- [Jim] 30 Years ago, Tom Schlafly opened St. Louis's first brew pub.

Challenge number one?

Well, he wanted to do something that was against the law.

- That's a big obstacle!

- It was a major obstacle.

- [Jim] There are all kinds of links in the supply chain.

And we look at a local effort to train people who can strengthen one of those links.

- But at some point everything has to be on a truck.

- [Jim] We stop in at a lab where people are trying to keep up with that tricky thing called a virus.

- This last year and a half has been very incredible.

We have been so very busy.

- [Jim] And we remember this man, he went in front of our cameras when we were both brand new at this TV thing.

- We didn't have to get it all right.

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

- It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and usually the first show of a new year we spend looking back, and we will, it's just that we're gonna start out looking back 30 years.

Now young people, these were hard times if you were a beer drinker.

Hard to find an IPA, a coffee stout, let alone a pumpkin ale because, well, there were no microbreweries.

No brew pubs, not a one.

Not in St. Louis, not in the home of the world's largest brewery.

What happened?

Well, Brooke Butler has the story of a David by the name of Tom who took on Goliath.

(upbeat music) - If there's anything that brings St. Louisans together, it's beer.

After all, we're home to The King of Beers.

But it's not all just Budweiser Clydesdales.

St. Louis is currently home to 75 breweries, including the popular micro or craft breweries.

But up until 1991, there was only one brewery.

So how did we go from one to 75 in just 30 years?

Technology and social media played a major role, but there was one obstacle that led a couple of people to really get St. Louis' beer scene hopping.

- Part of the fondness for craft beer is a rediscovery of what's local and an embrace of what's local.

- [Brooke] That's Tom Schlafly, the Schlafly of Schlafly Beer.

And as they celebrate 30 years of being the charter member of the St. Louis microbrewery scene, he knows a thing or two about what makes them so popular.

- It's not just an anonymous commodity that's made by an industrial facility somewhere out there.

They can come to any of our locations, see the beer being brewed, and I think, but that's just the first step.

I mean, the fact that you're local might get people to take the first taste, but if it's not good, they'll go back to what's familiar to them.

- [Brooke] While good beer is subjective, there's no denying Schlafly's success.

Before his entrance into the beer world, Tom was a lawyer in St. Louis.

It was during a law conference in Oxford, England that he noticed what seemed like a brew pub on every corner and thought, "Why doesn't St. Louis have these?"

- By coincidence.

I saw a former law partner, Charles Kopman and I told him the story I said, "There I was at Oxford, but I'd learned more about English beer than I did about English law."

At that point Charles said, "You need to meet my son, Dan."

- [Brooke] Dan Kopman co-founder of Schlafly, at the time was traveling around the United States selling beer for a London brewery.

He noticed that certain areas of the country that bought imported beer also sold what they called micro brewed beers.

- And so Dan introduced me to the concept of micro brewed beers and told me that he thought the idea would work in St. Louis.

- [Brooke] So we're talking about St. Louis, - Right.

- A beer city.

I mean, that's a pretty brave thing to do.

- There were a couple major obstacles to our opening the business.

First was the attitudinal resistance among some consumers.

And secondly was the fact that our business model was illegal under Missouri law.

- [Brooke] That's a big obstacle.

- It was a major obstacle.

- [Brooke] Following the prohibition in 1933, Missouri lawmakers made it so breweries could not have retail liquor license to operate their own taverns.

Luckily, Tom had the law background to navigate this obstacle.

- So what we had to do was get the Missouri law changed to allow us to open initially as a brew pub, and we were able to do that in 1991.

And there was, as I said, tremendous interest because people just never thought of another brewery opening in St. Louis.

- [Brooke] But just a few weeks after the grand opening of the Schlafly Taproom, they were completely sold out of beer.

As successful as it was as a brew pub, Schlafly didn't stop there.

After several inquiries about selling Schlafly Beer in other bars and restaurants, Tom revved up to overturn another Missouri law.

Basically those same post-prohibition laws made it so you could operate as a brew pub and sell beer on the premises, or a brewery that distributed to other establishments, but not both.

- And my legal background came in handy again.

So that was 1993 when the law changed, and it was an important milestone where we were able to sell beer, not just on these premises at 21st and Locust, but to sell to any other retail establishment in Missouri.

- For our first three and a half years, we were almost kind of lonely.

Like, where is everybody?

- [Brooke] Stephen Hale is Schlafly's founding brewer.

You'd recognize him from the kilt.

And for the past 30 years, he's had a front row seat to St. Louis' growing beer scene.

- So it was three and a half years before Trailhead opened in St. Charles, and then about four years after we opened Morgan Street on the Landing.

