The Wisconsin Magazine; 715

Whether people like Tony and Jeff should have been here in the first place is another question. Both have cerebral palsy a handicap that has made placement in a community group home closer to their families difficult. Jeff's ability to speak has been affected but not his ability to dream I dream about going out and living in the community and going to get a job and going to make some money. The Wisconsin magazine for January 29. Reporting from Madison, Dave Iverson. Good evening welcome to this week's Magazine. First off a word or two about some schedule changes. We had planned to report this week on the Martelon Insurance company that's an insurance company that went bankrupt following last summer's severe storms in west central Wisconsin. Instead we'll have that on the air a little bit later on this year. Now a few words about what we are going to do this

week. If there's no place to go dreams don't work very well and even expert opinions don't count. If you want to be released from Wisconsin's institutions impersonal institutions sometimes we'll have a report tonight on those institutions and some of the people who are in them. On another topic; T-shirts informative, provocative sometimes a work of art. We'll talk with Wisconsin's millionaire T-shirt king. And finally this week a report on the American Bald Eagle our film has been played all over the country and to some critical acclaim so we thought we'd give you a second look at it tonight. We accept our institutions. They're traditional. They're efficient. Some much more so than others and they relieve us of our burdens they separate certain people from society. But what does that mean to those certain people. Last month we reported on a regular home. That report profiled a Milwaukee group home a place that serves as home to several retarded men and women. But many more mentally handicapped people some 5000 or so remain in

institutions both nursing homes and state institutions. Some of those people could live somewhere else. If there were somewhere else to go. In our report tonight we take a look at institutional care both at the state institutions and in nursing homes and what they mean for the handicapped. From a distance it looks like a small college. 550 isolated acres. It's a community within itself. It's self-contained. Even have your own power plant and sewage plant. We have very little contact with the outside world except as the outside world wishes to come and and visit. This separate campus is the southern Wisconsin Center for the developmentally disabled. One of three state institutions built to house the mentally retarded. About 750 people live here but not all belong. There are people living in this

institution who just don't need to be here. How serious a problem is it? What does it mean for someone who shouldn't be here? What does it mean to that person in human terms? Well it's not a serious problem except for those people. Their rights are being violated. Their desires their personal dreams whatever they may be. That's what's being held back. Their family contact, their right to live in their own home. The right to marry. To be as normal as possible. Those are things that are being stepped on. Tony and Jeff are two of those people whose dreams aren't being realized. We talked on the day the American hostages were released from Iran. So I thought it was about time. You know if I didn't get out of here. We should have never started a long time ago when it already did. Whether people like Tony and Jeff should have been here in the first place is another question.

Both have cerebral palsy a handicap that has made placement in a community group home closer to their families difficult. Jeff's ability to speak has been affected but not his ability to dream. I dream about going out and living in the community. And going to get a job and going to make some money. If they're not appropriate, why are people here? Tradition, it's a very traditional form of care. It exists and as long as the institutions exist the incentive to develop truly comprehensive community care doesn't exist. The incentive doesn't exist. What Charles Juliusson is talking about is money. It's cheaper for counties to house people here because of how our funding

structure works. The $80 a day tab to live in places like Southern Center is picked up through federal Title 19 money. The feds pay 58 percent the state 42 percent. The county doesn't pay at all. A community group home doesn't qualify for those funds. They're supported by the county budget and those dollars just don't stretch as far. And I think it starts right with the federal serving funding system. The federal government puts up money essentially for institutions through Title 19 through medical assistance. Not only does the person have to be eligible but the place the nursing home the state institution has to be eligible. The same kind of funding is not available at this time to the community programs. There is an inadequate funding traditionally for all human services. Services for the developmentally disabled are no different. And the availability to generate more funding depends on the

political astuteness of the advocates for the developmentally disabled. Constance Pouquet is one of those advocates. As director of the United Association for Retarded Citizens she says institutions just don't work. Medically oriented facilities focus on the health and medical needs of people but especially medical needs of people. People with mental retardation are not necessarily ill people and don't need nursing or medical care. That indictment of institutional care, the isolation, the long corridors, the nurse's station is directed at nursing homes that care for the mentally retarded too. The majority of people living in those settings are not profoundly retarded. They are people who can in fact do a great deal for themselves. But if you take people who are in fact very slow to learn and have significant difficulty in learning

