- [Announcer] Wheelan-Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

They now have livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service.

- Making sure veterans get the attention they need, and going for a dig, unearthing the secrets of some of the earliest Western Illinois residents, in The Cities.

(upbeat rock music) Some of the earliest residents of Western Illinois left behind some items that tell the story of how they lived.

But first, we need to dig them up.

We'll talk about that in a moment, but first, taking care.

Memorial Day has come and gone, but for many veterans living with the impact of COVID-19 in their daily lives, is still very much with them.

The Veterans Administration in the Quad Cities continues to reach out to military men and women who may need more help with their health and wellbeing.

We talk with Cindy McGee, the clinic manager of the VA Clinic in the Quad Cities.

It has been a tough year for COVID.

Looking back, how difficult was it for veterans?

- Well, I don't think the impact was anything unlike the larger community as a whole for our veterans.

So the Iowa City VA implemented their emergency response protocol in March of 2020, and with that, we put in place where the veterans didn't have an opportunity always to come to the Clinic.

But we set up telehealth for our veterans, and telephone calls, because everyone was staying home and keeping their social distancing.

So back in February of 2020, we did around 350 telehealth visits, but in February 2021, we've done over 4,500 telehealth visits to make sure our veterans still keep connected and engaged with their providers.

- So do you think that's going to be something that is the big legacy of COVID, is that there is going to be more of this telehealth going on?

- I do, just because it helps the veterans that are in the rural population, or our older veterans that have a difficult time getting into the Clinic.

The VA provides devices for them to get connected to their provider or their care team and discuss anything that needs to be taken care of.

- So right now it's about 50% of the American public has gotten vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines.

Are you seeing the same thing among the veteran population?

- We are.

Now we have had clinics every Thursday here at the Clinic, and we've had a couple Saturday clinics with the J&J.

Starting Tuesday, June first, we are offering COVID vaccines daily.

They can either walk in or schedule an appointment from 10 to noon.

So we're giving both Moderna and J&J, and the veterans, all they have to do is call us at the Clinic and any clinic in our Iowa City, visit and get their vaccines scheduled.

- Well, veterans are no different than the general public in so many different ways, of course.

So you've got that hesitancy that you're seeing in the general public, is it even more pronounced among veterans?

- I would not say it's more pronounced.

I just would say that we've had a great response from the veterans in regards to, they've been very grateful and eager to get their vaccines.

So we still provide the education and the communication for our veterans that don't believe or are hesitant to get the vaccines.

But we've done like, town hall meetings, and virtual sessions with our veterans to try to eliminate their hesitancies.

- COVID-19 has affected every part of the population.

It's really affected elderly citizens far more.

And about three quarters of veterans, about 73% of veterans, are actually age 50 or older.

Has that been really a problem?

Is that among the veteran population COVID has really struck real hard, only because of age?

- Well, and we worry about our older veterans.

That's why we have a couple of programs, the telehealth again, we will send them a device, get them connected with their care provider.

We also have home-based primary care, and they go out into the veteran's home and offer them services, so that's been a great help for our veterans who feel that they, you know, they don't want to go out of their house because of the pandemic.

- Now you mentioned that the VA is offering walk-in clinics to get COVID-19 vaccines.

Does that also apply to spouses and caregivers, because the VA has been trying to help the people that help the veterans as well?

- Correct, the Save Lives Act was signed on March 24th of 2021, and that expanded the network of people that we could give them vaccines to, to include spouses and caregivers of veterans.

So even if they, a caregiver could be someone that went and got the veteran groceries, or mowed their lawn, anyone that is connected with a veteran can now get the vaccine through the VA.

So all they have to do is complete some paperwork, get into our system, and schedule their appointment.

- You did mention the telehealth.

I mean, it is amazing how much that has helped reach out to people in rural areas.

Has that been a big push in the VA?

Because the VA is in some of the city.

I know that you're in you're in Sterling, of course, and you've got a wonderful clinic in Galesburg, but some of the more rural areas, it must be very difficult to reach those veterans.

- It is.

But if they have the VA telehealth equipment, it includes 4G connectivity, so the veteran doesn't have to worry about their internet connection, we provide that for them.

- And what services are provided by telehealth?

I mean, it's not diagnostics, is it?

- Well, we offer, I mean, they can get a blood pressure cuff with it, they can get a stethoscope, so they can monitor their heart rate.

They can get oxygen, so we can do pulse checks with them.

