(casual upbeat music) - [Jim] Coffee might help you start the day, but for these high schoolers, coffee will be sending them on a journey of discovery.

- I know how powerful that international traveling can be, and how much it changes you.

- [Jim] We find out just how the folks at Hidden Valley turned this little section of Missouri into ski country, and meet those who have made their mark on a year-round sport.

- Is there a St. Louis style?

- Yes, there is.

We are known as some of the smoothest skaters on earth.

- [Jim] We look back at the man who left St. Louis a lot more than his name on Tucker Boulevard.

- I think Tucker shaped St. Louis in ways that we can see, and ways that we can't.

- [Jim] And the day the world's most famous she came to St. Louis.

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

(casual upbeat music) (casual upbeat music continues) (casual upbeat music continues) (music fading) - I'm Brooke Butler.

Our first story is about kids and coffee.

At least that's where it starts, but certainly not where it ends.

Leah Gullet on the youth program appropriately named Show Me the World.

- What you got?

- We have a light, medium, and dark roast.

They all have different flavor profiles, so you- - [Leah] A group of St. Louis City School students set up at the Tower Grove Farmers Market every Saturday from spring to fall to sell their coffee, and it's for a refreshing cause.

This is the Show Me the World project where students from select schools in underserved communities learn from a robust curriculum that will prepare them to study abroad at the end of the school year.

It was originally named the Show Me Costa Rica project by founder, Samantha Lurie, a teacher at Vashon High School.

10 years ago, after a school swap with Clayton High School, the students noticed that there were a lot of educational opportunities that wasn't present in their school, and wanted to know if it was possible for them.

- And we had a big discussion at the end of the day with the principal about education equity.

And so one of the opportunities that they saw was a flyer in the cafeteria that said, you know, it was advertising "International trip, sign up here."

And they were blown away by that.

They were like, "Ms. Lurie, what?

How do they get the chance to travel internationally?

That's just like a dream of mine."

(soft music) - [Leah] Samantha worked with staff, parents, and the community to start this program, and it quickly turned into a huge success.

Fundraising even got a lot easier with the start of their coffee business.

This was started by co-founder Sylvester Chisom and students while visiting a coffee farm in Costa Rica.

- It was like an a-ha moment between myself and the few students, like, well what if we figure this out to make the coffee a part of the programming?

We could use it as a teaching tool.

It's agriculture.

It's entrepreneurship, it's branding, it's marketing, it's fundraising.

Now we have a very strong entrepreneurial component to the program that's built around a coffee business, the Show Me the World project coffee, that you can find in grocery stores all across St. Louis in the Fresh Thymes.

- [Leah] When the students traveled to different countries, they learned the process of making coffee from start to finish.

From farming, harvesting, and packaging it up to sell to their communities back in St. Louis.

(casual upbeat music) (people chatting) One last thing that the students do before they leave the country is take a field trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

This is where they'll learn more about what they'll see in the country they are visiting.

This field trip is led by co-founder, Boahemaa Adu-Oppong, and her fellows from Washington University.

- I primarily look and focus on the science curriculum, and build that out for the project.

And then also figuring out new activities that the students can do, looking at other systems, study systems, that they'll be studying at the different countries.

So right now, we're going to be going to Ecuador, and so that was something that I wanted to incorporate within our curriculum, so I was able to get that changed and incorporate it so that the students could have that understanding.

Exactly.

So you have these different light forms that are able to survive, because they decided to choose a different way to get in nutrients.

- You get to know the students on a different level.

It's completely different than just teaching a student in the classroom, right?

It's a different relationship.

You get to be the one to see the first of everything.

First time on a plane, first time leaving St. Louis.

First time with a passport.

First time going to the beach.

Like, those are my favorite moments of just like being able to experience that with other students, because I know how powerful the international traveling can be, and how much it changes you.

- [Sylvester] What advice do you have for them?

Is it worth it?

- It's a one in a lifetime opportunity, so you don't wanna miss it.

- And the best one in a lifetime opportunity.

- Yeah.

- When you expose youth to things that maybe they haven't seen, you show them the possibilities, you show them the world that could exist for them, it really creates that bright spot, and leads to that success that we're looking for after high school.

- We break down barriers to open doors, and we are opening doors because of the collective community that has come together here in St. Louis, and across the nation.

- [Leah] And next spring, this chapter of students will be going to where it all started 10 years ago, Costa Rica.

- I've never traveled outside the country.

I've never even been on a plane.

So that will be very exciting for me.

- We have other amazing coffee options, like Honduras, Ethiopia.

(bright upbeat music) - Winters in St. Louis are nothing if not unpredictable when it comes to snow.

This year's storm has definitely made up for those warmer seasons of years passed.

