- [ Jim Kirchherr,] We explore the St. Louis Zoo's newest exhibit, which allows us to share the tree tops with our fellow primates.

- [Female] So everything started with a desire to get the animals outside, and then it grew into this amazing exhibit.

- [ Jim Kirchherr,] We go to a construction site in Jefferson County.

Crews aren't building a riverfront development, they're working on the river itself.

- These issues are along the big river now, if we do nothing, it will migrate to the Merrimack, and ultimately to the Mississippi.

- [ Jim Kirchherr,] We stop at Kirkwood's Pioneer Bakery, where the story is not just what they do, but who is doing it.

- It's an underutilized population.

- And nobody has ever topped this young man.

The story of Robert Wadlow of Alton, Illinois.

It's all next, on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we're gonna start off monkeying around.

Kara Vaninger came here to the St. Louis Zoo to see the new exhibit designed for primates, them and us.

The exhibit's a good example of the challenges that face modern zoos.

How do you keep the animals active and happy?

And the visitors active and happy?

Well, here's the 13 million dollar answer.

(upbeat music) - [Kara] If you've been to the primate house at the St. Louis zoo recently, you may have wondered, where are all the animals?

Thanks to a brand new exhibit, the happy answer is, outside.

- You know what?

After a long winter, when you're inside all the time, what it feels like to get outside with that sun and fresh air, well, these animals are no different.

They get psychological and physical health benefits from that.

So everything started with the desire to get the animals outside, and then it grew into this amazing exhibit.

- [Kara] Primate Canopy Trails opened in the summer of 2021.

And as a result of five years of collaborative expertise and insight between designers, architects, animal keepers, and horticulture and maintenance staff.

- In order to pull off getting these animals outdoor, in a 35,000 square foot area, we needed to take down an old building.

And then the zoo train has several tunnels.

One runs right underneath this exhibit.

So we went through and renovated that tunnel, got it in tip top condition before we started building on top of it.

- It's based on two concepts.

One concept is what's called a rotational exhibit.

So a lot like an animal would use a home range in the wild.

They don't use the whole thing every day.

They go to different parts, on different days, for different reasons.

And that's what they do here.

- Eight very unique type of spaces designed to be vertical.

Designed to interact with living trees, so the animals can do the same.

- The second core foundation are tunnels.

That's how animals get from place to place, but the tunnels aren't just a roadway, they're a destination.

So we found our younger animals use them as trampolines and to explore, to visit their neighbors, to see what guests are doing.

- [Kara] But before guests were allowed into the exhibit, the primates were given a whole month to get used to their new area.

- For some of these animals, they had never been outside before.

The key to all of our acclimation was we let the animals set the pace.

So we never tried to force animals out.

We never put their food at the other end so they had to go there to get their dinner or their breakfast that day.

We just opened up the doors, we let them have the spaces, and then we let their behavior guide us with what came next.

Our spider monkeys are a great example.

The first day you could see them sitting in the primate house, in the doorway, looking outside.

By the next day, they were sitting just outside that door in the beginning of the tunnel.

And then the next day they started going further and further.

So they took their time.

And now they probably are using their habitat 360 degrees.

- It was very, very clear that they were excited.

They were having fun.

They were enjoying it, and exploring more and more, day by day.

- But if we had tried to force them out, their first experience might've been negative or scary or fearful.

- [Kara] Although they still have the option of being inside, many primates are reveling in the great outdoors and all of the new sights, sounds, and smells that come with it.

- The trees, the wind, the highway.

One of our habitats directly looks out over the lion enclosure.

So we've got lions who can see monkeys and lemurs, and lemurs and monkeys who can see lions.

You know, if you think of something like Polar Bear Point is amazing, we have one polar bear.

So, it gives that animal wonderful welfare.

I have 14 species and over 40 animals that are all getting their lives improved because of Primate Canopy Trails.

- Now they're able to have a large, very enriching exhibit life and really the ability to interact with our guests, which is very important as well.

- [Kara] Although guests could always smell the animals in the primate house, now they have the opportunity to hear them.

- The black and white ruffed lemurs, they are the loudest animal we have in our building.

You can hear them literally across the entire zoo.

That's something that our guests hadn't really heard in the past.