So there are different accessories that can come along with their device.

- And that's amazing, because I mean, some of those simpler things you don't want to drive miles and miles to get that, this is really a good a system that you have, people should take advantage of this!

- Correct, and then, and that's why we offer it to all our veterans.

So if they have any needs or, you know, don't want to leave their home because of the pandemic, we'll be happy to offer those services.

- We've been talking about their physical health.

Of course, the mental health element weighs on so many, not only veterans, but as we pointed out, caregivers and family members.

The VA's really ramping up on services for mental health as well.

- Correct.

Now we've never stopped giving any service throughout the pandemic.

Our Clinic's always been open.

We have, like we said, we've moved more during the height of the pandemic, we've moved more towards the telephone and the telehealth way to meet the veterans' needs, but we've always been open, we've been here to discuss any issues or problems for our veterans with the isolation that they have felt.

- And that is the big thing underlying that, please, Cindy.

I mean, the isolation has hit a lot of people, very difficult, especially those who are a little bit older that really need kind of that give and take just to stay sharp or to have really, you know, a happy experience with life.

If you're not around people, it could be very miserable.

- Correct, and that's why, I mean, the telephone and telehealth has been big parts of it.

Again, the home-based primary care, so they can go out to the veteran's home, so the veteran doesn't have to come to us, that's been huge too.

- There was an interesting aspect of the VA website that I noticed is that it listed all of the services that you give, that's a given, but it also kind of listed the wait times for services, and also talked about almost a survey of how veterans felt about the wait time as well.

Is that part of the VA's transparency as far as its clinics are concerned?

- It is.

We're trying to, that's a priority for the VA, to be transparent and give the veterans the information that makes them have informed decision making for their care and what they need.

So we try to provide that and make sure that veteran feels in charge of the health care that they are given.

And we have excellent outcomes and high trust with our patients.

We've done town hall meetings to try to keep the communication open between both us and them, and they get to choose what they want from us.

- Of course, it always comes down to money too, you know?

As much money as you get from Congress.

And are the needs being met?

Because it seems like, and when I talked to some of the vets that I know, is that the VA is getting better at at least recognizing and meeting their needs.

- Well, we sure hope so.

With the move here to our Davenport facility, that has really helped expand our services.

So from Bettendorf, you know, we brought over primary care, lab, x-ray, mental health, and telehealth, we've always had telehealth.

But new to our Davenport clinic, we now have audiology, optometry, physical therapy, podiatry, chiropractor, and acupuncture, and then home-based primary care.

- And that is huge!

I mean, tell me about the West Locust Street location, because I mean, you're across from the fairgrounds, and it really has been, not only have you been able to expand some of the programs as you were pointing out, you're also able to consolidate many of them as well.

- Correct, we can offer them here at the Clinic instead of the veterans having to go to Iowa City so much, which is really important for our veterans.

And also the parking has been much better over here at this facility than at our Bettendorf facility.

- And that's no small feat!

I mean, that is a big deal.

Well, let's talk about mobility for many veterans, that is critically important.

- It is, it is.

It's very important.

And we've heard a lot of positive feedback from our veterans, and they've really enjoyed the new facility and the new space.

- Let's be honest, I mean, the VA facility in West Davenport is really, it is the veterans', it's for them, it is theirs.

Do you welcome them just to come by and visit, just to see what is being offered?

- Yes, we actually, you know, we have flyers here.

We offer them if they want to come by.

We have a lot of walk-ins when they try it, you know, with their medical care, if they have need any medical assistance, they stop in.

So we're still doing our front door screening with regards to the COVID, and we're trying to maintain our social distancing within the lobby area.

But we do have anywhere from 150 to 200 veterans step through our facility every day.

- What restrictions are there in the VA Center when it does come to COVID-19?

- Well, right now, with the front door screening, the veterans are asked if they have any signs and symptoms of COVID.

They've been asked if they've been in contact with anyone that's been positive for COVID, and they get their temperature changed right now.

Then they're brought into the lobby and checked in at the front desk.

Our lobby area, we try to maintain the social distancing with the seating area, or get them back to their appointment as soon as possible.

- So the key of course this week and in the coming weeks is to get as many people vaccinated as possible.

Are you anticipating now that you're offering more shots more often that we'll see more veterans actually receive the vaccine quicker?

- We hope so.

If we haven't caught them already.

