- It's Halloween.

(howls) Is that kind of spooky?

- Well, it does kinda scare me a little.

(chuckles) - Nothing new there, right?

- Right.

- But wait a couple minutes.

We're gonna get to the spookiest ghost story in Peoria history.

- Ooh, next on, "You Gotta See This."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - We're at Roth Pumpkin Patch in Morton where we have not one, not two, but three great stories today.

- One of those stories about a songwriter who skyrocketed to success with a little bit of fuel with chicken wings and beer.

- That's a great story.

We're also gonna visit with an artist where in the nation's capital, he's created an amazing number of innovative and inspiring artworks.

He got his start in Peoria though.

- Wow.

- No one knows he's from there.

- And he has one of the tallest sculptures in town.

- And you, hardly anyone has seen the thing.

- Hardly anyone.

- First though, let's jump into the spookiest ghost story in Peoria history.

And the strangest thing about it might be the source, one of the most well respected and no-nonsense professionals in all Peoria history.

- Well, let's find out if it's a true story or a big hoax.

Check it out.

(spooky music) - [Phil] What follows is perhaps the most unusual and haunting of Peoria's many ghost stories.

Truth, legend?

That's a mystery.

Yet here's another one.

The source of this remarkable story is none other than Dr. George Zeller, the revered and renowned mental health reformer who ran the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane.

In the late 19th century, asylums are often hardly more than jails, mad houses were many patients were restrained like inmates, and often neglected or abused.

The Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane opened in 1902 in Bartonville, part of the state's push to reform mental healthcare.

Still, of patients there, not everyone had severe psychological maladies.

Some faced challenges such as deafness or blindness, but were committed to the assignment for a lack of any other state institution or agency to help them.

Such was the case of a patient brought there not long after the asylum opened.

The man, apparently in his late 20s, had suddenly lost his ability to speak.

Further, he could not write so he could not share his name.

However, the asylum somehow found out that he had once worked at a printing house.

Thus, the asylum called him Manual Bookbinder, or sometimes just A. Bookbinder.

In time, he became known simply as Old Book.

Aside from his communication difficulties, Book seemed healthy and blessed with a strong back.

He was given a shovel and put on funeral detail.

The job kept him busy as the 2000 bed facility had funerals all the time.

Many residents were indigent, so many were buried on site under tiny concrete markers bearing only numbers, row after row after row.

At the end of each service, Old Book would lean on a particular elm tree and wail in sorrow.

Staffers and residents were impressed by his boundless compassion and heartfelt grief as he leaned on what became known as, The Graveyard Elm.

In 1910, Old Book went the way of all men and Zeller himself decided to handle the funeral, attended by 300 asylum employees.

In his diary, (whistling music) Zeller would recall a most extraordinary end to the service.

- [Narrator] A choir sang "Rock of Ages," the usual signal to lower a coffin into the awaiting grave.

Just then, the crowd froze at the sound of a familiar wail of grief.

(dramatic music) - [Phil] As Zeller later wrote, "We could not be mistaken.

It was Old Book."

Some mourners shrieked and ran away.

At Zeller's command, the lid was opened on the casket.

At that very instant, the wailing ceased and inside the coffin there was Old Book, lifeless but at peace, hands folded across his chest.

As mourners watched, Zeller directed the casket be lowered into the grave.

The matter went on without further incident until a few weeks later.

The graveyard elm suddenly began a wither, apparently dying, so the asylum's landscaping crew decided to chop it down.

But when a worker struck the first ax blow, an agonizing screech of pain screamed from the tree.

(dramatic music) Spooked, the worker ran off.

Later, another crew tried to burn down the tree, but the tree wailed once more with smoke curling upward in an outline of Old Book.

Workers hastily put out the fire and left the graveyard elm alone.

After that, the story faded into history, as did memories of Old Book, until Zeller's diary was found decades later.

Over all that time, a bolt of lightning had zapped the graveyard elm, which burned to nothingness and Old Book's grave marker got stolen.

But about a dozen years ago, amateur historians researched the backstory of Old Book.

A new marble marker was put on his resting place.

Today, visitors sometimes come by and read the epitaph.

"In each death, he found great sorrow.

He wept at each, passing tears for the unloved and forgotten.

Now Old Book, we weep for you."

(upbeat music) (glasses clinking) - Welcome back to the 33 Room.

I'm Dustin Crawford.