All the senses that the animals are getting, our guests are getting from our small primates for the first time also.

- [Kara] So how did all of these new stimuli affect the primate's behavior towards visitors?

- They're doing the same types of things they did indoors.

We have some animals that we're people watchers, and they do the same thing here.

Animals who kind of ignored it and went on their day, do the same thing here.

I was surprised, because they always had that glass front.

They just seem to do their thing, which is great, that's exactly what we'd hope for.

- [Kara] The new exhibit not only provides mental enrichment for the animals, but it also gives them the space needed to tap into their physical potential.

- You know, just cause a colobus monkey in the wild might have been documented jumping 30 feet, an animal who's never jumped more than 10 feet at a time is not going to have the athletic ability or the confidence, then that's what they're getting a chance to practice right now.

- But then we also thought about our human primates, our guests, and being able to get them up off the ground, just like a monkey.

We wanted to do it in a way that impacted the soil and the tree roots as little as possible.

So when you look at that walkway, what you're seeing is essentially a rollercoaster structure.

And the whole purpose is to have the fewest points where the structure goes down into the ground and affects the tree roots.

All of the steel structure, all have these graceful curves and organic shapes, and those are to represent trees themselves.

And they provide more ways for the animals to move around the exhibit.

- [Kara] The St. Louis Zoo is home to several endangered and critically endangered species of primate and uses the new exhibit to show visitors how habitat loss contributes to their dwindling numbers.

- The big message of Primate Canopy Trails is that all primates, including humans need healthy forests.

And a healthy forest is one that's continuous, not fragmented into little sections.

And this climbing structure actually gives that message in an experiential way for kids and others.

- [Boy] Let's go through the tunnel!

- You're going to be walking up, climbing up a pathway or going through a tunnel, and there's a sign that says go, we created a bridge over a waterway, so you can now get to your family.

Then you try another path and there's a dead end.

And there's a sign that says, oh, sorry, logging road, you have to find another way to get your food.

So it really shows out some of the challenges wild primates are dealing with.

- [Kara] So whether it's getting a monkey's point of view in the climbing structure or hearing the raucous call of the black and white ruffed lemur, the hope is that visitors will understand that with a little thoughtfulness, ingenuity and effort, human development doesn't have to come at the expense of irreplaceable wildlife.

- We're really wanting them to appreciate the animals, but we also want to get that point across, development is inevitable, but there are ways to knit together those wild places through human spaces so that the animals can live in harmony with humans.

- We have another story that involves some pretty tricky design in engineering, but this is a construction project that very few people will see.

And if all goes as planned over time, hardly anybody is going to notice.

Brooke Butler went to Jefferson County where a crew is rebuilding a river.

- This project is, as far as bank stabilization in small streams goes, it's on the complicated end.

There's a lot going on here.

(cheery guitar music) - [Brooke] Located in Jefferson County where Calico Creek meets the Big River, there's a lot going on like Joe said.

As a hydraulic engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, Joe Collum and the many other teams we'll talk about later, have spent a lot of time at this confluence.

And although there's a lot of moving parts with multiple sites and organizations and teams, everyone, and everything is working toward the same goal.

To restore and stabilize eroding areas along the Big River that have been affected by hazardous lead contamination.

- We have a few different approaches that are different, but these features are all ones that we're familiar with.

There's guidelines and specifications for how you go about designing for these things.

It's just to put them all on one site, one project all at once, it does add some complication to it.

- [Brooke] So let's talk through some of these features.

The restoration project has three sites that each use different approaches.

Here is site one.

The approach used here was to restore what was previously a second channel for the Calico Creek to flow into the Big River.

By adding what is basically a second lane of traffic for the water to flow, it prevents high water levels from further eroding the riverbank.

Site two uses something called wayward weirs, which are these rock structures that stick out into the river.

- In simple terms, if you had an obstruction in the river, the river is going to flow over it like this.

And if it's tilted like this, the river, if it's going this way, it's going to turn and flow over it like that.

So what these weirs do is they're tilted upstream, and it will turn the river as it goes through this bend so that it's no longer eroding the outside bank.

Instead, it's focused more towards the center of the channel.

These weirs actually point the final flow as it finishes going through this bend directly into where we want it for the next bend.

- [Brooke] The next bend is site three, where they are implementing a toe-wood structure.

