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1.25.25 - Part 2 · Children's Hour

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Raidilized Children's Story ire. As a reminder,
• 0:05
  Radilized a reading service intended for people who are blind
• 0:09
  or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
• 0:12
  printed material. Today we will be reading from various books
• 0:16
  on famous black Americans. Your reader today is Diane. We
• 0:21
  will continue with the book Henry Aaron Stream. It was
• 0:25
  published by Candlewick Press has a copywriter of twenty ten.
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  The author of the book is Matt Tavares. He joined
• 0:34
  the Braves Class C Minor leg League team in All Claire, Wisconsin.
• 0:40
  Henry was nervous before his first game. He had never
• 0:43
  faced a white picture before. He had been told for
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  a long time that while white ball players were better
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  than black ball players. In his first at bat, he
• 0:54
  lined a single into left field. As soon as he
• 0:57
  heard that familiar crack when his bat hit the ball,
• 1:00
  he knew he was going to be okay. In nineteen
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  fifty three, Henry spent another season in the Miners, but
• 1:08
  he was promoted to the Class eighteen in Jacksonville, Florida.
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  He had two black teammates, Horace Garner and Felix Mattila.
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  The rest of the team was white. Before that season.
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  No black player had ever played in the South Atlantic League.
• 1:24
  They played their games in southern cities where black people
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  and white people weren't even allowed to play checkers together.
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  Some white fans called Henry a nigger. Some even sent
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  him letters three and to kill him if he kept playing.
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  Some fans stopped coming to games. Some of the fans
• 1:44
  who came through rocks at him. Pitchers fired fastballs at
• 1:49
  his head. Henry didn't understand why they hated him. All
• 1:52
  he wanted to do was play baseball. Sometimes it got
• 1:56
  to him, but then you remember Jackie Robinson and all
• 1:59
  he had gone through to pave the way, and he
• 2:02
  remembered his teammates from the Negro leagues who never got
• 2:05
  the chance to live their dream. Henry focused on the
• 2:08
  ball and tried to ignore everything else. Every game, wherever
• 2:13
  the team played, the color section was packed with fans.
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  They came to watch Henry, Horace and Felix playing second base.
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  Henry could hear them cheering wildly for ever free root
• 2:26
  team play. He remembered the day back in Mobile when
• 2:30
  he sat in the Color section and watched Jackie Robinson.
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  He knew how much it meant to these people to
• 2:36
  watch him play. He was more determined than ever to
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  make his dream come true. Henry played so well that
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  season that by the end of the year, some of
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  the white fans who had stopped coming to games came
• 2:49
  back to the ballpark. Some of them even cheered for him.
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  The night Jacksonville won the pennant, the team had a
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  big party at a restaurant in Savannah, but only people
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  were allowed in while the other player celebrated the most
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  valuable player, Henry Aaron sat in the kitchen while Horace
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  and Felix waited until the party was over. That winter,
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  Henry played balla in Puerto Rico, where he faced real
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  big league pitchers for the first time ever. He struggled
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  at the plate, and he made so many errors at
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  second base that his manager switched him to the outfield
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  back in home. Even though Henry was still on the
• 3:30
  minor league roster, he got to travel with a big
• 3:33
  league club for the first few spring training games in
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  nineteen fifty four. The Brave starter's played the first five
• 3:41
  or six innings of each game, then minor leaguers like
• 3:45
  Henry would take over. Henry knew that any day he
• 3:48
  would be sent back to the minors, so he made
• 3:51
  the most of ever every at that During the second
• 3:55
  game of spring training, the Brave starting center fielders sprained
• 3:59
  his ankle. The next day, his replacement pulled a muscle.
• 4:03
  Suddenly the Braves needed outfielders. On March tenth, when Henry
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  checked the lineup for the spring training game versus the
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  Boston Red Sox, he couldn't believe it. He was starting
• 4:15
  in right field and batting lead off. Henry hit a
• 4:18
  home run that day, and for the next three weeks
• 4:21
  he never left the starting lineup. On the last day
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  of spring training, Henry signed his first real major league contract.
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  The regular season was just a few days away. Henry's
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  dream was about to come true. On their way north
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  from spring training, the Braves stopped a mobile to play
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  an exposition game at Hart'swell Field against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
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  The color section was packed. Henry's mother and father, aunts
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  and uncles, sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends all came
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  to the game. Old friends shared stories about how they
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  used to play ball with Henry at Carver Park. When
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  Henry came up to bed, he could hear the fans
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  in the colored section cheering and clapping and shouting his name.