And then after that more breweries started to slowly open.

Does everyone get along with everyone?

I would say accurately, not quite, but almost.

There are no secrets in the beer industry.

Sure, there are a couple.

I'm not gonna list every ingredient to every beer.

Well, actually those are listed on the website, the ingredients.

Maybe the process is different or something.

- [Brooke] And after all, it's the ingredients that make microbreweries unique from macro brewing companies.

We all know that person who claims any mass-manufactured beer is inferior to their neighborhood pub.

However, Stephen was quick to point out the difference in quality versus variety.

- To make light beer worldwide and keep it consistent and taste the same all over the place, most craft breweries would have a challenge doing that.

We couldn't compete in the arena of lighter lagers, which larger breweries pretty much dominated, they've owned that category for a long time.

Over the past 30 years, many breweries have entered that market as well as a plethora of beer styles.

The list is too long to list, but choice, variety, I think that's what the consumers want.

- So this is our Schlafly Beer, beer color wall, basically.

So you can see we've got from the palest yellow all the way down to basically the darkest black.

Craft beer drinkers are always evolving themselves and wanting to try something new.

It's striking that balance of like honoring the classics and then also innovating and helping us move forward.

- [Brooke] Jared Williamson is the current lead brewer at Schlafly.

Some actually call him Stephen Jr, but no kilt yet.

And while Stephen got his start with home brewing, like most people in the industry, Jared came to St. Louis 10 years ago with experience from working at a brewery in Kentucky.

So he knew about the reputation that Schlafly had already established.

- This became an incubation hub for talent.

The St. Louis Brewers Guild is about a 70 mile radius.

And there's close to a hundred breweries in that guild now.

And probably at least almost half of them have some connection to this brewery.

You know, either they were an intern here or they worked here.

So the family tree of St. Louis craft beer definitely started in this building, and the branches and the roots have grown out from there.

- [Brooke] So 30 years and four locations later, the original brew pub at 21st and Locust is still hopping, pun intended, although most of the distribution happens at their Bottleworks location in Maplewood.

Just a few weeks ago, the parking lot was overflowing with beer connoisseurs for their annual Full Moon Festival.

So it's not a stretch to say Schlafly can brew up another 30 years of success.

- Remember that we're in St. Louis and St. Louis is a cradle of jazz.

Jazz is an improvisational medium.

It's not carefully orchestrated like a symphony where everyone knows exactly what to do exactly when.

With jazz, you have to adapt.

And I think that's something we've learned over 30 years, we've been flexible.

That we haven't stuck rigidly to a business plan because things change.

And while we've grown, and we now have hundreds of employees in four locations, and we're in 14 states nationwide, I hope that we don't get too big so as to lose the ability to adapt and respond to the customers 'cause once you lose that, then you're on the down slide.

- Work hard, play hard, it's what we ought to do.

And at the end of the day, in the middle of the day, whenever you do it, enjoy a good beer, cheers, y'all.

Cheers to you too.

Thank you.

- I'm not sure how to look back at the year 2021.

I mean, it started out with this attack on the US Capitol by our own citizens.

And then there was the Cardinals 17-game winning streak.

I mean, talk about a grab bag of memorable moments.

We did get a new president and vice president and the political battles that followed, but let's stay close to home.

St. Louis got a new mayor, Tishaura Jones.

We've been following the construction of the new soccer stadium, which is now unmistakably a soccer stadium, with our new team's first season still a year away.

A couple of years after that, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency headquarters on the north side should be up and running.

That is a big deal.

And in Midtown, an old industrial site has been transformed into the City Foundry STL, starting out with a food hall with plans for retail and residential expansion.

But the Loop Trolley, well it never got back on track, although there are those who haven't given up hope, and anyway, I rarely pass up the chance to show pictures of a street car.

Even better, old films of streetcars.

These were running on the old Hodiamont line, and there is an update on that.

We've been following the plans to turn that old dedicated right of way that runs through six neighborhoods just north of Delmar into a Greenway.

They've gotten a lot of input from the community and are moving into the design phase.

But all of that, it's down the line.

A big story that's happening now for this region just under way, and it will continue, new arrivals from Afghanistan.

With a lot of people stepping forward to help them settle in and make them feel welcome in their new home.

All of this, I don't really need to remind you, in the midst of a pandemic.

Here I am on my big day, March 3rd, 2021, getting my first Moderna vaccine shot at a Walmart in Bridgeton.

But to really get into the heart of this story, we needed to go here.

Dr. Sharon Frey's St. Louis University laboratory, where they study infectious diseases and viruses and develop vaccines.

- This last year and a half has been very incredible.

