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It's time for Positively Kansas.

Coming up, a migration of children.

Thousands of them change the face of families and communities across the state.

This year marks an important milestone in the story of the Orphan Train movement in Kansas.

Meet this Wichita woman who says it's something to celebrate.

Also, being homeless is no joke, serious.

You know, you deal with the cold weather man that froze out here.

Summer's coming.

You're going to be sweating.

A new idea promises to offer some relief for the Wichita homeless.

Is it possible?

Could it work?

We'll take a look.

Plus.

The sounds of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other classical composers continue to inspire generation after generation.

But find out what's special about this local orchestra in particular, and how you can enjoy their performances for free.

I'm Sierra Scott.

We'll bring you those stories and many more, Positively Kansas starts right now.

It's a new idea for dealing with an age old problem that leaves people broken and hopeless.

At any given time, there are thousands of homeless Kansans roaming the streets in need of a way out of that life.

Now, a Wichita man says he may have the answer.

A village of very tiny homes.

Jim Grawe is here to explain.

Well, you know, homelessness is a problem that just doesn't go away.

There are a lot of reasons why people end up living on the streets.

Oftentimes it isnt just because they can't afford a place to live.

So this plan is not just about tiny houses, but about a tiny house community.

See what you think.

If I am homeless in Wichita, Kansas.

Sleeping wherever I can lay down.

It's just.

It's terrible out here.

That's how Michael Johnson describes his life living on the streets of Wichita.

The things that you take for granted when you have it, you know, you don't have out here and so it's like a new world.

You know, you cannot trust too many people because you'll just get robbed, taken advantage of, you know, It it stinks.

If it wasn't for God above, you wouldn't make it.

One place he finds some help and refuge is this support center run by a local organization called let's Rock and Roll and Change the World.

It was founded by Bob Johnson.

No relation to Michael.

I know numerous people are living out on the bridges, sleeping in parks, abandoned buildings, behind trash dumpsters.

It it's a struggle.

He wants to move Wichita's homeless into their own tiny homes, in their own little self-contained neighborhood.

My vision is to have a community of tiny homes wrapped around a supportive service for medical, health, dental, mental health, things of that nature.

To have a supporting community, because the issue is homelessness, which I've been addressing for over 26 years now.

I love these people out on the streets, and I want the best ones for them.

And I think that we have to realize that what will not solve homelessness is housing.

What will is community housing.

The homes would look something like this.

Its a beast.

The designer and builder of this tiny model home is Shawn McClellan of Haynesville.

Everything has to be multi-purpose on it.

For example, the, the lower stairs that I have here have, storage on the top of those.

And, and, the very first stair, obviously, is a chair as well for the table when it's in the right position.

So it's a stair.

It's a chair, it's storage.

Packed into 224ft.

There's a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and a loft for sleeping up in the loft.

Again, there's there's not a ton of room.

Obviously, you can't stand up in here, but this would be your sleeping loft, so there is a large enough area to put a king sized mattress and do all your sleeping up here.

He says a house like this cost around $30,000.

Bob Johnson envisions 150 of them on 20 to 25 acres.

Some would serve as transitional housing for the homeless, others would be permanent homes to be purchased or rented, and help would be there for everyone in the little community to deal with the struggles that made them homeless in the first place.

Because I wanted to to convince the public and the community as a whole the feasibility of this project.

He acknowledges it'll take a lot of money to make it happen and a lot of cooperation.

The first step is making tiny homes even allowed in Wichita and surrounding communities.

Right now, local ordinances do not allow houses this small.

We want to educate the, city leaders, the officials.

So not only that, but the community as a whole, because this is going to have to be a collective effort.

No one entity is large enough to do this alone, because the vision I have for this vision we have for this, let's rock and roll and change the world, is to change the world.

For his part, Michael Johnson says he'd move in today if he could.

I sleep in a garage downtown without a door or at the Indian Center or wherever I can find wherever the cops don't get you.

I haven't had a cooked meal in months.

Being homeless is no joke, serious.

