- [Narrator] If you know where to look, you can find one of these or one of these and a lot of this.

We meet with folks who want us all to start talking some trash.

- Everyone's been tremendously helpful, excited, enthusiastic.

- [Narrator] It wasn't the first or the last Navy ship carrying the name, USS St. Louis, but probably the most famous.

They didn't call it the Lucky Lou for nothing.

This is the time of year, you wish they ask this old house team might just come knocking on your door and once in St. Louis, they did.

And we sit down with the St. Louis symphony orchestras' Stefan Deneve to talk about plans for the post pandemic season.

- I have been missing tremendously the power of a big size orchestra.

- [Narrator] And his experiences conducting for audiences around the world.

And the time one performance got booed.

- It's a very strange feeling-- - [Narrator] It's all next on "Living St. Louis".

(upbeat music) I'm Jim Kertscher.

Last summer a ship named the USS St. Louis was commissioned and put into service.

The seventh us Navy ship to carry the name of our city.

We've been working on a documentary about that ship and all that came before going back nearly 200 years.

And for Memorial day, we thought we'd give you a sneak preview.

Cara Vaniger brings us the story of the Lucky Lou.

It's the story of a ship of a crew of battles and a St. Louis debutante, who set it all in motion.

- There's only two good ships in the navy, the one you've just left and the one you're you're going to.

Never the one you're on.

Here's to St. Louis, (indistinct) It was a good ship.

- [Narrator] In 1937 as 17 year old St. Louis, Nancy Lee Morill was being crowned the queen of love and beauty.

Battleships and a world war were most likely the furthest things from her mind.

But the feather tiara and romantic title would lead to her becoming sponsor of one of the most decorated US Navy ships of all time.

- The newspapers described her as a vivacious brunette and I can testify the vivacious.

She was gray by the time I met her, but so kind and friendly.

- [Narrator] Retired Naval officer and prolific author, Paul Stillwell is originally from Springfield, Missouri.

- I just like to say that I have been a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals since 1954, seen them hundreds of times and they remain my favorite team.

My heart bleeds cardinal red.

- [Narrator] A career as a historian at the US Naval Institute and as editor of the Naval History Magazine took him far away from his beloved Redbirds.

But before moving to Annapolis, he was contributing articles to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and reached out to the former debutante for an interview in 1972.

- I got her recollections of being tapped to be the sponsor of the light cruiser.

She was picked for the job because she had been crowned at the Veiled Prophet Ball.

It was a debutante ball, and she was just coming out.

- [Narrator] Ms. Morill had long ago become Mrs. Smith, but her memories of the St. Louis were still crystal clear, especially the christening.

- The president of the shipyard coached her, how to swing the bottle of champagne against the hull of the ship because it's considered bad luck not to break the bottle but it's encased in some kind of wicker so that the shards won't fly and injure people.

So according to the accounts that day, she had a beautiful sidearm delivery that would put dizzy Dean to shame, make him look like a sand ladder but she really took pride in the ship and the Navy did a nice job of keeping in touch with her over the years.

And the ship had been commissioned, steamed in the Atlantic for awhile then was based at Pearl Harbor from 1940.

And on the day of seven, December, 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor, the St. Louis was there.

She was more outboard of the cruiser Honolulu which was a near sister ship.

The ship was in the shipyard to get a new secret device called radar.

So they had scaffolding up around the superstructure.

- We couldn't move because when you take a ship into the navy yard, you go on what they call cold iron, shut down all your boilers.

You take all of the services from the pier.

- Peaceful, quiet, early Sunday morning, running for the log.

It was just 756 when two of our officers saw it.

- Look over there coming in over port islands.

- That's funny, those planes are dark colored.

They don't look like ours.

- They're not ours!

- When the raid began, the St. Louis sat seemingly helpless, a ship under construction it's boilers and guns, ice cold as fire and smoke filled the sky and sea around her.

But the crew was already in action bringing her back to life - We had the St. Louis battery operating in a matter of minutes, machine gun bullets, and shell fragments ricocheted off the deck.

But we kept firing.

- We got one!

- Before the war was an hour old We brought down three planes, not a bad beginning for Lucky Lou.

- We only had one bomb landed fairly close and it landed on the other side of the Honolulu blew up.