But about this time last year, I headed out to Hidden Valley Ski Resort.

It hadn't snowed much, but even without help from mother nature, the conditions were spot on for exactly what I was there to see.

(bright upbeat music) When you think ski resort, chances are Wildwood, Missouri isn't the first location that comes to mind.

Sure, we've got the hills, and occasionally the snow, but some may not realize St. Louis is actually a popular destination to hit the slopes.

It is a frigid negative four degrees today here at Hidden Valley, and here in the Midwest, we know that tomorrow may very well be 60 degrees, but that won't stop winter sports enthusiasts from continuing to visit this season, thanks to the evolving technologies of artificial snow.

- Hidden Valley is the hidden gem of St. Louis.

It was opened up in 1982.

Last year, we celebrated our 40th anniversary with- - [Brooke] DJ Koch is the general manager of Hidden Valley.

This is his first year in that role, although he's been around the slopes for many years, which is obvious, as he gave us the behind the scenes tour of how the snow gets made.

And so, your season doesn't start until, I mean, you really never know every year, right?

It's kind of up to the conditions.

- Right, it's all up to mother nature, as soon as we get that cold snap, cold weather, usually three days straight of 29 degrees or below, we can start.

(bright music) - [Brooke] So let's get into it.

How in the world does this snow stay on the ground in St. Louis' often unseasonable conditions?

Well, as DJ said, it starts with a cold snap, and then they can blast the snow guns to make a snow base.

The snow base is important to act as insulation for new layers of snow.

Now if you're like me, you might be wondering if there's some sort of chemicals involved in the process, but it's all just water and air.

- We use, it holds about two million gallons, and we use inside this house about five pumps in order to pump this water out of the retention pond and up on the hill to mix it with air to make the snow that you're seeing now.

- [Brooke] At the snow guns, the water is mixed with compressed air in something called a nucleator located inside the snow gun nozzle.

The quality of snow depends on the real temperature outside and the humidity levels.

That's why when the temperature gets into the single digits, they maximize the snow guns to make piles of snow.

These snow cats or groomers then evenly distribute it around the slopes.

And that's the basic inner workings of what appears to the average person as a winter wonderland miracle.

But of course, I couldn't just stop there.

How did this process become such a normal part of ski resort operations?

- [Announcer 1] By blowing his moist breath into a home freezer, then scraping dry ice into it, Dr. Vincent Shaper in a simple experiment at the General Electric Laboratories demonstrated years ago the possibilities of artificially inducing snow or rain.

(bright music) - [Brooke] There are varying claims of fame to the first inventor of artificial snow, mostly because there have been so many different approaches to the process.

In 1936, there was a Japanese physicist who is credited with the first synthesized snowflake.

And in 1949, there were a few guys at a Connecticut ski resort that patented their invention of using chopped up ice blocks.

But I'm sure it's not a surprise to most of us that the main reason artificial snow making is needed is because climate change is making weather conditions increasingly difficult to maintain the snowy conditions.

So now I gotta ask, with climate change, how has it affected?

- Well, the only effect we have is just waiting for that cold.

It always seems to come.

(upbeat music) - [Brooke] And there are continuous efforts to improve artificial snow making, as over 90% of the world's ski resorts rely on this process.

- Believe me, we will put the best product down that we can, and we will never stop producing that experience of a lifetime for our guests.

- If you ask someone when was the last time you roller skated, many will say, "Not since I was a kid."

But there are others who might say, "Last night."

Ruth Ezell's story is about those folks, still skating, and doing it with style.

(bright upbeat music) - [Ruth] The old school tunes playing on the sound system is your first clue it's adult skate night at Skate King.

This roller rink in Pine Lawn has been the place to rock, skate, roll, and bounce for generations of St. Louis area African-Americans.

Regulars, Joe Crazy Legs Hill and Kevin Hollywood Brown have been skating since they were kids.

So I would imagine this place is like a big family.

- Exactly, exactly.

- We got a real bond.

- Family has been made, and families.

- There's a real bond in here.

- Families have been made here.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Relationships.

- Yeah.

- This is a different world, when you cross through that threshold.

When you cross through the skate rink, you forget about all what's going on out there.

Let your hair down.

- [Ruth] Skate King has deep roots in the African-American community.

It's owner is Matthew Foggy Jr. - And Skate King over the years has been a sanctuary, I mean, a mainstay for young people, parents know that they can drop their kids off and we are going to take care of them.

We have any number of family skates where people are able to skate with their young children.

But we also have been able to have a much larger than average adult skate, because people enjoy skating with their peers.

So we have categorized sessions specifically for those age demographics.

- [Ruth] The joy of roller skating inspired one St. Louisan to develop an online business around it.

