Hoosier History Live

A bushel of challenges have confronted family farmers in recent decades. At the same time, farmers markets have sprouted up in towns and neighborhoods across Indiana, the popularity of their "buy local" appeal undeniable.

Nick Carter, 39, is knee-deep in both family farms and farmers markets. He grew up on a multi-generational family farm near Russiaville; today, he lives with his wife and three young children on a farm in Marion County.

Dig this: More people gardened last year than at any time since the 1940s, according to recently released research. Our expert guest will describe reasons this boom is likely underway, how garden centers and growers are struggling to keep up with demand and other topics during a show that will explore a range of intriguing topics under the gardening umbrella.

Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp, the Indianapolis-based writer, editor and speaker known as "The Hoosier Gardener", will be Nelson's guest. Jo Ellen, past president of Garden Comm: Garden Communications International, will also share insights about plant diseases, insect resistance and myths.

The myths include various homemade "cures" widely circulating on the Internet that actually harm plants and the soil.

"We are being bombed."

Carmel resident Svitlana Ramer, 35, received that frightening text message from her mother in February. Svitlana had immigrated to the United States in 2008 from Ukraine. Her mother and her 91-year-old grandmother continue to live in Kyiv, the capital city of the country that's been the focus of international attention since its brutal invasion by Russia.

Svitlana and other Hoosiers have founded the Ukrainian Society of Indiana and held events to raise awareness of Ukraine and celebrate its heritage. According to the International Center of Indianapolis, where she is the vice president of development and external affairs, about 8,700 Ukrainian Americans live in the Hoosier state. About 2,150 of them are immigrants.

Snicker if you must, because that's an understandable reaction to an annual tradition in Northwest Indiana. At the Pierogi Drop every New Year's Eve in the city of Whiting, a 10-foot tall version of the dumpling associated with Polish cuisine is dropped into a boiling cooking pot at the stroke of midnight. And in the summer, the Pierogi Fest in Whiting sometimes draws more than 350,000 enthusiasts.

Also in Lake County, a historic former courthouse in Crown Point that was known for decades as a "marriage mill". Hollywood celebrities like silent movie star Rudolph Valentino, sports icons such as Muhammad Ali and Joe DiMaggio and other notables trekked to Crown Point for speedy weddings. No waiting periods, residency requirements or blood tests were required then. Now known as the Old Lake County Courthouse, the former "marriage mill" structure, which was built in 1878, is a tourist destination that houses a museum and distinctive retailers, including antique shops as well as merchants who sell vinyl records and vintage clothes.

On Memorial Day weekend, Hoosier History Live will follow up previous shows that featured World War II veterans. This time, we will focus on children and teenagers, now in their 80s and 90s, who dealt with special challenges during what many historians consider the most cataclysmic event of the 20th century.

Nelson's guests will include a retired teacher in Carmel who spent World War II in an internment camp for Japanese Americans. She will be joined by an author, chaplain and World War II historian who, in addition to interviewing veterans, has been collecting the stories of Hoosiers who were "children of war". They include a Carmel resident who, as a 7-year-old girl, witnessed the attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and a Zionsville resident whose Polish family fled both the Nazis and the Soviets.

Doctors, nurses and ambulances have been part of the scene at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since the first auto race in 1909, a disastrous, five-mile competition that resulted in the deaths of drivers, mechanics and spectators. (The inaugural Indianapolis 500 was not held until two years later, in 1911.) Medical, sports and social history began unfolding lickety-split at the world-famous racetrack. Hoosier History Live will explore the eras involving the Speedway's first three chief medical officers, a 50-year span ending in 1959.

Helmets for Indy 500 drivers did not become mandatory until the mid-1930s. The first chief medical officer was overruled in 1914 when he disqualified a driver who had visual challenges. And the second chief medical officer resigned in 1951 when a beer tent was erected at the racetrack, saying he did not want to have to treat "drunks".

For a deep dive into the histories of Geist Reservoir and Morse Reservoir, which supply much of the water for residents of the greater Indianapolis area, Hoosier History Live will plunge into several questions. Were you aware that a historic village called Germantown, which was founded during the 1830s and flourished for more than 100 years, was subsumed to create Geist?

Do some of Germantown's structures, which included houses, a post office and a mill, remain underwater in the reservoir located in northeastern Marion County and southern Hamilton County? Geist Reservoir was created in the 1940s, although the Indianapolis Water Company began a push to develop it more than 20 years earlier.

First off, it should be noted that Native Americans lived in the dense forests and marshlands of the land that became Marion County before any settlers of European heritage arrived. In particular, the Lenape tribe of Indians (called the Delaware by white settlers) had established villages in the central Indiana region.

Then other people began to filter into the wilderness of Marion County circa 1820. At some point in early 1819, a basket maker named Ute Perkins wandered through and built a cabin. He didn't stay too long; historians say he felt lonely and isolated in the dark woods and left to settle in Rush County.

During the 1950s and '60s, a Hoosier from Crawfordsville could not tell people where he worked. His employer was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which Benjamin Evans only could reveal beginning in 1970 when he was named executive secretary of the agency and no longer undercover.

Before that, his assignments included a post in Cuba during the rise of Fidel Castro. And in the aftermath of World War II, he was based in Japan as a military officer and part of the U.S. occupation force. By then, Evans had been trained in psychological warfare, known as "psywar" and a major focus as the Cold War era began.

"Cold War traumas are on many folks' minds (currently)," notes Douglas Wissing, author of Gentleman in the Shadows, a biography of Benjamin Evans. Doug will be Nelson's guest as Hoosier History Live explores the life and CIA career of Evans, who died in 1987.

"I traveled from the time I was 14 until I was 18. The moment the idea hit to go somewhere, and it always did in the spring, I was off. St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dodge City, Cincinnati . . . anywhere the next freight train happened to be going."

So said perhaps the most unlikely Hoosier to become an international business tycoon. His name endures because he created an unusual small town that's surrounded by the city of Lebanon in Boone County.

Hoosier History Live will take a dual look at industrialist Henry Ulen, who quit school after the fifth grade to ride the rails, and the town of Ulen that he founded in the 1920s not far from where he had grown up.

Henry Ulen