- [Jim] It takes time and money to train a service dog to help those with PTSD.

(soft music) But the payoff is huge, practical and emotional.

- I don't know, he feels it, and he'll next thing I know he's on my lap, or he's flipping upside down on his back and doing something stupid and making me laugh.

- [Jim] This St. Louis woman wanted to vote in the 1872 presidential election.

You can guess how that turned out.

But Virginia Minor and her husband were not about to take no for an answer.

- They were ready.

They had a plan, and they were gonna see how far they could take it.

- [Jim] We mark the passing at age 99 of architect Gyo Obata, part of the modernist movement that came out of Washington University, that threw the world of architecture and engineering quite a few curves.

- [Kiku] I think a lot of contractors were like, we're not doing this, I don't, we have no idea what this is.

- [Jim] It's all next on Living St. Louis.

(upbeat music) - I'm Jim Kirchherr, and we're gonna start off with a story about people and their dogs, or maybe it's about dogs and their people, dogs and their jobs.

Now it doesn't take much to say, get a dog to bark at an intruder, but to become a service dog, well, as Brooke Butler shows us, that takes a lot more than basic training, and with good reason.

- Yes.

(upbeat music) - [Brooke] There's no denying the joy we feel when we interact with a dog.

Sure, they slobber and shed, but it's worth it for the unconditional love.

In fact, having a pet is so comforting, in 2019, there were nearly 200,000 people seeking registration for their pet to be considered an emotional support animal.

But these dogs, as much emotional support as they do give, are actually highly trained, official service dogs.

They train for up to two years to support victims of post traumatic disorder through the organization, Got Your Six Support Dogs.

- We just got asked yesterday by somebody coming in.

They're like, "What is Got Your Six?

Why, what does that have to do with dogs?"

- [Brooke] Executive director, Nicole Lanahan, explains the phrase, "Got Your Six" comes from world war II, when fighter pilots would give their location in terms of a clock.

When someone was at your six o'clock, that meant they had your back.

And the slang stuck, (siren wails) not just for military, but also for first responders.

- And so we knew, I wanted something that military, law enforcement, first responders would know, "Hey, that's, I know that slang, this, this organization is for me.

This is my organization.

Honestly, in the beginning, which is so funny, I was the biggest skeptic of PTSD service dogs.

I was thinking, "Okay, you guys, you just want to take your dog on an airplane."

- [Brooke] Nicole has been training dogs for over 20 years in various capacities, from narcotic dogs for the military, to diabetic and mobility assistance dogs.

But after several people contacted her with requests for PTSD support dogs, she started to investigate the details.

- And so to understand what the dogs do, you really have to understand PTSD, and how it affects your brain.

- [Brooke] Historically referred to with terms like shell shock or battle fatigue, PTSD has been affecting soldiers since the creation of war.

In fact, references to symptoms of PTSD even date back to survivors of saber tooth tiger attacks.

But the problem is, in a world where saber tooth tiger attacks are pretty few and far between, the psychological responses are still the same.

- For example, I was supposed to do an interview with somebody who applied for a service dog, and they never showed up.

About an hour after they missed their appointment, I get a phone call and it was them sobbing, saying, "Look, I tried to come in, I really did, I need this dog, but I saw a cardboard box on the side of the road.

And I had to turn around."

You and me, we're like, "Cardboard box?"

But to them, they know that over in the desert, that's where they would hide bombs, is in trash.

And so they're driving past the trash, and frontal lobe says, "Hey, we're in America.

There is no bomb in that box."

But the amygdala speaks up and says, "Hey, do you wanna risk it?

Is it worth risking your life?"

And ultimately, no.

So I'm gonna turn around and go home where it's safe.

- [Brooke] But with understanding the science and logical explanation behind PTSD, there was still the question of how a dog could be of assistance.

- Are they just dogs that make you feel better?

It has to be more than that, because the Americans with Disabilities Act says a service dog has to be able to perform a medical task in order to be a service dog.

So I'm thinking, what is this task?

They have to do something.

- So we're just doing nothing while that cat walks around.

So I like to say that training is actually quite boring, because teaching neutral is doing nothing in the face of a distraction, right?

And that's the first thing we start with is solid, pristine obedience.

From there, we move into their anxiety alerts, which include a lower body alert, such as a foot tap.

Yes.

What a good girl.

If I'm crying.

(fakes sobs) Yes, very good.

(laughs) Very nice.

And they do nightmare interruptions, and retrieve items for us.

One more.

(item clatters) - [Brooke] So the simple answer is PTSD service dogs pay close attention to their owners, And when they notice a nervous behavior such as foot tapping, knee bouncing, or sighing, they alert their owner by interrupting the nervous behavior.