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  Henry smicked a line drive in to left field. He
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  hustled around first and slid into second, just beating the
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  throw from the left fielder, his hero, Jackie Robinson. Henry
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  Aaron had a dream. He wanted to be a big
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  league baseball player. There were times when it seemed almost impossible,
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  and times when he almost gave up. But finally, one
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  fine day in nineteen fifty four, Henry Aaron's dream came true.
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  Our next book is titled Counting the Stars, The Story
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  of Catherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician. It was published by PAULA.
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  Wiseman book as Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers,
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  and it has a copyright year of twenty nineteen. Our
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  author is Lisa Kline Ransom. Katherine Johnson was born the
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  fourth child of Joshua and joe Lett Coleman, and the
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  first to love numbers. By the time Katherine could speak,
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  she was counting. She even counted the steps she walked
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  from her front porch to Sunday morning church service. At night,
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  after her Mama and Dady tucked her into bed, and
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  the moon shone bright in the West Virginia sky, Catherine
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  counted the stars one by one. She was too young
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  to go to school, so Catherine followed behind her sister
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  and brothers to the two room schoolhouse in White Sulfur Springs.
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  When the teacher knows the tiny, curly haired girl reading
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  along with other students, she offered Katherine her own seat.
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  Her mother was a teacher, but it was her father,
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  a lumberman and farmer, who could figure numbers in his
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  head faster than anyone. Catherine knew why how her father
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  helped her find the answers her math questions when her
• 7:01
  teachers couldn't. At six years old. Instead of starting her
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  first in kindergarten, Katherine went straight to second grade. Instead
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  of starting third grade, Katherine went to fifth. During the
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  school year, Joshua and joe Lette left behind their farm
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  and rented home one hundred and twenty five miles away
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  in Institute, West Virginia, and enrolled all four common children
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  in a school at the West Virginia Institute. Joshua traveled
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  back and forth working as the bellman to make ends meet.
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  The Coleman sacrifice paid off, and by the time Katherine
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  was ten, she started her first year of high school
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  in institutes. When Katherine was an outdoors with friends or
• 7:46
  exploring her own backyard, she spent her time alone indoors,
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  where the world she explored existed only in her own imagination.
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  In the early evenings, Catherine's principal walked to his youngest
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  student home, stopping to point out the constellations overhead. Ever
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  since she had counted stars outside her bedroom window at night,
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  Catherine's mind swirled with questions that soared past the clouds
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  and far beyond earth. In nineteen thirty three, with high
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  school ending in the Great Depression beginning, Catherine wondered if
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  she could find more answers in college. But with times
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  tough all over, college seemed as far away as the moon. However,
• 8:27
  West Virginia State Institute found promise in the fifteen year
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  old with a gift for numbers, and offered her a
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  full scholarship. She entered the college's math department. As she
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  walked across campus, numbers with march in Catherine's head calculus, algebra, trigonometry,
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  probability classes. Catherine took them off when her college ran
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  up classes for Catherine to take. Her math professor William Crayter,
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  creating an analytic geometry course just for her, all alone.
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  She sat in a classroom with empty seats behind her,
• 9:00
  chalkboards filled with mathematical proofs and formulas in front of her.
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  You would make a good research mathematician, Professor Claytor told her.
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  Katherine knew a lot of girls in the segregated South
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  who were teachers, mothers, and nurses, but she had never
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  met one who was a mathematician. But where will I
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  find a job? Katherine asked. Professor Clayter contained scribbling numbers
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  on the board and said that will be your problem.
