Hello!

I'm Beryl Dakers and This is Palmetto Scene.

Tonight we wrap up our women vision series with a Spartanburg native who is very dear to South Carolina ETV and public radio.

She founded the ETV Endowment and she's been one of our biggest supporters and cheerleaders throughout the decades.

But we're just one of the many organizations that Elaine Freeman has impacted.

I always tell my children and they will tell you this.

I tell them you have to give your life away.

And when you give it away you're giving it away with other people and they, you share together.

And nothing's ever accomplished by one person.

Nothing.

It is that philosophy of giving that has guided Elaine Freeman.

She is founder of the ETV Endowment, the member organization that supports programming on SCETV and South Carolina public radio.

And she remembers well those early years more than forty years ago when the ETV Endowment began from her home.

Well that's true on my dining table but I had a lot of help.

You know, Henry Cauthen was a visionary head of the South Carolina ETV at the time.

And he with Nella Gray Barkley the first American manager of Spoleto raised the money and produced the Menotti Opera, the Council for Great Performances.

And PBS was very young at that time.

And he wanted to make PBS his goal and make ETV a star in production.

Programming coming from this area.

He talked to Nella Barkley because she had worked with him.

She said I have a friend.

There was no selection process with the committee.

I wrote a management by objective proposal for him and which he liked.

And the founding trustees of the Endowment because they were the bulwark who consistently were followed by other great directors, the late Governor McNair, the late Hugh Chapman, Nella Barkley.

And what was your vision for the organization?

Well, I loved good educational television.

And I knew that state funding couldn't do that.

Henry knew that.

And my vision was adopted from his, to make ETV Endowment beloved as a membership organization through the state so that people who joined the Endowment with their gifts every year would feel that they were the family.

And their gifts supported programs like Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR for more than forty years and Nature Scene on ETV starting in nineteen seventy eight.

I'm devoted to Rudy Mancke.

He was my mother in law's paper boy.

And he came to me with an idea.

And we set that idea in motion and we took near thirty six trips with Endowment members who...He's like the Pied Piper and that was so much fun and we raised a lot of money for ETV in the process.

Freeman and trustees of the Endowment were also instrumental in acquiring ETV's present day headquarters in Columbia.

After purchasing a building owned by the Sara Lee Foundation they had to find tenants including Harvest Hope and Sears Roebuck when money was tight.

We rented out the all the space and it was a real challenge because there was no electricity.

And one time I was showing the space and a rat ran over my foot.

(laughter) But we were able to get the money that way until we can get the capital campaign going.

And then our trustees were wonderful, the late Robert Small took me with them too then Bell South and Piedmont Natural Gas and Lawrence Grass.

They all worked together and we raised the money and the state was impressed and put in some money as well.

And we opened that beautiful telecommunications center in nineteen ninety eight.

And that was so much fun.

In addition to your work with the ETV endowment, your founding of it.

You have been a major force within the Spartanburg community.

Founder of the Charles Lea Center in nineteen seventy one.

Your vision helped establish the Ellen Hines Smith girls home.

How has how have you decided which causes to support and then get behind them?

Well it's it's always been about education and a lot about special education and about young people who don't have the opportunities for education.

Of course ETV was offered that But the Lea Center was so badly needed.

I taught in the public schools here first.

And, and I will tell you that there were four separate boards who were, four separate entities who had their own money and their own mission and they were willing to come together to form the Lea Center Board to merge all their assets to build a new entity.

And it's very rare that that can happen.

That was an eye opening experience for me early in my voluntary career to see a center that is now serving people with disabilities from birth to nursing.

It has residential components and so on and to see that grow has been one of the most rewarding things of my life because I chaired that fundraising campaign.

Again with a wonderful team.

Elaine Freeman retired as executive director of the ETV Endowment in two thousand eight after thirty one years as its executive director.

But she still remains active in support of programming.

I became executive producer through the decades of raising money to be accountable and you're working with the likes of Bill Moyers and and other producers and you have to have to have production insurance.

You know liability insurance.

And so that kinda led me into being an executive producer, first with Piano Jazz and then with John Rainey.

This World War Two series and Vietnam series which you have seen.

And Man and Moment of the profiles of of veterans.

And that has been an eye opening experience because veterans some of whom I've known, because I've been around a while, would never talk about their, what they went through but away from that experience enough decades and being interviewed for a documentary about South Carolinians and their sacrifices and not just those who served but those who were at home.

Those who were building the ships in the navy yard, you learn how dedicated these young people were then to keep our country free.

How would you describe your overall life vision and how it's affected your career?

I don't want to sound trite but I was baptized as a child in the Hitchcock Memorial Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, New York.

And I met my husband in Boston.

He was at MIT.

And I've been a lifelong Presbyterian.

And I believe that there is a plan for your life.

And you have the ability to miss that plan.

You have free will.

But at anytime you can redeem it but with a little help from your family and your friends and the stewards you know, you can try to make your life count for something.

I'm an octogenarian now and I've had a whole lot of fun with a lot of friends and I pray that the plan that was set for me when I was born is in part fulfilled.

♪ We continue to celebrate the summer of space with our next few segments.

Up first, a new exhibit at the state museum that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing.

While still taking visitors on an immersive journey through our space history.

♪(upbeat music) ♪ A lot of things obviously go into making an exhibit just from the standpoint of content.

There's finding the proper historical context.

In this case the historical context of the Apollo program being set in the nineteen sixties, late fifties and a little bit into the early seventies.

♪ The story we're trying to tell is the South Carolina connection to the space program and the history of that over the many years and the story of the importance of science, technology, engineering, math to make these wonderful things happen, And that anybody's capable of doing that.

You know, all that can be done you know with the right focus.

The right discipline, the right support.

We did title it Apollo's journey to the moon and that's the story of obviously getting the astronauts to the moon but the journey is more than just the actual flight to the moon.

The journey is the scientific discoveries the political battles that had to take place in order to procure funding.

The journey is involves many different states and sort of the journey in my view is bringing all these different sort of processes together to actually facilitate what we all kind of know publicly as this flight this journey to the moon itself.

♪ Being a museum, the artifacts are also an important component of it to actually tell the material story.

and also to have the proper imagery and sort of individual stories to also bring the sort of larger story of Apollo in the full View.

All those different things and you know it's working as a team to pull all that together.

I think the the ambience of the exhibit is different than the ambience of the rest of the museum.

The huge graphics that tell a story that really are encapsulating.

Then of course the artifacts and the objects.

And then the last piece is really the film that we added to the exhibit and its a great way to tell the story.

We certainly think that there's a couple things around exhibit design that we want to be really cognizant of, that we want to engage people.

And then once we engage them we want to educate them.

So the way engage them is with the interactivity.

♪ Rather than just reading a panel if you can actually touch feel get on something that increases the learning capacity of the kids.

So we certainly wanted to bring that into this exhibit as well.

I hope the guests will realize how much nerve these guys had to just go into space I mean our smartphones have more computing power than this whole rocket had and just the dedication and everything and their designing this stuff basically with slide rules.

And to have enough trust to sit on top of that thirty five story rocket and go to the moon took real bravery and so just the way the whole country got together and made this thing happen it was really amazing so that's what I hope people see and just the how brave they were.

We really want to make sure that the Hall of Heroes that displays all the South Carolina astronauts is something that kids take away they could inspire to to be.

So we really want to make sure that South Carolina space connection is a take away.

And the other thing just the technology you know the huge focus on STEM nowadays.

You know if we can create some interest in young kids relative to the importance of science and engineering and technology and math.

What better way to do it than actually show them rockets in space and and that that that connection.

Because it's still ongoing.

You know obviously this space station is still flying around, talks now of going to Mars.

So there's a lot of potential in the in the space program you know so as part of our exhibit we want to make sure we made that connection as well.

What I hope people really take away from this is that it's not just simply putting a rocket on a launch pad and we shoot it up and everything goes right.

You know it's it's a far more complex story.

It's technologically and politically.

We go to great lengths and great expense to bring the guests a real experience that they can they can enjoy and so we just do it for the for the people of South Carolina.

♪ Several years ago one of the most famous astronauts, Apollo eleven lunar module pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin visited Wofford College in Spartanburg.

We were able to talk with Aldrin back then and with all the hoopla surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of that historic flight we thought it appropriate to reprise that interview for you now ♪ Wofford college in Spartanburg welcomed a very special visitor to its campus Apollo eleven astronaut Buzz Aldrin spoke to a group of students about his life and career.

He also sat down with the ETV to talk about that historic first mission to land on the moon and his surprising reaction to finding out he was on that flight.

The day the assignment came out and Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and I were gonna be given the chance to make the first landing, I went home and talked to my wife.

And I had flown a successful mission year before a couple years before and I knew the demanding tasks of going different places and giving speeches.

Now if we succeeded I knew that this was going to be so so much greater.

And I told my wife you know if I had my way I'd just as soon be on a later flight than the first one.

But I can't do that.

That choice isn't mine.

It wouldn't be fair to the crew and to other folks.

Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins launched on top of the massive Saturn five rocket to begin their journey to the moon on July sixteenth nineteen sixty nine.

The world listened to mission control in Houston talking to the Apollo eleven crew as they began their final descent to the lunar surface.

Eagle Houston we see you on the stair.

Over.

Better Angle and out.