A toe-wood structure utilizes layers of timber and rock and vegetation to restructure and stabilize the riverbank.

This area was once heavily covered in brush, and it's common for landowners to cut it down.

But that area of vegetation called the riparian zone is essential to keeping the ecosystem in balance.

That's why at each site, they're also creating areas for new growth to take place.

- So what happens is when the river comes up, some of the sediment that the river's carrying will actually flow over into that space between the rock structure and the bank.

Whether it's good sediment or bad sediment, it will deposit there, and over time you'll actually see vegetation start to grow up there and you'll get to see some more habitat, and just a lot of good river things happening there.

- [Brooke] So Joe knows about the hydraulics of the project, but like I mentioned, there are a lot of organizations involved to carry out their area of expertise.

That brings us to Steve Harrington with The Nature Conservancy.

- This is an area that's had a long history of lead pollution.

Projects like this do a really good job of greatly reducing the amount of lead that continues to load into the system.

- [Brooke] Now we've met Steve before, a few years ago on a similar project at LaBarque Creek that used a lot of the same techniques we've talked about here, but on a much smaller scale.

The work at both LaBarque Creek and Calico Creek are considered pilot projects, which allows everyone involved to learn what works well and what doesn't, so they can apply it to future projects.

- Merrimack River basin, including the Big River, has amongst the highest biodiversity in this entire region of the United States, particularly in the Midwest region.

So doing projects like this that can help reduce stream temperatures over time, by having shade, that can help create in-stream habitat by having habitat for those fish to find places to hide and find food to eat, incorporating these nature-based solutions, by getting green live plants, that provides corridors for insects, birds, mammals, and just creates more so that there's greater resiliency into the future with the changing climate.

All that has a benefit as we reduce the pollution that goes downstream into our waterways, into the Merrimack and potentially into the St. Louis area.

- [Brooke] It sounds simple, just putting some extra rocks and trees around the water and using bioengineering techniques is supposed to look simple to the average person because they mimic the way nature intended the process to look.

But by just waiting to let nature take its course, we'd be losing a lot of biodiversity waiting for that to happen.

- We have threatened and endangered species such as freshwater mussels.

We refer to those as indicator species because they do tell us the quality of the watershed and the river, and we're losing those mussels.

So that tells us that now is the time.

If we do nothing, those species will be eliminated, other species will be greatly impacted.

- [Brooke] Matt Vielhaber is the project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers, and above all else he emphasizes that the collaboration between the organizations is essential to this project.

- One of the coolest parts about this project is, it is by definition collaboration.

We have three federal agencies.

We have a state agency, we have NGOs, or non-governmental organizations such as The nature Conservancy.

I'd be remissed if I didn't also point out that the collaboration is absolutely tied to the landowners.

All of these projects are planned for privately owned lands.

We understand that these landowners purchased this land for themselves and their families to be able to enjoy this beautiful habitat and recreate.

And we're not looking to impact that.

It's also important to note that these issues are along the Big River now, if we do nothing, it will migrate to the Merrimack and ultimately to the Mississippi.

So, you know, a greater area of impact, more species will be impacted, it's a big deal.

- Our next story takes us to a bakery, but it's not just about what they make, but who they are.

Anne-Marie Berger stopped in for a visit.

(tinkling music) - [Anne-Marie] The Pioneer Bakery Cafe in downtown Kirkwood is unique.

They opened for business during the pandemic.

- Originally we were going to open earlier in the spring, but when the pandemic hit it delayed the project, but it appeared the pandemic wasn't going away and so we just felt we just needed to continue pushing on and go forward with it.

- [Anne-Marie] Now that's brave, but it's not newsworthy.

That's not why The Today Show came calling.

- And today we head to St. Louis Missouri.

- Oh, it's a great spot.

- [Anne-Marie] What makes the Pioneer Bakery Cafe special is their business model.

They exist to provide transferable and employable skills training for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD.

- [Scott] So the Pioneer Bakery Cafe was created as a practicum working environment for the special step up program.

- [Anne-Marie] The step up program is a grant funded effort at Lafayette Industries, a sheltered workshop that directly employs adults with disabilities.