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  When college ended, teaching began for Katherine in a high
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  school in West Virginia, where she was nearly as young
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  as her students. Outside the classroom, Catherine found love in
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  the brown eyes and big heart of Jimmy Goebel. She
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  loved teaching as much as she loved Jimmy. But in
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  nineteen forties West Virginia, married women weren't aloud in the classroom,
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  so quickly and quietly the two became one. They both
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  now taught at a high school in Jimmy's hometown of
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  Mary and Virginia. First one, then two, then three daughters
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  were born to teach her salary plus two summer jobs
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  barely equaled a roof over their heads, and with three
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  little girls to care for. Katherine, Jimmy knew the numbers
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  weren't adding up. Jimmy's sister and brother in law told
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  them of the opportunities in Hampton, Virginia, where there were
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  plenty of shipyard jobs waiting for Jimmy, and even a
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  government job for Katherine. It wasn't teaching, but over at
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  the National Advisory Committing for Aeronautics at Langley org Nautics,
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  word was they were looking for women who were good
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  with numbers for their computing department. Let's do it. Catherine
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  decided she didn't know much about fight that Katherine knew
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  an awful lot about math. Dorothy Vaughan, a tenured veteran
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  at Langley, greeted Katherine on her first day as human
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  computer in the Aircraft Loads building in Langley Aeronautics. The
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  West's computing office was filled with round faces of women
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  furiously completing sheets of equations darth. Dorothy knew Catherine's family
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  back in White Sulfur Springs, as she knew Catherine's reputation
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  with numbers. Nearly twenty years earlier. When the computing pool began,
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  many of the engineers wondered aloud how the female mind
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  could possibly process concepts as complicated as man. But it
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  was the job of these women computers to double check
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  the engineer's data, developed complex equations, and analyze the numbers.
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  Each disc had a calculating machine that many of the
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  women did not need them. Katherine had barely settled into
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  the routine at Langley when Dorothy called her and coworker
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  over to her desk. The Flight Research Division is requesting
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  two new computers. Dorothy told them, I'm sending YouTube. It's
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  just a temporary assignment, she told them, two weeks at
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  the most. Katherine grabbed her person hurried over to the
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  building twelve forty five for curious to see what the
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  engineers were up to. Outside the Research Division building, a
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  runway was humming with aircraft. Inside the office hummed with energy.
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  Catherine found a seat and got to work. She ignored
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  the stairs and color girlth sign on the bathroom door,
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  and the segregated cafeteria, eating instead at her desk. Katherine
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  ignored all of it and did what she was hired
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  to do. Mag the numbers work Katherine asked questions over
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  the engineer's shoulder as they worked read their issues of
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  aviation week to her eyes were strained. Why what how?
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  From her first assignment, Catherine's flawless analysis and in depth
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  research made her a favorite. Her desk was piled high
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  with requests for numbers to crunch as her two week
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  temporary assignment doubled, then tripled. After six months, it was
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  clear Katherine was a permanent part of the team. When
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  the engineers went to means to discuss rear behind closed doors,
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  Katherine asked to go. Girls don't go to meetings. She
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  was told, but again and again, Catherine continued to ask
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  until she got the answer she wanted. Yes. Now, Catherine
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  sat at the table in the meetings, the only woman,
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  the only computer, the only brown face, taking notes as
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  engineers discussed new discoveries and machine computers that worked fifteen
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  times faster than humans. Katherine listened even closer when they
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  began discussing a brand new field space. On October fourth,
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  nineteen fifty seven, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first
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  artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. Sputnik may have been
• 13:44
  beaten the United States into outer space, but the race
• 13:48
  was far from over. The National Advisory Committee for Aergnoutics
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  changed his focus from airplanes and became the National Aeronautics
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  and Space Administration NASA. Race to space was in full swing.
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  The long hours Catherine's TeamWorks grew longer as the US
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  her to find an answer to the Soviet Union Sputnik.
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  They found it just a few months later than they
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  when they launched the Explore one satellite. The more space
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  discoveries there were, the more the world wanted to know.
• 14:21
  The bleeps and signals from the satellites orbiting Earth transmitted
• 14:25
  terrados and homes across the country made people wonder how
• 14:29
  much more was beyond Earth's atmosphere. With their life on
• 14:33
  other planets, could man travel into space. NASA set out
• 14:38
  to answer those questions with Project Mercury, named for the
• 14:42
  Roman god of travel. The Mercury, a six foot wide spacecraft,
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  would carry the first man into Earth's orbit. They just
• 14:50
  needed to figure out how. Engineers ran over one million experiments,
• 14:55
  test runs, simulate and inspections, and still in nineteen sixty
• 14:59
  one one, the Russians again beat to the United States
• 15:04
  when their first humans shot into space orbited Earth. The
• 15:08
  US grew tired of waiting. Why weren't we winning the
• 15:11
  space race. The folks at NASA had the best minds,
• 15:15
  the skills, expensive computers. They had Mercury seven, a group
• 15:19
  of experienced NASA train pilots. They even had a secret weapon,
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  Katherine Johnson. It was the engineer's job to plot the
• 15:27
  path of spacecraft from the moment it left the launch
• 15:30
  pad until the moment of his descent into the Atlantic Ocean.