We have been so very busy, us and just about everybody else in medicine.

But certainly in infectious diseases have been so busy trying to figure out how to make these vaccines, how they test these vaccines and what will the future hold.

- [Jim] And what happened in response to the Coronavirus that causes COVID-19, it had never happened before.

- Yeah, so this is a very historical moment in time.

With the advent of the MRNA vaccines, the vaccine was easy to manipulate to make in the lab, to manufacture.

- [Jim] Before this, vaccines were, and most still are, grown in eggs.

They're inactive versions of the viruses that don't make you sick.

But they do build your resistance.

But MRNA vaccines are not versions of the virus, they're instructions on how to build the resistance.

I'm not sure this graphic really helps explain that, but M, or messenger RNA, is well, the messenger that brings the instructions, and they can be more quickly tweaked now to target new variants like Omicron and whatever comes next.

And researchers know this is an ongoing battle.

- What can we expect from COVID?

Bottom line is we don't know yet, my feeling and many other people believe that we will have this COVID virus, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be staying with us in its many forms, its many variants.

Like flu, it likes to mutate and make new variant.

It would be nice if the virus itself became less virulent and caused less disease, that's always a possibility.

And so I think it's here to stay, I personally think we'll probably end up with getting a vaccination no less than once a year, just like we do with influenza, but we have to wait and see.

- [Jim] There are other COVID vaccines in the works and they may well be needed, because a virus is a moving target.

- [Nurse] There you go.

- Here's a term we heard a lot last year and we'll continue to hear this year, no doubt.

Supply chain, it's one of those things we don't think about much until it's not working very well.

Well, as part of our Pathways to Work initiative, Anne Marie Berger takes a look at an ongoing effort to strengthen one of the very important links in that chain.

- [Anne Marie] According to the American Trucking Association, trucking is what makes our economy go round, bringing in nearly $800 billion to the US economy in 2019.

Now those are pre-COVID numbers, but the good news is there has been a post-pandemic economic boom.

The bad news, just like every other industry, the hiring shortage is hitting the trucking industry hard, which trickles down to the companies they deliver to.

- Without truck drivers, our economy literally stops.

I mean, everything you see around us, brought here by a truck.

Sure, things can go on a boat, a plane, even on a train, but at some point, everything has to be on a truck.

- [Anne Marie] So while an increase in demand is something to celebrate, the lack of truckers has exacerbated the supply chain crisis, leaving warehouses full of undeliverable products.

The industry's struggle to retain drivers isn't new, but the COVID-19 pandemic amplified the issue.

A report released in October by the American Trucking Association estimated that the industry is short 80,000 drivers, an all-time high.

However, they're estimating that number could double to 160,000 by 2030, as more truckers retire.

- It's not a easy job, it's not for everyone.

- [Anne Marie] But there are efforts to narrow the shortage.

Rene Dulle is the Senior Program Manager at the Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College.

- We work very tightly with industry to determine where there's gaps, where there's skills gaps.

Through St. Louis Community College we offer several accelerated job training programs.

By accelerated I mean, you're not going to school for two, three years, you're going to school maybe for five weeks or eight weeks, maybe 12 at the most.

And at the end of those programs, you're going to acquire a certificate or some sort of credential that's recognized by an industry.

And usually it's a pipeline straight to a job.

- [Anne Marie] The college offers a commercial driver's license or CDL truck driver training program where upon completion, students will have the skills and certification needed to become an entry-level over the road or local truck driver.

- The CDL program is one of our most popular programs in the Workforce Solutions Group.

- [Anne Marie] What do they have to know about this thing?

- Everything.

- This is a beast, right?

- This is a 53-foot trailer.

It's the industry standard size trailer.

Along with our truck.

- [Anne Marie] Matthew Albrecht is the lead CDL program instructor.

He's a retired over the road truck driver, also known as long haul truckers.

- So this is the inside of my office.

Upshift or we downshift.

- [Anne Marie] Those who specialize in hauling freight long distances, as opposed to regional or local routes.

- We start with simple basics of backing with a trailer.

We have a coned area here, this is a little bumpy.

- [Anne Marie] Oh wow, you're gonna squeeze in here, aren't you?

- We're gonna squeeze in here.

- [Anne Marie] Students seek their commercial driver's license for many reasons.

Some are career changers.

- I was once an employee for Norfolk Southern Railroad, I took a early retirement from that and I just decided I wanted to do something else.

So I went from working on the railroad to operating big rigs.

- [Anne Marie] Others are looking for a career pathway.

- Not everybody needs to go to college to make a good wage, and we can help them see what these pathways are and also help these companies fill those positions.

- [Anne Marie] Right, so the up-skilling and re-skilling of people.

