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Steve Truchan's family business, the Gary Bridge and Iron Company is located near the Chase Street spring. He recalls a time when the spring stopped flowing. It happened in the early 1980s when new sewers were installed in the area. "All of those houses in there lost their water," he says, "and the Chase Street well quit running."
This was one of a group of excerpts gathered under the subject heading of Environmental Impacts for a digital and in-person exhibit of the Spring at Small Farms Oral Histories. The digital exhibit can be seen at https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/spring-at-small-farms/home.
Kay Westhues interviews Steve Truchan at his office at the Gary Bridge and Iron Company in Gary, Indiana, on December 6, 2019. Truchan is the owner of Gary Bridge and Iron Company, located on 37th Ave. near Chase St. His family moved there in 1950 and he grew up in that neighborhood, and his neighbors included several of the families who farmed near the spring. He described a second nearby spring, a period when the spring stopped running, and what the area looked like during the 1950s-60s. He talked about the practice of hunting and foraging in the surrounding woods. He also discussed how the spring and the surrounding land was impacted by drainage projects and Lake Sandy Jo. Part of the Spring at Small Farms Oral History Project. See the full exhibit here: https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/spring-at-small-farms/home
In a career spanning four decades, Craig Van Sickle has written, produced and directed more than 200 hours of prime-time television, including scripts for “Murder, She Wrote,” “NCIS,” “24” and George Lucas’s “The Clone Wars.”
Van Sickle graduated from IU in 1979 with a degree in telecommunications and soon moved to Los Angeles, where he eventually met up with his writing partner of 30-plus years, Steve Mitchell.
In 1985, after nearly six years in Hollywood, Van Sickle sold his first script to “The Love Boat.” Two years later, he landed his first staff writing job at the “Murder She Wrote” spinoff “The Law & Harry McGraw.” In the years following, Van Sickle moved up the ranks from story editor to executive producer/showrunner under the guidance of mentors Peter S. Fischer (“Murder, She Wrote”), Kenneth Johnson (“Alien Nation”) and the late Stephen J. Cannell (“Rockford Files,” “Wiseguy”) as he continued writing scripts for all three TV giants.
In 1996, Van Sickle achieved his lifelong dream when his original series, “The Pretender,” was picked up by NBC.
“That was my big leap,” Van Sickle recalled. “Ever since fifth grade when I decided to become a writer, my career goal was to get my own series on television.”
“The Pretender,” written and created by Van Sickle and Mitchell, ran for four seasons and launched two feature-length films. They recently published two novels set in the “Pretender” universe: “Rebirth” and “Saving Luke.”
Since “The Pretender,” Van Sickle created the series “She Spies,” became showrunner for NBC’s “Medical Investigations” in 2005 and wrote about 30 television pilot scripts.
In 2008, Van Sickle saw another dream project come to life when he wrote and produced his reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” titled, “Tin Man,” which aired on The SyFy Channel. To this day, “Tin Man” remains the network’s highest-rated mini-series of all time and garnered nine Emmy nominations, winning multiple awards that year.
In addition to his mentors, Van Sickle credits his family, who he said made it all worthwhile.
“My wife Wendy was there for me from the very beginning, before success. Along with our two great children, Aridae and Wills, family love kept me very grounded,” he said.
In 2017, Van Sickle launched scripTVisions.com, a script mentoring site that helps unproduced writers improve their scripts and launch their professional careers in Hollywood. Each year, he selects one protégé’s work to submit to his agents and take out into the marketplace to get the show on the air.
“Ninety percent of my clients are pro bono,” he said. “In an era where novice writers are being taken advantage of by fly-by-night script services, I just felt they deserved legitimate feedback from a professional – the kind of notes that will truly help them break into the TV business.”
Since 1985, Van Sickle has been an active member of the Writers Guild of America West, for which he has participated in numerous panels and workshops throughout the years.
He is working on a new series called “Veil” for Starling Entertainment, which he hopes will premiere next year.
The Sample: On April Fools' Day 1975, IU grad Leon Varjian held the first annual Banana Olympics in Dunn Meadow. To honor the original event's spirit of absurdity and fun, the producers of The Sample held their own version of the games 44 years later.
The Sample: In this episode, Emily visits the closet of Paige Venturi, editor in chief of IU's only fashion magazine. She and Arjun Madhavan have been a part of Season Magazine since Sharon Hsu founded it in 2018. Season opens a door for students passionate about fusing art and utility into content that fellow students can connect with.
Dean Shanahan sits down with journalist and documentarian Elena Volochine to discuss Russian politics, her experiences reporting in Moscow, and her film Oleg's Choice, which follows Russian fighters in Eastern Ukraine.
Wagner, Gerald, Wolf, Ray, Thomas, Ben, Miles, Emily, Shanahan, James
Summary:
Late September in the U.S. saw a host of abnormal weather events: record heat in the Southeast, a Category 5 hurricane in an odd location, and five feet of snow in Montana. This episode, the team zeroes in on the early, heavy snows that could have a long-term effect on farmers in the Northern Plains.
2:00 - Gerald Wagner, director of the Blackfeet Environmental Office
14:00 - Ray Wolf, science and operations officer, NOAA/NWS Quad Cities
20:45 - Ben Thomas, director of the Montana Department of Agriculture
Dorothy Waters grew up in the Black Oak neighborhood of Calumet Township and her parents owned farm land near the Chase Street spring in Small Farms. Waters and her siblings pulled weeds in their fields at night and quenched their thirst by drinking from the well on Chase Street. "We would pull weeds, we'd run up and down that big sand hill. And then we walked down and we get a drink at that spring. ... I just loved drinking from that spring."
This was one of a group of excerpts gathered under the subject heading of Community Use of the Spring for a digital and in-person exhibit of the Spring at Small Farms Oral Histories. The digital exhibit can be seen at https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/spring-at-small-farms/home.
The Black Oak artesian well was located in the front yard of Dorothy Waters' family home. She says that when people from the neighborhood collected water from the spring, they sometimes left pennies on a tree stump to thank the family for providing the water to the public.
This was one of a group of excerpts gathered under the subject heading of Black Oak Spring for a digital and in-person exhibit of the Spring at Small Farms Oral Histories. The digital exhibit can be seen at https://iusbarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/spring-at-small-farms/home.
