(soft guitar music) - [Jim] The dogs are the star of the show at this prestigious event, but our eyes were on the St. Louisan who picks the winner.

- The largest entry I've ever judged at one show was 200 Smooth Fox Terriers.

- [Narrator] It's moving day in south St. Louis, it's just that the bats in the attic don't know.

We talk with the NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor about why she came to do a national story from St. Louis, why here and why now?

- And what can the nation learn from St. Louis?

- And the story of the daring young men and their flying machine, and the summer when the world wondered when the St. Louisans would ever come down, and how.

It's all next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat rock music) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and it's one thing to enter a contest, something completely different to be the person who has to pick the winner.

Ruth Ezell's story is about somebody who does just that, and in his world, on the biggest stage there is.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] We're just about an hour away from Best in Show!

- [Ruth] It is said every dog has his day, but only a select few dogs bask in the limelight on the days of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

The Kennel Club itself is the oldest organization in the US dedicated to the sport of purebred canines.

This particular show, held in 2012, had an important St. Louis connection.

- [Announcer] There's Bill Potter, William F. Potter, St. Louis, is our terrier judge.

- [Ruth] William Potter has been immersed in the dog show world for more than 50 years.

He became a licensed American Kennel Club judge in 1990, and is judging for the Westminster show in 2021.

Watching the competitors being put through their paces, one can't help but wonder if the dogs know the audience is applauding them.

And I couldn't help asking Bill Potter that very question.

- Yes, and there are some dogs that really thrive on it, that when they hear that applause and they hear that attention, they enjoy it.

- [Ruth] So what exactly do judges look for when they evaluate show dogs?

- Each breed has a written standard of what the dog should look like that describes everything from their coat to their height, their weight, how their head is shaped, their eyes, their ears.

And you have to commit that to memory.

And as you're going over the animals, you develop a pattern of evaluating them against that standard, and then kind of storing it away in your mind, especially at the group level.

Run around, please.

- [Announcer] The beautiful Cesky Terrier.

(audience applauding) - At the breed level, there are times that we take notes.

If you're judging a large entry, the largest entry I've ever judged at one show was 200 Smooth Fox Terriers.

And I took notes during my judging of them, for some of the classes had like, 40 animals in it, and I wanted to make sure that as I eliminated some from competition, that or kept some for competition, that I was making sure that I was doing the right thing and remembering exactly how I had evaluated each of those animals.

(audience applauding) - [Announcer] Mr. Potter's making his cuts here.

Pulls out the AmStaff first, the Aussie.

- [Bill] Sir.

- [Announcer] The Border.

(audience cheering) - [Bill] Sir.

- [Announcer] The Smooth Fox Terrier, the Kerry.

- [Ruth] Bill Potter's first show dog was given to him in 1968, a college graduation gift from his wife.

This 1970 photo shows the proud owner with his prize-winning Irish Wolfhound, Tara.

Potter's successive dogs were decidedly smaller.

His first Smooth Fox Terrier, a breed for which he has a particular fondness, was named Jerry.

Here's the pair in 1978, when Jerry won the terrier group at the Memphis Kennel Club.

Potter's last Smooth Fox Terrier was Lily, the only one of his animals he had shown by someone else.

In 2005, she became a champion at the Morris and Essex Kennel Club show in New Jersey.

Lily died in early 2021, at the ripe old age of 15.

Her owner is now focusing on judging.

- [Announcer] We really make our terrier judges work hard, I'm telling you, every year!

- [Ruth] But working hard is just the way Bill Potter likes it.

The pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 Westminster show and shows across the country, so he's thrilled to be back on the circuit.

(audience cheering) - [Announcer] I think he's done.

- [Bill] And around, please.

- [Announcer] There we go!

Bill McFadden and a Kerry Blue Terrier, does that sound familiar?

How about 2003, when Bill won it all?

- [Announcer] The one, the two, the three, the four!

- [Announcer] The Kerry Blue is first, the Smooth is second, the Skye is third!

- [Announcer] He knows!

- [Ruth] Can you imagine what your life would be like, if without dogs at all?

- [Bill] No, I would be lost.

- [Announcer] So there it is!

Terrier group has been decided!

Coming up next, it's Best in Show!

(triumphant fanfare) - Sometimes we travel pretty far to get a good story, but sometimes we find it in our own backyard, or in Kara Vaninger's case, just overhead.

- You don't have a wildlife issue, you have a hole in your house.

Let's safely get the animals out and then address the hole.

- Although I've been producing from home for over a year now, today my story takes place at my home.

Because this four family, South City flat is also home to a bat colony.

(horrifying music) This might sound a little spooky, but bats are actually nocturnal superheroes, zipping about and eating thousands of mosquitoes a night.