I'm gonna be making another cocktail.

And this is the Melisandre.

It's gonna have some funky and interesting ingredients and some stuff you can make at home and use the excess for fun as well.

So we're gonna start with some one of my favorite bitters, rhubarb bitters.

I'm gonna do two dashes of rhubarb bitters into a shaker cup, and then we're gonna do a dash of Peychaud's Bitters.

(mellow music) Get those into there, and we're gonna have some fresh lime juice, three quarters of an ounce, and we're gonna have some strawberry syrup.

Make this at home just with sugar and strawberries.

Cut up those strawberries, throw some sugar on 'em, put in a jar and shake it up to fully cover those pieces of strawberries.

After about a day, it'll pull all the juice outta the strawberry.

Bring that to a summer and strain it off and you have some delicious strawberry syrup.

And if you have access, you can make some strawberry shortcake.

All right, now we're gonna get into some of the fun ingredients.

We have Luxardo maraschino liqueur.

This is made from marasca cherries, or cherries in marasca sauce actually.

And do a half ounce of that.

And we're gonna move into some Creme de Noyaux.

This is made from cherry pits.

This is in a very old school creme.

There it goes, half an ounce.

So just from the pits, it's gonna add cherry flavors, but also some nutty flavors.

Then we're gonna get some vodka.

Always have some good vodka on hand.

Do a full ounce of the vodka.

(mellow music continues) And I believe, we're gonna get a glass out.

Now this glass we're going to fill with ice.

We're gonna use the ice.

So we're not adding water because we're going to leave that ice in the glass.

Fill your shaker tin up with some ice as well to chill and dilute your cocktail.

Shake for a good 10 to 15 seconds.

(ice clanging) (ice clanging continues) Nice and frosty.

You strain that into your glass.

You don't have to push the spring all the way down for this one cause it's okay for some ice to get in there from the shake.

Have a little bit of room at the top.

You're gonna fill with some soda water, and garnish with a strawberry.

And that is the Melisandre.

(mellow music fades) (soft music) - [Phil] In the nation's capital, artist Allen Uzikee Nelson is renowned for multiple achievements.

He has a claim for creating imposing sculptures, imbued with African themes.

He has respected for decades the civil rights advocacy, and he is revered as a pioneer of public art that bespeaks a rich African American heritage.

But in Peoria, where he started his art with no formal training, he is virtually unknown.

And his first public artwork, though one of the tallest in town, goes mostly unnoticed.

- But I never took on art courses at all, in high school, grade school, nothing.

- [Phil] Though Nelson created the artwork for the local chapter of the NAACP, the statue's relevance has faded even amid that organization.

- Until you mentioned it, I did not know about it.

And so, I'm sure that there are many more, especially younger people, that don't know about it.

Not that I'm so young, but younger generation don't know what this statue is, who created, and why.

- [Phil] So "You Gotta See This" went on a journey to reconnect Peoria and Allen Uzikee Nelson, and get the story behind the sculpture at John H. Gwynn Jr. Park on Peoria's south end.

- [Allen] I was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1938, the son of Sarita and Dr. John Nelson.

My father was a traveling dentist in Tupelo.

That's how we survived the depression.

Then he built the office.

- [Phil] Dr. Nelson later saw an opportunity to hang out his shingle in Peoria.

So in 1955, his son Allen took his first steps through the front doors of Peoria High School.

A math whiz, he was excited to take trigonometry.

- [Announcer] At Peoria High School, everyone gets a chance to help play the game.

There are a wide variety of math courses that can be taken to prepare you for any type of future training or work.

- [Phil] But the teen said that after a week in trig, he was moved to shop class.

Nelson believes the move was made out of a belief that a Black teen would later hold no job requiring high level math.

Meantime, his dad encountered racism.

Though a landlord back in Tupelo, he could find no Peoria bank willing to lend him money to buy a house here.

He eventually found a lender in Pekin, a town at the time not always known for welcoming Blacks.

Dr. Nelson bought a house on the south end of Peoria, near the current intersection of MacArthur Highway and 4th Street.

After high school, a young Nelson worked briefly for a Peoria drugstore.

- [Allen] So my brother started this Standard Oil gas station.

We had three or four pumps, and my job was to run the gas station after high school, and that's what I did.

- [Phil] Nelson eventually decided to attend college, considering Bradley, but deciding to go to Southern Illinois University.