- It's something that I didn't know I could do.

- Chad Harrell's first career was in telecommunications, but he took a leave of absence to figure out his true calling.

Harrell found it by chance, video taping and posting other skaters with his phone.

He quickly found an audience, and SkateLyfe TV was born.

Is there a St. Louis style?

- Yes, there is.

We are known as some of the smoothest skaters on earth, probably the smoothest skaters on earth.

People watch us, and we just have a smooth glide.

- [Ruth] And Joe Hill should know.

- And I started a style called the Crazy Legs.

♪ Uh ♪ Mama said I'm a son of a gun - [Ruth] How did it happen?

- [Joe] By mistake.

Just stumbling to it, and got good at it.

Kept practicing at it, and then got real good at it.

- We also created like the G slide.

- [Ruth] The fancy footwork here is like dancing in place.

- There's a new style of skating called ballroom skating that really kinda mimics ice skating.

- [Ruth] So roller skating is thriving here, as well as in other major metropolitan areas.

But longtime enthusiasts, like Matthew Foggy and Chad Harrell would like to see it get more respect as a sport.

- I think that it's so entertaining that I'd like to see it as an Olympic event.

It's got three great components going for it.

Fun, fitness, and fellowship.

- I always kinda refer to roller skating like a life lesson.

We all fall, but what are you gonna do if you fall?

Are you gonna stay down there?

No, you're gonna get back up, and you're gonna keep going and keep skating.

- [Ruth] And that's how they roll.

(casual upbeat music) ♪ Everybody knows ♪ How it makes you feel (bright music) - So we've got a mayor's race underway in St. Louis, and our next story is not about the current candidates, but about a St. Louis mayor who truly left his mark on the city, and a lot more than just a street sign that says Tucker Boulevard.

Jim Kirchherr sat down the author of a new biography of the man he calls St. Louis' mid century modern mayor.

- And joining me is Southern Illinois University professor, Andrew Thieving, who has just written a biography entitled "Mid-Mod Mayor: How Raymond Tucker Shaped St. Louis".

Andy, thanks for being here.

- It's a pleasure.

- Mayor Tucker serves three terms, '53 to '65.

This is an incredibly interesting period.

But let me go to the question, how do you think he shaped St. Louis?

- I think Tucker shaped St. Louis in ways that we can see, and ways that we can't.

I mean, this is the guy who built the skyline of St. Louis, basically.

I mean, he wasn't mayor by the time some of the stuff was completed, but he laid the groundwork for the St. Louis skyline.

So the city looks different physically.

And then, you know, he did so much behind the scenes.

Probably the greatest thing he did was to make permanent the earnings tax.

- [Jim] Raymond Tucker had been a Washington University engineering professor when he got involved in City Hall in the 1930s, helping push through changes to alleviate the city's serious smoke pollution.

- You know, here's Tucker.

He's kinda the nerdy professor, and he gets pulled into public service, he has a liking for public service.

- [Joe] And Thieving says his approach to problem solving continued to focus more on process than on politics.

When he became mayor, the Gateway Arch project was stuck.

The river front was cleared, Saarinen's design had been chosen, but the plan had always been to remove the railroad tracks on the river front, and the terminal railroad consistently refused.

The project was deadlocked.

- And Tucker, to his credit, convenes everybody, and here's the professor, and he's got a process, he's got a method, and he's gonna bring these institutions together in his office.

And at the end of the day, they decide to build around the tracks, and just kinda cover 'em up.

- [Jim] And the trains are still running down there?

- [Andrew] And the trains are still running.

And so here's Mayor Tucker, he is actually able to do the groundbreaking, and push this project.

And that was a long time coming.

- But you then, also so much of the attention of the 1950s in St. Louis has been on the negative.

It's been on urban renewal, and Mill Creek Valley.

It's been on Pruitt-Igoe.

So there's all of this stuff that is being done, but some of that stuff today we think is being done wrong.

- Clearly there were problems in the way that everything was done in the 1950s.

There was a lot of racial injustice, there was a lot of social injustice.

And at the same time, I think we have to be very careful to avoid taking our 21st century lens, and all that we know now, and using it to understand what was happening in the moment.

It isn't like this just happened in a vacuum.

It started in the neighborhoods, and then there were bond issues.

I mean, what started in 1954 with convening the advisory committee, they didn't tear a building down till 1959.

It was five years of community work.

- It seems to me that this is the pivot point for St. Louis, still thinking big, but facing decline.

I can't remember, it was maybe 1950 when the Post Dispatch came up with the Progress or Decay series.

- And I really think that's how Mayor Tucker saw the city.

If we didn't make progress on all fronts at the same time, we were gonna fall behind.

And I think a point that Tucker makes is this is a time of massive federal investment in cities, around the country.

