WTIU members.

Thank you!

>> BRANDON: Coming up, draw inspiration from a group of Hoosier cartoonists.

Hear about a sport for the visually impaired.

And follow a soldier charting a new path.

That's all on this episode of "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana."

I'm Brandon Wentz, and today we're coming to you from the Richmond Art Museum in Wayne County.

Serving the public since 1898, the Richmond Art Museum is a unique and vital resource for the surrounding community.

The RAM, as it's known, is the only independent museum to be housed in a public school and boasts robust permanent exhibits from the 19th and 20th century with a focus on American impressionism.

And we'll learn all about this lovely museum in just a bit, but first, producer John Timm takes us to Elkhart County, to sketch the story of the cartoonists known as The Nappanee Six.

♪ >> Indiana is full of cartoonists.

Even though we produce a lot of corn, it's almost as if we've produced a lot more cartoonists.

Nappanee is a small community.

We always say that we're the third largest city in Elkhart County, even though Elkhart County only has three cities.

♪ So the Nappanee Six are six men who grew up in Nappanee, and they became nationally known as cartoonists.

There was Merrill Blosser who created Freckles and his Friends .

Henry Maust, who was actually a commercial artist.

Francis Mike Parks, who was an editorial cartoonist.

Fred Neher who created Life's Like That .

Bill Holman who created Smokey Stover , and then Max Gwin who created Slim and Spud and Pig Trough .

Four out of the six were born and raised in Nappanee.

Francis Parks came to Nappanee when he was in the eighth grade, and then Bill Holman and his mom moved here at the age of 2 from Crawfordsville, Indiana.

We credit their art teacher Bessie Brown.

She was an art teacher at Nappanee High School, and she would've actually taught five out of the six.

And she was said to have encouraged doodling, and so much that Merrill Blosser actually drew a picture of the devil and was expelled from school because he wrote the principal's name under it.

So they all knew each other.

Merrill kind of was the inspiration for the other five.

Bill Holman and Fred Neher would have worked at the five and dime together.

They would come down to the Parks' house to see Mike's newest mail-in correspondence course.

Merrill Blosser, Henry Maust, Mike Parks and I believe Bill Holman all worked in Cleveland together at one point.

>> Get your Morning Star !

Read all about it!

Morning paper.

>> Back in their day, they were widely known.

They were nationally syndicated.

So they were appearing in newspapers all over the country.

>> Read all about it!

>> I would say the hey day for them was probably about the 1920s, for the early five, to probably about the 1950s.

And then with Max being the youngest, his hey day was really in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

I know with Fred Neher, he was syndicated in at least 200 to 300 newspapers.

Mike Parks was pretty widely known since he had like J. Edgar Hoover asking for his cartoons, Winston Churchill.

Anyone famous who appeared in his cartoons was actually requesting for them.

Bill Holman was really big during World War II because his Smokey Stover , Spooky the Cat and Chief Cash U. Nutt would actually appear on the sides of World War II bombers.

With Henry Maust's work, he created advertisements for Kraft Foods, General Mills, Swift Ham.

His Swift Ham actually won a Gold Award in New York City.

One time Merrill Blosser actually asked his readers to name a horse for him, and he had over like 2,000 entries.

Max Gwin actually wrote gags for other artists as well.

So he wrote their punchlines along with Slim and Spud and Pig Trough.

There's also the factor of Mr. Charles Landon.

And Mr. Landon was the founder of the Newspaper Enterprise Association.

And with his school of illustration and cartooning, he and his staff recognized that there was actually so many artists coming out of Nappanee that they would use them in their advertisements.

Our collection of our cartoonists goes back quite a ways.

Our collection was started by Evelyn Culp when she was the director of the Nappanee Public Library, and she wrote personally to all of the cartoonists asking them for cartoons, which they sent her a bunch of original cartoons that are still in our collection, along with some copies.

And that was probably done in about the 1980s.

In 2014, Max Gwin actually gave us the opportunity to come to his house to go through his cartoons and see what we would want to add to our collection.

My involvement, I actually named them the Nappanee Six.

Before, they were just called the Nappanee cartoonists.

We needed a really catchy name for an exhibit that we were doing on all of them.

So I came up with the Nappanee Six, and it's kind of just stuck with them.

I also have worked with my staff to digitize a lot of their cartoons for public viewing.

I do programs about them, at least once or twice a year.

I also worked on helping with the redesign of their exhibit.

The Nappanee Six, they're so pertinent to Nappanee.

And for people to walk in here and not know about them, and to be, like, hey, we have six nationally known cartoonists, people are just in awe.

Giving them a place in the museum and really highlighting them has really helped bring awareness to the Nappanee Six.

No town can be too small for something great to come out of it.

>> BRANDON: It's really fascinating to look through the various pieces at this location and see all these people coming from the same place, but how drastically different their styles were, and the areas of art in which they touched.

Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

Earlier, we spoke with Shaun Dingwerth, the executive director here, to learn more about what these galleries contain.

>> The Richmond Art Museum was founded in 1898.

We are actually celebrating our 125th anniversary this year.

We are the oldest cultural organization in Wayne County, and we are the second oldest art museum in the state of Indiana, just behind Indianapolis.

What many people may not know is to our knowledge, we are the only known public art museum housed within an active public high school.

So our strategic plan is to bring art to kids K through 12.

So we service about 4,000 kids annually.

So our goal is to introduce kids to art.

We know that if they're introduced to art early in their life, they will be more likely to be art supporters in the future.

So one of the things we have is a full-time education director, who is a liaison with all the schools in the region.

So we service over 15 schools within the area.

We do a specific program for kids in K through third, because there's not a lot of art instruction provided in the schools today.

Art is a great entryway to talk about topics that are more difficult to talk about.

It creates an environment of where people can speak freely and openly.

Our first director had this quote.

She said, if we could teach children about war, we can also teach them about beauty.

We have four galleries.

We have a collection of primarily American art, impressionist painters.

We also have an incredible collection of works by historical and contemporary Indiana artists.

We do seven exhibitions annually, and that includes an annual exhibit, which is the oldest exhibit in the state of Indiana, that is for Indiana and Ohio artists.

And we also do an all Wayne County High School Art Exhibition every year.

You know, Indiana, Ohio is known for pottery.

And one of the things Wayne County is known for is the Overbeck Sisters.

So we have an incredible collection of works by the Overbeck Sisters, and ceramics is something that Indiana, Ohio is known for.

So we try to continue in that tradition by offering contemporary ceramicists and making their works available, not only for sale, but for exhibit.

The state of Indiana is known for two art colonies, and everyone is super familiar with Brown County.

What a lot of people don't know is that the Richmond group was earlier than Brown County.

So between 1870 and about 1930, we had a group of very active artists who participated in helping and forming this museum.

Because of the industry that existed in Richmond, many of these artists were able to have jobs in the factories.

They were called interior decorators.

Oftentimes, they would do the lettering or they would do the pinstriping on the farm machinery that was made in Richmond.

And then on the weekends, they would go out and they would paint.

They would go up and down the Whitewater River.

They would go down as far as Metamora and Brookville, Indiana, and they would paint landscape scenes.

I strongly encourage people to visit regional art museums.

There is always a gem or something in these areas that you don't know about.

And Richmond has such a distinguished art history and industrial history.

And when you look at the regional museums, there's always an unexpected surprise.

>> BRANDON: And in our chat with him, Shaun just barely scratched the surface of the things you can find in this museum that are connected to Indiana in art, in music.

So I highly suggest, if you get a chance, to come visit.

Want to learn more?

Head to Richmondartmuseum.org.

Up next, producer Jacob Lindauer takes us to Marion County to sound off with the Indy Thunder Beep Baseball Team.

[ Beeping ] [ Buzzing ] >> Be the ball.

>> He would have heard that like Rodney Greer going to the number three position.

[ Cheers ] ♪ >> Beep ball has been around since 1975.

The first World Series was in 1976.

It was founded in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.

Charlie Fairbanks and John Ross, those two guys, had a vision about beep baseball for the blind and visually impaired with a ball with some mechanisms in them from some old telephone parts and everything.

So the ball made a nice beep.

And then they talked about the bases making a nice buzz.

[ Buzzing ] The game was played with blind and visually impaired athletes, youth and adults, and there's six players at bat and there's six fielders.

But there's also a designated fielder and a designated hitter.

There's only two bases, first and third.

The bases stand 100 feet from home plate, 10 feet off the fair line, and the bases are random.

There's a base operator that determines what base the batter runs to.

It's like a race.

If the batter gets to the beeping random base before the fielder tracks the ball, he scores a run for his team.

If the fielders track the ball and hold it up off the ground, the batter is out.

The Thunder was born in January of 2000 when we decided to join the National Beep Baseball Association in 2001.

And we haven't missed a World Series since 2004.

Our fortunes turned once we decided to go really young and sports Father Time catches up with you.

So we need to get younger and more athletic.

We were the youngest team ever to start a World Series Championship Game.

And it was -- it's a great feeling when the city of Indianapolis hasn't won a World Series since 1990, and 2016, that was a long time in between drinks, and I was on the end of both of them, once as a player and now as a coach and a manager and owner of the team.

♪ Let's roll, Thunder roll ♪ ♪ Come on, let's roll, Thunder roll ♪ ♪ Come on hit, Thunder hit ♪ ♪ Let's hit, Thunder hit ♪ ♪ We're going to put that ball right on the bat ♪ ♪ And everything that we hit, we stop after that ♪ ♪ Let's roll, Thunder roll >> I think, you know, the socialization, family, leadership, and just being on a team, you know?

Being around positive people, having that positive attitude, and I think that carries them a long way in their life and their schooling and their jobs or what have you.

>> A lot of the running sports for these guys, there's a guidewire, you know.

That's how they run.

There isn't like track, you run around, you see the lines, you are good to go.

And so they don't really have an opportunity to run all out.

You don't have the ability to just cut loose and run as fast as you can, which you get that in beep baseball.

>> I was always in trouble when my cousins were in the streets.

Then I came to beep ball, found something that I like.

This is my fifth year of playing beep ball, and it's just -- I love it so much, I don't think I want to stop.

I grew up with these guys.

Everybody that I play with, everybody that's on the team, they've been here since I was 14 growing up.

I can't even say they are teammates.

They are like another family.

>> Those are my brothers.

I mean, we hang out outside of this, obviously.

We play football.

We practice beep ball outside of practice just because it's fun, something that we can do together.

I mean, it's a family.

I mean, especially three championships later.

You know, I feel like that's one of the main reasons that we are so good, is because the bond is just so there.

We have a very young team.

So it's a lot easier, I guess, for us to have fun together and do a lot of activities together.

I'm just hoping I can stay with the team as long as I can, until I can't play no more because this is my sport now.

Like, this is all -- this is all I do sports-wise.

For the league overall, I will say I hope that it gets to the Paralympics at some point because it definitely needs to be there, because we can show off what we do, and we can kind of teach people that don't know anything about the sport.

I definitely think it should be recognized as a great sport because it's very entertaining.

It's very different, and it's very competitive.

>> I would like to see the game of beep ball to be on the level of the Paralympics, be on television, you know.

I would like our sport to be on an ESPN, a FOX, showcase the skills of blind and visually impaired baseball players.

We have a lot to offer, and the goal is to try to see it get to that next level in the next five or ten years.

We would like to see our World Series be on TV.

>> My goal, my future for our team is that all of these individuals that are on our team have successfully transitioned into being a contributing member to society, whether that's through working, higher education.

But also just being a sport, you know, having good sportsmanship, having good character.

Feeling like they contribute to society, instead of what the misconception is around blind and visually impaired, is, you know, oh, they are locked up in their house.

They are not going out, you know.

Give them the confidence to travel, to go out get that job, go out and go to school.

And help them, you know, kind of get the tools they need to do that.

♪ We fight, we fight, we fight we fight, and that ain't all ♪ >> Thunder!

>> Roll!

>> Thunder!

>> Roll!

>> Thunder!

>> Roll!

>> BRANDON: I think it would be a blast to get our cast and crew from "Journey Indiana" together and go play a game of beep baseball, and that's something we should record.

Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

Up next, producer Jason Pear takes us to Steuben County where a wounded veteran is pushing himself to the limit.

♪ >> When I got hurt, I really struggled mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

Some of the darkest times of my life.

It was rough on everybody.

I think that's one of the things that most veterans struggle with, especially when they get wounded, not wearing the uniform anymore, losing that sense of identity and purpose.

What am I going to do with the rest of my life now?

I was infantry.

You know, the guys that go in, kick down doors, and, you know, do all the grunt work and, you know, fight the fight.

I loved it.

And even before I got out of basic training, I knew that's what I wanted to do.

The physicality of it, pushing yourself, you know, being a leader, you know, the camaraderie, everything.

It was -- you know, you get to shoot guns and blow stuff up.

I loved everything about it.

We were on a patrol at night in the city of Ramadi, and my Humvee ran over a roadside bomb, and then we were ambushed.

I went to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. That's where my leg was amputated.

I spent most of that time learning how to walk.

You really got to learn how to do everything again, not even just physical, but, you know, mental, emotional, psychological.

You need to learn how to deal with all of that and get ready to go back into the world.

One day my therapist said, hey, I got something I think you'd want to try, and he had a handcycle there.

And we took it out on the veranda, just that went around the hospital.

And I was just able to ride that and just -- it was -- it was like being a kid again.

You know, like learning how to ride a bike for the first time kind of thing.

I loved it.

And I got done, and I said I got to get me one of these!

Then I went to Fort Benning for a year, and that's where I got my first handcycle.

Then when we came back here, it sat in our shed back here for probably about two years.

I was at the Y in Angola.

I was praying and everything that day, and I just felt like God was telling me, go get that handcycle out and start riding it and race it and do it for my glory.

And I walked out of the gym, got it out the next day and started riding.

That was 2011.

♪ That first day I went out and rode, I think I rode 13 miles, and I thought I was gonna die.

And I didn't ride again for, like, another two weeks.

I was so sore and tired and everything.

And then I went out and did it again, and I told my wife, I said no matter what happens, make sure I go out and ride my bike the next day to start getting used to it.

So it's just a gradual buildup to I can go out and ride 50, 60, 70 miles a day and just do it every day.

In 2012, I started getting competitive.

I went to a couple international races.

I went to the national championships for the first time.

That's also where I realized that I got a lot more work to do.

It was probably about 2013, I think, before I won my first race.

And then 2014, I made first national team, world championship team, and slow but steady process, you know, keep moving up.

One of the good things about handcycle is a lot of marathons will allow us to compete.

So, yeah, I have been able to race and win in Boston, I think five times; L.A. marathon; Detroit marathon; Chicago marathon; and then races all over the country, all over the world.

I have been to Rio; Bogota, Colombia; all over Europe and Italy; Belgium; Germany; South Africa.

It's taken me literally all over the world, and it's been -- it's been amazing to be able to go to the nice places of the world.

It's definitely been quite the journey.

My initial goal was the 2012 Paralympics in London.

When I went to that first national championships, I got smoked.

I got smoked pretty bad.

That's where I realized I had a lot of work to do.

Really, the 2016 season is when I put in a ton of work, and it all paid off making that first team.

When I went to Rio, I let the pressure, I let the stress of everything get to me, and I was very upset with my performances.

And ever since then, my whole goal has been, get back and go to Tokyo and make it right.

So this year was great.

I went to the Paralympic trials in June, and I actually won the trials outright.

Honestly, that's what my goal was the whole season, was to go there and win, and not have any doubt of whether I would make the team or not.

And, yeah, I was able to go do that.

We do a Bible study group when we go to races.

There's several of us that get together, and one day we talked about how do you define success, and we used John Wooden's definition of success, doing your absolute very best that you can with the opportunities and the talent that you have been given.

So I really tried to focus on that.

I just want to go over there, and I want to do my very best that I can.

If I come home with some medals, that's awesome.

But if I go there and I do my absolute best and walk away with nothing, I can live with that.

>> BRANDON: Now, obviously, I am not a competitive athlete, but I've used a handbike before.

And I can't imagine going 50 to 60 miles a day because the one or two that I did was exhausting.

Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

All right.

Well, I'm gonna spend a little more time here discovering all the various art from Hoosier artists.

So I will see you next time on "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!