Arizona Autism Charter School uses behavior therapy techniques to help children communicate their needs. (Courtesy of Arizona Autism Charter Schools)
When Diana Diaz-Harrison strolls the halls of her schools, she is reminded on a daily basis why she loves education. She has always loved kids. It’s what drew her into the education field in the first place. Her earlier self as a bilingual teacher in California could not have imagined her present self as an innovative leader in education. Today, she is the founder of a specialized public charter school system—the first of its kind: the Arizona Autism Charter School (AZACS).
AZACS is unlike the typical public school institution. It is a tuition-free charter school based on a nonprofit educational model for Arizona’s non-neurotypical students who have been diagnosed with learning differences. These children are thriving in a non-traditional classroom setting within her network of charter schools geared toward children with autism in Arizona. According to Harrison, about 25 percent of students are not autistic; however, they might have a speech delay or cerebral palsy, or they are wheelchair-bound students.
(Courtesy of Arizona Autism Charter Schools)
“It is hard to convince others about the growing trend of diverse student populations,” she stated. “These students need personalized learning, therapeutic services, and a small class model. And because there are so many diverse students, they need the services of AZACS.”
Harris first established a campus in 2014 for students in grades K to 5. Today, Harrison’s schools serve 725 students online and at three campuses in central Phoenix in grades K to 12. For post-secondary education, AZACS added a transition academy to assist students between 18 and 22 years old. Here, students can earn career and tech credits (CTE) while learning essential life skills and getting vocational training. And yet, spaces are continually being added to accommodate enrollment needs.
The work of AZACS attracted national recognition with Harrison winning the Yass Prize, an award established in 2021 to honor and support innovative alternatives in education. As the winner, AZACS will receive $1 million in prize money. Dubbed an education changemaker, Harrison has committed her passions, expertise, and tenacity in ways that improve the quality of life for many neurodiverse students in Arizona. “My goal is to help change the narrative, celebrate these students for what they can contribute to society. They are not a burden. We have to find the best ways to reach them,” she said.
The school is a tuition free charter school that aims to help children with autism explore their unique gifts. Below, Harrison at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the school’s post-secondary program focused on workforce training. (Courtesy of Arizona Autism Charter Schools)
Fighting for Those Like Her Son
And reach them she does. Harrison’s own son, Sammy, was diagnosed with autism when he was only 2 years old. She found it difficult to access personalized quality education at traditional public school institutions. Like many parents, she struggled to find an affordable private school that would work for her son. Soon after, Sammy had a transformative intervention through Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC), renowned for providing the best behavior therapy for autism. It was a game changer. “Sammy started verbalizing and engaging with people other than me and attended other activities in a group setting. I was excited about school, and then when all of those strategies were not available in public school, I was baffled as to why there was hesitation to implement therapies that work.”
Harrison realized what was possible and decided to do something about it: start her own school for autistic children. With an emphasis on behavior modeling, Harrison’s schools depend on a robust team of dedicated personnel and behavior analysts. “Sometimes autistic kids are defined by challenging behaviors, but they are so much more than that. There are therapies that can help them overcome. These students are so brilliant in terms of their ability to connect with others, their desire to do productive things in their community, and they love people,” Harrison said.
She explained that with a 3:1 student-to-faculty ratio, they are able to master foundational skills in reading and mathematics. Shaping behavior is also essential, such as learning how to sit in a chair, make a proper request, or raise a hand to ask for help. Identifying communication deficits or behavioral challenges using applied behavior analysis (ABA) teaches students to better understand themselves; and, according to Harrison, these techniques are drilled into children early so that they learn how to deal with self behaviors properly—which reinforces desirable behavior in the classroom. Instead of screaming in a group environment, students are given token cards that help them communicate their needs.
(Courtesy of Arizona Autism Charter Schools)
“These kids need reinforcement with meaningful rewards to shape behavior. … Social emotional learning is what we do all along because kids need to feel comfortable and regulated,” Harrison said. The school’s next goal is to foster an environment for students to collaborate on projects. “They can tap into their interests to help them go into a deep dive,” she said. One such project was building a self-sustaining turtle habitat. Students researched what kind of tortoises would thrive in ideal conditions in their school environment, incorporating a variety of academic lessons. Not only is this way of learning meaningful and creative, but it’s also applicable to real-life passions on topics of interest to them.
Set Up for Success
Harrison endeavored to start a specialty school based on other schools in existence already: South Florida Autism Charter School helped her pilot the way, using a similar instructional model based on behavior therapy and a nonprofit structure. It proved successful. “It seems like we always outgrow ourselves due to need. We use a lottery process because we are the only charter in the state. We feel a huge responsibility to grow and keep up with demand and to help others start a similar school in their state,” Harrison said.
(Courtesy of Arizona Autism Charter Schools)
Her winning pitch for the national prize means additional funding to continue AZACS’s innovative mission. Middle and high school students will have greater access to project-based learning modules through Woz ED. Apple’s co-founder started the company to partner with schools around the country, with the goal of providing cutting-edge STEM curriculum. Whether it is to learn coding, understand computers, or fly drones, the science program equips students with training to get them into the workforce quickly after graduation. “The kids are flourishing. We are preparing them for highly sought after tech careers which they are uniquely suited to work in these fields,” Harrison said.
Winning the Yass Prize means that planned expansion in other Arizonan communities can now take place. Additionally, Harrison is eager to help build similar autism charters in other cities around the country. She intends to create a type of playbook, partnering with South Florida Autism Charter School, to offer specialized training and access to a toolbox of materials to create specialty schools in communities all over America.
AZACS’s learning opportunities will be able to offer their students better earning power after they graduate and become productive members of society. “We are changing the narrative to see themselves as problem-solvers who contribute instead of seeing themselves as special education kids who are disabled. It is fascinating to see them flourish with their unique thinking patterns—to see what they can do.”
If you ask what education means to people, most will think “school.” If they are jaded, “debt.” But for the first great American family, it was much more than this.
In his autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams,” the author describes growing up within a celebrated lineage that, by his lifetime, had become a cultural institution. During his childhood, Henry wrote, he would often transition between the Boston home of his father Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln’s future ambassador to England during the Civil War, and the home of his grandfather John Quincy Adams, where he played in the former president’s library. Sitting at his writing table as “a boy of ten or twelve,” he proof-read the collected works of his great-grandfather John Adams that his father was preparing for publication. While practicing Latin grammar, he would listen to distinguished gentlemen, who represented “types of the past,” discuss politics. His education, he reflected, was “an eighteenth-century inheritance” that was “colonial” in atmosphere. While he always revered his forebears and felt they were right about everything, he observed that this learning style did not sufficiently prepare him “for his own time”—a modern age that was increasingly defined by technology, commerce, and empire.
Henry Adams is today considered one of America’s greatest historians. Given this, one would probably conclude that his education served him exceedingly well, even if he hoped to produce history rather than merely record it. The substance of his educational ideals was, when stripped of their luxurious trappings, very similar to that of our second and sixth presidents. Although this was precisely the problem for a young man growing up in a new industrial epoch, there is much to admire about this cultivated reverence for tradition. Values, unlike skill sets, do not become obsolete.
Graduation photo of Henry B. Adams from the Harvard College Class of 1858. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. (public domain)
A Father Teaches His Son
The wealth and privilege Henry Adams experienced was far removed from the boyhood circumstances of his most famous forefather three generations previously. John Adams was born in a simple farmhouse where the family’s only valuable possessions were three silver spoons. The key to his rise was education. Not only of the formal kind, but of character. John took inspiration from his descendants, “a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers.” When he complained of losing interest in his studies due to a churlish teacher at his schoolhouse, his father, a deacon, enrolled him in a private school. Later, the deacon sold 10 acres of land to pay for his son’s college fund.
John admired his father, striving to embody the qualities of sincerity and patriotism he instilled. He called the deacon “the honestest man” he ever knew and passed on these ideals to his own son, John Quincy Adams. While John was in Philadelphia attending the Continental Congress, he instructed young “Johnny” through letters. Writing to Abigail on June 29, 1777, he said, “Let him be sure that he possesses the great virtue of temperance, justice, magnanimity, honor, and generosity, and with these added to his parts, he cannot fail to become a wise and great man.”
In letters to John Quincy during this same year, John advised his son to acquire “a taste for literature and a turn for business” that would allow for both subsistence and entertainment. Reading the historian Thucydides, preferably in the original Greek, would provide him with “the most solid instruction … to act on the stage of life,” whether that part be orator, statesman, or general. While John was away, Abigail constantly upheld her husband to John Quincy as an example of professional achievement and courage. She encouraged him to study the books in his father’s library and forbade him from being in “the company of rude children.”
For the Adamses, books were not just the means to a career, but a key to unlocking the sum of a person’s life. Education encompassed experience, conduct, and social ties. Like his grandson Henry, young John Quincy was sometimes unsure whether he would be able to live up to his ancestors’ example.
John Adams, second president of the United States from 1797–1801. Official presidential portrait of John Adams by John Trumbull, circa 1792–1793. Oil on canvas. White House Collection, Washington, D.C. (public domain)
A Family Heritage
John instructed John Quincy more directly when taking him along on diplomatic missions in Europe. In Paris, John Quincy began keeping a daily journal at his father’s request, recording “objects that I see and characters that I converse with.” John Quincy observed his father staying up at all hours to assemble diplomatic reports and would later emulate this diligent work ethic.
He then accompanied John to Holland. At the age of 13, he “scored his first diplomatic triumph,” according to biographer Harlow Unger. The precocious young student, dazzling professors with his erudition at the University of Leiden, caught the eye of an important scholar and lawyer named Jean Luzac. John Quincy introduced Luzac to his father, then struggling to convince the Dutch government to give America financial assistance in its costly war with Britain. Luzac was impressed with the Adams family, advocated their cause of independence, and succeeded in securing crucial loans for the desperate young nation.
John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States from 1825–1829. Official presidential portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy, 1858. Oil on canvas. White House Collection, Washington, D.C. (public domain)
During this time, John Adams encouraged his son to continue studying the great historians of antiquity: “In Company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus and Livy, you will learn Wisdom and Virtue.” He closed his letter by emphasizing the importance of the heart’s authority over the mind: “The end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen. This will ever be the sum total of the advice of your affectionate Father.”
John Quincy, ever the obedient son, attended to both the wisdom of the distant past and his family heritage that enshrined it. While following in John’s footsteps as a diplomat, and later president, he would pass these values on to his own children.