I guess, you know, that woke people up on the St. Louis, especially those dudes that went down below when the general quarters sounded and didn't know what was going on.

- There was a metal gang plate that was connecting the St. Louis to the Honolulu.

So they got out a welding torch and cut that away.

So she could free herself.

- Captain always swore that he'd never give any order to prepare the ship for leaving port.

The crew took it upon themselves to do that.

Put those boilers together.

They got steam up, got those guns set up and then they told the captain, Hey we're ready to go.

Captain Rood he had a conversation with the Admiral over on the Honolulu Captain Rood said I'm going to go out.

The admiral says you're nuts.

He says I'm gonna go out, we got orders to go, I'm going.

So we go.

At 9:31 in the morning we backed out of the pier there.

Cranked her up to about 22 knots swung by the overturned Oklahoma.

We swung by the California and we headed right on out.

- But as the St Louis sprinted down the channel towards the open sea another threat was waiting to stop or escape - Look out, spotted the torpedoes coming at us as it was going out of the channel.

Two man sub that fired at us.

- Two torpedoes on the starboard beam, about 2000 yards.

And of course in the age you'd run over there, but you were supposed to run to the other side and lay down.

I could just picture the mad rush.

And about that time, he said, belay that word.

It was to the other side this year.

And fortunately they hit the coral reefs before they hit us.

- They hit the reef!

They hit the reef!

- But I think he would have been the first casualty on our ship.

Bet those engine room crews could have got to it, that's for sure - That was miracle number two.

Lucky Lou was beginning to learn her name.

- And the St. Louis was the only major ship from Pearl Harbor to get into the open ocean at that time.

- Not only did the St Louis make it out of the Harbor during the attack but on a day of unbelievable loss, she did so with zero casualties, earning her the name, Lucky Lou.

- She picked up a number of battle stars because she had performed from the beginning of the war to the end.

And then after the war it was time to bring the boys home from overseas.

So she was a fancy taxi cab, carrying the people from overseas, back to the United States.

After the war, there were newer, more modern cruisers.

So they stayed in commission and since the St Louis was older she was put in the mothball fleet in case she would be called back to other duty.

And surprisingly that duty was not in the US Navy.

in 1951 she was sold to the Brazilian Navy and Mrs. Smith as the sponsor went there and it was a cold day and she remembered that as well.

The ship was renamed the Almirante Tamin Dari, meaning Admiral Tamandare who was the father of the Brazilian Navy.

So she was one of the biggest ships in the Brazilian Navy for many years.

- Even after the ships transfer she still held a special place in the hearts of those who had served upon her experiencing terror, victory, and everything in between the crew of the Lucky Lou from teenage sailors to seasoned officers made history together under the name St. Louis.

- I can hardly go anywhere without seeing all kinds of trash paper, plastic bottles, styrofoam cups.

But since I started working on this next story I can't help, but wonder now where it's all going to end up.

There's this pilot project that's aimed at catching some of that trash and catching some of our attention.

It looks like a small pontoon boat but it's really a trap, a trash trap.

They call the trout.

It was going into deer Creek at deer Creek or Rocketship park, just off Hanely road.

Overseeing the installation were some folks from North Carolina with Asheville Greenworks.

- So this is our project is called trash trout.

And basically it's just a device that sits in a waterway passively.

And every time it rains it collects all of our man-made trash.

The trash starts off on the side of the roads, you know either thrown out or blown out of the back of a pickup truck.

Every time it rains, that's picked up it's pushed into a local storm drain which then goes into the closest Creek.

So all of that trash goes in.

We call it the path trash.

So this stops it from getting any further.

- The trap itself is open at one end and when secured to the stream banks.

The floats will funnel the trash into the cage.

This is one of three traps being installed in the area as part of a pilot project.

It's funded with a grant from the regional EPA office and it's the work of environmental groups, blue to blue conservation and Missouri confluence Waterkeeper.

- And these trash traps and booms are intended to be just another tool to help people who are already doing the cleanups and things like that.

They're not an all encompassing solution.

They are mainly designed to capture the floating litter which is usually the lighter weight plastics the plastic bottles and foam, things like that.

And not things like tires, and stuff like that.

- This is not permanent.

