windswept prairie.

I've been called the flag lady for a while now.

Well, you conceive an idea, and then you follow it through.

And of course, it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the city, because everybody's been behind it.

Well, Barb no longer has the shop, but she still takes care of that giant flag that's been flying over Fredonia now for more than a quarter century.

And it's the first thing you see as you're driving to Fredonia.

You know, you look up, you look up on that hill.

Yeah.

You get the words out and there's the flag flying in the breeze up there.

And it's huge, a huge that is so neat that the so neat.

It marks Fredonia.

It does.

I don't think they can take the flag down anymore, because the flag has become so much a part of the landscape and a part of the people.

I don't think you could take it down.

And we're coming up on 25 years of nine protons since 911.

They should have a flag festival in Fredonia or something like that around the flag pole, but they'll have something.

Okay.

All right, well, that's a wrap for this week.

If you'd like to help keep Harrisburg's people on the air, we invite you to make a $100 donation specifically earmarked for this program.

And as a thank you, your name will appear on screen at the beginning and end of the show each week.

As a proud supporter.

Well, Susan and I are volunteering our time, but producing television, as you may know, is expensive and it's not possible without help from viewers like you.

Thanks for watching, everybody.

I'm Larry.

I'm Susan Peters.

We'll see you again soon.