Welcome to Living St.

Louis.

I'm Brooke Butler, and this week we're on The Hill.

Is it on The Hill or in The Hill?

Anyway, it's a neighborhood shaped by generations of families who brought their traditions with them and built something that lasted.

And no, we don't have any stories about pasta or Italian food, but we thought for the first show in the new year, when everyone's thinking about starting new and new adventures, it was a good time to think about honoring our past and learning from what's already around us.

On this Living St.

Louis, a new mural bringing a defining chapter of St.

Louis soccer history into the present.

High school students experiencing a culture far beyond their own backyard.

It's very encouraging to know that we are being put on this big stage and I think the kids are enjoying the challenge.

A conversation with St.

Louis native whose career has taken him far, but never far from home.

To bring in some help and help people rebuild their lives.

In the story of Anna the Wolf, offering a closer look at St.

Louis' connection to the natural world.

It's all next on Living St.

Louis.

♪♪ - This city has always taken pride in its history and the people who have put it on the map.

So it's only fitting that right here in The Hill neighborhood, there is a tribute to a real life underdog story with a Hollywood finish to a beloved sport.

There are many in St.

Louis who claim that this city is a premier soccer town.

That it's part of our identity.

Well, spoiler alert, they're not wrong.

The proof is everywhere.

Soccer in St.

Louis has been played, loved and supported here for over a century by all ages and genders.

And this mural installed in the summer of 2025, commemorating one of the greatest upsets in World Cup history, boasts St.

Louis as America's first soccer city for all to see.

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of what's largely considered one of the great American sports underdog stories and what historians call really one of the greatest upsets in FIFA World Cup history.

Matt Sebek, Chief Experience Officer for St.

Louis City SC, along with children of some players, are toasting this new mural of the 1950 U.S.

National Soccer Team, who went against all odds beat Powerhouse England in a World Cup match in Brazil.

What does that have to do with St.

Louis and the Hill?

Well, five of the 11 starting players were from St.

Louis, four of them from this neighborhood.

So we figured what better way to pay homage to that 75th year anniversary than a mural on the side of a foundational restaurant like Antonino's.

My dad was Harry Keough.

He wore number three in that match.

It's just terrific that St.

Louis City, our relatively new major league soccer franchise, recognizes the roots, how deep they go in St.

Louis for the beautiful game of soccer.

St.

Louis City SC commissioned local muralist Scott Pondrom to paint the tribute.

He quickly realized the significance of this game and what his mural means to those in this neighborhood.

Scott Pondrom, "I didn't really realize the level of detail that The Hill played.

And then when I started painting, like the sons and daughters of the players, the neighbors of the players, people who knew the players, like the story really came alive to me then.

In 2010, Patrick Murphy profiled the game and the players in the Nine PBS documentary, A Time for Champions.

The St.

Louisans all knew each other and had played together for years in neighborhood and amateur games.

Harry Keough was a mailman, an Irish kid who learned soccer in the Spanish neighborhood he grew up in.

Charlie Colombo, nicknamed Gloves because of his habit of playing in leather gloves, was a meatpacker known for taking no prisoners on the field.

Gino Pariani, a sheet metal stacker at a St.

Louis can factory, married just three days before he left for Brazil.

Two of the St.

Louis players had seen action in Europe.

Frank "Pee-Wee" Wallace spent 16 months in a German POW camp after his tank was set afire at Anzio.

Goalie Frank Borghi was decorated for his actions as a field medic in Normandy and made his living driving a hearse.

They were tough, they were good, and they knew it.

But the challenge before them was daunting.

They lost their first game against Spain in the tourney, 3-1.

Next they faced powerhouse England, and they had few illusions about the outcome.

If we gave them a good hard game and made them really work hard to win, that would have satisfied me personally.

I was hoping to hold them down at four or five goals.

The chances of us winning the United States was kind of weak.

England was favored to win the whole thing that year, the World Cup.

They were considered at that time the father of soccer.

The British had good reason to be confident.

London bookmakers put the odds of an American victory at 500 to 1.

With full-time day jobs, these young men were not professionally trained soccer players.

And it was tough from the start.

But shot after shot, England missed, or it was stopped by the American from the hill, goalie Frank Borghi.

38 minutes into the game, the miracle occurred.

Joe Gateson kind of dove out of a line of players.

Dove out and the ball was coming and he lunged like that and the ball went in.

It was just a one in a million, really.

One in a million made possible by five young men from St.

Louis, remembered on the hill by new generations of soccer players.

It's so foundational, you know, it's kind of the history of giants that we all kind of stand atop of right now and it's our job to make sure that that legacy is carried forward.

For many St.

Louisans, neighborhoods like The Hill offer a small taste of cultures rooted far beyond our city.

But just across the river, some high school students got to experience the real thing in a once-in-a-lifetime trip across the pond.

Edwardsville High School here in picture.

They come from Edwardsville in Illinois, which is quite near to St.

Louis, Illinois.

Is it St.

Louis or St.

Louis?

Sorry, I never know.

Daisy, you should be able to correct me on that.

St.

Louis or St.

Louis?

Well, I think it's St.

Louis.

Well, us St.

Louisans might have a few thoughts about the pronunciation, but when one of the largest cities in the world is announcing your name for millions to hear, an extra vowel can't hurt that accomplishment.

The London New Year's Day Parade is one of the largest New Year's celebrations in the world, marking its 40th anniversary in 2026.

More than 8,000 performers across the globe, a 2.2 route through the heart of the city, and an audience that stretches far beyond the streets, reaching millions of viewers worldwide.

It's part concert, part cultural showcase, and part tradition, one that turns London into a global stage.

And this year, that global stage included a hometown name.

Edwardsville High School Marching Tigers.

♪♪ It's very encouraging to know that we are being put on this big stage, and I think the kids are enjoying the challenge of letting them know, hey, they estimate 500,000 people on the parade route itself, and then however many people watching back at home and wherever they're broadcasting it.

So I think the kids have really relished in the opportunity to be on a stage as big as this.

I just want to hear that first bit.

Dee-da-da-da.

Five, or one, two, three, four, one.

Of course, for a performance this big and far from home, it took much more preparation than the average parade.

We came out to one of the band's extra rehearsals a couple of weeks before the trip, but the planning actually began four years in advance.

In our band program, we go on a trip every four years, and for the last couple cycles, we've gone to Orlando and marched at Disney World, and four years ago when we went, I wanted to kind of up the ante to try to get more students involved, more students wanting to go, and to make a much bigger educational impact for the students.

Ryan talked to fellow band directors who highly recommended the London Parade.

But it wasn't a guaranteed spot.

Bands from around the world apply, submitting performance videos and going through a vetting process just to be considered.

And in September of 2024, that answer arrived, not in an email, but in person.

The official invitation was hand-delivered by Bob Bone himself, the founder of the London New Year's Day Parade.

You are going to be invited to London's New Year's Day Parade 2026.

Are you pleased with that idea?

[applause] The reason we've chosen Edwardsville to come to the parade, and a very special parade for us, it's our 40th anniversary, is because of their reputation.

You know, this is a massive, massive event for us in London, so we want the best performers.

I mean, it's as simple as that.

Have you ever been out of the country?

I've never been out of the country, so... You need to get your passport.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's okay.

It's worth it.

It's worth it.

Yeah.

We've had a lot of reminders of, "Hey, make sure you have you done your passport yet.

Make sure you've done your passport."

Right now we're in the reminders for their electronic travel authorizations, which is another step they have to take.

I mean, it's not cheap going to London.

And you're taking 157 people.

How does that work?

So how that works is every student had a, they have a cost associated with it, and we've offered about a fundraiser every two months for them to participate in if they'd like to, as well as me and the directors and the boosters have kind of taken over a couple of other fundraising efforts to try to help families that have asked for a little financial assistance to get there.

This is the Edwardsville and they have the most interesting and exciting uniforms that I've seen for a color guard for a very, very long time.

The London parade itself also helps support the bands by organizing shipping the larger items -- instruments, uniforms, flags and banners -- via freight overseas.

We packed up all of the big instruments and we put them in these massive shipping containers and they're getting shipped to London.

So this is currently not my personal instrument, but my personal instrument is on its way to London right now.

♪♪ For these students, this isn't just a trip.

It's a payoff for years of early mornings, late nights, long weekends, and countless hours spent perfecting every note and every step.

It's pride, it's validation, and it's proof that dedication in a high school band room can lead all the way to an international stage.

♪♪ - I'm really proud to have the opportunity to represent my school like this.

Like, this isn't an opportunity that everyone or even every school gets to have.

And so I'm really just honored to have that opportunity.

- I really do hope that this gets the kids geared up to play beyond high school.

I hope that it encourages our middle school kids to continue and just keep making people excited to travel the world.

The Hill is known for its deep roots, generations of families, stories passed down, a real sense of knowing where you come from.