The success, achievement, and public legacy of the Adams family has everything to do with this conception of education as a living inheritance. Writing over a century later, Henry Adams saw the role of learning as a lifelong endeavor that was difficult to justify through any specific practical or monetary measurement. But, he added, “the practical value of the universe has never been stated in dollars.”
Li Fan, an expert in baroque and early music, recently returned to playing the modern violin. It was a bigger adjustment than she expected, especially given her dynamic career in violin before taking up early music, and the experience prompted her to consider many things about the change of pace in music, culture, and life over the course of history.
“People [today] don’t have the heart to do a single, slow thing. In this mindset, we’ve lost some of the finer details. There’s a loss of sensitivity in this. We need more volume and power and speed to excite people,” Li said. “Now we need stronger sounds, bigger, brighter, and louder, more virtuosic. … I think this is very interesting.”
In the past few years, her career has in a way come full circle, her artistry deepened by a renewed understanding of tradition and faith.
Fated Encounter
After a decade of performing as a violinist in the orchestras of renowned ballet and opera companies in China, and recording numerous CD, radio, television, and film projects, Li turned her sights on Germany. Wanting to deepen her study of music, she went abroad. In a twist of fate, Li was introduced to early music and embraced it with open arms.
“What began as a fated encounter turned into a mission,” Li said.
Already 30, Li baffled administrators when she applied to German music conservatories. They would tell her that most of their incoming students were a mere 17 years of age and wondered what she was doing among them.
Li was accepted into a school, but was told that there weren’t enough teachers, so she would have to wait a semester before beginning classes. Homesick and tired of waiting, she decided to investigate whether there was some other class she could take.
“The first thing they asked me was how old I was,” Li said. She quipped that they must have found her old because they advised her to go learn old music. She was sent to the ancient music department where, finally, she was told to come back the next week and bring her instrument.
When Li returned, she was introduced to a whole new world of sound.
(Dai Bing)
Ancient Studies
“This instrument came to me, and I accepted it, studied it, understood it, its history and content, and appreciated the beauty of it,” Li said. She delved into not just early music, but also medieval art and culture.
“It’s very close to God—all the arts were about God,” she said.
During her studies in Germany, she took master classes with Ton Koopman, a conductor and renowned musicologist; John Holloway, a baroque violin expert; Anton Steck, a violinist and conductor; and Pedro Memelsdorff, a music director and musicologist specializing in medieval music.
She was a member of the Paradiso ensemble in Frankfurt and collaborated with La Stagione Frankfurt, the Free Dance Theater in Frankfurt, Maurice van Lieshout, Michael Schneider, the Mannheim court orchestra, and the Main Baroque Orchestra.
After graduating from the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany, Li furthered her postgraduate studies in historical interpretation with Petra Müllejans, the German violinist, conductor, and pedagogue renowned for her work in historical performance practice, and Li later became an assistant instructor for the professor’s master classes.
She also studied medieval and Renaissance music at the Schola Cantorum Brabantiae with Maurice van Lieshout and Rebecca Steward.
Li’s time in Europe was spent performing, in ensembles small and large, playing both old music and new premieres. She recorded a number of new CDs, including an album of Vivaldi’s works with the Capella Academia, and Telemann concertos with La Stagione Music Orchestra. She appeared in recorded live productions such as the DVD of Schauspiel Frankfurt’s 2009 Roter Ritter Parzival (Percival, the Red Knight). She became a founding member of ensembles Aquilla, La Pace, and the Allegris Quartett, touring in both Europe and Asia. Li was selected by the New Frankfurt Philharmonic to share the stage with artists including the beloved Andrea Bocelli and celebrity David Garrett.
“Then, returning to the modern violin—it just looked so fast,” Li said.
Reviving Tradition
Recently, Li accepted a position with the world-renowned Shen Yun Performing Arts. She was interested in both the company’s music and mission. A person of faith herself, she appreciated the fact that New York-based Shen Yun doesn’t shy away from faith and tradition.
“This is a very unique ensemble,” Li said. Though the instruments in Shen Yun’s orchestra are modern, and the music is newly written for each season, the music is traditional in composition from the standpoints of both the East and the West—ancient Chinese music arranged for a Western orchestra.
“We talk about reviving tradition—that’s not an easy thing, and not something you can just say casually. But we have to do it. We are doing it—in a way that is complex, harmonious,” she said. “The music is Chinese, and it’s not just pleasant to listen to, but also meaningful. It gives you a lot to think about. There is a story. … There is deeper meaning and a touch of the divine.”
In this space, Li felt she could take all the experiences gained in her life—the years spent playing music she felt was closest to God, the traditional Chinese culture she was steeped in during her upbringing—to fruition. In encountering Shen Yun, she gained a sense of mission.
“‘Reviving traditional culture,’ this phrase is something I think about all the time now, and it’s close to my heart. I’ve lived with early music for so many years in my career, and my upbringing was that of traditional culture,” Li said. “I felt I could really purely and simply focus on this mission.”
By this point in Li’s career, early music fit like a glove—a worn and comfortable one. She didn’t need to take up the modern violin again, whose metal strings and modern bow were sonic worlds apart from Li’s comfort zone. But Shen Yun’s mission so moved Li that she threw herself into practicing the violin again so as to achieve the level of world-class excellence required of the group’s artists.
During those first few months, Li felt like she was existing in a pressure cooker. But it was also a time that brought her a new understanding of faith, spirituality, and her art.
“I thought I had faith before—but it is truly strong now,” Li said.
(Dai Bing)
From Pressure, Diamonds
In encountering Shen Yun, Li also gained a renewed sense of faith.
Many of the artists in Shen Yun practice Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, as the founding artists had formed the company with a culture of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance—the three principles of the practice. It’s a spiritual, self-cultivation discipline that also includes five meditative exercises, including a sitting meditation.
So when Li met a member of Shen Yun for the first time, the idea that she could take up this spiritual discipline for herself was planted. In truth, Li’s husband also practiced Falun Gong, but in more than a decade of marriage, it wasn’t something Li had been interested in. His faith was his personal matter.
“For that first year or two, I did nothing but practice. But then I remember one day, I came in early, and before practice, I decided to meditate first,” Li said.
“Finally, I had some peace. And for some reason, the tears just came pouring out,” Li said. It was a turning point for Li’s resolve—in her mission, and her faith. And as she resolved to live her life by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, she gained a deeper understanding of art and music as well.
“Shen Yun evokes kindness in people. It prompts one to think about higher things, about what is true compassion and benevolence,” Li said. “True beauty and true goodness change hearts and minds.”
After a particular performance in Spain, Li remembered comments from an elderly woman who had been in the audience with her daughter. The woman’s husband had been a musician as well, and she was deeply moved by the music of the performance and spoke fervently to Li about the spirit of what they experienced.
“‘It was like we had given humanity a direction’—audiences will say things like this. They feel like they’ve obtained something greater than sensory enjoyment, but something that was positive for their spirit, that through cultivation of one’s character, one can have a better future,” Li said. “Of course, I’ve seen audiences who were moved before—but not like this.”
Li believes the art Shen Yun brings to audiences is the best, not because of the skills each member possesses, but because of the spirit they deliver to each and every viewer. Traditional culture is divinely inspired culture, and “what we’re bringing people is from from the divine, and that’s why it is the best,” she said.
Sonya Curry, educator and proud mother of three successful children, Steph, Seth, and Sydel Curry. (Nathan Mays)
Sonya Curry likens her family to The Big Machine. Every member of the family plays a part in helping the household run at maximum efficiency, with chores and activities on schedule for each. So when her eldest son Stephen Curry—who would go on to become the basketball star Steph Curry—failed to do the dishes one week during his high school sophomore year, there was no question that he would not be allowed to go to basketball practice—despite it being before an important game. Curry told her son’s basketball coach that he would be missing practice, which, according to the coach’s rules, meant he would not be starting the next game.
“I reminded Stephen so many times to do the dishes that I realized he was starting to rely on me to manage him. That’s not going to work. I have to train my kids to manage themselves. That’s what this is about. Yes, everyone has to do their part to keep the Big Machine running. At the same time, they have to learn to be their own managers,” Curry wrote in her recent book, “Fierce Love: A Memoir of Family, Faith, and Purpose.”
Sonya Curry and her son Steph Curry pose for a photo on the red carpet during a 2019 event in Oakland, Calif. (Kelly Sullivan/Stringer/Getty Images Entertainment)
Parenting for Curry meant having her children learn by making mistakes and learning that actions have consequences. Being the head of a private school in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she raised her three children, Steph, Seth, and Sydel, Curry knew that children must figure out the process themselves while parents guide them to the conclusion. Her approach is similar to the schooling philosophy she embraced as an educator: the Montessori method. Named after Italian educator Dr. Maria Montessori, the philosophy embraces a system of learning that measures success based on the creative potentiality of a child. According to Montessori, it would “activate the child’s own natural desire to learn.”
Curry first enrolled her two sons at a Montessori school when they were 3 and 5 years old. She was immediately impressed with how her sons, with different personalities, thrived in the same classroom while developing separate groups of friends. One day, the owner of the school approached Curry and asked her if she would be interested in running the school’s new satellite program for toddlers and kindergarten. Curry, with a degree in family studies and child development, agreed. She set up the new school on a piece of farmland.
This, she recalled, was the defining moment that led to her career in education.
After more than two decades at the school, she retired in 2017 and devoted her time to writing her book. Curry feels compelled to reach out to parents with sage advice: how to parent with ultimate success according to each individual child and his or her gifts. The bigger picture for Curry now is encouraging other parents in their roles of nurturing their children. “Hopefully the book keeps people talking about what they are doing as parents, to find support, and to offer support to others as a community.”
Curry with her children and grandchildren. (Courtesy of Sonya Curry)
Education Journey
Her journey into the realm of teaching began at an early age. She had a natural gift for teaching. At the ripe age of 10, she taught lessons to several neighborhood children in the trailer park in which she lived. Whether it was math, spelling, or reading, she commanded the class and the children respected her—like a real teacher. One particular experience led Curry to witness how education could transform someone. A neighborhood teen named Philip had developmental disabilities and did not know how to read. Curry took the initiative to teach him. Seeing someone struggle, she was drawn to be that teacher or coach who encouraged success. In retrospect, Curry says this was the only career she dreamed about and opportunities just presented themselves throughout the course of her life.