They're also important pollinators and seed spreaders, but this doesn't mean property owners want them using their attics as a bat cave.

- Properties for us are homes and businesses, but for wildlife, it's a resource.

- [Kara] Garry Guinn trained in wildlife control services with the Humane Society of the United States, brought what he learned to Missouri, and founded Humane Wildlife Solutions.

- Humane not only means, you know, to cause as little stress or harm as possible, but it's also pragmatic.

We specialize in eviction and exclusion of various species and prevention.

- [Kara] To address the bats bunking down in my building's attic, the crew brought in 40 foot ladders and fearlessly worked at the tip-top of them, sealing up all of the little holes and installing a bat cone at the main point of entry.

- It's basically a little fun slide for the bats to exit the structure.

- They are droop and swoop fliers, so they use gravity to build inertia to fly up.

Because everything else is closed up and the cone is at such an angle that they have a hard time manipulating it, they're unable to reenter.

And it would be important to realize what time of year it is to use that, because the babies and the young may not be able to climb yet, or even fly for that matter.

- [Kara] Many species of bat are not only protected, but on average, have just one pup a year, so it's important to make sure that young aren't stuck inside without mom, or exit without the ability to fly.

- Once they're out, we remove the cone, and then we re-install, you know, some sort of material to prevent them from reentering.

- Whether it's the simple, safe cone solution for bat eviction, or placement of reunification boxes to return young to their mothers, Garry and his crew go into each situation with the animal's best interest in mind.

Although there is one factor that is consistently unpredictable.

- We get asked all the time, what is the strangest animal that we deal with, and I will frankly say humans.

- I think part of our job is to talk people back a few steps from panic, because when they call us, they're in crisis.

- [Kara] Encouraging clients to understand the animal's motivation for moving in can help calm the initial feelings of repulsion or fear.

- They're not there to wreak havoc on a building or frighten people, usually it's a mother trying to find a nursery opportunity for her young.

- [Kara] Some situations can even be remedied by the property owner by doing a little research and making small changes.

- One of my favorite resources is WildNeighbors.org.

And on that website, there's a bunch of information about how to address wildlife issues in not only a humane manner, but an effective one.

I think that it's important that we realize that these are solvable issues that do not require traps or poisons, or for that matter, even relocation.

- [Kara] And speaking of relocation, what about the bats that took the one way slide out of my building?

What happens to them?

Where do they go?

- Well, it's really up to the bat.

We can do our best to try to attract them to bat boxes or other portions of the habitat.

- [Kara] Even after being evicted from a structure, most wildlife will stay in that area.

So even if they aren't your housemate anymore, they'll most certainly be your neighbor.

Bat boxes provide an alternate housing option, but Garry says that placement is key to their taking advantage of it.

- A bat box is generally more successful if it has heat in the morning to warm them up, and then a little bit of coolness during the day.

- Like 50 to 75 bats in a small bat box, the larger bat box might get upwards of 100 to 150 bats.

Even the large brown bat, which is a common species in Missouri is still a very tiny creature.

And when they're in the box, they actually like to snuggle, especially in the colder months.

- [Kara] And if the adorable fact that bats like a good snuggle isn't enough to dispel some of the bad press they've gotten over the centuries, how about their relentless appetite for mosquitoes?

- One of the myths about bats would be that they want to fly in your hair, that they want to attack you.

But most folks don't realize that as you breathe, you give off CO2, mosquitoes are drawn to CO2.

If a bad is diving at your head, it is not trying to attack you, it's trying to get lunch.

- They're like a little Michael Phelps.

They aren't able to glide, they have to swim up a breaststroke, and that takes a lot of energy, so they're just voracious insectivores protecting us from mosquitoes who transfer more diseases to humans than mammals do.

- They are not the monsters that we are maybe seeing them as.

One of my favorite resources for bat questions of any kind is BatCon.org, Bat Conservation International, trying to understand why they are important to your environment is part of coping with this.

- Living in the city, it can be hard to remember that we are in a delicate ecosystem, and that we all, humans and wildlife, have an important part to play.

- You would think a raccoon is a problem, or a squirrel is a problem, but they're actually effective and essential parts of our ecosystem.

Rodent control, naturally harvesting nuts.

- [Kara] A disconnect between humans and the natural world has led to quick fixes like toxic sprays or traps that aren't just deadly to the perceived pests, but can also have a negative effect on all of us in the long run.

- We have the systems already built in place naturally that we have co-existed with for millennia, then to change it over the last few decades, and noticing higher incidences of our own health issues, you have to wonder if there's a corollary or tangent there.

We are just a piece of the puzzle, not the whole thing.

