Hoosier History Live

Almost like the beginning of a Disney movie, this story starts with a boy captivated by animals, but distressed by turbulence in his family.

After growing up in Indianapolis during the years following World War I - and attending Arsenal Technical High School and what was then the John Herron Institute of Art - Bill Peet went on to be generally considered the greatest storyboard artist at Disney Studios. Peet is the only artist to have created all of the storyboards for a Disney animated movie; he did that for two classics, One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and The Sword in the Stone (1963). (During the era before computer-generated animation, several storyboard artists typically would create one movie.)

During and after his 27 years at the studio - where Peet's relationship with founder Walt Disney was periodically volatile - he wrote and illustrated about 30 children's books sold internationally. Almost all of his books - which include The Wump World (1970) and The Ant and the Elephant (1972) - remain in print today, nearly 20 years after his death in 2002.

Peet's books fascinated Ken Avidor as a boy growing up in New York, inspiring him to become a sketch artist and cartoonist. Ken, who now is based in Indianapolis, will be Nelson's guest to share insights about Peet, whose years with Disney included significant work on such beloved films as Pinocchio (1940) and Dumbo (1941) - as well as the early development of The Jungle Book (1967), although a rift with Walt Disney resulted in Peet leaving the studio during production of that animated classic.

After the break with Disney, he focused on his children's books, which often were inspired by his Hoosier childhood, including Chester, the Worldly Pig (1978), about a restless hog who runs off from an Indiana farm to join a circus. The books were so successful that Peet often was regarded as on par with his contemporary, the legendary children's author Dr. Seuss.

So why isn't Peet better remembered, even in his home state?

That's a question Ken Avidor will discuss during our show, along with sharing insights about the themes that reoccur in Peet's work. Cruelty within the animal kingdom - along with the impact of human "progress" on animals - were predominant storylines.

Born in the Ohio River town of Grandview, Ind., in 1915, Bill Peet was 3 years old when his family moved to the eastside of Indianapolis. Although family members lived in several houses, Peet wrote in Bill Peet: An Autobiography (1989) that his happiest years were when they lived with his maternal grandmother in what is now called the Emerson Heights neighborhood. That's when Peet's father, whom he described as a continual source of conflict, abandoned the family for 10 years.

Also during his youth, Peet explored creeks and woods near his home, sketching wildlife. At Tech High School, Peet wrote, he was failing almost all of his classes until a friend advised him to study art.

By then, he had been drawing for several years. His autobiography is filled with sketches depicting scenes from his boyhood, including locomotives at Union Station, race cars at the Indianapolis 500, the visiting circus ("but always the assembly of tent cities, never the circus itself," he noted) and fish in a local creek, including dozens killed by water pollution. At the Indiana State Fair in 1934, Peet's paintings won prizes.

After his studies at Herron, Peet was hired during the Great Depression by Disney Studios, where his work on Dumbo - the story of a circus elephant with oversized, floppy ears - impressed Walt Disney.

His impact on One Hundred and One Dalmatians was enormous. Although the movie was based on a children's book by English author Dodie Smith, Peet wrote a screenplay that expanded some aspects of the story and dropped others. In addition to doing all of the storyboards, he was deeply involved in character development, including the depiction of Cruella de Vil, the terrifying villain who attempts to steal the Dalmatian puppies for her own nefarious purpose.

During his years at Disney, Peet had his first children's book published. Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure (1959) is about a proud lion whose mane catches fire.

Many of the ideas for his books, Peet wrote, derived from bedtime stories that he told his two sons. Peet's wife, Margaret, was a native of Ladoga, Ind.; they met when she was studying art at Herron.

Ever since the selection of the original Mercury 7 astronauts in 1959 marked the dawn of the U.S. space program, it's been well known that a significant percentage of NASA astronauts, mission specialists and engineers have spent portions of their lives in Indiana. After all, Purdue University has long been nicknamed "Mother of Astronauts."

Less well known, however, is Indiana's connection to the dehydrated food that has been the chow for many of the U.S. space program's intrepid cosmic explorers.

And then there's the Hoosier state's link to the physician who treated several astronauts who became household names during the 1960s, including Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong.

Hoosier History Live will spotlight these unexpected links just as space travel is receiving renewed attention with the recent launch of a capsule by SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk that took two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The mission "ended a nine-year launch drought for NASA, the longest such hiatus in its history," according to a USA Today report. (NASA had been relying on Russian spaceships to take U.S. astronauts to and from the space station).