- Absolutely.

Up-skilling and re-skilling.

- [Anne Marie] This course offers two types of commercial driver's licenses.

A class B license is for someone who may be looking to work locally, driving vehicles not quite as large as an 18-wheeler, such as a box truck, large passenger buses, cement mixers, or garbage trucks.

A class A license permits a driver to drive class B vehicles as well as tractor trailers, those big rig 18-wheelers.

In Missouri, the minimum age to earn a CDL is 18, but there is a law that prohibits drivers from under 21 from crossing state lines.

- So if you have a class A CDL and you are between the ages of 18 and 21, you would not be able to drive to Illinois, for example, in your truck.

- [Anne Marie] But there are plenty of local and regional commercial driving employment opportunities for those 18 to 21.

This CDL course at Forest Park is a five week program.

Monday through Friday, 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

- [Rene] We have a large parking lot that's dedicated to our program.

And on campus we have manual transmission trucks.

- So one of the things we teach 'em first is just to drive around in the truck, how to shift in the truck.

Then when they're really comfortable with that, then we'll put the trailer on the back and see how good they do with that.

- We will be teaching them on the largest trucks, largest trailers, most difficult transmission available, meaning they can do anything they want once they leave this program.

- [Anne Marie] Can anyone do this if they get the training?

- Yeah, yes they can.

(upbeat music) - [Anne Marie] Long haul truckers typically are men.

Recent data shows women only make up about 10% of all truck drivers in the United States.

- I'm Leslie, and I am a professional class A commercial driver for Werner Enterprises currently.

- [Anne Marie] Leslie has been driving 18-wheelers since last year when she earned her CDL license at Forest Park Community College.

Her reasons were simple.

She needed a pathway to a stable career, and truck driving offered it.

- Since graduating in 2009 with a degree in anthropology from St. Louis University, I couldn't really do much with that degree and then needing to find a job that wasn't like going back to another four years of school or graduate school for the price.

So I found truck driving and I heard there was a huge amount of openings.

So I signed up for a class pretty quickly within 2020, when everything shut down and I couldn't do Uber anymore.

- [Anne Marie] And while women like Leslie are not the norm, earning a CDL and becoming an over the road trucker is a career pathway that's breaking stereotypes.

- Actually the person that I share my truck with is also a woman driver.

She's been at it for three years and she's actually younger than me.

(upbeat music) - Finally, we thought we'd kick off the new year by remembering an old friend.

Sonny Fox died just about a year ago at the age of 95, barely made it into the new year of 2021, but left us I think with some words of wisdom.

He came from that generation and fewer and fewer of them are still with us, that had gone through an awful lot.

He was a TV pioneer.

He went on camera when we first went on the air and then went on to a great career, but he never forgot us.

And we haven't forgotten him.

- 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, Channel Nine, called "The Finder."

- [Jim] Sonny Fox had answered an ad and got the job, came to St. Louis to host the new show.

When he would stop by many years later, he was always happy to talk about those early, those first days, of what was then called Educational TV.

- They invented the rocket.

- The same kind of a principle.

- The same kind of a principle.

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

- 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.

- [Jim] He didn't stay long in St. Louis, 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's prime time, "$64,000 Challenge" game show, but was fired.

Not in the cheating scandal, that came later, but because he accidentally read an answer instead of a question.

He's remembered by a generation of New Yorkers as the host of the children's show, "Wonderama" and he'd go on to become an NBC vice-president, a producer, he did all kinds of things.

Met all kinds of people, too many to list here.

But to really understand who he was, - I'm a finder.

- [Jim] You have to understand his generation.

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

I don't mean a 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 and 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 at the other end, I was an entirely different person, 'cause I found out enough about myself to walk out of there and say, "Okay, you think you're gonna scare me, no."

I've gone through a career where I've 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, you know, on the other hand you may find some extraordinary people and things that you would never have found if you stood on the outside saying, "I don't know if I want to go in there."

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

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.

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

And wow, did it change my life.

This became seminal in my life.

Well hi.

Looks like everything's all set to show you what we found this week.

We tried stuff that didn't work, we tried stuff that did work.

Some worked, some worked better.

We tried to bring people in from outside, and not every moment was successful and not everything worked.

♪ On a tree by a river, a little Tom-Tit ♪ ♪ Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow" ♪ 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.

- [Henry The Hummingbird] Hey Sonny, over here!

- Well, what do you know, that's Henry the 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 2021 of COVID-related complications.

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.

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

(solemn music) - And that's "Living St. Louis," thanks for joining us.

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

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Living St. Louis" is made possible by the support of the Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A Jordan Charitable Trust and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues)