Welcome to On Q magazine.

I'm Stacy Smith.

They are doing more than just saying no.

In fact the White House is now praising some local high school students for taking a critical lead in curbing the use of heroin.

A special guest from Washington met with these students at a recent townhall forum On Qs.

Michael Bartley was there to show you some young people who are very voca in their alliance against drugs.

Students, parents.

Community leaders.

Police officers fro northern suburban communities.

They came in large numbers to this town hall drug forum.

And while high school heroin deaths are on the rise in many communities, some were still surprised with the openness of how high school kids describe what's going on.

It's a very big problem at our school.

I know most of my friend do drugs, and I'm trying to help persuade them not to.

By joining Northern Alliance most of your friends do drugs.

Yeah, that's a shame.

Like they know parents know about it.

And it's really a big problem.

The Norther Area Alliance involves students and as many people as they can in a community to focus as a group, to rid schools and neighborhoods of highly addictive drugs.

Deb Kehoe is executive director.

Why do you have to have an alliance?

What is the problem?

What are the numbers?

Well, I don't exactly know what the numbers are, but I can tell you that we're losing more and more kid to drug use and drug addiction.

The drug culture today, it has it has no prejudice and has no boundaries.

It impacts an entire community.

Isn't it true that in the suburbs in particular, your most critical problem with drugs, heroin?

You've lost some kids out her in the North Hills, for example.

That's absolutely correct.

We're finding that more and more we all know that.

And that is the reason why we're here today.

So this town hall drug forum not only called attention to the problem, but the northern Alliance is calling on communities to take action.

Guests at this forum first watched a video, emotional testimony from North Hills parents who lost children to heroin.

And I'm sure she used to thinking, I can keep this under control because I'm smart.

I'm a strong person.

And it took her over.

She didn't want to be a drug addict.

She had no intention of being a drug addict.

She thought she could lick it, a jolting message, and then came a fiery speech from the special guest who came all the way from Washington.

You cannot.

Change youth behavior.

You cannot do it.

Absolutely not.

Until you first address.

Adult behavior.

We are their role models.

Mario Solberg is the deputy director of the White House Offic of National Drug Control Policy.

And while she came here to congratulate the Northern Alliance for getting students and parents and others together to curb illegal drug use, Solberg herself delivered a direct message.

Young people need a consistent message from every sector of the community over time.

You cannot teach young people at school about drugs in their dangers and give them resistance skill and then have them go out into a community that says, two for one, women drink free tonight for their parents by the keg.

Where the town festival provides alcohol to young people.

Where dad says I had a terrible day.

Give me a drink and make it a double.

Where they go into their average convenience store and see 70 ads for alcohol and other drugs.

But Solberg soo became impressed at this forum because of who stepped up with perhaps the most powerful messages of the day.

Students themselves, who lead anti-drug programs at their own schools when doctor advised by a car accident he has a he or she has a moral obligation to pull over and help out.

This is no law, but it's common practice.

And almost all doctor in that situation will pull over and help out, regardless of the people involved.

I feel that we, as trained and caring members of this organization and our communities, it is our responsibility to do the same thing.

This does this doesn't mean that we have to snitch on every single person that we se that's doing something illegal.

But when any of us truly recognizes that there's someone who has a problem, it's our duty to intervene.

There are different means of doing so.

It, range from informing a family member to talking or organizin a formal intervention ourselves.

My message is that anyone who cares about this problem and has any resource shares the same responsibility, whether most teenager would like to admit it or not.

Somewhere deep down inside, we value the guidance that our parents provide us and we like to test the limits.

One way our parents can provide us with better guidance is by knowing the truth of what is really going on.

We need to let everybody know that there is a real danger behind these issues, and that ultimately is what makes us better leaders going out ther and really making a difference.

And in there lies the true difference.

Me, myself.

I'm in a band in the perception of being in a band is you go out every week and you party, you drink.

But I think the fact that me and my band mates are sober and we still make music and we do, we love that sort of sends a message to everyone else.

Well maybe we don't have to do drugs, maybe we don't have to drink.

And I think if everyone, even kids that aren't in the alliance, send that message of you can do what you want and you don't have to drink, you shouldn't drink and you shouldn' do drugs while you're doing it.

I think that that could really help better the school districts and.

That would really be the culmination of the goal of the alliance.

Thank you.

The student leaders were not only applauded.

Marion Solberg singled them out.

I must congratulate you.

You are on the cutting edge.

We know in our prevention progra that the Drug-Free communities program is the one that is having results.

Law enforcement officers who work with student leaders at North Hills Area High Schools are calling for more parents to get involved in anti-drug alliance all over western Pennsylvania.

If the parents realized just how prevalent a lot of these drugs were, they would be very concerned.

One of our problems is getting parents to come out and be educated about the information that we have to give them.

We'll hold meetings and, seminars, and not too many people show up, and that's unfortunate.

And Solberg warned there must be a community wide organization like this alliance to prevent young people from overdosing and dying.

With all of the support this alliance has with the incredible recovery network that you have here are way ahead of the game.

You can do it.

You can change norms.

You can save children.

Because this is not a war.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a public health crisis and it must be treated as such.

And you need to be involved.

You need to stay involved.

Will be.

Look on.

The woman's face comes as no surprise.

The talented Ellie Gillis, a sophomore at Pine-Richland High School closed the forum with the song Put It Past Love in honor of those young people who've died from drug abuse.

Put It Past Love to come from behind.

With the all stacked against me.

Too late along the line.

Solberg says while traveling across the country, she'll hold up this Northern Alliance as one of the finest anti-drug programs in the country.

Well, I wouldn't put it past my.

No offense.

Those kids stole the show today, didn't they?

They absolutely stole the show.

And that's what we want.

It's not offensive at all.

As a matter of fact, it makes me happy because this country needs young skilled, committed leadership.

And they certainly have it in this county.

The Northern Alliance meets often with students and parents in the community, and their model of battling drug abuse as a community is now expanding into other neighborhoods in western Pennsylvania.

For more information about the organization and tonight's story, just log on to our website, wqed.org and click the On Q logo on the first page.

No question about it.

Everyone was very impressed, Stacy with those students.

They were so open about this problem.

Very impressive.

Michael.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And when it comes to educating children about drugs, the expert say it is good to start young.

And for more on that, here is Chris Moore.

Well thanks, Stacey.

As part of our ongoing partnership with PNC.

Every month we look for way to help young children grow up.

Great.

Talking to parents and kids about drugs is our focus tonight.

And joining me now is Susan Huckestein.

She is an addiction preventio specialist with Western Psych.

You work with various levels of children, particularly young children.

What are the difference of working with young children and trying to educate them about the potential for drug abuse and anger and all those issues?

Well, we're starting at the basics.

We're starting with identifying feelings.

We're starting with just giving them the skills they need.

So when it comes time to make that choice, they'll have the strength to make the right choices.

And when dealing with children, sometimes puppets like the little squirrel that you've brought here, squirrel squirrel Squirrely going no no no no, we got to calm down.

I'm going to hit him.

No you're not no you're not.

We're going to do turtle now.

Now come on.

What do you do.

First step is stop stop stop.

And then you are going to take a deep breath.

And then oh I see I see wha the problem is and how I feel.

And and then okay, now you've to think, oh, I guess maybe I shouldn't hit him.

No, no you shouldn't.

That might hurt.

That's an example.

And this is, this is Chipper.

And he comes with me to some of the schools.

And in fact, we're doing the pets program, which is promoting alternative thinking strategies.

It's been initiated into 11 of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, elementary schools, and it's used in the other schools as well.

But it's it's one of the researc based, evidence based programs.

And it says what little children need.

Its in their Head Start program, too.

So we're dealing with the very young ones.

And so they can identif with a character like Chipper.

Oh certainly.

And and they can identify with being hit and dealing with anger.

And you seem as though you'r trying to teach them the steps of dealing with anger and calm calmly, not fighting back physically.

Is that right?

Right.

They have to learn.

There's other option to learn that there's choices.

There's always another choice.

And that's what we want them to do to to realize that emotions are big.

They're extremely big for a young child and they have to have the right names.

They feel these things, but they don't know exactly what they're feeling.

So when you put a name to it and you describe what it looks like, and then you explain how other people have it, it begins to build that empathy.

And so when they're read for that peer pressure to start, they can say, well this is good peer pressure now.

But this othe I don't feel so good with this.

So this must not be good for me.

And that's what we want them to do, to start to learn how to make those decisions on their own.

It looks like in the North Hill they were making some progress in dealing with those older teens.

But when you work with young children, is that the important level to start?

So that we don't have these kinds of tragedies where with familie or losing teens to drug abuse?

Oh, definitely.

The younger the better.

The early years of childhood, they learned so much.

And of course, the primary teachers are their parents.

So any program that's going to be used with children has to involve the parents and programs.

Do they have letters that go home?

They have workbooks, sheets that go home so that they can reinforce what they're being taught in the school.

They were very much pointing out it takes the whole village to raise the child.

And that's something the police lieutenant talked about, tryin to get more parental involved.

But how is i that teenagers are able to hide their drug use and abuse from parents?

It would seem to me parents would recognize some signs.

They don't want to see them.

They don't want to admit it.

But when they see the stop sign but they just don't admit it.

And teenage years are so volatile.

I mean, they're really going through a lot.

So they're they said, oh, with our emotions are that way because of their hormones.

And it's eas to find excuses for a behavior.

And this is a time to when teen years, when the teens break away from the family, part of that is necessary, but they become more private and the little children can react to Chipper.

Hi, Chipper hi.

And and they can express those emotions and those feelings.

They find it easier to talk sometimes to the puppet into an adult.

Isn't that amazing that they they can take a puppet and talk to their puppet abou their feelings in their anger?

Well, if the puppet is going through the same feelings and Chipper and his friends go through all their that same problems and talk about, and then they sometimes give him advice with Susan, thank you for being here.

We do appreciate it.

Oh, it was very nice.

Thank you Stacy.

Back to you, sir.

All right.

Thank you Chris.

Coming up next, we mark George Washington's birthday by finding out what he looked like as a young man.

It's coming up, so stay connected.

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Today marks George Washington's birthday, and this year marks a renewed interes in the nation's first president.

George Washington is a key figure in WQED documentary The War That Made America.

And his likeness is now turning up in some very high profile exhibits.

But recreatin the image of George Washington takes artistic talents and even some CSI knowhow.

On Q, contributor Andy Mason of the Heinz History Center reports.

I wanted to make them pretty lean, but yet, muscular.

At 22 years of age, Washington was a little bit taller than than the average man.

But as a younger person, I made his nose shorter and I made his earlobes shorter.

And then I'll put the eyes in from whatever thing you read.

They're a blue gray.

Most people see Georg Washington just about every day.

The old George with white hair on the dollar bill.

But what about the young man who made his mark in western Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War?

Well, there are dozens o paintings of George Washington taken later in life, but it's a little bit more difficult when you try to recapture the image of a young George Washington in his 20s or 30.

But now, through the work of historians, artists, even a forensic scientist, we're finally getting a pretty good picture.

Docto Jeffrey Schwartz is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the forensic anthropologist for Allegheny County.

As a forensic anthropologist, what I often ask to do is to identify individuals, missing persons, unidentified persons, skeletons that are found in the woods.

The idea is to find out who this person was.

He's working now to create three life sized statues for Mount Vernon, George Washington's historic home in Virginia.

My mission for Mount Vernon is to reconstruct George Washington to three different ages.

This major exhibit will depict Washington in his 50s, when he was president, in his 40s at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

And at age 19 which was the biggest challenge?

Doctor Schwartz had no acces to Washington's skull or bones.

He relied on a plaster life mask molded from the real Washington's face.

The thing that I wanted to try to work from were the most accurat representations of Washington, and that involved three dimensional representations, such as this life mask.

The statue and a bust that the French court sculptor John Antoine Hudon did of Washington.

He did the bust of the life mask when he visited Washington at Mount Vernon.

Washington was 53 years old.

Using the life mask, Doctor Schwartz created digital images of the older George and then turned his focus to Washington's mouth.

Is there a horse or, donkey teeth?

These are cow lower teeth.

These are human teeth.

Washington started losing his teeth at age 24.

A study of his dentures wa crucial to the reconstruction.

And what I wanted to do is to try to recapture what his oral cavity with his mouth was like and try to reconstruct with his bones were like as an older person.

So then I could work backward, putting teeth and bone back into the jaws to make the younger George.

A younger jawbone was then worked into the older skull.

So once I've established that point, I could go on and to make the younger George, which we see here, bring down the jawline whic is hidden in the older George's, because he'd been losing his teeth back here.