Again, we've probably vaccinated over 1500 right here in the Quad City, veterans in our Quad City area.

Or, yeah, 1500.

And we're pretty proud of that.

So the veterans that have come in so far, so we encourage them, if they haven't got their vaccine, to please come in so we can get back to normal life and their regular routine.

- Cindy McGee, the clinic manager of the VA Clinic in the Quad Cities.

In a moment, the big dig, a Western Illinois University effort to find the earliest residents of Western Illinois.

But first here's Lora Adams with plenty of great ideas for you if you want to go Out and About.

- [Lora] This is Out and About through June 15th.

Enjoy Quad Cities museum week, the sixth through the 13th.

Upcoming festivals include Aledo's Rhubarb Fest, June 4th and fifth, Andover's 185th Anniversary Festival, the fifth and sixth, Schuetzen Park's Sesquicentennial Celebration the 12th, Long Grove's Strawberry Festival, the 13th, Pride Fest at Bass Street landing, June fourth and fifth, and Mercado on Fifth, each Friday night in downtown Moline.

At the Adler, the Nielsen Trust, and Nick Perri & The Underground Thieves, the third, and The Magic of Bill Blagg on the fourth.

RME's Live@Five Courtyard series returns each Friday, starting at 5:00, while David Allen Coe performs at the Rust Belt on the fourth.

There's Friday Night LIVE in LeClaire, the fourth from 5:00 to 11:00, and Babaloo, a one-man musical comedy act for kids at the LeClaire Library the ninth.

Tomfoolery on Tremont presents the comedy of John McCombs the fourth, and Circuit 21 BEEHIVE: The 60's Musical continues featuring the fun, frothy pop music of the sixties.

For kids, Elephant and Piggie's: We Are In A Play opens June 11th.

Playcrafter's Barn Theatre opens an original play, Princeton's Rage, rated R, while the comedy Hate Mail opens at The Black Box Theater the third.

Plus the Clinton Symphony Orchestra performs the sixth at the Riverview Park band shell in Clinton at 6:30.

For more information, visit WQPT.org.

- Thank you, Lora.

The Bucktown Revue has plenty of influences, from the heart of American music.

They conjured up the music of Bill Monroe this week.

Here's The Bucktown Revue, and Realfoot Reel.

("Realfoot Reel" by The Bucktown Revue) - The Bucktown Revue and Reelfoot Reel, named after a place in Tennessee, Reelfoot Lake.

Each year, the Western Illinois University archeology team joins others to carefully, meticulously attempt to unearth the story of some of the earliest people to walk the prairies of Western Illinois.

It's an excavation at the Orendorf site in Fulton County, and Western Illinois University Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Andrea Alveshere, is once again leading Western's efforts.

We talked with her about the big dig.

So tell me about the Orendorf site, this dig.

It's been going on for a number of years.

- Yeah, so the Orendorf site is really a unique archeology site in a number of ways.

It was discovered in 1970, I believe.

Well, there's a mound area, and the mounds were known to be there since the 1920s.

But the village site was just kind of, it seemed that there probably was one nearby.

And then in the 1970s, the land was purchased by an energy company that was going to do coal, going to excavate for coal, underneath where the site is located.

And so some archeologists locally, especially our WIU archeologist emeritas is Lawrence Conrad, went out to see, you know, if there was anything underneath the area that was going to be destroyed.

And what he found was an extensive area of village sites.

And one of the really cool things about Orendorf is that it was occupied for many, many generations, but they didn't build exactly on the same spot each time.

So they moved their site, or they expanded to the south and west.

And what that gives us, which is pretty rare in archeology, is a village that's been occupied probably by the same, you know, people by different generations of the same group for, you know, more than 100 years, probably several hundred years.

And instead of destroying their old house, when they built a new one, they moved over.

So we can get a look at changes, you know, over hundreds of, you know, over generations, and in the cultural norms of this particular pre-contact Native American society.

- Well, and that is unique, but mounds are not that unique in our area of the Midwest.

But we must have learned an awful lot since the 1970s.

I mean, there was a lot of assumptions that have doing totally changed.

- Yes, absolutely.

So, I mean, even early on, European settlers, when they encountered these mounds were, you know, were loathe to believe that the Native people had been able to build them.

I mean, some of these sites are very complex, and they're earth mounds, so they're built of dirt, but the dirt, you know, just enormous amounts of dirt would have had to be moved in order to create these sort of pyramid-like mound structures.