When she got the opportunity to open her own Montessori school, she didn’t need the Montessori certification to be an administrator. “But it is really hard to lead teachers and parents authentically unless you have had the training,” she added. She enrolled in an intensive training program for nine straight weeks in Baltimore, Maryland. Though it was difficult leaving her children behind, this was her opportunity to learn the Montessori method. “In Montessori, teachers are guides who allow the unfolding of the child that God created. Create an environment where the child will learn and then take ownership of that learning. Here we don’t tell them what the answer is; instead, we encourage them to find the answers.”
Raising a Family
Curry places a heavy emphasis on faith and spirituality, such as by giving God the first part of the day through praying devotions. The family attends church on Sundays and participates in the church community.
Training successfully for spiritual growth also means talking openly about hardships. Instead of sweeping problems under the rug, parents should have important conversations with children about the kind of impact any decision will have on others, she said. “Learn to give yourself some grace, and give grace to other people—and then try to correct or make things right,” she said.
(Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers)
The Curry household frequently held family meetings to discuss schedules or hash out those tricky topics. Sometimes, the weekly meetings were replaced with a fun family outing. Family bonding is key for enduring difficult moments. She is grateful for them. “Fundamental life experiences are more about looking deeper under the surface so that you can glimpse down the road to the bigger picture.”
She recounts one such tough conversation when her daughter Sydel, at 14, wanted to attend a party where her crush was expected to show up. But the family rule was no dating until the age of 16. In an emotional outburst, Sydel told her she was the worst mother in the world. Curry then gave Sydel a choice. Could Sydel continue to live with her mother who respects her and protects her—or does she want to move out? It was a defining moment of parenting with fierce love. “Sydel needed to learn the valuable lesson of understanding her worth. She had to learn to protect her value because the world and other people aren’t going to,” Curry said.
Ultimately, Sydel apologized. Curry let her know that words are powerful and can hurt. It was a reconciling moment for the mother-daughter duo.
Curry says it’s inevitable for parents to make mistakes, but the key is to share openly with children about any challenges. (Nathan Mays)
Her children also taught her the importance of writing your own story—instead of listening to others tell you what your story should be. This teachable moment came with her middle son, Seth. At practice and in school, he would just go with the flow, wondering why he should put in extra effort. But Curry insisted that children should be challenged to do better, to do their very best. Despite her pleadings and many discussions with Seth, he would not take this to heart, until it came time for him to realize it on his own. Through high school and college, Seth learned to overcome the challenge of being in his brother’s shadow, and he came into his own through hard work. At Duke University, his basketball career thrived, and eventually, he made his way into the NBA. With Sydel too, Curry decided not to be pushy when she wanted to pursue volleyball and drop basketball—the known family sport—from her high school schedule. As Curry wrote in the book, “Make yourself the hero.”
Curry admits to not being a perfect parent. But she contends that that is part of the process. “My advice to parents is to give it 100 percent with intentionality every day. Nobody is going to do it perfectly,” she said.
Mike Rowe, America’s perpetual apprentice, has been giving viewers a front-row seat to our country’s dirtiest jobs for nearly 20 years.
The episodes of his show, “Dirty Jobs,” are a veritable archive of the various icky substances in earthly existence—sludge, slime, gunk, and grime—that he’s either had to clean, wade through, extract, or pick away at, often in the dirtiest, hottest, and smelliest of conditions.
Encounters with the animal kingdom are a category unto themselves. Given the close degree of proximity, these engagements are unpredictable: Rowe has gotten bitten by some creatures—ostriches, catfish, snakes, sharks—and gotten up close and personal with others—such as beavers, which he’s had to sniff to determine their sex.
OK, there are clean jobs, too. The yuck factor may be absent, but cue in the petrifying situations, such as scuba diving to the ocean floor and releasing fish blood and guts for “Shark Week.” (Don’t worry, Rowe was wearing a stainless steel chain-mail suit—which helps, he found out, when you’re being shaken like a rag doll by a group of sharks.) Or what about when he walked up 24.5-inch-diameter cables on the “Mighty Mac” bridge in Michigan to change light bulbs atop its towers, 552 feet up, only to realize that he was no longer safely clipped in?
But the stunts are not the point. The premise of “Dirty Jobs,” with no actors, no scripts, and no second takes, is all about showing America what it’s like to do a job that’s needed, a job that’s hard, and often messing it up in the process. The show ran from 2003 to 2012 and returned for a season in 2022. In between, it has never stopped airing.
In all, Rowe has performed more than 350 jobs, learning under the tutelage of hardworking Americans and having fun in the process.
Rowe is lowered into a manhole to perform a maintenance job. (Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
Pop’s Wisdom
“Dirty Jobs,” as Rowe says, is ultimately a tribute to someone he was very close to: his grandfather, Carl Knobel.
Though he had only been schooled until the seventh grade, Knobel had built his own home and was a master electrician, plumber, steamfitter, pipe fitter, and welder—a master jack-of-all-trades.
“He saw great dignity in all jobs,” Rowe said. “He understood, intuitively I think, that we’re all connected to work, and the way we’re connected to where our food comes from, and where our energy comes from.”
Early on, Rowe was convinced he’d follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He tried his hand at shop classes in high school, only to face an inconvenient reality: “I didn’t get the handy gene,” he explained.
His Pop gave him a dose of wisdom: “You can be a tradesman—just get a different toolbox, because what comes easily to me is not coming easily to you.”
So Rowe set off in a new direction—writing, singing, acting, and narrating. He belted out songs at the Baltimore Opera for years and worked the graveyard shift on the QVC home shopping network selling merchandise. He hosted an evening show on Channel 5 KPIX in San Francisco, a “cushy little job” that took him to downtown museums and Napa Valley wineries.
And then one day, his mom, Peggy Rowe, called.
She said, “Michael, your grandfather turned 90 years old today—and he’s not going to be around forever. And wouldn’t it be terrific if, before he died, he could turn on the television and see you doing something that looked like work?”
“It made me laugh because it was so true,” Rowe said.
Her message was delivered with love and humor, and Rowe, who was 42 at the time, decided to take it as a challenge.
Rowe goes deep into a Florida river to pour concrete, in order to preserve an old bridge. (Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
The next day, with TV crew in tow, he was back in action—this time in the sewers of San Francisco, profiling a sewage worker. The footage, he said, was “inappropriate” for his show, but he put it on the air anyway.
Then, something interesting happened. Letters started pouring in, with messages like this: “Hey, if you think that’s dirty, wait ’til you meet my brother, or my cousin or my dad or my uncle or my grandfather or my mom. Wait ’til you see what they do!”
That launched a regular segment, “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.”
Rowe’s grandfather got to see one episode of it.
“He was very nearly blind by the time he died. He was 91. So, he knew I had gone into this direction … and I’d like to think he approved. I’m pretty sure he did,” Rowe said.
‘Groundhog Day’ in a Sewer
The segment eventually led to “Dirty Jobs.”
The Discovery Channel show meant being on the road for much of the year, lots of showers, and even a change of attitude.
“I’ll tell you, honestly, I had to humble myself when my mom made her off-the-cuff suggestion I’d been impersonating a host for 15 years,” he said. “I was pretty good at hitting my mark and saying my line and creating the illusion of knowledge where it didn’t really exist, pretending to be an expert.”
Looking back, Rowe says during those early days when “Dirty Jobs” was on the air, it was jarring for audiences to see a guy who didn’t have the answers but was willing to “look under the rock” and bring viewers along.
“I stopped being a host; I started to become a guest. I stopped being an expert and started to be a full-time dilettante,” he said.
“And so, to the extent people might trust me, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt, I think it comes from the fact that they’ve seen me try and fail for 20 years, they’ve seen me crawl through a sewer. And when you see a guy covered with other people’s crap, you know, that guy’s not gonna lie to you.”
Rowe gets dirty while helping to turn waste lumber into biochar, which is often used as fertilizer. (Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
Challenging the Stigma
For the longest time, Rowe’s dream job was to host “The Daily Show.” He worked long and hard, with his eyes on the prize.
“They hired me twice to do that job. And each time, something went wrong—comically it just went wrong and didn’t work out.” He contemplated how close he had come. “But the truth is, looking back, not getting that gig was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Life had other plans for Rowe.
A few years into “Dirty Jobs,” the recession hit. People were asking where the good jobs had gone. And yet, Rowe knew, they were out there. On every job site where he set foot, he saw “Help Wanted” signs.
On Labor Day 2008, he launched the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which was essentially a PR campaign for the millions of unfilled jobs desperate for skilled workers. Over the years, the foundation has given $6.7 million in scholarships to nearly 1,500 people with a strong work ethic and the desire to pursue a career in the skilled trades.
Through his show, Rowe was showing the public what it was like to be a skilled trade worker: that in between going to work clean and coming home dirty, they brought pride and passion to their work; kept America connected with good roads and infrastructure, happy with indoor plumbing, and warm or cool depending on the season; and in the process, made a pretty good living, too.
Still, there’s the perception that dirty jobs are not jobs worth doing. As to how to change it, “that’s the million-dollar question,” Rowe said, “and if there were an easy answer, we wouldn’t have 11 million open jobs right now, and 7 million able-bodied men between the ages of 25 and 54 not only not working, but affirmatively not looking for work.”
(Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
To some extent, Rowe knows what doesn’t work: “Lectures, sermons, scoldings. Men my age standing on their porch, shaking their fist at the heavens, and complaining about Gen Z and millennials.”
“The real way to challenge these stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions is to hit them squarely on the head. You need to show people that you really can make six figures. You need to show people that a good plumber today can make as much as he or she wants, and you can set your own schedule,” he said.
(Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
Now heading toward its 15th year, the foundation follows up with its scholarship recipients, documenting their successes, and Rowe shares their stories with nearly 6 million friends on social media.
“We can complain about the snowflake culture and the snowflake mentality, but we’re the clouds from which the snowflakes [came], and I think it’s incumbent on us baby boomers—the people who are my age—to hit the reset button. And we have to provide people with better examples of what success looks like.”
One example is Chloe Hudson, a welder at Joe Gibbs Aerospace in North Carolina. Her ambition in high school was to become a plastic surgeon, but a price tag of upwards of $350,000 was not appealing. Instead, she got a welding scholarship from mikeroweWORKS and now makes a six-figure salary.
“She’s living her best life,” Rowe said. “I talked to her the other day, and she’s like, ‘You know, I am kind of a plastic surgeon, except I’m not dealing with flesh and bone. I’m dealing with metal and steel and complicated compounds.’”
The road to prosperity doesn’t end at mastering a skill, either. For example, take a welder who hires an electrician, a plumber, and an HVAC worker. That becomes a $3 million mechanical contracting company—not bad for starting out with a $5,000 or $6,000 certificate.
