Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star
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Longtime Hauteans who watch tonight’s “Our Town: Terre Haute” will likely spot two apparent omissions.
Social justice icon Eugene V. Debs isn’t featured, and nobody mentions the city’s decades-long smell problem.
There is a reason for both gaps.
Aside from those, the one-hour documentary covers Terre Haute’s history pretty much wall-to-wall, from its founding to the construction of the new Union Hospital expansion. The WTIU-produced show premieres at 8 p.m. today. That Bloomington-based PBS station will rebroadcast “Our Town: Terre Haute” at 9:30 p.m. Friday, and at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.
Viewers in Terre Haute can see it on Time Warner Cable Channel 10.
Debs, a Terre Haute native who ran for president five times on the Socialist Party ticket, will be the subject of a WTIU feature in the near future, said John Winninger, senior producer of the program. So, WTIU will save details on Debs’ remarkable life for that upcoming piece.
As for our smell issues, which have subsided in the past few years because of plant closings, few people around town mentioned it to the WTIU crew, Winninger said. Thus, that old stigma is not highlighted.
But, otherwise, “Our Town” does indeed look like our town, and includes great narratives from Terre Haute historians Mike McCormick, Marylee Hagan and Dorothy Jerse, as well as reflections from key figures of local institutions. (You may not realize the city can claim fame for having America’s first pay toilet.)
Winninger provided a preview copy to the Tribune-Star, and the show is entertaining and a good lesson in local history.
It’s almost all there — the birthplace of the Coca-Cola bottle, the infamous “red light district” with dozens of brothels, minor league baseball, the Hulman dynasty, the “Sin City” gambling busts, Mayor McMillan’s football face mask invention, Rose-Hulman Ventures, Blues at the Crossroads, Clabber Girl, Heinl’s Flower Shop, the Saratoga Restaurant, the Terre Haute Symphony, and the local colleges. The graphics and old photographs are fascinating and elegantly displayed. Tom Roznowski’s rendition of “On the Banks of the Wabash (Far Away)” — the state song, written by Terre Haute songwriting legend Paul Dresser — is a gem.
Most Hauteans know bits and pieces of the history presented in “Our Town: Terre Haute,” but few of us have seen it all blended into a single TV episode, with Larry Bird following St. Mother Theodore Guerin, Chauncey Rose and Madame Brown. It’s a worthwhile hour of tube time.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