- [Jim] Yeah, and we're doing the biggest stuff.

The biggest urban renewal- - Right.

- [Jim] The biggest public housing project.

- And Mayor Tucker says, you know, if we don't take what's earmarked for St. Louis, it's gonna go to Texas, or it's gonna go to some city that is ready to take it.

It was part of this attitude.

It was this we have to build things new.

- This was also an era of changing race relations.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision ending legalized segregation, and increasingly strident demands to be served in lunch counters, restaurants, and hotels, and the demand for more jobs.

The Jefferson Bank Demonstration came in Tucker's final term.

So one of the things you wrote towards the end of the civil rights chapter here, "His consistent perspective of civil rights was ahead of his peers in the 1950s, but behind the times in the 1960s."

- The stuff he was saying and doing in the late 40s and early 50s around civil rights was groundbreaking.

He was calling for public accommodation, that is if you're gonna open your doors to the public, you open it to all of the public.

And he's calling for public accommodation before there's a Brown Vs. Board of Education decision, before anybody's ever heard of Martin Luther King.

And so he is so far ahead there, but then, all of a sudden, somewhere, his consistent approach that the work kinda passed him by, and here we are in the mid to late 1960s, and he's very process-driven, and he wants the process to work when the process really needed a shove.

And you know, there's where we see the biggest gap.

Tucker was way ahead in 1950, and Tucker is fallen behind by 1965.

- [Jim] Tucker lost a bid for a fourth term, beaten in 1965 by AJ Cervantes, a colorful figure, more of a politician, and with greater support in the black wards.

- And was St. Louis ready for a change?

I think really what happened, I don't know that the voters rejected Mayor Tucker as his big electoral base moved out of the city and moved to the county.

- Okay, Professor.

How are you gonna grade Raymond Tucker?

- Well, I think it's important, again, that we don't take our 21st century lens to judge these actions from the 1950s.

We can't expect them to understand ideas that didn't come along until decades later.

And so I give Mayor Tucker an A, because Mayor Tucker, he secured resources for St. Louis that we otherwise wouldn't have had.

He broke a lot of log jams.

And he entertained big ideas.

- Well Andy Thieving, thanks for joining us, professor at SIUE.

Another one of your books, "Mid-Mod Mayor: How Raymond Tucker Shaped St. Louis", interesting if you're interested in St. Louis history, St. Louis politics.

And Andy, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for writing the book.

Appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

- Finally, Jim has a very different story from the 1950s, about one of the most famous people of the decade who came to St. Louis to try something new.

(casual upbeat music) (keys clacking) (casual upbeat music) - [Jim] This week in 1955, a play opened in the Empress Theater in midtown St. Louis.

The name of the play, not important.

What was important is that it featured Christine Jorgensen.

As the ad proclaimed, "The most talked about personality of our time."

And, "Miss Jorgensen's change of sex was one of the biggest miracles in medical history."

The New York Daily News broke the story in 1952 with the headline "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty".

(dramatic music) - [Announcer 2] Christine Jorgensen, who used to answer to George, creates quite a stir as she returns home to New York from Copenhagen.

Christine hit the headlines following the series of operations in Denmark that transformed her from a boy into a girl.

- [Reporter 1] Christine, are you happy to be home?

- Yes, of course.

What American wouldn't be?

- Have you been offered a movie contract?

- Yes, but I haven't accepted it.

- Do you have any plans regarding the theater?

- No, I don't think so.

- [Reporter 2] Hey, Christine!

- [Jim] But she did go into show business first with a successful night club act, singing, joking, she apparently was pretty good at it.

She said in her autobiography that doing the play in St. Louis in 1955 was an attempt to break into stage acting, but she admitted she wasn't brilliant.

Local reviewers, though, weren't expecting much.

They said her casting was obviously meant to sell tickets, but noted that the main floor was only half full.

At the conclusion of the play, Christine Jorgensen spoke and sang.

She wouldn't return to the theater for years, but did not fade from public view, continuing as a night club performer, and a lecturer, mot as a mere curiosity, but as an entertainer and transgender activist.

And although there were places that refused to book her, considering her immoral or unsuitable, and for years, she was kept off network television.

There was no indication in the St. Louis papers, at least, of any controversy or protest when Christine Jorgensen appeared in a St. Louis theater this week in 1955.

- And that's "Living St. Louis".

Don't forget, you can find all these stories and more on our NinePBS YouTube channel, and at NinePBS.org/LSL.

I'm Brooke Butler.

Thanks for joining us.

(casual upbeat music) (casual upbeat music continues) (casual upbeat music continues) (music fading) - [Announcer 3] "Living St. Louis" is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation, and the members of Nine PBS.