- [Kara] So the kind of work that Garry and his crew and others like them all of the country do is about something much bigger than simply being nice to wild animals.

It's about understanding and maintaining the natural balance that we all can thrive in.

(upbeat music) - We've been hearing a lot about the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, 100 years ago.

A few years before that, 1917, right around the 4th of July, the east St. Louis race riot.

A long time ago, I know, but our history has been re-evaluated in light of recent events and the Black Lives Matter movement, and it's not a bad time to ask how are we doing?

Well, the PBS NewsHour's Yamiche Alcindor was asking that same question right around the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, but she didn't head to Minneapolis, she came to St. Louis.

Gabrielle Hays sat down with her to find out why here, why now?

(somber music) - While visiting St. Louis to commemorate one year since the murder of George Floyd, we caught up with Yamiche Alcindor to talk its significance, how STL plays a role, and why we must honor the past in order to understand the future.

- I should tell you, I come to St. Louis probably every year to two years, because I spent so much time here during the Ferguson uprising in 2014.

So in some ways, it's connected to my journalism.

And when I think about policing, and I think about just what city could we check in on to see kind of how the nation is doing on a whole St. Louis and Ferguson are always top of my list.

(soft piano music) - [Gabrielle] So why is St. Louis so pivotal to telling the story of what has happened in the year after Floyd's murder?

- We're looking at St. Louis, it's in some ways the sort of city that has gone through what Minneapolis is going through and has also seen change, but also has a history of systemic racism and anti-blackness that is really, really hard to overcome.

So we're looking at kind of, what are the changes here?

What are the changes that people want to see, and how has this city weathered things here?

And what can the nation learn from St. Louis?

- [Gabrielle] For Alcindor, a big part of that is revisiting and never forgetting what happened to Mike Brown.

- Absolutely, the story of St. Louis is so much the story of America.

It's a city where people, there was so much tension along race where people were often displaced, where African-Americans in particular were targeted, terrorized in a lot of ways by white people who didn't want to live next to them, who were threatened by them, who really were paranoid at the idea of a free black person.

So we're looking at the massacre that happened in 1917, we're looking at the displacement of people in different neighborhoods, we're looking at the housing projects, and the history there, and the demolition.

And then we're also looking at present day St. Louis and how all of that history now is culminating in this moment that we're all living through.

(soft piano music) - But to tell the whole story, we must go back even further to a story we know all too well, one that took place right across the Mississippi River.

(soft piano music) Is it vital in order to tell the story of today to revisit those 100 and some odd year old stories?

- I think it's vital when you look at what's going on in this country to look at the history of the United States.

And that means looking at the history of particular cities, including St. Louis to really educate ourselves and to inform viewers about what happened.

A lot of people maybe didn't know about the 1917 massacre.

There's going to be this 100 year massacre anniversary of the Tulsa race riots.

But a lot of people don't know what happened in St. Louis.

- [Gabrielle] She's talking about the East St. Louis race massacre.

It happened in 1917 when more than 100 black people were killed at the hands of racist white mobs.

- So I think it's something for me as a journalist to learn, to take in, and then to share with people, because there are so many things that happened in different cities, in Wilmington, North Carolina, in Miami, Florida.

So many places where black people were frankly terrorized, where victims of domestic terrorism, state sponsored in sometimes, terrorism carried out by police officers at times, carried out by union leaders.

And we need to learn that history, we need to know that history.

And I would also say it connects to, of course, the founding of our country.

We've had this robust conversation about 1619, and the amazing work of my good friend, Nikole Hannah-Jones at the New York Times, and I think that in some ways we all need to have 1619 moments.

And the 1917 massacre is something that I think is so pivotal to the history and understanding of this city and it's vital to understand that history, to understand how you get to Amaria Jones, how you get to a Michael Brown.

- [Gabrielle] For Alcindor, it's with a better understanding of the past that we can make sense of the future.

- When you look at racial segregation, when you look at the idea that black people are some three times more likely to live in poverty than white people, that isn't just a coincidence.

Black people just didn't decide to live in different neighborhoods and didn't decide to be in places that had worse outcomes, whether it's healthcare or all sorts of other things.

When we look at the pandemic, what is it doing?

It's exposing, but it's also exploiting the inequalities in St. Louis and across the country.

So to really understand the pandemic and really police killings, and so many other things, housing and all the other ways that we see systemic racism present itself, you have to know the history.

- [Gabrielle] Learning the history, honoring the past, and telling the whole story.

- Finally, we remember a summer when much of the country, even much of the world was focused on St. Louis.

It was 1929 and all kinds of people, newsreel cameras, reporters, spectators, were gathered at Lambert Field to witness history, an unfolding story of danger and daring young men.