- Step up curriculum was designed with experienced special educators and business executives who examined their experience in both the classroom world and the business world and combined- - [Anne-Marie] Stacy Elster is the Director of Programs at Lafayette Industries.

- The program is designed twofold, and they come to Lafayette one day a week to receive instruction in our classroom, to focus on the curriculum, and then another day of the week, they go to our business partners.

And our individuals get to go apply those social skills that we're focused on here, while learning specific skills to the industry.

- [Anne-Marie] Elster explained that in Missouri, the hospitality industry can't recruit enough employees as businesses struggle to ramp back up.

Many in the pre-COVID hospitality workforce, moved into industries that kept hiring during the pandemic, such as grocery stores, online retailers and fulfillment warehouses.

Making the need to fill the hospitality workforce an opportunity for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

- Most people when they think workforce development, IVD individuals, aren't the ones that they're thinking of.

- You're absolutely correct.

It's an underutilized population.

It's so very important that they have the same amount of opportunities that you and I do when it comes to employment.

And there are many, many careers in this diverse world.

And so it's very important that people with disabilities have that same opportunity.

- [Anne-Marie] You like those gloves, okay?

- [Noah] I do, these are- - [Anne-Marie] Easier to use?

- [Noah] Easier to get handled.

- [Anne-Marie] This is Noah, and he's thrilled to be part of this one to two year program, learning soft and hard skills, he can bring to a job.

- Welcome to Pioneer.

It works for my speed, my learning speed.

They're not teaching me fast.

I'm learning at my own speed.

- [Anne-Marie] You're actually learning something.

- Yes!

I'm learning something.

I'm learning really good communication skills.

I have to say, "Welcome to the Pioneer Cafe," to customers.

Like, build my self-esteem up, and that's the biggest thing I'm learning.

(cheery music) - Noah was our very first participant who was interested in the program.

We were in the middle of construction and it was like, what are we getting ourselves into?

And all of a sudden, Noah and his father were looking through the windows and they had rode their bikes here to see, and I invited them in and just seeing his enthusiasm, despite the construction mess was just uplifting for me.

Like, gosh, this is what we're doing it for.

- [Anne-Marie] Pioneer, the name is a nod to their Kirkwood community and a reminder that they're leading employers and a workforce into a new frontier.

So this is the training location where they gain those skills that other people aren't hiring them for because they don't have any experience.

- Exactly.

So we're helping build a resume, build a confidence.

I always kind of refer to it it's like the wave.

You could be in the stadium and it takes a couple people to get it going, and there's a choice of the fans, it's either accept it and get the wave rolling, or it's going to peter out.

And so for us, it's that momentum we're trying to build up.

- [Noah] Everything good?

- [Female] Yeah, everything was great, thank you so much.

- [Anne-Marie] Working independent, self-advocating, not to mention a well-earned paycheck.

Sounds like a good recipe to me.

- It's really cool because I made the money that I'm getting from the cafe, like I'm gonna earn it.

So that is a big value in my life.

Once a paycheck says my name, that means everything to me.

- Finally, you may have seen that America's tallest man, Igor Vovkovinskiy, seven foot, eight inches tall, just died at the age of 38.

He was the tallest man in America at the time he was alive, but not the tallest of all time.

That record of course belongs to Robert Wadlow of Alton, Illinois.

We thought this a good time to retell his story.

(soft piano music) He was known as the Alton Giant.

Because of a pituitary gland condition that could be treated today, he grew to nearly nine feet tall.

And Robert Wadlow went into the record books as the world's tallest man, but he died at the age of 22.

So for most of his life, he was a growing boy.

Wherever he went, here, he is at age 15 with the YMCA group at the Chicago World's Fair, he couldn't help, but attract cameras and crowds, which then became his job with St. Louis's International Shoe Company.

He traveled from town to town, shoe store to shoe store.

But he did consider it a job.

- [Tim] He considered a full-time job.

His title was, Field Representative for International Shoe.

- Tim Leone produced a documentary about Robert Wadlow's life in 1991, he tracked down the photos in the films, he interviewed those who had known him, and he talked with us about what he found.

Here in Alton is the place where Robert was best known and really was the place that he, the only place he could just be Robert Wadlow and not the world's tallest man.

- True.

To the people of Alton's credit, Robert was viewed and thought of as just one of the guys.