He studied technology, learning how to run and repair manufacturing machines.

He didn't study any art classes, but he did start reading about Africa, and he joined the local chapter of the civil rights group known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

That's when the name Uzikee entered the picture.

- I didn't have a middle name, so I decided I was gonna give myself a middle name with a little more African flavor to it.

So it was a guy named Azikiwe, who was the first president of Nigeria.

So I decided, well, why don't I give myself a middle name, my artist name?

So I took this name, Uzikee.

- [Phil] From SIU, Nelson went to work for two years at McDonald Douglas, the aerospace manufacturer in St. Louis.

From there, he returned to Peoria to work at Caterpillar, where he ran machines, read blueprints, and taught new hires.

He spent a lot of time working with metal.

Meantime, he met John Gwynn, head of the state and local NAACP.

The local chapter wanted an outwork to decorate the outside of its headquarters, then on 3rd Street.

Nelson, who had been reading books from the Peoria Public Library about Western African art, said he could help out and with using only scrap metal.

The 15-foot tall metal sculpture was unlike the realistic statues outside the county courthouse and other public places.

After the NAACP paid Nelson $100 for the statue, he promptly forgot about art and went back to work.

But soon he was laid off by Caterpillar.

He would take a job in the nation's capital as part of the faculty at the University of the District of Columbia.

And in 1972, he was in his first art show and the public took notice.

- [Reporter] Allen Uzikee Nelson is an industrial engineering instructor here, and you have quite a piece of work behind you.

What kind of sculpture work is this?

- It's a modern technology sculpture with an African design to it.

- [Phil] Over the following decades, Uzikee would teach students and create art.

In 1977, he married a fellow artist, Januwa Moja.

They studied African art and became social and cultural activists.

A breakthrough came when he added stained glass to his big artworks.

- [Allen] Because what I found out, the light from the sun, reflection from the light had a hell of a effect on my artwork.

It changes with the time of the day.

- [Phil] He became especially noticed after he got DC's permission to adopt small parks where he would install public artworks, some as tall as 17-feet tall, and all African themed.

Public art of this magnitude was new to DC and brought fresh eyes to Nelson's African themes.

During Nelson's artistic heyday, he made only occasional trips back to Peoria, where his father died in 1981.

Meantime, his original sculpture was moved twice, eventually landing at the John H. Gwynn Jr. Park at the former location of Dr. Nelson's house.

Without notifying his artist son, a plaque was installed near the base of the sculpture, dubbing the artwork "Doc" in honor of his father.

The notion pleased Uzikee.

- [Allen] They called the piece "Doc," so I say, "That sound like a good name.

Name it after my father, that's a good name."

He always encouraged me to do my artwork.

He kinda liked my first piece of artwork I did.

I didn't think too much of it, but he thought a lot of it.

- [Phil] as cars zip by along MacArthur Highway, motorists might not notice the statue.

"That's why many Peorians don't know about it," says the Reverend Hightower, president of the local, local NAACP.

In fact, though he grew up in the area during the 1970s, he knew almost nothing about it.

Now he is hoping that the statue and Allen Uzikee Nelson might enjoy an education rejuvenation among Peoria school kids, like those at the nearby Valesca Hinton Early Childhood Education Center.

- And I think it's important that we preserve our history, to tell our history, so that young boys and girls who play around here at this school will know that this was a person that actually created this in honor of another black dentist here in the city.

(soft music fades) (upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Mary Disomma, and welcome to my kitchen.

Today I'm making homemade marshmallows because we're gonna make s'mores.

Let's get started.

First step is to add your 3/4 cup of water in your mixer.

Four envelopes of gelatin right in there, and we're just gonna let that set while we heat up our sugar syrup.

We're gonna pour our water, our sugar, and our corn syrup.

We're gonna turn our burner on.

We're gonna give our mixture a good mix.

Now that we've got it well incorporated, now we're just gonna let that heat up to 238 degrees.

I have my thermometer here ready to go.

So our sugar syrup has reached 238 degrees, so it's ready to go.

We have our gelatin powder and our water in the mixer, and we're gonna turn the mixer on and slowly pour the sugar water into the mixer.

There we go.

We've got our whisk attachment on here.

This is gonna whip for about 12 to 14 minutes.

It's been 14 minutes, and our marshmallow mixture is done.

So we need to prepare our pans because the marshmallow mixture is very, very sticky.

So what I do is I spray my 8x8 pan.