A tiny home community for the otherwise homeless has been operating for several years in the Austin, Texas area.

That's where this idea came from.

You can find out more about that by going to the Positively Kansas page at KPTS.org.

The woman in this next story turned her life around by pursuing her dream, and now she has a message for anybody who's down in the dumps and searching for purpose.

Her name is Aida Stenholm, and her dream was to design and sell custom made shoes.

A woman after my own heart.

She says this new career has completely changed her outlook on life.

After going through some very difficult times.

After having my baby, I have a very, very bad depression.

So bad, so terrible.

Something like it.

I can't move from my bed.

Her doctor advised her to take medication for her depression.

She said no.

Then he had an alternative suggestion.

Here's what he told her.

Do something that you want.

I said, I want to make shoes.

That is my dream, that is my goal.

And he said, okay do it!

Stenholm, is a native of Peru, which is a hotbed for shoe manufacturing.

She and her family decided to move back there so she could learn the ins and outs of the business.

Stenholm, says a lot of people thought she'd flipped her lid.

My family here in Wichita friends, all over.

My family, even in Peru, they tell me you are crazy.

I said, no.

That's what i want to do.

But they did it.

Stenholm spent several months learning and setting up a small manufacturing operation of three people there who made shoes by hand.

Then she and her family moved back to Wichita to live and operate the business.

Many of her casual designs are decorated with sections of colorful Peruvian blankets.

Its happy, its colorful, its handmade.

Stenholm says she's proud of the design and the quality of her shoes, and she's thankful she's been able to overcome her depression by pursuing her dream.

I was so happy!

Im feeling me again!

Sometimes you stay right here.

Sometimes you say down.

But you have to fight for what do you want.

Stenholm has a selection on hand at her Wichita home.

Her shoes can also be ordered online.

This year marks an important anniversary for thousands of Kansas families, who can trace their ancestry back to orphans in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

The Orphan Train Complex in Concordia turns ten years old.

It serves as a national museum and research center for the historic migration of children from New York to the Midwest.

Most were kids of immigrants who were too poor to care for them.

And many of these kids found a loving, welcoming homes in Kansas and went on to live productive, successful lives.

Jim Grawe talked to the daughter of one such orphan, and here's her story.

The babies are always the first to be picked.

Because there are families that didn't have children.

Or maybe they had all boys or all girls, and this was their chance to get to pick a child.

And one of those tiny tots was Mardella Freund's mother, Mary Brennan.

She was very well cared for.

She she's a very healthy little girl.

She was very neat and clean.

This photo was taken in 1902.

On the day this oblivious little two year old rolled into Wichita on a train full of orphans to be adopted by her new family.

She would keep that dress she's wearing in the photo her entire life.

That was a part of New York for her.

That was a part of, I think is a memory of the nuns that took care of her.

They said that the nuns took very good care of the children, and I think it was kind of the one thing she had that she brought with her.

Little Mary had been living in a Catholic orphanage in New York.

Her parents were Irish immigrants and gave her up because they were too poor to care for her.

Mary's story was like so many of the 250,000 orphans who are shipped out of New York between 1854 and 1929.

The idea started with Minister Charles Brace.

He founded the Children's Aid Society of New York City.

He started getting this idea if he could get the children to the Midwest, that the farmers and people in small towns would accept them, and that they would have a much better life than we would have growing up on the streets in New York or in the orphanages.

Poverty, famine, disease, war.

They left scores of children without capable parents in those days, as European immigrants were flooding into America.

Over the course of 55 years, some 12,000 of the orphan train riders found homes in Kansas.

We never shut our borders to the orphan trains, which did happen in some states.

And so you can imagine in a state like Kansas adding 12,000 children over less than 75 years because we didn't get trains until a little bit later.

You know, what that plays.

How many descendants that means?

Shaley George is curator at the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia.

This museum and research center opened in 2007.

Its mission is to preserve the history of the orphan trains, and to help orphan train riders and their descendants learn more about where they came from and how they ended up where they ended up.

What we do here that I'm most proud of is that we give closure.