Roger how does it look.

The eagle has wings.

Rog.

South Carolinian Charles Duke Junior was that voice in Mission Control during the Apollo eleven landing three years later.

Charlie Duke would become the tenth and youngest man to walk on the moon during Apollo sixteen.

During Apollo eleven, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wanted Charlie to be their Capcom short for capsule communications, the only person in Mission Control who talks with astronauts during the mission.

Well being a Capcom is one of the most envied positions within the astronaut corps.

A lot of people want to be a Capcom.

It's a pretty exciting assignment and during an Apollo mission particularly very exciting to be in the mission operations control room.

At the point of landing that's where Charlie Duke was during the Apollo Eleven mission.

On July twentieth nineteen sixty nine as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began their historic descent to the moon's surface, Charles Duke was in mission control in Houston waiting along with the rest of the world on the edge of his seat.

The tension was mounting in mission control and we were getting closer and closer to calling an abort.

I called sixty seconds which meant he had a minute to land.

60 seconds lights on, Forward.

Forward.

3 feet down till we land.

Picking up some dust.

And then I call up eagle you got thirty seconds.

Forward.

Forward.

Drifting to the right a little.

30 seconds.

Charlie Duke kept reminding them how much fuel they had left.

At one point Deke Slayton turned and said just be quiet.

Be quiet.

Just just give me some space they need to land.

contact right okay engine stop.

We copy you down eagle.

And we knew they were on the ground.

If you stop the engine you gone land.

And and there was a pause and then Neil says Houston.

Tranquility base here.

The eagle has landed.

And we literally were holding our breath so that prompted me to respond.

Roger Tranquility we copy you on the ground you got a bunch the guys about to turn blue.

We're breathing again.

Thanks a lot!

There were four people who knew that after we landed what we were going to call ourselves.

Tranquility base Neil Mike and I and Charlie because we knew he was going to repeat that and he stumbled on the word.

After after that mission all three of us did not want to stay in the crew rotation.

Neil and I have been course on the first landing.

Conceivably at the end I could have been a commander.

but I really wanted to move on to go back to the Air Force.

And Neil wasn't exactly a person who gave a lot of the interviews and contrary to that I felt that if I had good ideas I wanted the people to know about them.

But that's okay.

I consider myself in that time period one of the most fortunate people.

My mother was born the year that Wright brothers flew.

My father's an early aviator, knew all the people.

I got in combat, landed on the moon and now I'm planning the details of humans reaching Mars.

That won't happen during my lifetime but I sure hope that we will be on the path to get there.

That's one small step for man.

One giant leap for mankind.

Chasing the moon a film from American experience is a fascinating and unique story about the history of our country's space exploration.

Here's a sneak peek.

T minus four minutes fifty seconds and counting.

Skip Sheldon informing the ast... That's the first time I understood what it meant to smell fear.

Every single one of those five hundred people was afraid that it would be their little gauge, their little valve that would go wrong.

(space shuttle taking off) Lift off.

We have... Chasing the moon really establishes the totality of the experience.

It's telling this decade long journey of not just what it took to land a man on the moon technically but what the country was going through during that time.

I really wanted this story to really take the audience into the moment and have it be timeless.

I wanted this film to appeal to a new generation.

Robert is an archaeologist when it comes to finding footage.

He spent years searching archives around the world.

This film really relies on a series of eyewitness accounts from a very diverse group of people.

We're hearing about Mission Control from a woman in Mission Control.

Poppy Northcutt.

I have a degree in mathematics, worked really hard and became a member of the technical staff and ended up assigned to work in the control center.

I thought it was important that people understand that women can do these jobs.

Going into science.

Going into technology.

We made the decision to do these interviews audio only in part so that we wouldn't distract from the story without the interruption of talking heads on camera The viewers completely immersed in the experience of the space race and the visuals which are astounding.

What I hope people will take away is that this was a grand ambition.

That was really hard.

And it took everyone working together and not giving up to make it happen.

♪ Tranquility Base here..The eagle has landed!

Chasing the Moon will premiere in July.

For more stories about the Palmetto State please visit our website at Palmettoscene.org.

and of course be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Then join us again next time for another edition of Palmetto Scene.

As we leave you tonight our palmetto postcard features wildlife from Lady's Island.

By the way don't forget to send us your postcards whether video or photos.

Send them to Palmettoscene@SCETV.org For ETV and Palmetto Scene, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Thank you for watching.

♪ calm guitar music ♪ ♪ upbeat music ♪ If you want to learn more about this program, check out our website at Palmettoscene.org Here you'll find useful links and web only extras.

You can also access full episodes and can suggest stories for us to cover.

That's Palmettoscene.org ♪ upbeat music ♪ (chime)