But of course, with the complexities of PTSD, the relationship between the dog and the owner is a little bit deeper.

(cheerful music) - Sometimes I have emotions that I don't even know.

I don't even know how to categorize 'em.

Like, I'm not mad, I'm not sad, I, but I don't, I feel something and I don't know how to verbalize it, or I don't know how to, how to get somebody to understand how I feel like.

And Arkham just gets it.

I, I don't know, he feels it.

And he'll, next thing I know he's on my lap or he's flipping upside down on his back and doing something stupid and making me laugh.

- [Brooke] Coming from a long line of Navy veterans, Andy Canning took a while to realize he needed help managing the difficulties that come with returning home from service.

- And I, I did therapy and things like that.

One of the first things I told my therapist was, that I don't want to be on medication.

I wanna feel, And I want to, to feel those things and emotions, but I wanna learn how to control 'em.

And he said, "Well, if you can find somewhere that'll do it, I think a support dog would be a great thing."

So I did some research, did some research and ended up finding out that a friend of mine from school was a trainer here at Got Your Six Support Dogs.

The first thing you have to fill out an application, it's like 20, 25 pages long, and you first print it out and you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's gonna take forever."

Well, it's that way, for me personally, it's that way for a reason.

To even get started in the process you have to want to get better, right?

So you gotta do the legwork.

- [Brooke] That legwork includes references and insight from your therapist, a primary care physician, your spouse and or family members.

And after the application is received and approved, there's about a year long wait list to get matched with a dog.

But once you're in, Got Your Six provides more than just the dog.

- So we make sure, with our applicants, that they're already, one of our requirements is they're already participating in therapy, but when they're here, one of the things, again that makes us different is they get a two week trauma resiliency program with the service dog.

- [Brooke] This 14 day trauma resilience program includes a 24/7 therapist on site, workshops on mindfulness and stress relief techniques, and of course, lots of interaction with your dog.

And all of this is at no cost for the veterans.

- So when they're here, we cover the cost of their meals, their hotel.

We also make sure that they have all of the supplies they need for, for their dogs, the dogs care, for the entire year.

And all of that costs us when it's all broken down, it costs us $25,000 per dog.

So that since we are a nonprofit, we have to fundraise all year in order to make sure.

Last year we placed 10 dogs.

We always like to increase.

We haven't been able to increase because of COVID.

COVID was rough, but we're thrilled to say we haven't had to decrease either, which was a scary possibility.

- [Brooke] A lot of their support comes from donations, both monetary and supplies, but Got Your Six is a big advocate for the PAWS Act, which provides government funding for pairing service dogs with eligible veterans.

- Ever since the PAWS Act happened, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of backyard garage organizations pop up, hoping to get some government money for training a dog, and we've already seen and heard horror stories.

So we wanna make sure that anybody that's looking for a service dog, even not through us, just making sure that the organization that you go look is accredited.

- [Brooke] These non-accredited organizations are most likely offering services because the demand is just so high.

And it's predicted that the demand will only increase with the effects of the pandemic on first responders.

But looking at the transformative results, it's a worthy demand to supply.

(cheerful music) - When I start like feeling stuck and I feel surrounded, he'll kind of bump me and say, "Hey, we're all right, let's do this."

He, he keeps me in the moment and, and lets me and enjoy my life the way I want to.

Prior to this, and prior to getting help, I probably wasn't the best human to be around.

It's like somebody, not that my family didn't, and not that my therapist didn't, but somebody that I have never met before in my life cares enough to give me a chance.

(upbeat music) - There's a lot of talk and debate these days about voting rights, but really that's nothing new, not in this country.

For women's history month, we decided to go back to the election year of 1872.

That's when a St. Louis woman read the US constitution and decided she had as much right to vote as the next guy.

(cheerful music) Virginia Minor was part of the women's suffrage movement gaining momentum after the Civil War, she wouldn't live nearly long enough to see the passage of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, but she wasn't going to wait for that anyway.

- So in 1872, Virginia Minor, a St. Louis woman attempts to register to vote.

- [Jim] Elizabeth Eichman researched Minor's story while working on her PhD in American studies.

- Goes in, meets the registrar, Reese Happersett, and attempts to register to vote for the presidential election happening just a month later.

She meets Reese Happersett, and he denies her attempt to register to vote on the basis that she isn't male.

- She knows this is going to happen, I'm guessing.

- Yes.

(suspenseful music) - Missouri's constitution at the time limited voting to men only.

Virginia Minor had not broken any law by trying to register, but she argued that based on the US constitution, it was the registrar who broke the law by turning her away, and took that argument to the courthouse downtown.

Was it meant to be a test case?

Was that what they were attempting to do there?

- Yeah, I think so.

They were ready.

They had a plan and they were gonna see how far they could take it.