You wanna put some non dick cooking spray.

This is gonna make it really easy to get the marshmallows out of the pan.

You just layer it like that.

This way you have the sides to help lift the marshmallow out.

Now we're going to spread the marshmallow, dividing it between the two 8x8 pans, and just smooth it out so it's nice and even.

Now that we have our marshmallow mixture in the pan, we need to let it sit for three hours before we put 'em in the confectioners' sugar and cut them.

So our marshmallows are good and set.

I've got a piece of parchment paper.

I'm gonna put some confectioners' sugar.

Now we're gonna flip our marshmallow over into the powdered sugar.

Here we go.

We're gonna put some more powdered sugar on top.

Now we're ready to cut our marshmallows, and you wanna put some nonstick cooking spray on your knife because this mixture is sticky.

I'm gonna make 'em the size of a graham cracker square.

We have some nice squares there.

Now you just wanna make sure to dust the sides of the marshmallows in the confectioners' sugar.

Now we're ready to assemble our s'mores.

We'll start with our graham cracker.

Place our chocolate, our marshmallow, now we're gonna toast it.

(flame humming) I like mine good and toasted.

Now we put the cover on.

Look at that.

This is a slice of heaven if you ask me.

(upbeat music fades) - [Julie] It's that time of year again in Central Illinois, harvest time.

You can't miss the flurry of activity happening in the fields surrounding us.

It's nothing new for fourth generation farmer, Eric Hodel.

It's a way of life.

- I've kind of had a little bit of philosophy, first was like, I wanna teach my kids how to work, but really I've kind of modified that to, I want to teach my kids to enjoy to work.

I think it's one thing that you can really be directive and really get somebody to work, but I just feel like it's a life skill that we are gonna be working, and work is what you make of it.

And hopefully you find something that, it doesn't feel like work, and I get that motto, but I guess I look at it from the standpoint as, I hope that my kids and myself can enjoy to work and find something that they enjoy working at.

- [Julie] Since 1920, Hodel's family has been farming this land outside of Metamora.

He grew up on this acreage, but didn't go straight into the family business.

In fact, he spent most of his young career working in the corporate world.

- And so, I had 20 great years at Caterpillar in a variety of engineering, marketing, and product experiences.

Loved what I did, loved the organization, but had an opportunity about five years ago present itself, and the opportunity was our family farm, my dad wanting to transition it as he headed into retirement.

- [Julie] A family effort that is yielding record numbers in this year's corn and soybean harvest for the Hodels, a bounty that would surprise the past generations.

- So things have changed an awful lot since then.

My dad was always proactive as far as technology and new things.

And so, that kind of passed on.

He would never imagine that we could raise the crops we're raising today and record 'em the way we do on the iPad, our technology.

- The scale would be shocking to them, right?

So, my grandfather harvested with a team of horses, literally hauled grain to Peoria with a team of horses and a wagon.

And I'm gonna guess that was maybe a hundred bushel and I just jumped in a semi and took a thousand bushels in and in probably a 10th of the time, if not a hundredth.

And so, I think the scale or the magnitude would be shocking.

- [Julie] Both father and son have cultivated a farmstead to teach the next generation the business side of farming, whether they decide to go into agriculture, or not.

- They help in the barn.

They obviously help in the show ring.

They help in December when we do our accounting and we're paying bills, not paying bills, but really laying out the year's accounting work.

And my kids will say, "Did we spend $17,000 on feed?"

Yes, we did.

That's what it takes to feed a sheep operation.

And so, trying to help them understand that piece of it.

I know that my understanding of that and how a farm works, and even the magnitude and scale helped me quite a bit early in my career at Caterpillar to more quickly relate to the business.

And so, hopefully there's maybe an opportunity that our kids will do the same as they enter their careers.

- [Julie] One thing for certain, this 100-year-old family business is something that ancestors and descendants can be proud of.

- [Eric] I think the essence of raising a crop, caring for the ground, and being content would be pretty gratifying and they'd be glad to see that the next generation has built on the foundation that they put in place.

- [Julie] Fueled by chicken wings and draft beer, Crow Carroll skyrocketed to success, quite literally.

One day, the radio ad salesman stopped into Schooner's, the bar and grill in Peoria Heights.

While munching and drinking, on a whim, he grabbed a cocktail napkin and jotted down song lyrics that had just popped into his head.