And it may not even be the right kind of trap for this location.

While deer Creek is often a shallow, lazy stream heavy rains can quickly turn it into a deep, powerful fast flowing creek, sometimes filled with a lot more than trash.

Take a look at the tree branches.

Even the tree trunks caught up under the Handley bridge.

- A couple of weeks ago the flash flooding we had and we knew that this Creek was flashy.

So that tree took out the trap.

We took it out, we reinforced it and we're putting it back in.

We've made some modifications.

And that's why Eric came out here to help us with some of that stuff.

- The, this particular device is not 100% built for this particular waterway.

It's built for a little bit smaller waterway.

But what this is going to do is it's going to give us some time to get a larger device in for this one a larger device that's heavier built and can stand the big debris running into it.

- Two other traps of different designer.

Part of this project, this one was installed on a river to pair a tributary in university cities, Heman park.

Another is in Mackenzie Creek in the city.

Trash traps of all kinds are being used in other places in the country and the world.

But around here, it's new and it's taken some explaining.

You can't just show up and do a project like this.

There are a lot of entities that might or might not be involved.

- It was kind of, there was a lot of back and forth of like, what do you want to do?

Send me some pictures.

What is this thing again?

And then, okay, well, do you need a BPS permit?

Do you need a floodplain certification from FEMA?

Do you need, you know, and it just, there were all of these questions that we figured out.

- But nobody's fighting you?

- oh, no, not at all.

Everyone's been tremendously helpful, excited, enthusiastic.

- Thank you everybody for coming out today.

- A couple of weeks later, they were back at the site drumming up excitement and enthusiasm for trash.

- If you look behind you, I don't know if you guys can see it.

There's a trash trap right there.

This is one of three trash collection devices that we are in charge of maintaining and cleaning.

So now we're going to go clean up garbage.

Which is kind of the reason why everybody's here.

- The folks who showed up were supplied with gloves and bags and grabbers, and went along the Creek.

And if they wanted into the Creek to collect whatever trash they could find, small and big - Just wanted to participate and help out, try to clean up the area and get some volunteers, try to do some volunteering.

Just trying to get a little bit more involved and be a part of the solution instead of the part of the problem - Josh Wilson went into empty the trap and these will be cleaned out periodically by volunteers.

- So data is critical for this particular process.

So everybody that goes in to clean out the trout what we want from them to do is gather that data for us, empty out the water weight that's there.

Take a weight measurement and see what type of trash they're getting.

And then we log this on an online form.

- We find more polar pop cups and QT cups than any styrofoam there is.

And it's one of the worst things.

Beer bottles.

They get a lot of these too, but yeah and then styrofoam packaging.

This is a really, these are really bad because you can't it's coming off on me right now.

- You can see it's like this.

- Oh the styrofoam here.

- And then it breaks down into all these.

And it's really hard to pick.

Like we could never pick all of that out.

- From that single trap after just two weeks and from an hour and a half of trash pickup by volunteers this is what they collect.

- Well, ultimately we're hoping that we can figure out where the trash is coming from and help to stop it at the source rather than just continually cleaning it up downstream.

We are hoping to capture it before it heads down the river Depair or the Mississippi river and ultimately the ocean.

- You may well see more than the usual number of ladders and scaffolds this summer, because the pandemic has brought on something of a surge of home improvement projects.

If only we could just call in the ask this old house team as needed.

Well, we can't, but we do have a story by Anne Marie Berger about the time they did make a house call here in St. Louis.

- So it's because the bulbs are close to that junction box.

They have the wires that we pushed up from the light fixture downstairs.

When I tap, I just can feel how solid it is.

- Ask this old house and their crew of plumbers, carpenters landscapers, and others help homeowners with their home improvement projects.

- We're a spin off of this whole house.

It's a lot of the same cast members that you know and love from this old house, but instead of working on one house each season, we go all across the country and help answer viewer emails about smaller projects.

- Projects, range from simple to less simple.

And it's 18th season.

They made in-house call to an old home in St. Louis - All right guys, say hello to your new lantern and what do you think?

- Wow.

- Beautiful.

- It's way cool.

- So we're in Lafayette square.

- So it's custom built (indistinct talk) - Our house is of the oldest ones here, though it's been here since 1882.