Note to listeners who may be day-dreaming about blasting off as a civilian space traveler: Your prep could be overseen by a Purdue alum who works with civilians likely to become the first space tourists.

Our guest, Purdue historian John Norberg of Lafayette, will share details about various intriguing - but seldom highlighted - links between Indiana and the space program. A retired columnist for the Lafayette Journal & Courier who has been inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, John has been a guest on previous shows, including those that explored Astronauts and Purdue and Amelia Earhart's connections to Indiana.

So what's the skinny on the astronauts' food?

A former Indiana farm girl who studied home economics at Purdue supervised the packaging of food consumed by shuttle crews for several years, among other responsibilities. Karen Pearson Ross (Purdue class of '71) grew up on a farm in Sheridan, Ind., and eventually married popular NASA astronaut Jerry Ross.

Her husband liked to quip that he was the only one among his colleagues who enjoyed "home cooking" while in space. Both Karen and Jerry Ross, who grew up in Crown Point, Ind., are now retired. Our guest John Norberg collaborated with Jerry Ross on his autobiography, Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA's Record-Setting Frequent Flier (Purdue University Press, 2013).

In addition to sharing details about Karen Ross' cosmic culinary work, John Norberg will discuss Dr. Steve Beering, the former, long-time Purdue president (1983-2000) who died in April at age 87. Beginning in the early 1960s, Dr. Beering was the physician for Grissom, a native of Mitchell, Ind., Glenn, Alan Shepard and others among the original Mercury 7 astronauts.

Dr. Beering, who was on the medical staff at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas then, later gave Neil Armstrong his first physical for the astronaut program. Dr. Beering went on to become the dean of the IU School of Medicine before serving as Purdue's president.

Currently, Purdue alum Beth Moses (class of '92) is an astronaut instructor training people who will become the first space tourists. Although she works for Virgin Galactic, the company that hopes to send tourists into space, Beth Moses officially is classified as a NASA astronaut, according to John Norberg. She traveled into space on a Virgin Galactic test flight in 2019.

With various aspects of racial justice in the headlines, Hoosier History Live will explore precedent-setting legal trials in early Indiana involving African Americans and Native Americans. We are drawing upon our rich archive for a special encore show focusing on two landmark cases of racial justice in early 19th century Indiana.

The two trials: one in which an enslaved Indiana woman successfully sued for her freedom, and a second in which white men were found guilty and executed for slaughtering nine Native Americans, an infamous incident that history has dubbed the Fall Creek Massacre. The shows focusing on these milestone legal cases both originally aired in 2010.

In 1821, Mary Bateman Clark, a young African-American woman living in Vincennes, made history when her lawyer filed a lawsuit seeking her release from an "indentured servitude" contract with one of the most prominent men in the new state of Indiana. The contract required Clark to cook, clean and sew for Gen. Washington Johnston and his family for 20 years. Her only pay was housing, food and clothing.

The case, which made its way to the Indiana Supreme Court, involved determining whether such "indentured servitude" contracts violated the state's Constitution as a form of slavery. Nearly 200 years ago - on Nov. 16, 1821 - the state Supreme Court ruled in Clark's favor and ordered her employer to release her.

Sharing insights about the social history of the era and the landmark case, Nelson is joined in studio by one of Clark's descendants, Indianapolis resident Eunice Trotter. Eunice, a veteran journalist, and her sister Ethel McCane have used their research about their ancestor to do "living history performances" for schools and civic groups across the state.

Eunice Trotter was involved in the production of a one-hour documentary, Mary Bateman Clark, a Woman of Color and Courage, which originally aired on WTIU Bloomington in 2013.

Eunice and Ethel also crusaded for a historic marker in honor of Mary Bateman Clark, which was dedicated at the Knox County Courthouse in 2009. The sisters are Mary Bateman Clark's great-great-great granddaughters.

Nelson and his guest also discuss a similar case involving another young woman, Polly Strong, who also lived in Vincennes in the 1820s and sued to obtain her freedom. She had been enslaved by Col. Hyacinth LaSalle, a prominent Vincennes resident, before Indiana became a state in 1816. LaSalle challenged the new state Constitution, unsuccessfully arguing that it could not be applied retroactively.