Rowe added, “If you’ve mastered a useful skill, if you’re willing to think like an entrepreneur, and if you’re willing to go to where the work is—then I don’t think there’s ever been a better time in the history of the country to be looking for work, because the opportunities are everywhere.”
(Ben Franzen and MRW Productions, LLC)
Mike Rowe Gives Relationship (and Job) Advice
Mike Rowe gives relationship advice—why not?
Years ago, Rowe wrote a Facebook post, which made the rounds online, about a good friend of his. This woman had been single her whole life and could not understand why. She was attractive and successful. Rowe suggested a dating service but she said no. He suggested she branch out across town, and try the museums, libraries, bars, and restaurants there. She declined again.
He said: “You’re not only looking for your soulmate; you’re looking for your soulmate in your own zip code. You’ve got a long list of qualifications: what they should look like, how much money they should make, how they should dress, where they should be from. So you just got all of these obstacles that you’ve put between yourself and the person who you believe can make you happy.
“And we do the same thing with work. We identify the job that’s going to make us happy, get the certification or degrees that we need, line up the interviews, etc., [but] we’ve got it backwards. We ask kids to imagine the job they want, long before they’re capable of doing that, and really, in many cases, before they have a good understanding of what their actual abilities are.”
Just as it happened to him, “you might realize that the thing you prepared yourself for is simply not the thing you’re going to do.”
“Everybody wants job satisfaction, and everybody wants happiness in their personal life, but if you start your quest with the notion that there’s a dream job, and you can’t be happy unless you get that job, it’s going to be a hard road—just as it’s going to be very difficult to find happiness in your personal life if you think there’s only one person on the planet walking around who’s capable of making you feel that way.”
Everyone Rowe met on “Dirty Jobs” was passionate, but few were doing the job they had in mind when they were young adults.
As Rowe says: “Don’t follow your passion—bring it with you.”
Learning how to apply the Pythagorean theorem while on a construction site, earning competitive wages per hour, all while working toward a matching scholarship that can be used for future tuition or employment needs—this is the model by which unCommon Construction hopes to encourage youth to explore a career in the trades, and break stereotypes about the industry.
Aaron Frumin, founder of the New Orleans-based after-school program for high school students, unexpectedly found his way into the construction industry. He went to a standard, four-year college after graduating high school, but he dropped out in his third year when he was unsatisfied with the education he was getting. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Frumin traveled there to help out as a Red Cross volunteer. He ended up working as a day laborer on a construction site, and he stayed in the city. “I was using my brain and I was using math skills and engineering principles and social skills. I was making good money. … No one would have ever thought of that career path for me,” Frumin said. He later went into teaching, and while working as a reading and social studies teacher in middle school, he realized the traditional classroom experience was not for him.
Aaron Frumin, founder of unCommon Construction, hopes the program can help dispel stereotypes about the construction industry and allow high schoolers to see it as a viable career. (Courtesy of unCommon Construction)(Courtesy of unCommon Construction)
That’s when Frumin thought about a program that could make education more relevant to developing students’ real-life skills. “How can we have a real return on investment for them so that they have a little more skin in the game?” So in 2015, Frumin started unCommon Construction as a nonprofit that would hire students to build houses, with the employees being selected from partnering schools that would recommend highly motivated students to apply for the after-school program, while earning school credit and wages.
Students work 10 to 12 hours a week, with 6 to 8 hours on a job site and 2 to 4 hours in the classroom on “framing character”: learning career building and professional development skills, as well as receiving technical training. They spend most of their time in the field because “we want to treat young people like they have value, and that their time is valuable, and we’re not just doing worksheets that are easy for them to dismiss,” Frumin said.
At the same time, Frumin wants the program to develop skills in the students that will be helpful no matter what career they pursue in the future. “We put a very intentional emphasis in our alternative learning environment on the development and demonstration of soft skills,” Frumin said. That includes learning teamwork, ethics, problem-solving, communication, and professional attitudes.
(Courtesy of unCommon Construction)(Courtesy of unCommon Construction)
The program operates much like a real-life construction company, with students completing the building of a house in a school year. The house is then sold on the market. When the house is purchased, the company matches their paycheck with a scholarship, which can be used during their first year after graduating high school—whether for tuition, school supplies, or paying expenses related to their future job, should they pursue a career right after graduating.
Frumin hopes the program can help eliminate the stigmas associated with the construction industry, such as that it’s a dirty job primarily for men or “the non-college material,” as Frumin put it. “Some young people who may be seen as college-bound, like I was, may never be presented with opportunities that help them become self-actualized members [of society],” Frumin said. “They’re held up or put down by a society that does or doesn’t value blue-collar jobs.”
Students earn wages, and when a house is sold on the market, the company puts “equity” toward their scholarships. (Courtesy of unCommon Construction)
But the fact of the matter is that the industry employs a great variety of professions. “Big construction companies still need lawyers, and they still need an accountant. They rely on emergency medical services, they have security positions, and they require insurance,” Frumin said.
It is time to value the construction industry, he added. “There’s a whole economy that surrounds our industry, and in fact, our industry makes up the backbone of the American economy. … We have to be part of changing the narrative for all the different people who are involved.”
It was mainly for the well-being of their 10 children that Carolyn and Josh Thomas struck out to start their own family homestead 1,000 miles from their home.
Their life in Southern California had been all about chasing a check, climbing the ladder, and getting ahead. They were used to following the crowd.
It was when their first son was born and it came time for his first round of vaccines that the parents became concerned about their lifestyle.
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
“The doctor had told me that the nurse was going to come in and give the baby two shots,” Carolyn told The Epoch Times. “Well, when the nurse came in, she gave the baby three shots. And both Josh and I have this very clear memory of these three different shots.”
They didn’t think much of it at the time; they were just so used to deferring to what the authorities said.
“When we went home that night, he had a reaction to the vaccines,” Carolyn added. “It made us really wake up and start paying attention and decide that we needed to be in the driver’s seat of our life, and we needed to be making active decisions.”
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
So the family grew … and grew, and grew. In 2007, Josh and Carolyn made up their mind to purchase a tiny plot of land where they grew their own food; and they awakened to the wonders of what the earth can provide their family. It wasn’t much, but the learning process was essential for what came next.
“We started really learning about the skills of cooking from scratch, making our own bread at home, canning, dehydrating, and different types of preserving,” the mom said. “We wanted to give our children the gift of health and very robust, healthy bodies, and also have the skills of producing our own food and growing our own food. Because at that point, it just started to be way too expensive to buy the amount of food that we needed at the quality we wanted.”
In order to feed their family well, they eventually scaled up to a 20-acre property in Tennessee where they raised their own beef.
They finally bought their 40-acre plot in northern Idaho in 2018.
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
“The reality is, if you go right to a lot of acres, you won’t have the skills you need in order to actually use them properly or well,” Carolyn said. “You’ll probably get overwhelmed by the experience.”
Yet tough times were right around the corner. In their local area in 2014, employment was scarce, and Josh found himself without the income they needed to sustain their expanding family. Little did they realize that their sustenance lay right beneath their feet.
“We still wanted to eat high quality, nutrient dense, and organic food, but there was just no money to buy groceries at all,” Carolyn said. “And so we really took it to the next level and started growing a huge amount of our own produce, and all of our own meat and dairy, and the fruit for preserving it.
“It really was an important moment for us, as we learned how to do this on a scale that could actually take care of our family and feed ourselves and be self-sufficient if we needed to.”
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
By now, they knew what to do with the land and how to make the best use of it: The family established one large, main garden for growing their staple crops—such as potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, and garlic, as well as big rows of broccoli and cauliflower. Then there were the perennials—grapes and raspberries.
Adjacent to the house, there is the “cottage garden,” as Carolyn calls it, which is right outside the kitchen. Here, she grows her herbs for seasoning, lettuce and cherry tomatoes for a quick salad, and a few flowers.
Then there is an area out front they call “the forest garden” where they have their fruit trees and some wild edibles tucked here and there.
But beyond mere sustenance, life on the homestead has helped the children bloom—not just in terms of developing good health and natural immunity, but also in their character and confidence.
“It allows each member of our family to know that they’re valued and a valuable part of the family,” Carolyn said. “We all have what we call ‘morning chores’ and ‘evening chores,’ and everybody knows what they need to do in order to get all the basics done.”
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
Some will be out feeding the animals or rotating the livestock; others will milk the cows, bring in firewood in the winter, or work around the house.
“We find that the kids, when they’re very young, they want to help,” the mom said. “They want to be involved and they ask to be involved. So when we start giving them chores, when they’re two and three years old, they really want to do it because everyone around them is doing it too.”
There’s nothing more natural for a family than life on a homestead. It’s how people have been living for thousands of years.
It may seem novel to some city folk, but the Thomases are just getting reacquainted with what comes naturally. Far from being hooked up to their devices 24/7, or becoming lazy teenagers, all these young ones are early risers. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas have to tell their kids to stay in bed until 6 a.m. They homeschool their kids, and they are happy.
Getting off the grid (they’re not totally there yet; commodities like coffee, etc. are store-bought) was mainly a family lifestyle choice for the Thomases. But in the chaos of the world today—with inflation, looming food shortages, and other uncertainties—the family believes it’s the responsible thing to do. By learning how to be self-sufficient, Carolyn says, we become less dependent on the government and thus more free.
Homesteading might be a check against government overreach.
(Courtesy of Carolyn Thomas)
Besides chores, Josh and Carolyn are now sharing their journey and skills with others. Having started their own YouTube channel and family brand called Homesteading Family, they teach their skills by posting multiple videos per week.
In these, Carolyn has gotten into old-fashioned, traditional cooking. Having dusted off a classic 1700s recipe book, she has unearthed some hearty, wholesome treats like a wonderfully robust pumpkin pie as well as deliciously simple bread pudding, and much more.
Yet she knows not everyone has access to a 40-acre farm. Many of her viewers live in the big city, but there are still things they can do to be more self-sufficient.
“Learn how to cook from scratch, learn how to make better buying decisions, learn how to bulk buy food and store it, even if storing it means you’re putting it under a bed or in a closet somewhere,” she said. “A lot of people think of living a lifestyle that is prepared and more self-sufficient as something they should do in case the world falls apart, some big event, or something major that happens on a large scale.”
The reality is that our great grandmothers and grandfathers always lived a more prepared lifestyle.
“Historically, it’s the normal, wise thing to do, like the parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper,” she added. “Work when it’s work season and put up your food, and have what you need for the off seasons.”