• 15:34
  The Mercury Atlas rocket would thrust the three thousand pounds
• 15:38
  eleven foot capsule up into the air with enough force
• 15:42
  to orbit the Earth. But the tricky part, they all knew,
• 15:45
  wasn't getting the astrot launched, It was getting him back.
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  Let me do it, Catherine told the head engineer, Tell
• 15:52
  me where you want the man to land, and I'll
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  tell you where to send him up hudder. At their desk,
• 15:57
  Catherine and the engineers came up with a few different
• 16:00
  equations for trajectories or possible outcomes to program into the computers,
• 16:07
  knowing that one wrong number, one wrong decimal could mean
• 16:10
  the difference between success and failure, life and death. With
• 16:16
  the stars glowing outside her window, Catherine spent her nights
• 16:19
  awake and her days at a chalkboard. Questions and numbers
• 16:23
  once again swirled in her head, but this time she
• 16:26
  was calculating distances, plotting to trajectories, and noting the Earth's
• 16:31
  gravity and speed of rotation, making sure the flight was
• 16:35
  a success for Nance and the astronaut John Glenn. With
• 16:39
  the flight crew, spacecraft, and launch team all ready to go,
• 16:43
  John Glenn was not He needed one final check to
• 16:46
  the computer's calculations. He needed Katherine call her, He told
• 16:51
  the engineers, get the girl to check the numbers. Katherine
• 16:55
  had one and a half days before launch day to
• 16:59
  double check the tree trajectory numbers that a mechanical computer
• 17:03
  had taken just hours to spit out. She worked each
• 17:08
  git backward and forward. When finally her numbers and the
• 17:11
  computers were a perfect match, John Glenn was ready to
• 17:15
  go ten nine, eight, seven, six, five, four three two
• 17:22
  one last off. On February twentieth, nineteen sixty two, Catherine
• 17:28
  watched the broadcast as the Mercury Atlas rocket boosted John
• 17:32
  Glenn into history as the first American to orbit Earth.
• 17:36
  Catherine counted as she watched the screen three orbits four hours,
• 17:40
  fifty five minutes and twenty three seconds until finally John
• 17:44
  Glenn and the capsule slashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
• 17:50
  As the world cheered, Catherine wondered, why, what, how could
• 17:55
  she make numbers take an astronaut even farther beyond Earth's
• 17:59
  atmosphere and maybe even to the Moon. Our next set
• 18:05
  of books are going to be about winter, and the
• 18:08
  first one is titled The First Half Winter. It was
• 18:11
  published by Henry Hot and Company and it has a
• 18:15
  copyright year of two thousand and five. The author of
• 18:21
  the book is Denise Slimming. On the first d half Winter,
• 18:25
  my best friend gave to me a red cap with
• 18:29
  a cold snap. On the second day of winter, my
• 18:32
  best friend gave to me two bright blue mittens and
• 18:35
  a red cap with a cold snap. On the third
• 18:39
  day of winter, my best friend gave to me three
• 18:42
  striped scarves, two bright blue mittens, and a red cap
• 18:47
  with a gold snap. On the fourth day of winter,
• 18:50
  my best friend gave to me four prickly pine cones,
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  three striped scarves, two bright blue mittens, and a red
• 18:57
  cap with a gold snap. On the fifth day of winter,
• 19:01
  my best friend gave to me five bird seed pockets,
• 19:05
  four prickly pine cones, three striped scarfs, two bright blue mittens,
• 19:10
  and a red cap with a code snap. On the
• 19:13
  sixth day of winter, my best friend gave to me
• 19:16
  six tiny twigs, five bird seed pockets, four prickly pine cones,
• 19:21
  three striped scarfs, two bright blue mittens, and a red
• 19:25
  cap with a gold snap. On the seventh day of winter,
• 19:29
  my best friend gave to me seven mayple leaves, six
• 19:33
  tiny twigs, five bird seed pockets, four prickly pine cones,
• 19:37
  three striped scarfs, two bright blue mittens, and a red
• 19:41
  cap with a code snap. On the eighth day of winter,
• 19:45
  my best friend gave to me eight orange berries, seven
• 19:48
  maple leaves, six tiny twigs, six bird seed pockets, four
• 19:54
  prickly pine cones, three striped scarfs, two bright blue mittens,
• 19:58
  and a red cap with a old snap. On the
• 20:01
  ninth day of winter, my best friend gave to me
• 20:04
  nine big black buttons, eight orange berries, seven maple leaves,
• 20:09
  six tiny twigs, five bird seed pockets, four prickly pine cones,
• 20:14
  three striped scarves, two bright blue mittens, and a red
• 20:18
  cap with a gold snap. On the tip Dave Winter
• 20:24
  my best friend gave to me ten salty peanuts, nine
• 20:28
  big black buttons, eight orange berries, seven maple leaves, six
• 20:32
  tiny twigs, five bird seed pockets, four prickly pine cones,
• 20:37
  three striped scarves, two bright blue mittens, and a red
• 20:41
  cap with a gold snaps. Our next book is titled
• 20:45
  Sampson the Snow and it was published by Neil Porter
• 20:50
  Book of Roaring Brook Press. It has a copyright year
• 20:55
  of twenty sixteen and the author is Philip C. Steed.