Re-enactments of the Polly Strong case have been performed across Indiana under the direction of Corydon historic preservationist Maxine Brown, who has been a guest on Hoosier History Live for a show about her historic restoration of a segregated school in Corydon, as well as a show discussing DNA testing and family ancestry. The restored school, now known as the Leora Brown School, has been the setting for re-enactments of the court cases of Mary Bateman Clark and Polly Strong.

Just three years after the Mary Bateman Clark trial, another milestone Indiana legal case set a precedent for racial justice in the United States.

When white men were found guilty by a jury and executed for the slaughter of nine Native Americans in March 1824, it was the first time that the murders of Indians by whites had been subject to capital punishment under American law.

To explore all aspects of the brutal crimes in the swampy woods of Madison County - where the Native Americans (including three women and four children) were gruesomely murdered - Nelson is joined in studio by David Thomas Murphy, author of the book, Murder in Their Hearts: The Fall Creek Massacre (Indiana Historical Society Press).

A professor of history at Anderson University, David spent four years researching the massacre, trial and subsequent developments, including the social history of pioneer Hoosiers (Indiana only had been a state for about seven years at the time of the massacre) and of the Native Americans in the region.

"The slaughter in the soggy Indiana creek bottoms created a short-lived but serious national security crisis," David has written, referring to concerns across the country that warfare would erupt across newly developing states.

In researching the tragedy, David explored why the federal government devoted great effort and resources to prosecuting the perpetrators. David's research required that he reconcile conflicting accounts of the events (the tribal origins of some of the victims remain unclear) as well as the motivations involved in the cold-blooded crimes, which involved shooting some of the Native Americans in their backs and mutilating several of the corpses.

Following the recent dismantling in an Indianapolis park of a Confederate monument that originally marked the graves of prisoners of war who died at a Union Army camp, Hoosier History Live will explore the historic context of various aspects of the controversy.

Several guests will participate during the show: an expert on Civil War history, including the former Camp Morton and Confederate sympathizers in Indiana during the war; an IUPUI professor who has researched the history of the monument that was moved from a former cemetery to Garfield Park on the city's south side; and a civic leader who oversees presentations about African-American history in the state.

Civil War historian Steve Towne, the author of Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War (Ohio University Press) and other books and award-winning articles about the Civil War, is an archivist at IUPUI. His colleague Paul Mullins, an anthropology professor, has researched the Confederate monument, which he notes was placed initially at Greenlawn Cemetery in 1909.

Greenlawn, the first major public cemetery in Indianapolis, was located near the White River and Kentucky Avenue, a site that was prone to flooding and later became increasingly industrialized. The monument, funded by the federal government, was a mass marker for 1,616 Confederate POWs whose remains could not be identified individually. Their remains were moved to Crown Hill Cemetery, Greenlawn's successor as the city's major graveyard; the reburial site at Crown Hill is known as Confederate Mound. According to Paul Mullins, the POWs' remains were reburied at Confederate Mound in 1931.

Along with Steve Towne and Paul Mullins, our guests during the show will include Ophelia Wellington, founder of Freetown Village, a living history museum she created in 1982 to teach African-American history.

During our show, Steve Towne will share insights about conditions at Camp Morton, which was created for the induction and training of Union Army soldiers on a site near 19th and Alabama streets that previously had served as the state fairgrounds.

During the course of the war, Camp Morton primarily served as a POW camp for Confederate soldiers and sailors; by the end of the war, about 1,700 had died there. Today, much of the Herron-Morton Place Neighborhood is on the site of Camp Morton.

With the moves of the POWs' remains, many could not be identified. The relocation of the federally-funded monument (with a metal plate at the base that lists the names of the POWs) from Greenlawn to Garfield Park was advocated by the Southern Club of Indianapolis, which Paul Mullins will describe during our show.

The placement of the monument in a public park in the late 1920s has been controversial for several years. Since the June 8 dismantling, it has been stored at an undisclosed location.

It is not the only Confederate monument, memorial or marker in Indiana. According to the Indiana Historical Bureau, a state historic marker in the Franklin County town of Laurel, birthplace of a Confederate brigadier general, is under review for "misleading and inaccurate statements" as well as the lack of proper historic context on the signage. In Terre Haute, an obelisk at Woodlawn Cemetery memorializes eleven Confederates who died in a POW camp in the city.

The phone lines will be opened earlier than usual during our show for listeners' questions and comments.