And the younger George is, a 19 year old, which is what I was reconstructing.

He would have a well-defined angle at the back of his jaw.

The jawline would have been very pronounced during the three month process.

Doctor Schwartz also shortened Washington's nose and ears because cartilage grows as we age.

He softened George's brow, fattened up his cheeks, and figured out his body measurements.

Many of his contemporaries said that he was a powerfully built man.

Thomas Jefferson said that he was the best horseman in the colonies, bar none.

Couldn't just be artistic license that we see some of these portrait artists giving him those skinny legs.

Actually, the statue is of a very lanky person, and we've measure now instead of all his clothing, as a 19 year old he would have been even thinner.

Do you think you found the young George Washington?

My opinion is that I think I've gotten a close to this as one can get to.

I don't have access to Washington's bones.

And while I'm not going to go into court to testify for the coroner or anybody, this is forensic in my mind and that I'm trying to eke out from the available evidence those features that were individualistic about George Washington.

At the time when Washingto first would have appeared here in western Pennsylvania he was a young 21, 22 year old, barely out of his teens, very, very tall, had auburn hair, very athletic, a good horseman, had a very, commanding presence by all accounts, that this recreation of young George is on display at the Heinz History Center.

We kind of centered in on thi this moment at Fort Necessity.

His first real military action.

Major military engagement.

Scott Stephenson is an historian and curato of the Clash of Empires exhibit.

And this young George is not what visitors might expect.

So rather than see a heroic future father of his country, we wanted to give people a little bit of a little bit of a jolt a they walked around the corner.

So we we settled in on a scene at night when Washington has just surrendered to the French.

He's been forced to sign this this surrender document after a bloody battle and pouring down rai for the history centers, George the artist used a local actor and made a mold of his face.

Well, our actor Scott Kersh.

Bomber had in common with young George Washington.

Kind of a suggestion of a double chin.

The full cheeks and a fairly prominent nose.

That really made him a good, good match for, young George Washington.

And we wanted to show him in a kind of private moment, because it's the private George Washington that's so difficult for, just general people and the public and also for historians to get out.

In this very private setting, the woods of Butler County and artist arrives at his studio.

Inside, Pat Martin is creating what may be the most widely seen model of young George.

How do you feel about 15 million people a year seeing your, your handiwork?

Well, to be honest with you, that's probably the the thing that attracted me most to this project.

Pat has been a museum sculptor for 30 years.

This six foot three George will be dressed and displayed at Pittsburg International Airport and remind travelers of how a youthfu George Washington got his start right here in western Pennsylvania 250 years ago.

So what I did was fil in under the eyes a little bit as a reference.

Pat used Washington's face at age 53.

The line seemed to be a lot softer in a younger man.

Doesn't have a sharper, brow ridge.

I softened that down a little bit, and he used George's eyes for inspiration.

Now, when I sculpted this, I put a pair of eyes in.

So you just get a feeling that you're dealing with a real human being.

There's a lot you can do with expression just on the way you point this eye and of course, with him, with his, his demeanor.

You probably want to looking up a little bit to make him look real or alive, he still has to has the skin texture.

The portraits done here, they he shows a, a 5:00 shadow.

So we probably going to put that in there a little bit to.

All that attention to detail is for good reason.

Pat Martin hopes that every da thousands of people will admire his George from every angle with his demeanor.

I think I, I think it wil leave an impression on people.

And perhaps these impressions of young George would have made an impression on George Washington himself.

But I would hope he would say tha it's it's, pretty good likeness.

I think he'd recognize himself very quickly, but I think he'd probably be appalled because, of course, this is a this is a private side of a man who who was very conscious of his his status in society.

We know George's history now.

George, at 25, didn't know his history.

You know, there's this kind of sense of happiness, of joy and anticipation, I think, to say by George, that's me.

Pat Martin's recreation of young George Washington is now complete, and you can see it on display at Pittsburgh International Airport near the escalators in the airside terminal and standing near George, is another figure who made a mark in western Pennsylvania history.

Steelers great Franco Harris Pat Martin was also commissioned to do the life size statue of Harris, who showed up for the unveiling.

And, of course, thousands of travelers see both of Pat Martin sculptures as they pass throug Pittsburgh's airport every day.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you back here live at 7:30 tomorrow night.

Stay connected and have a great night.