Oh, I think that there hadn't been a case like this before, certainly not with the argument that they brought forth.

- The they she's talking about is Virginia Minor and her husband Francis Minor.

They moved to St. Louis before the Civil War, bought a farm east of Kings highway right here.

And he was an attorney, and hardly a bystander in all of this.

In fact, Virginia Minor, literally could not have made her case without him.

- Per Missouri law, Virginia wouldn't have been able to bring this suit forth by herself.

It was illegal for married women to sue.

So he, if you look at old court documents, you'll see it's his name and her name in everything.

So it was a joint suit, very much a joint effort.

And he was one of the three attorneys that also represented the case.

(stately music) - [Jim] While she was the one who tried to register to vote, Francis Minor had prepared the legal argument.

And after losing in circuit court, and then the Missouri Supreme Court, he ended up arguing the case in the highest court in the country.

- She was the first to argue on the basis of the 14th amendment, that actually, as they argued, women already had the right to vote.

- [Jim] The recently passed 14th amendment to the US constitution was designed to give African Americans and former slaves the full rights of US citizenship, and the Minors zeroed in on this sentence: "No state shall make or enforce any law, which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States."

They argued that voting was one of those privileges.

And since Mrs. Minor was a citizen, she had the privilege of voting, even if Missouri's constitution said otherwise.

The Supreme court unanimously disagreed.

Chief Justice Morrison Waite read the ruling that voting had never been one of the privileges of citizenship, that the constitution does not confer the right of suffrage on anybody.

That the court said, is up to the states and Missouri is free to limit that right to men only.

This was news because Virginia Minor's action, the legal challenge in 1872, was much more than a local story.

And it was meant to be.

- It was most definitely part of a larger movement.

So in St. Louis specifically, there's evidence that a movement had been growing since at least the mid 1860s, but I suspect even likely before then.

(stately music) - [Jim] The women's suffrage movement in the US marks its beginning in the 1840s.

It was to some extent put on hold during the Civil War, but many women came out of the war years more determined than ever to achieve that right to vote.

Like other women, Virginia Minor had volunteered in Union army hospitals in St. Louis.

She worked with a group that helped refugees that had streamed in from Southern battle fields.

She and many other women during the Civil War had served their country.

It kind of reminds me of, of the way women felt when they were working during world war II, the Rosie the Riveters and redefining their role in society.

- Yes, absolutely.

Without a doubt, women saw a connection between their work during the Civil War and the work that they would eventually do in the suffrage movement.

So they sort of became mobilized during this moment of the Civil War.

It's ended and they're thinking, "Okay, what can we do next as citizens?

How can we best perform our citizenship?

How can we best be an engaged citizenry?"

And for them, that was to be involved in the political process and to vote.

- [Jim] The ruling in Virginia Minor's case was important because it made clear to the suffrage movement that the constitutional argument would not work.

And suffragist focused at efforts, either on winning the vote state by state, or promoting a constitutional amendment.

They did win the vote in many states in the coming years, and finally for the whole country, when the 19th amendment took effect 100 years ago.

But even then Minor versus Happersett still had relevance because states still did have powers over voting, and they would use it.

- Their narrow defining of the 14th amendment really changed how states approached suffrage, and how they put limits on suffrage.

So this is where we get a sort of precedent for literacy tests or poll taxes that come in the decades that follow that limit who has access to voting, whether or not they have some kind of right to it.

(ominous music) - [Jim] After losing their case, Virginia and Francis Minor kept fighting the fight.

His 1892 obituary said that together with his wife, Francis Minor was an efficient and untiring advocate of women's suffrage.

Virginia Minor died two years later at the age of 72.

The paper noted that there were no religious services.

And also reported that in her will, she would leave her two nieces $500 each, as long as they didn't marry.

- So maybe she was hoping for a future in which women would be able to make gains without having to be married, and wanted to pass that on to her nieces.

- She left on her terms as well.

- Yes, exactly.

She left on her terms.

(stately music) - Virginia Minor, who spent most of her life fighting for the right to vote, is not one of the big names associated with the American women's suffrage movement.

At the end of her life, she had not achieved her goal, but in her will she also left a thousand dollars to Susan B. Anthony to carry on the fight.

Finally, we come to the James S. McDonnell planetarium to note the passing of the man who designed this landmark building.

Gyo Obata passed away in early March at the age of 99.

In the last few years, he wasn't doing any interviews, but in Kara Vaninger's recent documentary, Mid-Century Modern in St. Louis, his daughter talked about her father's life and his work.

(soft music) - My grandmother used to tell me that my father knew when he was five years old that he wanted to be an an architect.

It was just, he knew it.