It was one of the most exciting eras in aviation, technical advances, new business opportunities, and plenty of drama, excitement, and celebrities, and Americans just couldn't get enough of the stuff.

The newspapers, radio, newsreels, they were constantly reporting on the exploits of pilots flying faster and farther.

That summer, it seemed that somebody was always setting or trying to set an endurance record, most continuous hours in the air.

On July 13th, a new record was set in California.

And in St. Louis, a couple of Robertson aircraft pilots were already thinking of topping it.

Robertson was building a new plane for the Curtis Wright Company, the Robin, a single winged plane with an enclosed cockpit.

And just as important, it had a newly designed air cooled engine.

A new plane that set a record, well, that would certainly help sales.

But all this took planning and equipping a second plane that would deliver fuel in flight.

- I helped out on the ground, I didn't do any of the flying.

- [Jim] In 1995, we interviewed Slim Roberts, who as a young aviator at Lambert Field, helped equip the airplane that would be used to refuel the Robin.

- So to make greater capacity, why, we rigged the tanks right at the back end of the fuselage for extra additional fuel.

- [Jim] With the Robin and its refueling plane ready, Dale "Red" Jackson and Forrest O'Brien took off on a Friday, the morning of July 11th, but without much fanfare.

It did make the papers, but the head of Robertson Aircraft, Major William Robertson, at first merely described it as a test flight.

But the bigger aviation story that day was about a transatlantic air race between a French and a Polish plane.

One reason all this was so dramatic was the real danger of pushing these machines.

And this race ended in tragedy.

(soft piano music) The St. Louis story then began to pick up steam as it became clear that the pilots had in fact set their sights on the endurance record.

The coverage increased, and so did the crowds at Lambert Field.

- A lot of crowds came there at nighttime, like, everybody came here.

(soft piano music) - [Jim] The Robin was specially equipped with an extra fuel tank.

The pilots worked four hour shifts.

The one not flying would sleep on top of the fuel tank.

There's no indication what they used to go to the bathroom, or how they emptied it.

There was a hatch behind the fuel tank where O'Brien would stand when the refueling plane positioned itself right above.

- They'd fly straight and let the hose down, and he put it in a tank, turned on the valve, filled the tank up.

Also sent him any message you'd want to send, food and everything else.

- [Jim] Newsreel coverage shows two canisters being filled with food, water, and messages.

And it's possible that these are the pilots' wives.

There was another canister that would be filled with oil for the engine, and attached to the outside of the Robin were catwalks leading up to the engine.

- Now, the purpose of the catwalk was that if they had some troubles with the engine, they could repair it.

I wouldn't have believed that.

And by golly, Red still tells me that he changed some spark plugs.

How he got a plug in there, I don't know.

But he said he did, and the engine kept running.

- [Jim] At 2:00 PM on July 23rd, O'Brien and Jackson broke the endurance record and said they planned to just keep going, and they did.

St. Louis mayor, Victor Miller, who'd been planning to welcome them upon their landing, just gave up and went on vacation.

The publicity was a boom to Robertson, plane sales were up, and there was a cigarette company touting the importance of Tareytons to ease the strain for the pilots and the spectators.

(old-fashioned piano music) (airplane engines humming) While all this was happening in St. Louis, there were planes in Houston and Minneapolis doing the same thing, going after the endurance record.

On July 27th, the plane in Houston had to land because of mechanical issues.

And shortly after that, the plane in Minnesota flew low to drop a note, and then went into a spin and crashed, killing the pilot.

Risk was part of this, that was understood.

It was what made all of this so exciting, but it was another tragedy here at home that put a damper on the excitement here.

George Lambert was killed in a crash in North St. Louis County, while flying with a student pilot.

George Lambert was the son of Albert Bond Lambert, the city's leading promoter of aviation.

The airfield bore his name.

He had backed Lindbergh's flight two years before, and he was an official observer of Jackson and O'Brien's endurance flight.

There was now a growing sense that Jackson and O'Brien had pushed themselves and their plane far enough, and this flight needed a happy ending.

The boss told them to come on down.

- They really wanted to stay up longer, and it would have stayed up longer, but they were told that the air in the tires on the landing gear would go flat.

If you go to the land, well, you'll tear up the airplane.

So reluctantly, they shut off flying and came down.

- They touched down after spending almost 18 days in the air, officially the new record.

420 hours, 21 minutes, 30 seconds.

This was the best kind of news coverage for the industry and for the city of St. Louis.

This was 90 years ago, summer of 1929.

A few months later, there would be a crash on Wall Street, and everything would change.

But that July, 90 years ago, St. Louis was flying high, making news in the final moments of the roaring twenties.

(upbeat old-fashioned piano music) And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us, I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we'll see you next time.

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

(upbeat rock music)