and you put them in a situation, a large group living situation where they do not get personal attention and it is so much easier for the staff people in that kind of a setting to do it. People do not learn to take care of themselves in an in a large institutional setting. Sinai Green Tree nursing home houses about 70 developmentally disabled people within its 400 bed complex. Nursing director Judith St. Onge understands the concern. I agree with them. I would have designed a place for people to live very differently. But this is what we have and so we try to do everything we can to change that. For example the staff is stable. You may have noticed they even dress differently on that unit than nursing staff does in other parts of the facility and we keep them down there so the people begin to relate in small groups and we divide the people up to eat into small eating groups rather than have them in one large dining room. In this kind of things. But basically I agree no one should have to

relate to a large impersonal environment. Everyone seems to agree on this you have people in institutions saying that institution models aren't good and nursing homes and advocacy groups and people who live in group homes all down the line say that institutions really aren't appropriate for a number of mentally retarded people and yet obviously they exist. What does that say about where we're headed. I think it shows that we're accepting a very slow progress towards the reintegration of these people to the community. There are tremendous hurdles to pass. The highest hurdle is simply finding alternative housing. The State Department of Social Services is proposing that more money be routed to community programs but that will take time. So for now the wait continues. But I don't foresee any change. With the economic condition the way it is now I foresee more of a reliance on the institutional types of service systems which it would be awfully unfortunate.

I think that it's really a matter of a society's lack of value placed on people with disabilities. If they're not valuable as human beings are any of us valuable as human beings? To recap as we reported there is an effort being made at this time to direct more money to community group homes and other kinds of community live-in type projects. The verdict on that will occur at the state capitol. And that verdict is still out. Onto other things now, almost everyone has a T-shirt. A T-shirt and a pair of jeans is the closest we've come to a national dress code. As any t-shirt fan will tell you though it's just another undershirt, naked if you will. Unless there's something printed or pictured across the front. No matter what design or message you have printed on your t shirt there's a good chance it was made in, believe it or not, Wisconsin in the village of Butler to be exact at the headquarters of the world's second largest distributor of

designer T-shirts Holoubek Studios Incorporated rather, reporter Carol Larson visited Butler and the head of this T-shirt enterprise. His name is Verne Hollaback he's a 1960s artist who rode the T-shirt trade into a successful business on a self-styled assembly line called the Iron-on Express. It's hard to believe that there was a time when that versatile garment called the t-shirt didn't automatically come with a saying or the insignia of your favorite beer or rock group emblazoned across the front. But back in 1962 spectators at this Minnesota fair got what may have been their first chance to have a personalized design painted on the front of a shirt or jacket by a college student by the name of Verne Holoubek [Background noise and music] Now actually we didn't paint at the beginning, at the beginning it was magic markers and this was down in college for a party, to paint some beer drinking designs on an Army Surplus parachute jacket and people started buying them for about two or

three dollars apiece. At the very beginning to be very honest the beginning I wanted to make $600 the first summer. It ended up making about $3000. So I stayed with it. At that time you could still get through a year of college for $3000. Holoubek's success kept multiplying year after year until he is now the head of a multi-million dollar company which only goes to show you never laugh at those art school advertisements on the back of a matchbook cover. Yes I'm one of those people that wrote in for the draw me art instruction schools Right. And I took the course while I was in high school and always wanted to be an artist and eventually became an artist made my living being an artist for about 6 or 7 years and eventually decided that I had to run a business and had to give up the art work. I consider myself a designer. I can design systems I can design machines. Can have an appreciation for a good piece of art or a bad piece of art but to physically sit down and draw the artwork I must admit I was probably never that good and learned

early in the game there are many many people better than I was so I should really let them do that work and I'll try to do what I'm doing which is trying to be a manager. Holoubek appears to have managed it all quite well turning his magic markers over to an art department. A few men and women with brushes, pencils and magic markers. Here designs are just being created that you may be wearing only a few months from now. Like one for the Charlie Daniels Band or a political or humanitarian message perhaps a glitter print of a favorite American car or beer or one for the not over the hill T-shirt wearers proud of their age. From here the designs are turned over to people who make stencils of them letters or pictures the inks will pass through only the patterned areas. The way silk screening is done. That kind of direct printing is done at the studios on a new machine that makes an old process pretty fast first putting down one color ink. In this case red then switching to the green color then fitting the shirt exactly over the black then finishing off the whole design in gold.

Some beer drinker will soon proudly parade this shirt but even automated direct printing takes too long to turn out the hundreds of thousands of shirts ordered each year from Holoubek. That's why the mass production process that revolutionized the T-shirt business and that is the bread and butter of the company is the iron-on transfer, the stencil prints out the design on wax coated paper instead of cloth, a layer of glue is squeegee to over the exact design and when the paper is applied to cloth with heat the design attaches itself to the T-shirt. It all seems so simple. No it took almost 5 years to even get people interested in them from 67 through 72 we struggled very hard trying to keep the business alive because most people did not believe that it worked or even saw the application. I spoke to a lot of high level people who you know just didn't understand what we were doing. The people who do understand what Holoubek is doing are now working for him and mostly young people who he credits with making improvements in the way things are run.

We create garments that say things and to do that everybody has to be a little creative or they want to be creative or they're attached to it. This business does demand creativity to keep up with the trends. Trends from the constant ring of rock n roll music heard around the building the popular bands appropriate for T-shirts are one thing they all keep up on. That includes popular female vocalists. Now T-shirts being as Holoubek says one of our last outlets for individual statements the T is used for all sorts of advertising of self where you're from, what your sign is, what you'd rather be doing legal or illegal and they can also be used for warnings or for outright threats. There is also a trend towards identification with heavy machinery status gained through the logos of tough motorized vehicles. And there is another trend that even Holoubek can't explain back to the original type mad monster pictures. He was first drawing at state fairs though some do have a more modern twist. T-shirts appear to have come full circle and so has Verne Holoubek his

product is being sold on every continent and barely to his mid 30s Holoubek is already looking to start all over again. Eventually I would like to probably go back into creating new products constantly and there's a big contradiction between managing a company being a creative arm and I'm must admit I'm having to learn that. Learn that [inaudible] and paying attention to details and watching day to day stuff. Eventually I would like to put management into the company to run the day to day and I would like to create products and do some more dreaming. Someone give that man a magic marker. Somewhere there's probably a T-shirt that says Save the American Bald Eagle. That's the topic of our next report. We first did this story a couple of months ago since then it's received some critical acclaim all across the country so we thought we'd give you a second look tonight. In many ways the story of the American Bald Eagle is the story of American history the symbolic eagle clutching an olive branch in one talon, arrows in the other. It's a

symbol of a nation inclined towards peace, though ready for war. But the eagle has fared better as a symbol than as part of the environment its greatest enemy has often been the arsenal of civilization. Bullets and pesticides. In spite of protective legislation eagles are still maimed and killed far too often. But ongoing human support may make the eagle outlook an optimistic one. When the bald eagle was selected as our national symbol two hundred years ago there were perhaps 100,000 birds airborne over the new land. We don't really know exactly how populous they once were. We only know how close we are today to having none at all.

[Intro music] So there's dreams that make them want. One by one [music] Using like the sun [music] No more than 700 pairs of mature bald eagles fly over the lower 48 states today. Over half of those are located in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. Wisconsin's bald eagle population has stabilized about 150 adult pairs and eagle flying over northern Wisconsin or fishing along the Mississippi is a more frequent sight now but seeing an eagle soar is still more privilege than commonplace. Eagles are a kind of

barometer. If the Eagles are in trouble. There's something wrong with the land, water or air around us. Eagles, just like the environment are susceptible to man. Probably the bald eagle is one of the few animals in Wisconsin that is a true wilderness animal that really can't tolerate man. There are certain... Ron Eckstein is a wildlife manager for the state's Department of Natural Resources. And they're an indicator of our environment. When the bald eagle starts to go we know there's something wrong. Too many people, too many chemicals something's going. Eagle population was nearly decimated by something going on in the environment. DDT. Well it was an egg thinning syndrome that occurred. The DDT another hard chemicals interfered with the estrogen metabolism calcium metabolism of the birds and they laid thin shelled eggs. These eggs then were crushed during incubation or had other defects that caused them