The table was overloaded when Hoosier History Live served up a show on topics related to the foods of the pioneers earlier this year. So during this show, we will savor additional, fresh aspects of what and how Indiana residents ate during the 1820s, '30s and '40s.

Which members of pioneer households worked in the gardens? Did early settlers really believe tomatoes were poisonous?

How was the corn grown in the pioneer era different from what's cultivated in Hoosier soil today?

Indianapolis-based food historian Sheryl Vanderstel will discuss those and other topics that we were not able to explore when she was our guest in April. In addition, Sheryl is planning to share insights about aspects of what she calls "food etiquette," of the pioneer era, customs ranging from "tableware to table settings, serving and meal manners."

"Table manners varied by social class and ethnic groups, just as they do today," she says.

Typically, every member of an Indiana pioneer household had a prescribed role in maintaining the family garden, Sheryl notes. In addition to vegetables and fruits, the gardens included herbs for cooking and medicinal use.

A native Hoosier whose ancestors were pioneers, Sheryl is a former assistant director of education at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, where her duties included overseeing hearthside dinners and other food programs.

She has been involved in food programming at other historic sites and museums as well as educational seminars about historic foods. Sheryl is a board member of the Irvington Historical Society.

Saturdays, noon to 1 p.m. ET on WICR 88.7 FM. Or stream audio live from anywhere on WICR Online! You can listen to recent shows by clicking the podcast links below, or check out our extensive archive of past shows available as podcasts.

June 13, 2020

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Ellis Island - the "gateway to America" for generations of immigrants - is located in New York Harbor, of course, hundreds of miles from Indiana. Even so, a little historical sleuthing reveals various connections between Ellis Island and the Hoosier state, and it is these connections which will be the focus of this encore broadcast of a show that originally aired in 2018.

The receiving station for aspiring Americans now celebrated as an iconic aspect of our shared history opened on Ellis Island in 1892 during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison, so the only president elected from Indiana oversaw the lead-up to its debut. According to some estimates, about 22 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island during the years between 1892 and 1924, its peak period as the country's "door." (Ellis Island remained open as a receiving center until 1954, but during its final 30 years, limitations on immigration - and the creation of other points of entry - meant that far fewer immigrants were handled at the island.)

Not only will we explore the challenges that confronted all involved during the early Ellis Island years - immigrants often endured shockingly crude medical exams - we also will look at the waves of ethnic heritage groups that came to Indiana from the 1890s through the mid-1920s. Nelson's studio guests are:

• Jennifer Capps, the veteran curator at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis. Because Ellis Island opened under the Harrison administration - he was elected president in 1888 and left office in early 1893 - Jennifer has researched several aspects of the planning for the major immigrant processing center. According to Ellis Island: Gateway to the American Dream (Barnes & Noble Books, 1998), "the federal government assumed responsibilities for immigration and built Ellis Island" after corruption scandals with its predecessor, Castle Garden, which was run by New York officials.
• And Teresa Baer, managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society Press. Teresa is the author of Indianapolis: A City of Immigrants (2012) and Finding Indiana Ancestors (2007), both published by the IHS Press; she also is the editor of The Hoosier Genealogists: Connections, the society's family history magazine.

According to timelines in Teresa's books and in other reference sources, the 1890s through the early 1900s in Indiana was an era of heavy immigration from Eastern European countries including Poland, Hungary and Russia, as well as such Mediterranean countries as Greece and Italy. Significant percentages of the immigrants were Catholic and Jewish.

During our show, we will frame the early decades of immigration through Ellis Island by describing the waves of ethnic immigration to Indiana that preceded it, including early Irish, German, English and Scottish arrivals.

Between the 1890s and the start of World War I in 1914, many waves of immigrants came from what then was the Austro-Hungarian Empire; today, after more than a century of geopolitical shifts and cartographic reconfiguration, their countries of ancestral origin are the modern nations of Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Slovakia.

According to Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience (IHS Press, 1996), South Bend received larger numbers of Polish immigrants than any Indiana city during this era. Many Eastern European immigrants also settled in Lake County and other northwestern Indiana counties after U.S. Steel began operations in the early 1900s. The city of Gary was founded in 1906 and became the new hometown of many mill workers, as did Whiting, East Chicago and Hammond.

Italian immigration during the late 19th and early 20th centuries included hundreds of marble-cutters who settled in southern Indiana, including the town of Bedford, to work as limestone carvers. Hoosier History Live explored this aspect of Italian immigration in 2010. Other shows that explored immigration to Indiana during the heyday of Ellis Island include our programs about Latvian and Lithuanian heritage in 2016 and Russian immigration in 2014.

Our guest Jennifer Capps will share details about crude eye examinations - with unsterilized equipment - that were imposed on immigrants during the early decades of Ellis Island as a receiving station. Federal laws called for the rejection of those who showed indications of suffering from a "loathsome or contagious disease," but the reality was that many immigrants were turned away if they displayed any hint of illness or physical impairment, according to Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words (Checkmark Books, 1997).

A fire at Ellis Island burned the first receiving station to the ground in June 1897, more than four years after Harrison's presidency ended. By then, more than 1.64 million immigrants had been processed. The fire destroyed immigrant records from 1855 to 1897, including those from Castle Garden. About 200 immigrants were on the island at the time of the inferno, but all were safely evacuated. Construction began immediately of new buildings made of materials deemed fireproof.

Some history facts:

• The first site proposed for the immigrant processing station was Bedloe Island (now called Liberty Island), where construction on the Statue of Liberty had been completed just a few years prior, in 1886. Because of public opposition to that proposal, nearby Ellis Island was chosen instead.
• The first official to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty was Harrison's vice president, Levi P. Morton.
• As recently as 1997, more than 40 percent of the U.S. population could "trace their roots to an ancestor who came through Ellis Island," according to the Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation.

As the city of Indianapolis celebrates its 200th birthday - and on the eve of what was supposed to have been a mass, public kickoff event for the Bicentennial era of the Hoosier capital - Hoosier History Live will explore a malaria epidemic during the early 1820s that almost wiped out the city just as it was getting underway.

We also will look back on the city's history at various proposals for its improvement, including some ideas that fizzled or needed to be reworked.

A Bicentennial era (2020-2021) launch had been planned for early June that involved a major public community gathering on Monument Circle. Instead, as our guest Deputy Mayor Jeff Bennett explains, civic leaders have been conferring to come up with a celebratory kickoff scheduled for June 28 that can happen amid COVID-era public health guidelines. Jeff will share more details during our show.

And listeners are invited to call in to share their visions and dreams for Indianapolis during the next 200 years. The phone number of the WICR-FM studio is 317-788-3314; Nelson will open the phone lines early during the show.

The coronavirus pandemic certainly isn't the first public health crisis Indianapolis has faced. During the summer of 1821, the new city confronted a devastating malaria epidemic that killed 72 men, women and children, according to Indianapolis: The Story of a City by Edward A. Leary. Dozens of terrified residents packed up and left.

Many victims were nursed back to health by Dr. Isaac Coe (1782-1855), a Rutgers-educated New Jersey native who was the second physician to arrive in the city. Dr. Coe scolded state leaders for choosing a swampy site as the location for the new state capital merely because it was the geographic center of Indiana. More than 20 of the children who died in the malaria epidemic were buried in Plague Cemetery, the city's first graveyard. A commemorative plaque marks the approximate site of the cemetery on the campus of today's IUPUI.

Despite that inauspicious start, the city endured. During the next 200 years, visionaries proposed various plans for Indianapolis and its historic sites. Our guest Jeff Bennett will discuss some plans involving transformations for City Market at E. Market and N. Alabama streets that never unfolded.

Nelson and Jeff also will discuss Lockerbie Fair, a proposal first suggested in the late 1950s by city planners to transform the Lockerbie Square neighborhood into a historic "theme park" with costumed reenactors. The concept gained steam as interest in history increased with the buildup to the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976.

However, the Lockerbie Fair plan drew strenuous protests from historic preservationists, who wanted to protect Lockerbie as a residential neighborhood and were restoring its 19th century cottages. Opposition from Indiana Landmarks (then the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana) was a key factor in causing the Lockerbie Fair concept to be scuttled.

The proposal in 1958 from the Metropolitan Planning Commission that advocated for the creation of Lockerbie Fair also suggested demolishing City Market and historic Union Station, replacing the latter with a "modern heliport and transportation hub." The planners predicted that city residents soon would be relying on helicopters for transportation to Broad Ripple and other neighborhoods beyond downtown's Mile Square.

The planners advocated for demolition of City Market so it could be replaced "with a cube-like structure ... which would give a festive atmosphere for the market shopper."

That didn't happen at the site, which was first envisioned as the location for a food market when Scottish-born surveyor Alexander Ralston laid out Indianapolis in 1821. Initially, an outdoor market flourished there. The current City Market building, which was constructed in 1886, has been renovated several times; a substantial redevelopment in the 1970s included construction of its two wings.

Both City Market and Union Station, which was also built in the 1880s, have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. An attempt in the mid-1980s to convert Union Station into a "festival marketplace" of boutique shops and restaurants failed after a few years. Today, Crowne Plaza leases most of the historic train station from the city for use as a hotel, banquet hall and conference center.

Earlier in his career, our guest Deputy Mayor Jeff Bennett worked for Indiana Landmarks. He also was our guest last January for a show about how the Centennial of Indianapolis was celebrated in 1920 as well as the 150th birthday festivities in the early 1970s.

With the highly anticipated induction of Tamika Catchings into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame coming up this summer, Hoosier History Live is taking a look back at the challenges the Indiana Fever legend confronted during her spectacular career as a player, as well as her aspirations for post-Fever life.

Since the original broadcast of this show in 2017 - one year after she retired as a player - Tamika has been named general manager and vice president of operations for the Fever. In August, the honor that she has called a "storybook ending" is expected to unfold with her enlistment into the Hall of Fame.

She will be inducted along with other basketball superstars, including her lifelong friend Kobe Bryant, whose posthumous membership comes after he was killed in a helicopter crash in January. During this interview with our host Nelson, Tamika talks about the childhood bond with Bryant that began when they were growing up in Italy, where their fathers played pro basketball.

Tamika went on to be one of the most beloved athletes in Indiana history - and not only because she was considered to have been one of the best female professional basketball players ever. Nor is it merely because she won four Olympic gold medals.

Tamika Catchings is regarded as an inspirational figure even by admirers who never have attended an Indiana Fever game.

Born with a profound hearing impairment that caused her to be bullied as a child, Tamika established her Catch the Stars Foundation in 2004 to help young people confronted by challenges. She wrote an autobiography, Catch a Star (Revell Publishing, 2016) in which she describes how she was discouraged from chasing dreams.

Tamika, now 40, was named a Living Legend by the Indiana Historical Society in 2017. Also that year, her jersey (No. 24) became the first to be permanently retired by the Indiana Fever; her entire 15-year playing career in the WNBA was spent with the team.

During our show, Tamika talks about a range of aspects of her life and career, which included a role that surprised many: tea shop proprietor. In 2017, Tamika bought the Tea's Me Cafe on the near north side of Indianapolis after learning that the owners intended to shutter it. She had been a longtime patron and didn't want the cafe to close.

A year earlier, she married her husband, Parnell Smith, in a small ceremony in downtown Indy. She became a commentator for ESPN's SEC network. And in 2017, Tamika gave the commencement address at IUPUI.

"If anyone can do it, you can," she repeated to the graduates as a refrain throughout her speech.

Although her father, Harvey Catchings, enjoyed a 12-year career with the NBA and then played pro basketball overseas, the WNBA didn't even exist until Tamika was 16 years old.

By then, she had moved multiple times, spending her formative years everywhere from Italy to Texas as the family was continually uprooted because of her father's career. In Catch a Star, which Tamika wrote with Ken Petersen, she describes how she was perceived at the succession of new schools:

"Tamika Catchings was still just an odd-looking girl with big box hearing aids over her ears."

She went on to lead the Fever to a national championship in 2012, win four Olympic gold medals (the most recent at the 2016 Rio Olympics) as a key player on Team USA and receive the ESPN Humanitarian Award.

"Tamika has been a shining light in the community, a tireless worker and a tremendous role model not only for young athletes, but for everyone," writes Tony Dungy, the former Indianapolis Colts coach, in the introduction to Catch a Star. "She is one of the rare superstar athletes who really 'get it.'"

Tamika was drafted by the Indiana Fever in 2001 after leading the University of Tennessee's team to a national championship. At Tennessee, she had suffered a severe leg injury, but in Indianapolis she rebounded and excelled with the Fever, overcoming what Tamika describes in her autobiography as painful shyness during her youth.

"The name-calling, the put-downs, all the being singled out and set apart was too much," she writes in Catch a Star, referring to childhood teasing because of the hearing aids she wore.