He had always been bigger than everybody, he'd been bigger than the teachers in grade school.

He was bigger than all the students.

He was bigger than every adult.

He was bigger than every car.

He was the biggest thing and he always had been that way.

So the people here, his classmates, teachers, the people at church and the various civic groups that he belonged to didn't really react adversely to him.

Robert had always been that way so they didn't really think of it as anything out of the ordinary.

- [Jim] Tim, where was all of this stuff?

Was it all in one place or did you have to go around digging for the photographs and the films that you did find?

- We had to dig rather deeply through attics, basements, personal collections, newspapers from around the country, the International Shoe archives, the local newspapers, what have you.

The film clips we found were from Europe, The National Archives, and again, people's basements and attics.

- [Jim] A lot of the things were official films.

They were newsreel photos and newspaper photos.

Here in town though, were there lots of pictures that people had just snapped of Robert Wadlow?

- There were more pictures than what most people thought.

There were a lot of candid shots taken at the high school of Robert by his classmates, but not very many photographs, candid photographs of Robert taken at home, or what have you.

The father would always expect to be paid.

If anybody had a camera, the father said, "How much money do you have in your pocket?"

Penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and would be expected to be paid, even just a little kid with a box camera.

So the kids would go to the school with their box cameras and take pictures of Robert, or have pictures taken with Robert at the school.

That's why there's so many photographs taken there.

- [Jim] Now, you have a couple of the candid photos, but in the collection that you, that you've shown me, most of those are the posed photograph.

Robert must have posed for thousands and thousands of these photographs.

Some of them really quite silly.

You have one where there's a midget I guess, from the circus shouting up to Robert in that, how's the weather up there pose.

- [Tim] True.

- [Jim] Did Robert ever draw the line and say, "This is silly, I'm not going to do this."

- Realistically, only once.

The family signed a deal with Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus and Robert appeared at Ringling Brothers for a short period of time.

But Robert always appeared in a coat and tie, three-piece suit, what have you.

And he never had to quote, perform, on quote.

Ringling Brothers, people out of town would put him with the other individuals who had physical disabilities or physical oddities and Robert never thought of himself that way.

And that's the only time that we have been cognizant that he physically said, "I don't want a part of this, get me out of the circus."

- [Jim] If somebody were to do a mini series of Robert Wadlow's life today for television, the theme would be his father controlling his life, the exploitation of Robert Wadlow.

Was he exploited as a human being?

- Both yes and no.

Again, you have to remember, we're talking the 1930s, the country was coming out of The Great Depression and it was considered to be standard practice for family members to work together, to help support the family.

And Robert did this willingly and did it his entire life.

And so in that context, it was not exploitation.

By today's standards, yes, it would be considered exploitation.

- [Jim] Had he lived on at age 22, and he was beginning to show some signs of independence, do we know, do you have an idea what sort of life he would have led beyond that?

- He began thinking about maybe having a business here in the upper Alton area, a shoe store is what he was thinking about.

He expressed some interest in maybe having a family, settling down, being a quote, businessman, a self-sustaining businessman.

And I think if he had been able to live his life to fruition, more than likely he would have achieved most of his goals, but he would have never gotten away from the family.

More than likely he and his father would have run the business together.

And possibly his younger brother would join the business.

If again, if Robert had lived.

- [Jim] The thing about him is that, for someone how was the world's largest man, a man who stood out no matter where he went, he seems remarkably to have been well adjusted.

- Very true.

Robert was very comfortable who he was.

You have to remember, he was always in the public eye ever since he was a very young person, starting from about age nine.

And so he developed a certain sense of sophistication far beyond the experience of any of his peers.

And so he was pretty comfortable with who he was.

He said, one time, he said, "People should utilize their handicaps instead of fussing about them."

He said, "Look at me, I'm getting along all right."

So that kind of says it all.

- It was on one of his out of town trips that Robert came down with an infection caused by the rubbing of a brace on his ankle, but really caused by the fact that he was nearly nine feet tall and still growing, he'd outgrown his nervous system and hadn't felt the pain until it got serious.

It caused his death in 1940 at the age of 22.

He was buried in Alton, which later erected in his memory and honor, an amazingly life-sized statue.

And that's Living St. Louis.

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

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