- Now a house in Lafayette square.

One of St. Louis's oldest neighborhoods is perfect for an ask this old house project but Jay and Melissa Hoffmeister, didn't write into the show to update their old house.

They wanted to bring back an original feature.

- We're actually having a guest porch light to put on.

And it's just kind of an idea that we fell in love with because there's a few houses in the neighborhood that have them.

- So we kind of think we're handy.

- We're really not right.

- But whenever we looked at the lantern, we're like, well we can do this.

And then we looked into it and we're like but it's so complicated.

Like, no we can't.

- Too expensive - And so we thought we'll take a shot at this old house - And dealing with gas lines isn't exactly something amateurs want to deal with.

- No, no no no no.

- No.

We'll leave that up to the professionals.

- And we're going to add a beautiful lantern to the front of that building.

We're just, you know - The Hoffmeisters didn't just get a professional.

They got Richard Trethewey, the plumbing and heating expert who's been with this old house since the beginning.

- Doesn't it doesn't mean I bring it with me and we show it shouldn't we end the scene.

- I call myself the luckiest plumber ever.

I grew up in a family business, fourth generation.

I was given wrenches as a kid.

There was no choice for me.

I knew what I'd have to do with my life because it was part of the family heritage.

And then this thing happened in 1978, 79 which you do the math it's now 40 years ago.

- How ya doing my dear.

Let me do that Greg.

We love being in St. Louis.

Everybody's really nice here, by the way, just, you know?

- Oh good we like that.

Yeah.

Some of us in the east, you know they get a little short with people.

- Well I don't know, in these hot humid days you might, you might.

- I know.

Well, I'm in the air conditioning business.

(chuckles) We can call ya.

- When you first intro it.

- Yeah.

Okay good.

- Ask this old house is produced out of Boston but they're on the road about six times a season before their production crew of just five arrived in St. Louis.

They had already visited homeowners in DC, Virginia, Utah, Tennessee and Illinois.

Ask this old house travels with a small crew.

But when they're coming, you can't miss them.

(upbeat banjo music) For all the people that are watching all these DIY shows and flipped and all of that stuff.

Do you have to have a conflict in here?

Does there have to be a problem in order for this to be a drama?

- There won't be tears today, no.

There won't be drama.

- This is how you do it?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, we're a PBS show.

So it's about education first and foremost we're trying to teach people how to do these processes how to do them the right way.

What's actually involved with it.

Give them a realistic sense of if I want to do a project similar to this how many people is it going to take?

What are the tools they're going to use?

Give you a sense of what the cost might be.

You know, if the house is cool, we'll tell the story of it.

If the homeowners are cool.

They'll be featured more but we're really here just to teach the step-by-step.

- Now the jobs on this show for the most part are single day projects to complete but just like any DIY project there's a lot of advanced planning, troubleshooting and knowing when to call in the professionals - Aspire came out and looked at the project for us probably three or four weeks ago.

Now they realized that in order to get a gas line through the brick they may have to take down some wood paneling which meant getting a carpenter involved.

Now we have a circus today.

There's about 15 different people all here to help mostly off-camera, but you know figure out how to get this gas pipe, the quickest most efficient way to do a retrofit like this and not have to tear apart the whole house.

(upbeat banjo music) - The magic of TV makes this process seem so easy and affordable to run a gas line and purchase and install this one of a kind handmade in new Orleans lantern could run you five to $6,000, but you can always write and get ask this old house.

You never know.

They may roll up to your door.

- They get thousands of entries a day.

She was telling me and I think we're just lucky.

We were lucky.

What can you say?

- And finally restaurants, stadiums concert halls are beginning to fill back up again.

So we thought it a good time to check in with the man who wants to bring big sounds and big audiences back to Powell hall.

Finally, a year ago, when the pandemic hit Powell hall like other performance venues shut down the St. Louis symphony orchestra canceled the last concerts of the season.

But like so many of us they've had to adjust and adapt and they've got plans, music director Stephane Deneve came by our public media commons.

We decided it was still wise to stay outside to talk about the challenges of the past year and the plans for the future and with a contract extension.

His future here in St. Louis extends at least through the 2025, 26 season.

Well, let's start out, first of all congratulations on the contract extension.