not to hatch. Not enough young are being born every year to replace adult mortality and many people felt these pesticides particularly DDT would remain in the environment for long periods. It's possible now that the some of them are clearing up and the eagles certainly are producing better. As one problem lessens another develops, literally. The elimination of eagle habitat for Lake Shore Development. What I'm afraid of is just after we got out of the hard chemical problems we're into the lake shore development stage now many many people using the northern inland lakes region here for second home developments. We're seeing a lot of lakes that formerly had one or two cabins on them now have a great many cabins. With many more boats on the lake. Fishermen out there, this all is disturbing eagles and the loss of nesting habitat. Bald eagles need space each mature pair must have its own territories. Though two separate pairs of mature eagles might roost on the same like each will have its own exclusive area to

fish, nest and rear young. Eagle territory in Northern Highlands State Forest eagles have come here each spring for many years. They'll stay until the winter freeze forces the birds south in search of open waters to fish. Most experts think Eagles mate for life and lay one or two eggs each year. This year there are two eggs in this nest, both hatched. These young are just three to four weeks old. [The sounds of the outdoors] A month later in late June the birds have grown dramatically. They will soon be ready to fly. But for those first two and a half months they are totally dependent. The parents must roam the sky searching for fish in the lakes

below. The power and grace of the adults contrasts with the awkwardness of the young. Perhaps as many as one third of all young eagles do not even survive their first jump from the nest. Only half will live beyond their first year. Power and grace come only with time. Time not granted most young. From thin-shelled eggs to first flight, growing up is a fragile process. It is a process we still don't know much about, naturalists now place an informational ban on each bird before it is able to fly. The banding projects here was started by Chuck Sindolor, a Waukesha man who has spent 15 years and thousands of dollars in a personal crusade to save the bald eagle Sindelar's banded birds have been found thousands of miles from Wisconsin. Recovered eagles are almost always dead or injured. Scattered like shotgun fire across the country.

Well we found that the majority of eagles that are recovered are shot. There are other sources too some of them were hit by cars, some of them strike wires, strike objects so there's a number of ways but the bulk of them are shot and the bulk of them are killed within the first year of their life. Many times the birds being shot are immature birds they don't attain the white head and tail until they're four or five years old. Previous to this they looked like a large hawk and although it's illegal to shoot any kind of hawk or an owl people do shoot them not knowing that they're an eagle. Birds fortunate enough to survive are often sent here to the Raptor Research and Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. This is a sub-adult bald eagle probably two to three years old just getting some white feathers in its head and some yellow in its beak. And had the unfortunate circumstance of being caught in one of these traps and lost its leg. We're left here with a stump that is granulating in with connective tissue right now and we eventually intend to release this

bird with only one foot. Dr. Patrick Redig treats eagles felled by a full range of 20th century obstacles. Traps, high tension wires, bullets. In this particular cage we have an adult bald eagle that has been here now for about two months. The bird originally came down from Rhinelander Wisconsin or had been shot. From a shotgun and the right wing was fractured. Fracture is nearly healed at this point and I estimate that in about another week we'll have the bandages taken off this bird and then allow it access to one of our flight rooms. So it can begin to exercise and regain the strength in the wing. It will probably be left in a free flight facility for a period of about another two to three weeks and then will begin a period of time where we exercise the bird rather vigorously in preparation for its release. So all told we're talking about another four to six weeks before the bird released

Finally the lucky ones are set free. Today's ceremony is presided over by Terry Ingraham who heads a Wisconsin group called Eagle Valley Environmentalists. Many of these eagles are shot by young adults. We're talking about 16 to 24 years of age. Somehow we have to educate them not to shoot the bird. And I think the biggest thing is to teach these people an appreciation for the beauty that this bird has If they learn to appreciate what the eagle has what it symbolizes. Just to see the bird fly plain with the air currents. That's something that I think once people see that I think they're going to hesitate before they ever pull a trigger I think that will help save our birds. On this winter day. The eagle re-enters the wild. But he remains

particularly vulnerable to civilization to be hurt or helped by man. The choice between arrow or olive branch is ours. A choice we must still make. [Music] [Music] [Music] And thanks again go to cinematographer Frank Boll and sound man Tom Naunus for all their work in putting

together that story. That's this week's Wisconsin Magazine. Next time we'll be taking a look at the town of Shullsburg a town now without a zinc mine and look at what that might mean for other future mining communities around the state of Wisconsin. That story and more next time on the Wisconsin Magazine. I'm Dave Iverson. Have a good week.