When she launched her Catch the Stars Foundation, Tamika's goal was to help disadvantaged and challenged youth. In recent years, the foundation has expanded its mission to "empower youth to achieve their dreams by providing goal-setting programs that promote literacy, fitness and mentoring," as stated on the organization's website.

Even though there won't be an Indianapolis 500 this Memorial Day weekend due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we've got the green flag to explore the colorful heritage of the "greatest spectacle in racing." During this encore show originally broadcast in 2016, Hoosier History Live delves into the lives and careers of early race drivers who had deep connections to Indiana.

Here are some of the story nuggets involving "homegrown" competitors whose exploits captivated Indy 500 fans during the years immediately following the inaugural race in 1911:

• After 22-year-old native Hoosier Joe Dawson won the Indianapolis 500 in 1912, he hurried from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to his family's home at 2828 N. Illinois St. to hug his mom.
• Charlie Merz, the son of an Indianapolis police officer, survived horrific accidents early in his racing career to complete the final lap of the Indy 500 in 1913 - with his car on fire. He died in 1952 and is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.
• And in 1919, the Indy 500 was won by popular Howdy Wilcox, a pioneer race driver born in Crawfordsville. His son Howard S. Wilcox, also known as Howdy, founded the Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University in the early 1950s.

Anecdotes about those race drivers and others with Hoosier connections are shared by our guest, Indy native and lifelong racing enthusiast Mark Dill, the creator of firstsuperspeedway.com, an extensive website about auto racing, including the sport's pre-1920 history.

Mark, who is based in Cary, N.C., has worked in marketing and public relations for various high-tech companies. He also previously worked for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and, when he was an Indiana University student, as news director of Indianapolis Raceway Park. Mark and his wife Esther own Mark Dill Enterprises Inc., which helps market the rapidly growing sport of vintage auto racing.

Speaking of vintage: Many Hoosiers know a bit about Ray Harroun, a Pennsylvania native who won the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911 with a Marmon car made in Indianapolis. That race has been the focus of Hoosier History Live shows, including some with Speedway historian extraordinaire Donald Davidson. Donald also was Nelson's studio guest on April 4, 2015 for a program that explored the impact of track announcer Tom Carnegie and popular driver Jimmy Clark, the "Flying Scot" who won the Indy 500 in 1965.

For this show, we explore some Hoosiers whose legacies are not as well remembered by the general public today - as well as others such as Wilcox and Barney Oldfield, an Ohio native who, as our guest Mark Dill puts it, was "embraced by Indiana like a native son." A confidant of Speedway founder Carl Fisher, Oldfield (1878-1946) was a racing pioneer and showman who even starred in silent movies.

Although Harroun won the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911, the first lap was led by driver Johnny Aitken, an Indianapolis native whose life and racing achievements Mark discusses during our show. (According to Donald Davidson's Official History of the Indianapolis 500 with co-author Rick Shaffer, Aitken stayed in front for the first four laps of the 1911 race.)

Mark also shares insights about Joe Dawson, the winner of the second Indy 500 who went home to hug his fretful mother, an anecdote celebrated in local newspapers in 1912. Described as a "simple, modest man," Dawson (at age 22 years and 10 months) remained the youngest Indy 500 winner for several decades.

According to Mark's research, Dawson lived with his parents in a house with "the 1912 version of a man cave" that featured college football and baseball pennants.

Other early Indy 500s drivers we will explore include "Farmer" Bill Endicott, whose nickname, Mark says, derived from his ownership of a farm near Crawfordsville.

In addition to his website, Mark oversees a Facebook page on the same subjects.

Earlier in his career, Mark was vice president of Nortel and, in that capacity, worked with former Indy 500 driver Scott Goodyear on sponsorships. Mark also is a regular guest and commentator about racing for radio and TV and has been active in the SportsCar Vintage Racing Association.

Before the inaugural Indy 500 in 1911, there were several other auto races at the Speedway after the track opened in 1909.

Some of these races were won by a talented young driver, Tommy Kincaid, who had been born in Indianapolis; he drove for the Indianapolis-based National Motor Vehicle Company race team owned by Arthur Newby. Our guest Mark Dill will share insights about Kincaid, even though he never raced in the Indy 500; that's because he was killed at age 23 at the Speedway in 1910 while testing his car. (If Tommy Kincaid had been alive in 1912, Mark suspects that he - rather than Joe Dawson, who hugged his mom after the victory - might have driven the winning car, which also was owned by National.)