And that's how, 30 autumns ago, his tune was played as the daily wake up song for the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

- It's the power of wings and beer.

- Carroll is now 66 years old and retired after decades in radio, first as a DJ, and later as a sales rep.

In the 1970s and '80s, he earned local fame and a few dollars with the band Mackinaw, named after the town in which he still lives.

Local stations played some of his tunes, including "I Gave Her the Ring and She Gave Me the Finger," "Surfs Up on the Illinois," and the Beach Boys parody, "Metamora Girls."

(upbeat music) ♪ 'Cause we'll be rockin' and a rollin' ♪ ♪ When the surf's up on the Illinois ♪ - [Julie] He started writing jingles for local commercials, then began entering national song contests.

- I've always enjoyed a good challenge and I love it when people say, "You can't do it," because my philosophy's always been, when the wise man said it couldn't be done, the fool did it.

- [Julie] Aiming high, he found a tall challenge.

What about writing a song for the space shuttle program?

Carroll had been enchanted by the space program since childhood.

- Going to school in the '60s, the space program, it took on, I won't say a whole lot of value to your education, but it was a big part of growing up because if they could, they would wheel in a TV into your classroom and you would watch the blast off.

- [Julie] In 1988, he eye the Space Shuttle Columbia.

It had made several trips since 1981 and was about to embark on a new series of launches.

And on many of those trips, astronauts would be awakened each day by a different song.

- If I could write a little diddy, as they would say, maybe 15 seconds long or so, and get it played in space, it would be played in its entirety every time a news media covered it.

- [Julie] He kicked around a few ideas in his head, but things suddenly gelled one day while having wings and beer at lunch at Schooner's.

- It just hit me.

And I grabbed a pan and grabbed a Schooner napkin and started writing.

- [Julie] He looked over his lyrics, which seemed simple, but potentially catchy.

- "Wake up, Columbia crew, and NASA has some things for you to do.

Wake up, everybody.

Don't give 'em any lip.

Don't forget who paid for the trip.

Good morning, Columbia."

First time I sent it down to Houston and I got one of those "Dear John" letters.

You know, "Sorry, but we don't use unpublished or unknown songs."

Because when I found out the reason is, they were just scared about somebody making money off the space program.

- [Julie] Carroll signed over the copyright to NASA, which therefore owned the song.

He kept waiting and waiting.

He was at work at the old WIRL office in East Peoria on October 22nd, 1992, the same day the Space Shuttle Columbia had launched again.

NASA called to say Carroll's song would be used for the next morning's wake up, news that soon came across to AP Wire in the WIRL newsroom.

- All of a sudden it explains that an unknown songwriter from Peoria, Illinois, is going to debut his song and wake up the space shuttle tomorrow, and all of a sudden my phone went crazy even.

♪ Wake up, Columbia crew ♪ NASA has things for you to do ♪ ♪ Wake up, everybody, don't give 'em any lip ♪ ♪ Don't forget, they paid for the trip ♪ ♪ Good morning, Columbia - [Operator] Columbia, Houston, good morning.

(tones beeping) - [Astronaut] Good morning, Houston.

- Good morning.

That was a new song written especially for Columbia and we're anxious to see how it plays in Peoria.

- [Astronaut] Well, it sounds good up here.

- [Mission Control] This is Mission Control, Houston.

The wake up call this morning was an original composition by Crow Carroll, a resident of Peoria, Illinois.

The name of that composition was appropriately "Wake Up Columbia Crew" and was written especially for this, the oldest orbiter in the fleet.

- [Julie] Owner Greg Gebhards had always noticed Carroll working on jingles and whatnot at his place, but he didn't know Schooner's was a launching pad for a space shuttle song.

- But I didn't realize how important that was, and for a guy, just a regular guy in Peoria, Illinois, or East Peoria, Peoria, to write something like that and have it on the shuttle.

- [Julie] Gebhards put a plaque in the center of the bar commemorating Carroll's achievement.

The last line, to Carroll's delight states, "Never underestimate the power of wings and beer."

- No, I'm real proud of it and when people come up and say, "Did you really do that?"

I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah."

But just remember, I mean, just always give it your best shot and you know, just don't take no for an answer, and then just... - We've had scary stories, we've had inspiring stories, we've just had plain fun.

It's been a pretty good episode.

- You know what we haven't had?

- What?

- Boo!

(chuckles) See you next time.

(laughs) (upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues)