Chapter 19/Human interest stories

Mr. Loyd:

A few months ago I asked for your help concerning my 26-year-old handicapped tenant. He can't hear and can't speak. He worked part time at the post office and was told his hours were going to be drastically cut. I asked Housing Allowance how he was to pay his rent and they said evict him. Then you helped.

He was called back to work and now he had a steady job with a raise in pay. Now he pays his own way and receives no help from any source. How wonderful. I just want you to know how you helped.

Thank you. God will give you a special star.

Clara Rettman
Green Bay

Because investigative stories take a long time to do and don't come along every week, I did a lot of human interest stories.

For example, in Green Bay, I learned that friends of a young man getting married got him drunk at a bachelor party, and he drowned in a treacherous river in back of the tavern.

Research disclosed that similar tragedies happened a number of times. There are many bars lining the river and a long tradition in Green Bay of getting grooms plastered.

Hopefully I put a dent in that tradition, when I interviewed the young man's devastated fiance. She talked about loving him and how they had planned to have a family. Their wedding, she said, had turned into his funeral.

These tragedies still occur in Wisconsin because of heavy alcohol consumption and the barbaric custom of getting the groom drunk.

Several of my human interest stories were carried nationally on ABC's That's Incredible:

A little boy in Eau Claire survived to live a normal life after falling through the ice and staying under water for 20 minutes before rescue.

When a woman in Algoma, Wisconsin went to the hospital to have a baby, doctors discovered another baby not ready for birth. She had the first baby and came back to the hospital in a month to have the second one. Now one of the twins is a month older than the other!

Here's a story I did in the early 1970's at WLUK-TV on a boy who was tired of living behind the bars on Green Bay's Broadway St. where he would find drunks and cigarette butts in his garden. Joe and his parents wanted him to have the opportunity of living on a farm for the summer. In addition to Joe, I helped place a number of other city kids on farms.