The first federal Congress of 1789, where the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were passed, becoming known as the Bill of Rights. Shown in the central mural (L to R): James Madison (standing), speaker Frederick Muhlenberg (seated), Elbridge Gerry (standing, foreground), and Fisher Ames (standing, rear). “The First Federal Congress, 1789” by Allyn Cox, 1973–1974. Oil on canvas. Great Experiment Hall at the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. (Public domain)
Among the constitutional amendments, the First is the most sacred. Its guarantees of the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right to petition have made American shores a beacon for the world. The quiet and bookish man who first proposed it spent many years reflecting on its related issues in solitude—an uncommon pastime for a politician. The First Amendment has become so fundamental to the way Americans think about themselves as social creatures that it is easy to forget the skepticism, and even outrage, that it caused in its day.
A Scholar Enters Politics
James Madison was a shrewd student of political history. Of his many thoughts on government, though, one concern was foremost. In “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President,” Noah Feldman observes: “The subject that most animated James Madison was the freedom of religion and the question of its official establishment.” He developed an academic interest in the topic at Princeton under the Rev. John Witherspoon, who filled him with ideas of religious liberty inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment.
After graduating, Madison witnessed the persecution of religious dissenters in his native Virginia, where the Anglican Church was the established religion. In a letter to a friend dated January 24, 1774, Madison described traveling to a nearby county and encountering imprisoned Baptist ministers, “5 or 6 well-meaning men” who did nothing more than publish their orthodox views. That April, he wrote: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.”
“James Madison” by John Vanderlyn, 1816. Oil on canvas. The White House, Washington, D.C. (Public domain)
Madison entered local politics and attended Virginia’s constitutional convention in 1776. There, George Mason submitted his draft for a Declaration of Rights, which included a clause stating that “all Men should enjoy the fullest Toleration in the Exercise of Religion, according to the Dictates of Conscience.” Madison was not satisfied. He understood that a majority, in granting a minority permission to practice religion, could take it away as well. Going beyond John Locke’s idea of toleration, Madison successfully proposed changing the wording to reflect the right of “free exercise of religion.”
This guarantee ended the Anglican Church’s spiritual monopoly in Virginia. Eight years later, though, Patrick Henry spearheaded legislation to levy religious taxes. Madison opposed Henry but knew he was too soft-spoken to match the eloquent orator. He responded by writing a petition, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments.” Religious belief, he argued, “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” Belief could not be coerced and must exist in a separate sphere from civil government. Even a small tax could become oppressive.
Madison’s essay became foundational for the idea of the separation of church and state. The petition garnered enough signatures to defeat the proposed bill, and in 1786 the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was passed.
The Bill of Rights
By 1789, Madison had designed the Constitution and convinced most of the states to ratify it by authoring 29 of the articles that comprised “The Federalist Papers.” But the groundbreaking document was not safe. North Carolina and Rhode Island still had not ratified it. Opponents who favored states’ rights over federal power wanted to hold a second constitutional convention to undo the new government.
To prevent this, Madison drafted amendments that would address the Constitution’s flaws. He submitted his draft to Congress on June 8, proposing protections of individual liberties without changing the government’s structure. He sought to encapsulate, among these, his years of religious reflections. The clause of the proposed amendment—originally the fourth rather than the first—was more descriptive than its final version:
“The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed.”
This proposal had three aspects: guaranteeing equal treatment of minority views, barring Congress from establishing a national church, and establishing conscience as a right free from coercion.
The Bill of Rights includes the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution. (Jack R Perry Photography)
Madison struggled to get his amendments passed. Federalists ridiculed them as useless “milk and water.” Anti-Federalists unanimously opposed him. His old nemesis Patrick Henry called for a total revision of the Constitution, claiming a national bill of rights did not sufficiently guard them for individuals or states. An anonymous author, writing under the pen name “Pacificus,” asserted in a New York newspaper that Madison’s “paper declarations” were “trifling things and no real security to liberty.”
Madison defended his bill, arguing it would limit the tyranny of the majority and “establish the public opinion” in favor of rights. Federalist support began to trickle in. Madison wanted to fold the amendments into the Constitution itself, but he settled for appending them at the end. Representatives eliminated some of his proposals and altered others.
The final version of the First Amendment’s clause on religious liberty came to read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This slightly more restrictive version omitted Madison’s phrasing on the “rights of conscience,” but it is otherwise consistent with his intentions. Madison’s achievement made him the world’s foremost champion of religious liberty. His recognition of free exercise, rather than mere toleration, has been a model for other governments around the globe.
What does it take to forgive someone who tried to kill you?
To Virginia Prodan, it was simple. Being a woman of Christian faith, she lived her life by the principles expounded in the Bible. What she wasn’t prepared for was how the assassin sent to kill her reacted to her plea. Not only did he put down his gun, but he ended up changing his entire course of life afterward.
Prodan met her killer’s eyes and asked, “Have you ever asked yourself, ‘Why do I exist?’ or ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ I once asked myself those questions,” as she recounts in her memoir, “Saving My Assassin.”
He slid the gun back into the holster. Prodan proceeded to describe God’s capacity to forgive all who have sinned. The man softened, and eventually inquired about the faith that gave her the power to face him so bravely. “I will come to your church as a secret brother in Christ. I will worship your powerful God,” Prodan recalls him saying.
Prodan’s supposed offense, which led to her inclusion on the hit list of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, was defending Christians who were not allowed to exercise their freedom of belief. As a Romanian lawyer, she took on dozens of cases involving Christians who faced persecution for their faith during Ceausescu’s regime of the 1970s and 1980s. Some had their work licenses revoked or were charged with crimes because they had a Bible in their possession. Others turned to Prodan when the land that churches sat on was in danger of getting confiscated by authorities. During a time when Ceausescu only allowed citizens to worship himself, Prodan’s courageous defense of citizens with faith brought the attention of international reporters and U.S. officials monitoring the situation in Romania. Her court cases showed the world that religious freedom was absent in Romania. It angered the dictator so much that he hired a hitman to finish her.
Prodan with her son Emanuel and daughters Anca and Andreea, at a private ceremony for Prodan’s gaining U.S. citizenship, held at her law school in February 1994. (Courtesy of Virginia Prodan)
Years later, after Prodan made a daring escape to freedom in America, she would meet him again in the most unexpected of circumstances. “We are not enemies to each other,” she said in a recent interview. “God changed my assassin; God can change everyone. … God changed Romania through me.”
Seeking the Truth
Prodan grew up in an abusive household that did not cherish her. Prodan’s book describes a childhood in which her mother constantly reminded her that her freckles and red hair meant that she did not belong. She was often left at home to do chores while the rest of her family was gone on vacation. If she did not do them correctly, she would be punished with beatings. “As a child, in order to avoid punishment—for every single situation, I learned to find solutions,” Prodan said. She reflects that this was perhaps her training ground to learn how to rise above the circumstances and gain the resolve to overcome anything. “In life, sometimes we don’t understand why we go through tough times and why we have to endure those things. But those hard times will prepare us for something really, really wonderful that otherwise we will not be prepared for,” she said.
Books were her escape from reality. She excelled at school. After witnessing how the Romanian regime persecuted her uncle and her next door neighbor, Prodan became determined to study law. Her uncle was forcibly taken to the psychiatric hospital three times for daring to speak up against the regime—though the family never spoke about what exactly he did that made him a target for the Romanian Communist Party. “A fire started to build in me to find and understand the truth and understand why adults will know the truth but be too fearful to speak the truth, and also how to be strong and courageous and speak the truth. … That became my mission in life,” Prodan said.
Discovering Her Mission
Prodan applied successfully to law school and passed the bar exam for working in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Her first solo case was a pro bono case to defend a university student accused of burning his Communist Party ID card. He faced a 10-year prison sentence. Prodan found out that her client was coerced into confessing to committing the offense. She persuaded the client and his parents to testify and admit that he was forced to confess. In the end, the judge sentenced him to two years of community service. His family continued to be harassed and interrogated by police after the trial. His father suffered a heart attack during an intense interrogation session and died. Soon after, the client hanged himself, and the rest of the family disappeared out of sight. Prodan felt lost.
Virginia Prodan at her law office in Dallas, Texas. (Alexender Simoes)
One day, a church goer asked her to represent him. The communist regime had confiscated his family’s land. While assisting him with the process to get the property back, Prodan was introduced to Christianity. The regime considered the Bible’s teachings as running counter to Communist Party doctrine, but in an attempt to appear like the country respects freedom of belief, the government still allowed churches to operate. However, Christians were routinely persecuted and could be arrested for having the Bible in their possession. Prodan soon found herself defending church organizations and believers in court. Her courageous defense, accusing Ceausescu of human rights violations, garnered the attention of observers in the American embassy and international media. “People all over the world found out that a young attorney in Romania, a woman under 5 feet tall, 82 pounds, is taking the dictator to court,” she said.
Danger Ahead
Prodan soon found herself directly targeted by Ceausescu’s government. One day, as she was leaving her office and getting ready to go to the courthouse, a homeless man followed her and pushed her into oncoming traffic. She was constantly followed by Securitate, or secret police. One day, several officers forced her into an unmarked black car and took her to the Securitate headquarters. They hit her and threatened to put her in prison for life. Though they released her that evening, the scare tactics continued. Officers would ransack her home and her office. She faced more interrogations in which she was beaten by Securitate officers. On some occasions, “they will come inside of my home, eat the food, and leave the dirty dishes, or move the furniture around, because they wanted to play a psychological game,” Prodan recalled.
There were days when she would let the tears run down her face. But she refused to cower before authoritarianism. She believed that it was her mission to defend religious believers. “You have to just trust God, when you know that he is the one who gave you that mission … if you look back, that he will give you tools and open doors for you to accomplish that mission.” She recalled moments when she would be searching for provisions in the arcane Romanian code of law that, at least on paper, guaranteed a Romanian citizen’s freedom of belief. She would flip open the book—and it would miraculously land on the page that contained the information she needed.
Prodan graduated from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in May 1997. (Courtesy of Virginia Prodan)
Assassination Attempt, Escape to Freedom
One day, after Securitate officers slammed her head against the desk repeatedly during an interrogation and threatened to harm her children, she returned to her office, shaken but pretending as if all was OK. Her legal assistant told her a man was waiting for her to discuss a case. When the man entered her office and closed the door, he drew a gun. “I believed that I would be dead the next moment,” Prodan recalled. “My knees were shaking. I heard my stomach. I heard my heart in my ears. I was shaking. I even thought that my kids will live without a mother. But in all this, I heard also the whisper of God saying, ‘Share the gospel,’” she said.
Prodan describes the next few moments in her book, as she calmly spoke to him. “‘You are here because God put you here, and he has put you to a test. Will you abide in God or in the will of a man—your ultimate boss, President Ceausescu, who requires you to worship him? God has given you free will to choose.’”
Moved by her words, the assassin quietly listened as Prodan recited passages from the Bible about the power of forgiveness. By the end, he told Prodan that he would start to explore Christianity, and walked away.
But this was not the end. The next morning, two armed police officers blocked Prodan and her daughters as they left their house. They informed her she was being placed under house arrest. For four weeks, Prodan was stuck inside, with food supplies dwindling. When all hope seemed to be lost, the American ambassador’s wife managed to sneak to Prodan’s house, letting her know that the American embassy knew of her situation and was finding ways to help her.
Prodan with her children during her private U.S. citizenship ceremony. Her daughters are now a counselor and an attorney, while her son is a rescue pilot for the U.S. Air Force. (Courtesy of Virginia Prodan)
U.S. President Ronald Reagan authorized Prodan and her family to move to America as political refugees. Prodan was released from house arrest and allowed to go to the local passport office to get her paperwork. After transiting through Rome, Prodan and her family arrived in Dallas, Texas, in fall 1988.
Life in America
Upon settling in Dallas, Prodan went back to school to receive a law degree from Southern Methodist University’s law school, then opened her own practice. To this day, she continues to take on clients who feel their freedom of belief and freedom of expression have been infringed upon. She feels blessed to be in America. “American people are like no one else. They will open their hearts, they will open their houses [to you]. They encouraged me to go on and rebuild my life,” she said.
One day in 2010, she received an unexpected visit. A man came to her office and explained that the church where his son was pastor had encountered some legal trouble while seeking to construct a building. Suddenly, he asked, “Virginia, do you remember me?”
It was the assassin. After stepping out of Prodan’s office in the 1980s, he’d studied theology and became a pastor in Bucharest following the collapse of the Romanian communist regime. Now, he pulled out his phone to show Prodan a photo of his newborn granddaughter, who was named Virginia in Prodan’s honor. It was an emotional reunion. Michael—the name he adopted in America—was eager to share with Prodan the impact that faith had in his life. They caught up over lunch, but when Prodan asked to keep in touch with him, he explained that he was worried about repercussions in Romania. There was a growing wave of people calling for former participants in Ceausescu’s regime to be brought to justice. “Lots of Romanians asked the government to punish those people,” Prodan recalled Michael explaining to her. He told her that “it’s better for me not to know about his whereabouts. Because the government might come against [him].”
(Alexender Simoes)
Have No Fear
Throughout the years, Prodan has received anonymous letters and emails about former Securitate officers being jailed in Romania. She also receives a Christmas card from time to time, with the name “Michael” signed. She suspects these were all from her former assassin, quietly signaling to her.
Prodan said her experience not only allowed her to see how faith can transform even a cold-blooded assassin, but that there is nothing to fear in life. “Fear will just make you a slave. Fear will destroy your enthusiasm. But in order to conquer that fear, you have to confront that fear,” she said. She frequently recounts her story as part of motivational speaking engagements.
More importantly, she said, our actions are greater than ourselves—just like how she unexpectedly helped to change the course of Romania’s future. “My life and your life, it’s not only for us. What we do, what we accomplish, what we influence—sometimes we know, sometimes we don’t know. But we’ll reach beyond our imagination, [for] people, countries, generations to come,” she said.
Art Thompson is the founder of Sage
Cheshire Aerospace, as well as A2ZFX, based
in Lancaster, Calif. Here he is seated inside
the Red Bull Stratos space capsule, which he
designed, produced, and tested. Its outwardly
simple design belies the sophisticated
systems in place. (Samira Bouaou)
Babies’ chew toys, Batmobiles, rocket engines—Art Thompson makes them all.
Thompson is a modern-day da Vinci, the rare sort of individual these days who is equally comfortable in the worlds of arts and technology, and more often than not bringing the two together. One of his earliest jobs involved running a sign shop—the owner handed it over to him a day after he’d started. He was still a teenager. Later, his art background came in handy at the aerospace company Northrop, where he made architectural models and was pulled into working on the B2 stealth bomber for over 10 years.
Thompson’s own companies, Sage Cheshire Aerospace and A2ZFX, share a workshop space in Lancaster, California, devoted todesign, engineering, prototyping, fabrication, and testing.
This Jeep Grand Cherokee was transformed into a commuter’s dream for a viral Verizon ad. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
Sage Cheshire regularly makes parts for government agencies or aerospace companies—from aircraft fairings and components to antennae for the U.S. Navy—much faster and cheaper than they could do themselves.
“We’re a super small organization and highly efficient,” Thompson said. “So while a company like Northrop or Lockheed or Boeing spends a lot of time in bureaucracy trying to figure out what they want to do, we’re already finished with the project. And so they realize that and use that to their advantage by contracting work.”
The company can take on larger projects, too, such as scanning and reverse-engineering an airplane that an aerospace company bought from a foreign provider, who wouldn’t give them the plans.
Thompson also has his own projects. Working with a space plane, he started to think about how he could develop the technology for a better defense system. Instead of using a hypersonic weapon against a hypersonic missile—the equivalent of launching a bullet to hit a bullet—he envisions launching a space plane at 250,000 or 350,000 feet in altitude, firing pulses of laser, which would have a better chance of hitting the target, since the speed of light is faster than the speed of a hypersonic missile. With its small footprint, the plane could also be used for reconnaissance and be transported easily anywhere around the world and launched from a regular runway, unlike a rocket.
In 2012, Thompson built a giant, 45-foot-long, 800-pound paper airplane that took to the Arizona skies for six seconds. It was part of the Pima Air & Space Museum’s Great Paper Airplane Fly-Off competition, to spark interest in aviation and engineering. The plane was based on a model by 12-year-old Arturo Valderamo. (Flight Test Museum)
While Sage Cheshire handles some serious business, A2ZFXfocuses on product development and special effects—from the mundane to the spectacular. For example, the blister-like yellow bumps on sidewalks? Thompson’s team made the original version of these “truncated domes,” as they’re formally known. “And I cursed myself every time going over them with a shopping cart—along with millions of other people,” he said good-naturedly. A more dramatic, and flammable, example involved recreating a flying object zooming around in the air, to mimic the Human Torch for the promotion of a “Fantastic Four” movie.
Some of his projects not only have an undeniable flair for fun but also are marketing gold—like the Hum Rider, engineered to show off a marvelous solution to traffic jams. Envision a Jeep Grand Cherokee, with a wheelbase that widens and a body that elevates several feet above traffic, leaving stunned commuters below in the dust. Conceived to promote Verizon’s Hum dongle and smart app, the video made ripples through the internet, receiving a billion views.
The energy drink company Red Bull, with its marketing strategy embracing extreme sports and jaw-dropping stunts, was another client that was a natural fit.
When Red Bull was in its early stages of entering the U.S. market, it hired Thompson to make its eye-catching “can cars”—Mini Coopers outfitted with giant Red Bull cans on top, deployed with reps all over the country to offer samples of its product. Thompson built over 1,000 of these vehicles, although he jokes he had to build 3,000 cans to replace the ones that got destroyed. He said, “We would always tell [the drivers], ‘Don’t drive into the parking structure,’” which they invariably would.
(Samira Bouaou)
Mission to the Edge of Space
In 2005, Thompson got a call from Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian friend whom he’d met at a Red Bull go-kart race in Austria. A daredevil and base jumper, Baumgartner was best known for his unpowered winged flight across the English Channel from 30,000-foot altitude in 2003 and jumping off the world’s tallest buildings, such as the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
He asked Thompson if he knew Joe Kittinger, who had jumped from a balloon at 102,800 feet in 1960 and reached a speed of 614 miles per hour, sustaining freefall for 4 minutes, 36 seconds. It was a record that stood unbroken.
Then he asked Thompson: If you were to break Kittinger’s record, how would you do it? Baumgartner wanted to know if it was possible to jump from space or the stratosphere and fall at supersonic speed.
“You know,” Thompson recalls telling him, “It’s 3:30 in the morning in Austria. Why don’t you go back to sleep, I’ll call you tomorrow and I’ll tell you some ideas.”
He ended up writing an 87-page proposal including how a pressurized capsule could be built, with redundant life support, spacesuits, and stratospheric balloons.
Thompson flew to Austria to present the idea to Dietrich Mateschitz, the late owner of Red Bull, who engaged Thompson as the technical project director for the Stratos project. But Thompson didn’t want it to just be a marketing stunt. It needed to be real science with a purpose.
Art Thompson started making one “can car” for Red Bull and eventually produced over 1,000 of them. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
Though Kittinger had made his jump over 50 years ago, the protocols around high-altitude freefall were few. Thompson saw a real-world opportunity. For him, it was about developing and researching how a U.S. Air Force or NASA pilot could safely exit a high-altitude craft, as well as medical systems to treat astronauts and pilots in case of ejection and rapid decompression.
“The beauty of it is, the government didn’t pay one dime for it,” he said. “I got an Austrian energy drink company to pay for all of the development. We then shared this knowledge with the government for free.”
“That’s the future of business, because the power of social media is that tool that can be used to fund future research,” he said.
Say you wanted to go to Mars, Thompson offered by way of example. “The government doesn’t want to pay for going to Mars. … But if you could go to a tennis shoe company and say your tennis shoes are going to be the first ones going to Mars, and it’s going to cost this much,” these companies, with their huge marketing budgets, could step in and fund research programs that the government isn’t willing to fund.
Doing the Impossible
During the Stratos project, another project turned up that Thompson couldn’t refuse. The Pima Air and Space Museum asked him: Would he build the world’s largest paper airplane?
When he was young, he would use newspaper and coat hangers and build giant paper airplanes. The largest he got was about 5 feet.
Thompson’s parents were science teachers who imparted to him a love of science. His mother, Alice, is pictured here with George, a pet mountain lion, in 1956. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
This time, the dimensions were only limited by the need to fit the plane onto a semi truck. Built entirely out of paper, it was 45.5 feet long, with a 24-foot wingspan, and required 20 gallons of wood glue to put it together.
As 300 schoolchildren watched, a Sikorsky S-58T helicopter took the plane up to 1,400 feet in the desert, and it was cut loose. It hit 98 miles per hour and flew just short of a mile. For Thompson, the main goal was achieved: to promote STEM education, and “help kids think outside of the box—that anything’s possible.”
“If I could have $1 for every person who told me the Red Bull Stratos was impossible, I’d be a millionaire,” Thompson said. There were physicists screaming at the end, ‘Don’t do it, his arms and legs will tear off.’”
Kittinger calmly responded, “Thank you for your concern, you may want to recheck your calculations.”
There was certainly a lot at stake, and the project team of fewer than 100 people was working hard to solve problems as they arose. Thompson said, “I was told ‘no’ every time I turned around and just found a way around the issue to make it a ‘yes.’ That is the lesson for the next generation. Never take ‘no’ as a final outcome.”
Then there was the unpredictable human factor.
Thompson (R) served as the technical project director for Red Bull Stratos. Joe Kittinger (C) was the primary point of radio contact with jumper Felix Baumgartner during the ascent. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
After years of testing and development and only weeks before the first manned flight, Baumgartner got cold feet—he was at the airport in Los Angeles and called up Thompson, who rushed to go see him. Baumgartner, as it turned out, had developed severe claustrophobia inside his pressurized space suit. Human factors specialists Andy Walshe and psychologist Michael Gervais were brought in to help Baumgartner, pushing him into various uncomfortable situations and reminding him that he was a superhero and his pressurized suit was specifically designed for him.
Early on, it was decided that Kittinger, the one mission team adviser who understood firsthand what Baumgartner would experience, would communicate with him throughout his journey and talk him through the 47-point checklist before exiting the capsule.
The Space Capsule
Like Kittinger’s gondola traveling into space, the Stratos capsule was tethered to a helium balloon—but 10 times larger. At the size of 30 million cubic feet, it was the largest manned balloon ever flown. The ascent to an altitude of 127,852 feet took about two and a half hours.
Just as he prepared to jump off the ledge of the capsule, Baumgartner said, “I’m coming home now.”
“I know the whole world is watching and I wish the whole world could see what I see. Sometimes you have to go really high up to understand how small you really are.”
Thirty-four seconds after jumping, he hit Mach 1—just under 700 miles per hour. Fifty seconds after jumping, he reached March 1.25, a record speed of 843.6 miles per hour for a freefall. For 30 seconds, Baumgartner was supersonic.
He also set two other world records: the highest balloon flight (superseded by Alan Eustace in 2014) and the highest unassisted freefall. This Red Bull Stratos record is still a standing record, as Eustace’s jump was assisted with the use of a drogue parachute.
On Oct. 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner made a freefall jump from space. Thirty-four seconds after jumping, he reached a top speed of 844 miles per hour and achieved his goal of being the first person to break the sound barrier without an aircraft. From a height of 127,852 feet in altitude, it took him nine minutes to get back to Earth, half of that time being in freefall. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
It was just 65 years before, to the day, that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier piloting the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis.
Back on Earth, about 9.5 million concurrent viewers were transfixed watching the feat, as 3.1 million tweets pinged across the globe.
In all, it would be viewed by 3 billion people.
It was an unmitigated success for Red Bull, a marketing coup—delivering a big uptick in sales, by 7 percent to $1.6 billion in the United States, and by 13 percent to $5.2 billion globally.
Igniting people’s imagination was certainly one part of the formula, Thompson said. But he also brought to the table a more intangible ability: an ability to connect with and understand people from different backgrounds—scientific, medical, military, aerospace, and yes, even daredevil mindsets.
The Flight Test Museum and the Future
Stratos also made Thompson proud, partly because many kids told him it inspired them to get into engineering. As chair of the Flight Test Museum Foundation, he sees a unique opportunity.
California’s Antelope Valley, also known as Aerospace Valley, is home to many aviation firsts due to the presence of Edwards Air Force Base, the United States Air Force (USAF) Plant 42, and NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center, as well as companies such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and Scaled Composites.
“Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are located [here],” Thompson noted.
He is now overseeing the move of the museum, currently on-base, to a new home—75,000 square feet of space just outside of the base. It’ll house the museum’s rare aircraft, but it will also be a STEM education center, as well as “neutral ground” for industry players, government, and schools to come together to discuss the future and inspire the next generation to want to be part of something greater.
What concerns him is the phenomenon of students being “plugged into the Internet permanently” and being “spoon-fed” set answers like “a stone wheel is the best thing on a car.”
A rendering of the planned building for the Flight Test Museum outside the gates of Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Antelope Valley. Designed by architecture firm Gensler, it resembles the shape of the Nighthawk, a stealth plane built in the 1980s. The museum will hold more than 80 historic aircraft; completion is due in 2024. (Courtesy of Art Thompson)
People want the answer quickly, Thompson said, but they don’t always know why they’re getting it. “We lose some of the creative aspects of invention and inspiration—because they settle for that answer.”
Thompson’s parents, both science teachers, made it a point to expose him to as many interesting things as possible. “One of my best Christmas presents when I was a kid was when my parents got me a stack of lumber with a saw and hammer and nails. I was five or six years old in the backyard and started building pirate ships and forts.”
His inquisitive nature even became somewhat of a liability for his family. “One of the fears was, if they gave me something that I was going to take apart, and if I understood it really well, often, I didn’t bother putting it back together because—why?—I already knew how it worked.”
When he was 13, he bought his first car, an old Karmann Ghia, for $500. He rebuilt the engine and redid the wiring harness—and drove it around without a license.
“Physics is so fascinating, because you see it in everything. And I remember as a kid, when math became a physical shape, all of a sudden, my mind exploded—because math formulas, you know, create not only two-dimensional shapes, but three-dimensional shapes.”
“If you can expose [children] to all the fascinating things in the world, at a really early age, that develops your synapses. All of that activity is making all those neural connections and mapping that make you want to do more and be more.”
It’s why he’s so passionate about the Flight Test Museum. “This becomes a world now that exposes people to what’s possible,” he said. “This is engineering in motion. It’s physics in motion.”
The sun-filled entry of Cathy Kincaid’s
Dallas cottage, a one-story home built during
the post-World War I era. (Miguel Floes-Vianna)
When historical American homes are in need of preservation and an exquisitely traditional makeover, their homeowners have turned to interior designer Cathy Kincaid for over 40 years. She’s played fairy godmother to dozens of charming houses that are full of character, including a 1750s Connecticut ferryman’s cottage on the water, Manhattan penthouses, and a forested East Texas estate. “I think it’s so important to live in something that has history,” Kincaid said. “I think it inspires us … to be interested in the history of the United States, where we live, our cities. And these older homes, they do have a story to tell.”
Many of the storied residences Kincaid has worked on have been featured in the world’s top home magazines and are compiled in her 2019 book, “The Well Adorned Home,” published by Rizzoli. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Kincaid attended Texas Christian University before moving to Dallas in the 1970s. There, she worked with local legendary designers before hanging up her own sign in 1978.
In her sweet but serious Texas drawl, she described two superb renovations that are close to her heart.
The farmhouse’s dining room is richly adorned with Kincaid’s signature choice of patterned upholstery. (Tria Giovan)
Texas Charm
The property Kincaid endearingly calls the “East Texas Farmhouse” is a recreation property on one of the largest remaining private lots close to Dallas, with hundreds of acres of forest, a lake, and a guest house. It was built in the mid-20th century by the famous wrestlers, the Von Erich brothers.
Although they made their living wrestling, the Von Erichs made sophisticated choices for their large farmhouse and were delightfully creative as they went about designing the space. Many of the door and window surrounds are made of half-sawn boards, their shapes, whimsically irregular, retaining the outlines of the local trees they came from. It’s a feature Kincaid said she’d never seen anywhere before.
The current homeowners fell in love with the raw lumber ceilings and exposed beams, the staircase with a balustrade of antler-like branches, and other masculine features. Kincaid preserved everything the Von Erichs did right and remodeled the furnishings, wall coverings, fixtures, and the like, taking the interiors from “kitschy” to perfectly elegant and ready to entertain. ”We wanted to create interiors that were comfortable and relaxed, that also exuded youthful style,” Kincaid said. It’s a house in the countryside, after all, so she didn’t want anything to feel “too precious or fancy. But at the same time, we wanted the interiors to reflect the refined style and taste of the homeowners.”
Kincaid preserved the raw lumber ceiling of the farmhouse and paired it with timeless decor for an elegant yet youthful look. (Tria Giovan)
Kincaid’s signature touch is obvious in the stately yet comfortable custom furniture, with rich, often patterned fabrics that are layered unpredictably, beautifully, and delightfully in each well-considered room. She’s brought in timeless decor that looks effortlessly curated, while evoking a nostalgic atmosphere. The hearth is made to look inviting with a mini collection of model tall ships, a Federalist style mirror, a cabinet painted in the antique Dutch style, and many more careful details that don’t draw attention to themselves but lend a deeply American sense of hospitality.
Home, Sweet Home
The lovingly restored house in Highland Park, Texas, that Kincaid currently lives in is a one-story, shingled cottage built in the post-World War I era, “one of the few houses of this style that’s left in this part of Dallas,” she said. She bought it in 2012 and, after restoring and renovating it, moved in two years later. Kincaid described it as a “very American” home. “It’s kind of a surprise. … And when you’re here, you don’t really feel like you’re in the middle of Dallas.” Its architectural features are more in common with a cottage in rural Connecticut than a Texas abode. In addition, it’s set away from the main road, surrounded by foliage that shields it from other properties. Classic topiary and potted orange trees greet guests outside the front door. Its shingled exterior with white trim and architectural details and its gaslight-like exterior light fixtures give off distinctly New England vibes.
She and fellow amateur historians of her neighborhood say it probably started out as a tiny, three-room caretakers’ cottage attached to the estate of one of Dallas’s most influential families. “[It has] gone through different incarnations to where now it’s a family home, and it’s quite desirable. I guess you could call it kind of a success story,” Kincaid said.
Kincaid’s collection of porcelain accentuates the cottage’s New England design. (Miguel Floes-Vianna)The dining room is fitted with simple linen curtains to maximize its floor-to-ceiling windows. (Miguel Floes-Vianna)
Over the years, there were modern renovations: Plaster went onto the walls; less-than-beautiful features were added in the kitchen. Kincaid was passionate about preserving the historical features. Her restoration took it back a little “to where it would have been,” she said. “It’s more in keeping with the year it’s built and more in keeping with the style of the [original] house.” She also gave it some updates to better suit her tastes, and to match her beautiful personal collection of porcelain and paintings. “The ceilings in the living room are not tall. So to cheat the eye and maximize the floor-to-ceiling windows, we used short valances [decorative drapery] and simple, linen curtains. We also added transom windows [small window features that are placed above doorways] between the entry, living room, and dining room to add light.”