But oftentimes the full story is on discoverable.

Mary Brennan got no further than simply learning the names of her parents and that they had emigrated from Ireland.

In her case, there were apparently no surviving records to answer all the questions she undoubtedly had.

Nevertheless, her daughter says that Mary, like so many of the Orphan Train orphans, ended up living a successful, fulfilling life and having a lot of children.

She said she vowed that if she ever got married, she would have many children and we'd say, mom, nobody would be that lonely.

They'd have 12 kids, would they?

And then she'd say, okay, who should I give away?

And no, no, no, you can't give so-and-so away.

Kansas ranked eighth in the nation in the number of children adopted from the orphan trains.

There are a few orphan train riders still living, but they are very old as the last train ride took place in 1929.

The Orphan Train Complex in Concordia is a fascinating place to visit.

If you'd like to learn more, look for the link on the Positively Kansas page at KPTS.org.

The orphan trains may be a thing of the past, but there's still no shortage of kids in need of good parents to love and care for them.

That's why a Wichita woman is using her talent and popularity to help Kansas children find forever homes.

Surely you know who Susan Peters is.

She anchored the news in Wichita for decades.

That's when she started a monthly series of reports profiling orphans in need of homes.

Right now, these three live in separate foster homes miles apart.

In 2016, Peters gave up her anchor job and started devoting more time to sharing these stories of these youngsters.

These kids deserve to have their story told.

They to me are the forgotten ones.

They're stuck in our foster care system and they go through it for years and years.

And if they're not adopted, they age out at age 18.

And the state just says, okay, goodbye.

And then they're on their own.

Now Peters is producing her Susan's kids reports on her own with the help of sponsors who pay for the television time.

She profiles two kids or groups of siblings each month.

They air during commercial breaks on local stations at various times during the day.

You watch longer versions of the stories online.

But Peters doesn't make any money on the project.

She says it's purely a volunteer effort on her part and a labor of love.

They're not bad kids.

They're good kids who had the unfortunate luck to be born in a family, to a mother, to a father, to parents that, for whatever reason, just weren't making it as parents or didn't want the children.

Many of the children are children of parents who neglect them.

Many of them are children of parents who have become drug users.

Some of them are children of parents who just couldn't handle the children anymore.

Some of them are parents whose just their parental rights have been taken away for whatever reason.

The Kansas Children's Service League says that more than a third of Susan's kids have been adopted within a year of the story's being aired.

If you'd like to learn more and see the videos, look for the link on Positively Kansas page at KPTS.org.

We've reached an important milestone in the way we deal with the inevitable.

50 years ago, the first hospice began operating in London.

It changed the way a lot of people cope with the end of life issues, tying up loose ends and saying goodbye.

Jim Grawes here with the story of the man who brought hospice to Wichita.

This is a man who lives life to the fullest and celebrates every moment of it.

But he says that the way we die can be just as important as the way we live.

Every single one of us gets up in the morning and probably don't say these words, but thankful for the gift of life, and that we want to live well.

Terminally ill patients have to have the same opportunity.

Let's use every day because it's not limited time, precious time.

Living as fully as possible.

Like a runner giving it all down the stretch.

A terminally ill patient also faces the finish line, and it's the mission of Tom Welk to help make that finish a strong one.

Welk was a driving force in helping establish Wichita's first hospice program.

So what we want to do in hospice help people live well every single moment of their gift of life.

It was the early 80s.

Welk was a professor at Newman University with a doctorate in medical ethics.

He says hospice was a new idea in the United States, but an idea that was long overdue.

It began with basically an individual at the Wichita State Counseling Center who cared for her mother at home and knew that that was a tough labor of love.

And she had heard about the hospice concept.

So she contacted myself and other interested community members to put together a program named after a local blood cancer doctor who himself died of the disease.

The Harry Hines Hospice enlists a team of professionals and volunteers.

They help with both physical and emotional care for the terminally ill and their families.

The mission is to help people through what's difficult and inevitable, and seize upon the opportunities that exist in those final days of life.