- Ah, thank you very much.

- That must mean it's working out well for, for us and for you.

Why is that important to you?

- Well it means that I can go deeper in my relationship both with the orchestra and with the community.

And I do it very organically because it was extreme logic and it felt, it felt so good.

- Well, you've got it a short-term plan.

So I know you're planning the next season and you have I imagine a long-term plan as well.

- What I want is to offer our best music to the maximum people.

So my big plan is to make the orchestra always more accessible to everybody.

- The problem has been this year is getting the music to anybody let alone biggie, increasing the audience.

- Well the SLSO has never been silent, which is extraordinary from the very start in March, we went into digital and we started to do a lot of videos.

You know, the songs of America later, we did the songs of the holidays.

I must say it has really helped us to, to still give more through the modern digital age and also to reach people.

We would have not reached normally.

Imagine that through the digital content we reached more than 3 million person - What you were forced to do in this past year.

Is that something that might play a bigger role?

- Yes.

- Moving forward?

- Definitely this year has been a journey to the future because we, we certainly accelerated development that was necessary, which is to offer more digital content.

So we bought some very fancy modern cameras and they are there.

They are ours.

And so we look forward to actually not record every, every concert, but to have a selection of concerts that we can offer in a digital way to continue actually to reach more people, which is what I want to do.

- This past year we saw more chamber music concerts requiring fewer musicians and solo performances.

That require masks and distances and shorter concerts.

And a couple of months ago the symphony began to allow a few hundred people back into Powell hall for the live performances.

But those were also offered virtually.

- We have welcomed more and more people.

And we plan now in September with the new season to really have a full orchestra on stage and gradually to welcome a full capacity - A year ago, Deneve and I talked on zoom.

He was in Brussels.

He couldn't travel to St. Louis and he had more time with his family and time to practice the piano.

So much was being canceled.

But he was able to appear as a guest conductor in other cities and countries as pandemic restrictions eased up here or there.

I've been able to conduct actually quite a lot.

I feel very lucky.

- I've always wanted to ask you this.

I don't think I've asked you this before.

Where are the toughest audiences when it comes to the work you do?

- It's a good question.

Tough audience.

I really don't know.

What is fascinating is the different way of applauding.

You know, you have, for instance, in Europe the applause are very low.

You sometimes come four, five six times back and forth, you know, onstage.

While in America, you can have an extraordinary, big cheer like something very loud and very enthusiastic.

Yet you would never come more than two or three times back on stage.

- You haven't.

Let me ask you this.

Have you ever had a performance where you've been booed by an audience - In opera only it happens indeed that you have some summer crazy fans that have some very special ideas about how it should be performed.

And so - That's opera.

So that's a whole different - Yeah less color.

I remember some people just, just indeed.

Booed.

And it's a very strange feeling.

So that happens.

But for a symphony concert, luckily I tell truth.

I never had this horrible sound.

- And with good reason, St. Louis has a top tier orchestra and a great concert hall.

And Denev says the pandemic will probably keep the large symphony chorus off the stage for awhile but he's looking forward to concerts with a full orchestra and bigger crafts.

Me too, you know, I want to see some timpani and some Wagner Tuben and things like that on there.

That's really going to blow the roof off of Powell hall.

- I have been missing tremendously the power of a big size orchestra.

And I can't wait for, you know, all our musicians to be there and to play a big Muller symphonies.

I mean, poor Malheur.

He's not been played for a year.

I think now everywhere in the world almost so.

Yes, I, I I am definitely missing the, the big size, the big size orchestra.

- Well, thank you for joining us and have a great season coming up.

Good to see you back in person.

- Thank you very much.

We will announce our new season the full part of it, the 10th of June.

And I can't wait for people to be reunited with us in the fall.

It will.

It's coming.

And we'll be in forest park too in September.

That's the announcement for you.

We will be back to forest park.

This is really something very dear to my heart.

I love this encounter with the full community in this beautiful place.

So we are back.

- We'll see you then.

- Thank you very much.

- And that's living St. Louis.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm Tim Kertscher and we'll see you next time.

- Living St. Louis possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson foundation, Mary Rankin Jordan and Eddie A. Jordan charitable trust, and by the members of Nine PBS.

(Upbeat Jazz music)