Her collection includes a stunning, hand-painted wall covering whose fairy-tale vistas wrap around the dining room. While not antique, it represents a series of important chapters in Kincaid’s life. Years prior, Kincaid bought a home that once belonged to renowned interior designer Nena Claiborne (before she bought the house, Kincaid once worked at a custom lamp shop and would deliver the goods to Claiborne’s residence). Claiborne had hand-painted this wall covering depicting tall ships and maritime scenes in a style popularized in Normandy, France, during the 1700s. It combines rich jewel tones with strong earthy colors and superbly plays the role these wall coverings were designed for: to wow visitors and be an impressive conversation piece.
A hand-painted wall covering by renowned interior designer Nena Claiborne. (Miguel Floes-Vianna)
The wall covering tells a delicious story, but not in the way one may think. One of the men in the scene originally had no head. According to Kincaid, the story goes that he was Claiborne’s ex-husband who cheated on her. She made him headless as penance. About 15 years after Kincaid moved into the house, a fire tore through the upstairs rooms and damaged the dining room where this canvas hung. But Kincaid salvaged the canvas and employed a team of craftsmen and artists to revive the artwork and rehang it in her new Texas home. During the process, it needed some retouching. One of the artists painted the man’s head back on, not knowing it hadn’t been there to begin with. “I walked in and went, oh my gosh, he’s been redeemed!” Kincaid said.
It’s a story that began generations ago, and it hasn’t reached its end. The day before her American Essence interview, Kincaid was blessed with a new grandchild. Only the heavens would know what new stories will be told in this home that’s celebrating its centennial anniversary (approximately) this year.
(Miguel Floes-Vianna)
Kincaid continues to be drawn to gorgeous restorations with stories behind them. She said working on old homes is “a completely different feel. I love working on new properties, too, but it’s fun to go into an old [home], especially one that hasn’t been changed, and see how you bring it up to speed but at the same time retain all of the charm that it has from the years past. Nothing can quite replace something that was done a long time ago.”
There’s a unique character to them, she said. “I love walking into a house and wondering, ‘What’s happened there? Who’s been [there]? Who’s lived there?’”
Hobel’s Native American
heritage has greatly
influenced him. What most
people view as ‘‘survival
skills’’ are simply ancestral
skills in his eyes. (Samira Bouaou)
When disaster strikes, Shane Hobel is the guy you want by your side—or better yet, the guy you want to have taught you how to deal with it.
A former stuntman, bouncer, and motorcycle instructor, Hobel has carved out an interesting route to running Mountain Scout Survival School in upstate New York. Two influences have shaped him since an early age: nature and martial arts. His reverence for nature was instilled by his family and Native American heritage, as well as many elders along the way. He also holds a fifth-degree black belt in traditional Okinawan karate.
He is one of five elite trackers in a nonprofit national tracking team founded by Tom Brown Jr. to find missing persons, including lost children, disoriented hunters, and fugitives. (Once, he tracked down a black panther on the loose in the Palisades, New York.) With no hesitation to crawl and wade through any environment, he’s also the man people hire to look for breaches in their home security; he has also been called on to consult for the U.S. military.
Hobel started teaching survival skills to children in after-school programs, then expanded to adults. Successive waves of interest came from “macho” types, outdoor enthusiasts, survivalists, and families. But the largest growing demographic over the last four or five years has been women.
Hobel considers it his duty to preserve, protect, and pass on the skills he teaches to the next generation. (Samira Bouaou)
Driven by a mama bear instinct, women have grown unsettled by a world that seems anything but predictable, Hobel says, and are taking the initiative on behalf of friends and family. “One woman said, ‘Can you take my husband for 30 days?’” he remembers.
“There’s a quiet desperation of people wanting these skills. They don’t want to be labeled as doomsday preppers or conspiracy theorists—they just know there’s a simple phrase: ‘Being prepared is being responsible.’ Somewhere deep down, there’s a feeling that ‘you can’t expect anybody to come and save you. You just have to take it upon yourself to do these skills,’” he said.
Don’t Panic
It can be easy to feel panic-stricken at the thought of emergency preparedness. But as Hobel points out, those who have adopted a proactive approach toward preparation are already on the way to a healthier mindset.
“If something goes wrong, it’s not going to be a surprise, it’s an anticipated change. … With people who have skills, it becomes just a nice vacation, something that is not so terrifying. It doesn’t have to be extreme survival,” Hobel said.
When it comes to children, it’s especially important that “if something happens, this is not a crisis. This is an exciting adventure.” Be upbeat and positive, and you’ll see that your child is able to keep up with you. “But the moment the child realizes it’s a disaster, they’re not going to give you that energy.”
If you suspect a disaster is about to take place, “Jump in the car, go to Jersey, go to some Airbnb, go have some strawberry shortcake. If nothing happened, you took a day off, good for you. But if something did happen, you’re at an Airbnb with strawberry shortcake and you’re watching the world burn from a distance, but at least you’re smart enough to get out on the first wave.
“So your approach and how you go about it will be the attitude of success. If I start off as a victim, so I will become.”
Hobel shows how to make cordage using a double reverse wrap from found materials. (Samira Bouaou)
Survival Skills Are Ancestral Skills
Under a fall canopy of beeches and maples, Hobel muses about the current state of the world. His reference points: raccoons and squirrels.
In an era of distraction and modern conveniences, it’s easy to become passive, going about life immersed in technology but not necessarily connected to other people. Like raccoons, we are distracted by the newest and shiniest toys and gadgets.
Squirrels, however, think about the future. In the fall, “they’re making provisions now for something that is about to happen. Quite more often than not, they dig up somebody else’s nuts. It’s a symbiotic relationship, but their medicine is thinking forward. And making these provisions is why people are coming here,” he said.
Hobel is hopeful that people are bringing along friends and family. “It’s great support because you can’t do this by yourself.” Going alone would require a very high-level set of skills, he explained.
Mountain Scout Survival School covers typical survival school topics such as shelter, water, fire, and food, but it also teaches tracking, awareness, and movement. (There are legendary tales of men and women who could survive in the wild and move about undetected.)
The outdoor camp at the school shows some of the students’ work: strong lashings to make fishing spears, and tongs (“fancy chopsticks”) to move coals onto short stumps to form drinking cups. As they burn, they create a hollow that can be polished with a river stone. Scale it up and you can imagine how to make a canoe.
“Nature is the great equalizer—fire, cold, hunger, bears—none of those things [care] what your religious status is, your political status, your job title,” Hobel said.
The skills that Hobel feels are his duty to preserve, protect, and pass on are actually not survival skills at their core, but ancestral skills.
Shane Hobel runs Mountain Scout Survival School in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. (Samira Bouaou)
These skills were “extremely sophisticated,” though coming from “what we deem a very primitive time. We are living in a very sophisticated time but we are in fact quite primitive,” Hobel said.
Some Native American prophecies mention a time of upheaval on Earth, marked by food and water shortages, diseases, natural and man-made disasters, and war. After a period of chaos, humanity will find itself in a primitive place again, left to rely on these ancestral skills.
“I do this because I want people to be closer to the earth and live a beautiful, harmonious life. I don’t do this to prepare them for the Armageddon. But they’re empowered just in the event of.”
At his school, people have “a physical space by which they can come, be around the medicine fires, learn these empowering skills.”
Traditional Knowledge
Ultimately, Hobel wants to pass on the knowledge of these ancestral skills to children, explaining, “I want to put this back in the elementary schools and junior high schools, where it belongs.”
Hobel, who works seven days a week, has no shortage of ideas and projects—though not enough help and funding to make it all happen. He also has a nonprofit, Arrows of Honor, for veterans and first responders, that aims to address PTSD. He envisions them coming around the fire, becoming instructors, and then going back to their hometowns to teach children and adults these skills—and be looked up to.
“They have to be returned to ceremony, back to fire, back to being a warrior again … to realize that all of that trauma is not theirs—it was theirs to experience but it’s not theirs to keep or hold on to.”
In the end, it’s a journey of self-discovery.
People come to Hobel’s school thinking they’ll just learn about shelter, water, and food. “But what they realize is, ‘this is a journey to myself’—because it’s you that has to make that fire and shelter. You have to get out of your own way to be successful.”
A backpack can either be conventional (pictured here) or tactical, though the latter might attract more attention. Another alternative is to wear a photographer-style vest with many mesh pockets for your items and wear a coat over it. (Samira Bouaou)
Getting Out of Dodge
Unusual for a survival school, Mountain Scout Survival School, in Hopewell Junction, New York, two hours from Manhattan, teaches both wilderness survival and urban emergency preparedness—a hot topic, given 70 percent of people currently live in urban areas.
“The subject matter is overwhelming,” admits Hobel, who consults for private groups as well. In quaint gatherings in brownstone apartments, small groups come together around food and wine, focused on developing a solid plan to get out safely should a disaster happen.
The skill set required in the city is different from being out in the wilderness. The bottom line is, there is no sustainability in the city; it is wholly dependent on supplies coming in. In case of danger, Hobel advises city dwellers to get out with the first wave of exodus. Though you can stay for a little while, “eventually you’re going to have to go. My suggestion would be to go with the waves and don’t go alone; if you’re a solo operator, you’re just a target. Remember that the most scary individual in the world is a hungry person.”
The topics include communication options and protocols, plans detailing meeting points and how to get there, resources along the way, safety, and the big subject of go-bags—emergency backpacks to take when you leave home.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Hobel saw many companies sell generic, sub-par go-bags. He still urges consumers to be wary and do their research, since these kits aren’t adapted for your personal circumstances.
Go-bags can range from a 24-hour bag designed to get you by with the bare minimum, to the 36- to 72-hour bag (the most common), to what Hobel calls a “sustainability bag,” which can sustain you indefinitely—as long as you have the skills.
You also need to consider the time of year, and know your plan: where you’re going, who’s going with you, how fast or slow you need to go to accommodate the slowest member of your party, and whether you can replenish items along the way. Make sure to have a couple of exit routes in mind, and know how you’re getting to your destination.
Every member of your group of family or friends should have a go-bag, “packed and identical.” Crucially, get out and practice with it.
And learn the skills: If you lose your go-bag, “your skills don’t go in the bag and they stay with you; for example, first aid and CPR—start with that. You can help yourself and then you can help others,” Hobel said.