And that's what's at the heart of this next conversation.

Carol Daniel sat down with native St.

Louis and an actor, William Stanford Davis, to talk about growing up here and his breakout role in Abbott Elementary and how St.

Louis helped shape it.

I'm just going to call him my old friend, because we have actually sat down and had dinner together in the Central West End.

William Stanford Davis, Stan, it is so good to see your face again.

Good to see you too, Carol.

How are you today?

I am great.

I'm great.

And just before we started recording, and we're going to talk about Abbott Elementary, and we're going to talk about your career, and of course, the great and young and dynamic Quinta Brunson, but you were asking me about how the city's doing after the May 16th tornado, because it struck the neighborhood where you grew up, The Ville.

Yeah, yeah.

From the videos and emails and texts that I got from everyone, it looked like total devastation.

Broke my heart.

And, you know, it just, I know how people have worked hard to save those homes, especially those, some of the brownstones, the three-story brownstones, which one of my grandmothers had over on Page Avenue, Page Boulevard, I should say.

Tell how long I've been away.

But, you know, I'm hoping that someone will come to the rescue in some type of way, you know.

I suggested a big concert like they do for some of these other big catastrophes, but no one seemed to bite on to that.

But hopefully, maybe someone will take the initiative to, to, you know, bring in some some help and help people, you know, rebuild their lives.

Like, like a farm aid kind of a concert.

Yes, to help rebuild.

Yes.

You have that type of mass devastation.

Someone and there are a lot of entertainers, a lot of major people from St.

Louis that have gone on into big things.

I'm not calling them out or anything.

I'm just saying it's just an idea.

Maybe someone should, you know, put that little seed into the ground and make it grow.

I was on the elevator coming down to the studio, elevator full of Nine PBS employees, and one after another, someone said, "I'm freaking out.

You're going to be interviewing one of my favorite people."

Someone else said, "Tell him I love him.

Use my name and say I love him."

What does it feel like at this stage of your career to now be called a beloved, to be hope, to be embodying a beloved character on a beloved sitcom?

Is there a word that's bigger or better than blessing?

I don't know.

It's so hard to, sometimes it's hard to describe the feeling and because it's, it's, whenever you, whatever you think it's going to be, it's 50 times more, 50 times better.

And I'm still in pinch myself mode and I want to thank everyone in St.

Louis for loving the show, but people all over the world.

I know that you got you got hooked and you were bitten by the bug because your mother was taking you to movies.

You saw a movie with Sidney Poitier in it and you were hooked at that time.

So that's you as a child.

But when you actually enter the field, what did you think would happen?

And does this compare to what you even thought?

You know, I started out in entertainment, you know, we both worked in radio, you know, at Lincoln University.

And so entertainment and I worked in nightclubs in St.

Louis before I went to college.

So it's always been in my, my system.

But when I went to my grandmother's to take me out of school, and tell the teachers or tell the principal I had a doctor's appointment.

And I might have had a doctor's appointment, I don't know, I just remember being at the movies on the same day.

Oh my goodness.

And that stuck out more than any doctor's appointment or anything.

They used to take me to everything, take me to the Muny.

We'd go to the Muny every summer and see everything from Flower Drum Song, you know, I don't know if you even know it.

Yeah.

That's how far back it goes to, you know, we see everything there.

And, and My Fair Lady, and I'm like, why am I going to see this?

But once I get to see these things, I'd be like, moved to it.

So that's kind of where it started.

What is next?

I know we're in season five of Abbott Elementary, but can you, can you tell us what else you're working on?

I just did a film with Wanda Sykes.

In fact, it was at the St.

Louis Film Festival at the High Point.

At that point, yes.

At the High Point, I mean, at Forest Park.

I think it's still there.

It is.

It was there Monday.

It was there Monday.

Wanda was able to come in for the premiere of the film there.

But I wasn't able to because I'm working on Abbott Elementary.

I just did that and, you know, I'm writing a book and working on that.

And I'm just enjoying this moment on Abbott and I'm hoping that I don't wake up from this dream for a long time.

Absolutely.

And no spoilers, but what is next for Mr.

Johnson?

Are we going to finally learn whether he really did work for the CIA, whether he really was?

I think he might be an astronaut.

I don't know.

I think he was in the mafia, so CIA, why not?

Stan, who should we be listening to?

You should be listening to Carol Daniel on Listen St.

Louis.

William Stanford Davis, Stan, it is so great to have you on this podcast on Nine PBS.