- [Kara] As a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, Gyo Obata was enthusiastically pursuing his lifelong dream of becoming an architect, but the world was at war, and soon international events would determine the course of his future.

- My father was totally focused on architecture school, you know, not paying attention to political and world events.

The Japanese were beginning to be segregated out of society in California.

- [Kara] Moving inland and away from the Pacific military zone was one of the only ways for Japanese Americans to avoid internment camps.

A few businesses and schools were open to accepting these refugees as workers or students, including Washington University in St. Louis.

- And my grandfather told him that he needed to pay attention and, and try to get outside of California to continue his architectural education.

So he looked into Wash U. because it was the closest architecture school to California at the time.

So he applied, I don't think he thought much about it, but then the executive order came out to relocate all the Japanese.

A Colonel in the army, who was a friend of my grandfather's came one night and said, "Here's a pass for your son.

Get him out tonight, because they're gonna take everyone else tomorrow."

And so he got out on a train that night and came to St. Louis.

My father's brother and his sister and his parents were all relocated to internment camps the next day.

(somber music) - [Kara] Fellow Japanese American, Richard Henmi, spent months in an internment camp before he was able to enroll in Washington University.

Initially interested in aviation, he decided to pursue architecture instead, and was classmates with Obata.

- My dad has always said that he was so accepted in St. Louis, and he's always spoken so highly of St. Louis because it was so welcoming to him at that time.

It's amazing that Wash U. accepted Japanese Americans.

(upbeat music) - [Kara] These distinctive voices would join the murmur of modernism that was growing louder at Washington University.

Despite the growing interest in modernism, among both students and faculty, the university's architectural curriculum had remained fairly conservative.

- Local architects like Charles Eames and William Bernoudy actually dropped out of the Wash U. program in the thirties, because they were interested in Frank Lloyd Wright, and there was no support for that.

Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, had come to the Harvard graduate school of design in 1937, totally modernized the curriculum, and that set an international model.

- [Kara] Already famous for designing the Muny, faculty member Joseph Murphy became Dean of Architecture at Washington University in 1948, and shifted the school's focus towards modernism.

- Murphy really then builds out a faculty that includes people who are adherents to modern design.

It's the people coming to teach at Washington University, who leave such a big mark like Fumihiko Maki, - [Eric] Eugene Mackey, Jr., who later founded the firm Murphy and Mackey with Joseph Murphy.

- They were coming as young rising stars and working with a young faculty.

So it's this sort of, I think excitement and cross pollination.

- A lot of returning veterans were able to go on for the first time to get, you know, college degrees or graduate degrees.

They were very critical of classism, things they associated with fascism and, you know, totalitarian regime.

So they were very enthusiastic modernists.

- These ideas not only were open to consideration, but were being explored with the kind of ferocity and curiosity that people very new to an idea, bring.

And Murphy really encouraged and enabled that.

And then that leaves its mark in the built environment of St. Louis.

Practitioners like Gyo Obata, George Casaba, shape the map of the sixties and seventies.

- Thin shell concrete was important factor for the whole modern movement.

And it allowed these circular buildings, Bauhaus building in Dessau was all right angles, and flat roofs.

Some of the doctrinal modernists really thought that introducing curves was a betrayal of the aesthetic of modern architecture.

But fortunately we had great architects like Eero Saarinen and Dick Henmi who were willing to go beyond that.

- [Kara] A few years before Henmi designed the flying saucer as an exclamation point for Council Plaza, his Washington University classmate, Gyo Obata was also experimenting with thin shell concrete, with magnificent results.

- I still love the smell of concrete, (laughs) of freshly poured concrete.

It just, it, it takes me back to those days.

Well, when I was like five or six, I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with my dad.

So he would take me to construction sites.

(cheerful music) So the priory took advantage of new construction techniques that happened after the war.

I think a lot of contractors were like, "We're not doing this.

I don't know, we have no idea what this is."

But I think someone at McCarthy saw those drawings and said "This, we need to know how to do this.

We need to figure this out because this is the future."

So they figured out they could build a wooden frame and then spread thin shell concrete over it.

And then it would dry, and they would take that form and move it.

(upbeat music) The forms of priory really imply, you know, sort of reaching up in, into the sky, reaching, you know, it's a very spiritual kind of movement.

When you look at it from the outside, it's that beautiful white form.

But the windows look dark, so you really see this contrast of the white concrete shell and then the, the cow wall window system.

But when you go inside, it's like this light filled space.

I mean, it, I love that it has those two different attitudes in a way.

I think my dad would want to be known as a really good architect.

- And that's Living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us, I'm Jim Kirchherr,.

And we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Living St. Louis is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson foundation, the Mary Ranken Jordan and Ettie A. Jordan charitable trust, and by the members of Nine PBS.

(upbeat music)