I walked into this patient's room and the first words out of her mouth was, “Thank God for cancer ”.

Now that seems weird and strange, doesn't it?

And this woman had a lot of the loose ends you talked about, especially with family, with loved ones.

And so she said, thank God for this time.

That allows me to connect with these family members again.

So we worked with her.

Myself and the social worker got these people connected with her when she had done her work with the last one, she died.

Though he is an ordained Catholic priest, Welk, she says this hospice has no religious affiliation.

All faiths are welcome.

There are now 16 hospice programs in Wichita.

But Harry Hines is the only nonprofit.

Welk's current role is director of professional training and pastoral care.

He says it's rewarding work, though also challenging.

As you can imagine.

If you don't take care of yourself in this challenging work, it can take its emotional toll.

And you better take care of yourself if you are going to take care of anybody else.

So just as hard as he works.

Welk also loves to play and he is an expert at it.

He loves to garden.

I like to come out here and just be by myself, you know, planting and so on, and it really lets a lot of stress go from you.

Welks, passions also include hunting and fishing.

In Alaska, when he can.

And he's an expert craftsman, having built this wooden sailboat from scratch.

Welk says being creative and having fun helps him recharge for the really important work to which he has devoted his life.

But I think the deepest payoff is personal satisfaction that you have made a difference.

You have added to this person's life.

You have enhanced that.

That's the payoff.

And for me, if I can find out that I have helped this patient live life fully, I have helped his family say goodbye.

That's a reward.

That's a sense of satisfaction that we all get.

Quite a guy.

Well, if you have a story idea for Positively Kansas, please email me at jgrawe@kpts.org.

That's jgrawe@kpts.org.

Some things are trendy and some things are timeless.

The music of classical composers such as Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven inspires as many people today as it did hundreds of years ago.

And this year, a group that's dedicated to sharing that music with Kansans celebrates an anniversary.

Rebecca White has the story.

For 125 years, the Wichita music club has been bringing classical music to Wichita.

It's one of the oldest music clubs of its kind in the nation.

The group formed in 1892 as the city was facing a bust from an economic bubble.

As funding for the arts took a hit, prominent women in the city of Wichita decided something had to be done.

In their words, they needed to seek to elevate the standards of music in the city.

Past President Priscilla Rives says that while the group grew to over 100 members at one point, the goal has always remained the same.

But our whole thing has thrust has been to support music in the schools and in the community.

The club also supports six scholarships for students at Wichita State University and Friends University.

And once a month at Cincinnati Music they offer a safe audience for performers both new and experienced, to hone their craft.

This month, musicians performed compositions that ranged from Bach to a modern opera called Carrie Vocalist, Virginia Revering says that things can happen in a performance that you never experienced in the practice room.

The joy of performing in small, intimate spaces is again, you can see people lean forward to listen.

You can see people catch one word and something changes in their eyes and they realize this story is a new a new story for them.

They haven't heard this part.

13 year old Rachel Lawton and her mother, Brenda, are here with another young violinist to develop the skill of playing music in public.

It's just like, sort of like a second language.

And it's really cool that you can get together with other people and make music together, even if, like, you don't really know them.

Brenda says her daughter started playing eight years ago, and that performance opportunities like free concerts at the Wichita music club help young musicians learn that performance is about sharing your gift.

I think that these kinds of opportunities help students grow.

When you're working with kids, when you're working with students, you want to set them up for success, so you want them to take little steps.

If you just throw a performer with a violin solo out in the middle of a to a concert hall, that's overwhelming.

Coming here to the basement of Cincinnati music, it's friendly.

Over the years, the group membership has dwindled to less than 20 members.

But the club is committed to bringing local performing arts to a younger audience.

Club member Jean Mulford says that music is in search for listeners no matter where they find them.

If you think I'm, oh, I'm just a listener.

That's what musicians need, is good listeners.

And for now, with groups like the Wichita music club, you don't have to go far out of state or buy expensive tickets to hear world class music right here at home.

For Positively Kansas, this is Rebecca White.