We are so grateful.

We are so excited for you and we are rooting for you always.

Thank you, Carol.

So nice to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you very much.

I'm Veronica Mohesky and today I'm here with Jody Sowell, president of the Missouri Historical Society, and he's going to introduce us to one of his furry friends.

If St.

Louis could introduce itself, it would say I am a place that saved a species.

The Mexican gray wolf was endangered in the late 1970s and researchers went out into the wild to get the remaining wolves and bring them into breeding centers, including the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka.

Anna was born of two of those original wolves.

She was born on Earth Day 2001, and she would go on to give birth to 41 pups.

There now exists nearly 300 Mexican gray wolves in the wild.

Many of those can trace their lineage back to Anna and back to the St.

Louis region.

That's really cool.

Thanks, Jody.

Let's take a look at the story.

When Anna the wolf was born on Earth Day in 2001, her species was on the brink of extinction.

There were no known wild Mexican wolves.

Their range had once encompassed much of the American Southwest and parts of Mexico.

Hattie Felton is the director of curatorial affairs at the Missouri Historical Society.

She says the population declined for a variety of reasons.

There was habitat loss due to growing population in the region.

There was a real risk to the wolves because of farmers who would often shoot them because of the wolves encroaching on livestock.

And by the late 1970s, early 1980s, the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service actually went into the native range of the Mexican wolf and attempted to find every known wolf that they could, and they found seven.

Those seven wolves were brought to the Endangered Wolf Center in St.

Louis.

And with them, they attempted to start a breeding program with the hopes that they could begin to reintroduce the species back into the wild and hopefully repopulate and save them from extinction.

The Endangered Wolf Center opened in 1971 and is dedicated to the protection and preservation of wild canids, which include wolves, foxes, and wild dogs.

Anna was raised here at Endangered Wolf Center.

When she was born, her mom was a nervous mom, and her two litter maids passed away.

They made the drastic decision to pull Anna and human rear her.

- Tracy Rein is a conservation assistant and registrar at the Endangered Wolf Center.

She helped care for Anna the wolf.

- Once she was weaned, she was introduced to an older male who had had many, many pups and had raised pups, and he took to her right away and taught her how to be a wolf.

- While there aren't many photos of Anna, the Endangered Wolf Center has well-documented their care of Mexican wolves, including some of Anna's descendants, shown here.

- Anna was a very special wolf.

She was the only surviving offspring of her genetically valuable father, and she went on to have a total of 41 pups in four litters.

Each of Anna's litters were incredibly large.

Most wolves will give birth to about four to six puppies at a time.

She gave birth to eight puppies in her first litter, and that was a huge litter, and all of her succeeding litters were larger.

Her largest litter was 12 pups.

- So watching her raise her fourth litter, it was really interesting to watch her.

She moved, after they got to be about a week old, she moved half of the litter to the other side of the den box, and then she would nurse one half, and a little bit later go nurse the other half.

And in that way, she managed to nurse and clean all of the pups and take care of them, and that probably helped with her success.

It just showed how smart she was and how strong her instincts were to take care of those pups.

She hadn't had a chance to help raise like a succeeding litter when she was younger and had no experience with pups.

And she gave birth to those first eight and aced it.

She took care of them like she'd been doing it for ages.

Anna the wolf died just one day short of her 14th birthday in 2015.

So thanks to Anna and thanks to the important work that the Endangered Wolf Center does today, there are now more than 250 Mexican wolves roaming the Southwest and their population is only continuing to grow.

Two of Anna's descendants still live at the Endangered Wolf Center and Anna's genes can be found in many wild Mexican wolves today.

And though Anna was famous during her life, she received national and even international recognition after her death.

Thanks to the photo arc with National Geographic and photographer Joel Sartori, he was able to come out and take her photo and she has been on the Empire State Building, her photo's been on the Vatican and on a U.S.

Postal Stamp.

So she's out there through his work, she's still educating people about wolves.

Anna will be on display at the Missouri History Museum's Collected Exhibit through 2026.

Tracy Rein says Anna's story means there's hope for other endangered species.

"As long as we work hard and work with the animals, we can recover species that are in danger."

And that's Living St.

Louis.

Tell me honestly, do you like toasted ravioli or do you think it's something that St.

Louis has embraced but maybe a little overrated?

Let us know.

We love hearing from you at ninepbs.org/LSL.

I'm Brooke Butler.

Thanks for joining us.

♪♪ Living St.

Louis is funded in part by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.

♪♪