Some of them are round, some of them are more pyramid-shaped.

And so, you know, now we definitely know that these were built by the ancestors of modern-day, you know, Native Americans or American Indians, and that they had trade networks, they had large, complex communities.

They had enormous city, which is at the Cahokia Mounds World Heritage Site, down just across the river from St. Louis in Collinsville, Illinois.

And the Orendorf site is kind of an outpost of Cahokia, or they began to adopt the culture that started down there by St. Louis, and they were connected by the riverways.

So the Orendorf site is on the Illinois River, and the Cahokia site is kind of, you know, right near the confluence of the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Illinois Rivers.

- Well, the Cahokia site is the area that so many people know about.

I mean, worldwide and archeologists as well, and so much has been learned at that site.

But it really kind of underlines how important the Orendorf site is, as you pointed out, is not only, you know, they were moving to the suburbs and keeping their old house there, if you want to put it in today's terms, but also that there is some link between these.

- Absolutely, and one of the things that really interests me as an anthropologist is looking at cultural change.

And we know that people of the Woodland culture, which is the culture that in time, precedes the emergence of the Mississippian, people were living at the Orendorf site, or at least leaving their pottery around there, before the Mississippian culture arrived.

And so I'm really interested in looking at how you know, how did they have people move in?

Did they just adopt the cultural traditions like a new, you know, a new trend comes to town, and everybody wants to start doing that?

But they changed the way that their pottery was made, they changed the kind of bowls and dishes that they used.

They changed how their houses were built, and how their communities were laid out.

You know, sort of the urban planning of the Orendorf site changed over time, or, you know, the Woodland culture had a different kind of setup.

And so it's really interesting to see these things.

And we also see changes in those kinds of things throughout you know, in the different settlement areas from the earlier settlement and moving toward the southwest along the ridge there to the later settlements.

We can see some of those changes taking place, which is really interesting.

- This is a huge educational opportunity for Western Illinois University students.

I mean, to have this in your backyard, and all of our backyards, that's a big deal.

- Absolutely, we are really fortunate at Western Illinois University to be, you know, right in the middle of this.

You know, there are many sites, including the Orendorf site, which is, you know, the one that we're currently working on, but there are many sites of the Mississippian culture and the earlier Woodland culture and so on that are located along the Illinois River and to the west of it.

So we're right in the heart of this.

And, you know, we can drive day trips out to these sites and work on them, whereas we have, you know, colleagues from universities all across the country, and even in Europe who come all the way here to do their field work and learn about, you know, be able to work on these sites.

So it's a tremendous opportunity for our students to be able to be right here in the heart.

- Yeah, not only a tremendous opportunity, but there also must be, at least in your mind, is that, as you pointed out, these are our people who have deep roots in our area, the ancestor of Native Americans.

So you know that you're working on holy land, so to speak.

You're working on an area that has great importance to Native Americans.

That must be something that you think of every time you're at the site, and I'm assuming you just try to instill that in the students and your colleagues as well.

- Absolutely, yes.

We are, you know, trying to work closely with the Indigenous communities around here.

Some of my family members are members of the Dakota nation and, you know, working with them, and seeing how, you know their reaction to it is really pretty cool.

You know, one person in particular having come from one of our most impoverished reservations and growing up in foster care, and having a lot of discrimination against them for their background, seeing the way that site, you know, learning more about how people lived before Europeans arrived, and had these, you know, thriving, flourishing communities, and really learning more about that part of their heritage is pretty cool.

- How can people help?

'Cause we were talking about, this is not an inexpensive proposition you're going through.

- Right, yeah.

We have a fundraiser online where you can donate, and a list of kind of the types of equipment and things that we can cover for different dollar amounts.

And that's been extremely helpful to us in being able to keep the field school affordable for our students during this pandemic time.

We have to make a lot of changes in terms of the housing and the transportation, and just, you know, things that we do on the site in order to keep everyone safe from COVID.

And so we've been able to use funds from our generous donors to be able to help make sure that you know, that the financial impact of that is not passed on to our students any more than, you know, possible.

- Western Illinois University Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Andrea Alveshere.

And you can go to Western Illinois University's anthropology website to get more details about this summer's archeological dig, and how you can help.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device, and streaming on your computer.

Thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about the issues on The Cities.

(upbeat rock music) - [Announcer] Wheelan-Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

They now have livestream capabilities for viewing your loved one's funeral or memorial service.