Barney Oldfield, who even starred in a Broadway musical, generally is considered to have been the first American auto racing celebrity. According to the website of the Henry Ford Archive of Innovation, Oldfield "helped to democratize not only racing entertainment, but also the automobile in general, as the vehicles moved out of the carriage houses and into backyard sheds."

The website also notes that Oldfield "flouted the conventions of his time, both on and off the track. He was notorious for his post-race celebrations, womanizing and bar fights."

Charlie Merz, who finished the 1913 race with his car on fire, later became a successful businessman, engineer and chief steward of the Indy 500. According to a description of the 1913 Indy 500 on Mark's website, Merz's car burst into flames just before the final lap. Instead of stopping, he "forged ahead for the final lap ... with the riding mechanic swatting the flames with his jacket."

Learn more:

• Vanderbilt Cup Races - Author Howard Kroplick's website with information, images and events concerning the Vanderbilt Cup Races held on Long Island from 1904 to 1910.
• The Old Motor - A vintage-automobile "Internet magazine."
• Motor Sport Retro - A website that celebrates "classic motorsport, racing cars, motorcycles and gear."
• "The World When IMS Opened" - The Speedway's official website takes a look back at the year 1909.
• Donald Davidson on the Speedway's 100 years - Full audio (show length 26:27) from the March 5, 2011 Hoosier History Live interview with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's track historian, Donald Davidson.
• Indianapolis Motor Speedway founder Carl Fisher's colorful life - Full audio (show length 29:42) from the May 16, 2009 Hoosier History Live show featuring Indianapolis historian Glory-June Greiff.
• Cruise-In.com - A website that celebrates Indiana car culture.

Two counties are named after Native American tribes. Many of Indiana's 92 counties have names that pay tribute to Revolutionary War heroes. And other county names salute famous Americans, including some who never set foot in the Hoosier state.

A few counties even are named after an aspect of their natural landscape. Lake County, with a northern border on the shores of Lake Michigan, is an obvious example.

For this show exploring the derivation of the names of Indiana's counties, Nelson will be joined by a WICR-FM colleague who has a passion for American history, including the origins of county names.

Charles Braun, the attorney who hosts Legally Speaking, the call-in legal advice show that airs at 11 a.m. on Saturdays, will be Nelson's guest. He's an admirer of French military hero Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) - and there's a direct connection involving our show's topic. Noting that Lafayette played a crucial role as an ally of the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, Charles points out that two counties have names that salute him.

Those two are Fayette County in eastern Indiana and LaGrange County, in the far-northeastern part of the state, which takes its name from Lafayette's French ancestral estate.

Also honoring Lafayette, of course, is the Hoosier city of that name, located in Tippecanoe County. The Tippecanoe River, for which the county is named, derives its name from a word in the language of the Miami people meaning "place of the buffalo fish." The Miami, in turn, are memorialized by Miami County just north of Kokomo.

LaGrange County isn't the only one with a name connected to foreign soil. Switzerland County on the Ohio River is named in honor of the country that was the homeland of many of its early settlers.

Knox County, which includes Vincennes, Indiana's oldest city, is among those named after a notable American with no Hoosier connections. According to Indiana Place Names (IU Press) by Ronald Baker and Marvin Carmony, the county's namesake is Henry Knox, an artillery officer during the Revolutionary War who became the country's first Secretary of War. In that capacity, he oversaw both the Army and the Navy. Knox is immortalized in dozens of place names around the country, including the famous Fort Knox in neighboring Kentucky.

Delaware County, which includes Muncie, is derived from the name given by white settlers to the Lenape, the Native American tribe that lived along the East Coast before being pushed in the 1790s to the wilderness that became Indiana. The Lenape were called the Delaware by white settlers who encountered them in the East. Hoosier History Live explored the Lenape heritage in Indiana during a show in 2014.

Described by some experts as "the most moved group in American history," the Lenape were pushed out of Indiana during the early 1820s in what's been called a "forced migration."

Our guest Charles Braun is immersed in Indiana history in ways other than his knowledge of county names' origins. At the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis, Charles is the official reenactor of the only president elected from the Hoosier state. Charles has been hosting "Legally Speaking" for 37 years, making it the country's longest-running legal advice show with call-in from listeners.