The Wichita music club's free concerts take place the third Thursday afternoon of each month at 1:30 at Sensitive Music on East Lincoln.

Well, this year is the 150th anniversary of the Chisholm Trail.

And I find it fascinating because I have with me two authors who are also, amazing because this is their third book, actually.

We have Gary and Margaret Kraisinger with us, and I am really excited to hear about the information that you found that kind of I don't know if it rewrites history, but it changes our perception of history.

So, Gary, I'll start with you first.

Talk about what this book is about.

This book was written the from the standpoint of, Paul Harvey.

We're trying to still sell the rest of the story for so many years.

It was felt that the Chisholm Trail started Brownsville, Texas, and ran clear to Abilene.

We're here to tell you that's not totally true.

Because that's what I learned in school, you know?

But yeah, that's interesting.

The first four years, 67, 68, 69, 70, they use a different route in Oklahoma.

Now, the routing was the same in Kansas, but it wasn't called the Chisholm Trail.

It was originally it was originally called the Shawnee Arbuckle Trail and later changed to the Abilene Trail and even later changed to the Chisholm Trail.

That's interesting.

Why do you think it's so important that we get this information out to people?

Well, it's the truth.

I mean, it's a paradigm that has been going on or believed for 100 years, and we're just simply saying that, yes, it's a Chisholm Trail now, but back then it was not considered the Chisholm Trail.

It was a different trail, like in Texas.

The trail in Texas that they that the Cowboys followed was the Shawnee Trail.

And the reason they followed the Shawnee Trail in Texas was because it was the trail that they had used for over two decades before the Civil War and after.

And so why would they not use a trail that they were used to?

And then they branched off from the Chisholm from the Shawnee Trail in Texas to head toward Abilene, Kansas.

And you see, and most people don't know that.

You're right.

We don't.

And so this is very valuable information.

Gary, what are you hoping that people, once they read this book, are going to take away from it?

Well, we're not trying to take anything away from the Chisholm Trail or the people who were really delve into Chisholm Trail.

We're just trying to say there's more to the story.

There was a story before it became the Chisholm Trail, and that we're trying to enlighten people about that because I think it's fascinating.

You know, for instance, not only was it called the Shawnee Arbuckle and then the Abilene Trail and Chisholm Trail.

Most people don't realize it, but the Chisholm Trail didn't stop in Abilene.

But that's a whole nother story.

It went on further north of in Nebraska and the Schuyler, Nebraska.

And those are the type of things that we like to write about.

So the people are aware that there's it's like frosting on a cake.

It's additional information.

It doesn't take away from what everybody's done before us.

Well, how do we get a copy of this book?

Because I know a lot of people are going to be interested and want to read this.

What's the best way to do that?

It's at our store in Halstead.

we own the old hardware store on Main Street.

Halstead.

And you can get it there.

Oh.

The Good Faith and Life bookstore in Newton carries them Okay, excellent.

And you can get it on Amazon.

Perfect.

Well, I appreciate you to.

This is just fascinating.

And the maps are fascinating.

Everything about this story is just unbelievable.

And thank you.

As Paul Harvey would stay safe for telling the rest of the story.

Thank you for having us.

Absolutely.

That's a wrap for now.

But next time.

This is such a big deal in archeology to find a site of this scale where no one expected it.

A major discovery in a south central Kansas town threatens to blow the lid off everything we thought we knew about the Wichita Indians.

Meet the man responsible and see why.

This may be a real game changer in the way we think about ancient Native American life.

Also, you'll meet a Kansan who has traveled the world taking photos for National Geographic.

But perhaps he's best known for his stunning shots of rural Kansas Life.

Those stories and many more on the next Positively Kansas.

I'm Sierra Scott.

We'll see you then.

Brought to you by Central Security Group, your experts in home automation, security and peace of mind.

View video on your smartphone and control your home's lights, locks, heating, cooling and more.

Security app compatible with Apple Watch and Amazon Echo.

The preceding program was brought to you by tz productions.

Offering 40 years of media experience.