• 21:01
  On sunny days, Samson tended his dandelion patch, stepping carefully.
• 21:05
  He used his long trunk to pull up bothersome weeds.
• 21:09
  When he was finished, he stood in the sunshine, hoping
• 21:12
  for a friend to come along. Samson waited quietly with
• 21:15
  his flowers to keep him company. Hello, said little redbird
• 21:20
  one day. Oh Hello, said Samson, making cheerful conversation. Would
• 21:25
  you mind, asked the bird if I took some flowers
• 21:28
  for a friend. He's having a bad day and his
• 21:30
  favorite color is yellow. Yellow's my favorite color, too, answered Samson.
• 21:36
  He chose three of his best flowers and gathered them
• 21:39
  into a bouquet for the bird. Samson watched little redbird
• 21:43
  fly away. He wondered what it would be like to
• 21:46
  have a friend. As he wandered, he grew tired, and,
• 21:50
  before realizing it, before meaning to, Samson fell into a
• 21:55
  deep and lumbering sleep. He dreamed of the color yellow.
• 22:00
  While Samson slept, angry clouds came and covered up the sun.
• 22:04
  The wind began to blow, and very soon all the
• 22:08
  warmth of the day was gone. Snow began to fall.
• 22:11
  It rolled around and around, heavy wet clumps collected in
• 22:15
  Samson's great mass of fir, till he was almost completely
• 22:19
  covered up in Samson's stream, yellow turned to white. That
• 22:23
  was when Samson woke. All around the world was different
• 22:27
  from before. Samson could hardly tell what was where and
• 22:30
  where was what? Every direction was white snow. Samson worried
• 22:35
  about the little redbird. I wonder if she is out there,
• 22:38
  he thought, I wonder if she is cold. Samson stared
• 22:44
  hard into the blinding snow. Is better to walk than
• 22:48
  to worry, he decided, and so he did. Samson trudged
• 22:52
  through valleys and over rolling hills. The wind blew the
• 22:55
  snow into fantastic shapes, but Samson did not stop to
• 22:59
  look the little redbird is not made for this kind
• 23:02
  of weather, he thought. Samson swung his tail and stomped
• 23:06
  his feet to free the eyes that clung to his coat.
• 23:10
  Excuse me, please, called a mouse, mostly hidden in a
• 23:13
  snow drift. I would not like to be crushed, oh,
• 23:17
  said Samson. I did not see you. You should not
• 23:20
  be out here all alone, I know, sighed the mouse.
• 23:25
  I did not expect a storm. I am having a
• 23:27
  bad day. Would you like to come with me, ask Samson.
• 23:31
  Grateful and relieved, the mouse made the long journey of
• 23:34
  Samson's trunk, past his fast years and under his thick
• 23:38
  blankets of fur. There he kept warm. Are you comfortable,
• 23:43
  asked Samson. Oh, yes, said the mouse, very much. So.
• 23:47
  I am looking for someone, said Samson. She is small
• 23:51
  like you. If she is small, said the mouse, then
• 23:54
  we should watch where we step. I am looking for someone, too,
• 23:58
  said the mouse. I word, she is having a bad
• 24:00
  day like me. I worry that she is all covered
• 24:04
  up in snow. The wind houd and the snow piled
• 24:08
  higher and higher. Sampson breathed deeply, in and out, in
• 24:11
  and out. He stopped to rest near an unlikely patch
• 24:14
  of dandelions. Do you have a favorite color, he asked
• 24:18
  the mouse. Oh, yes, said the mouse. My favorite color
• 24:21
  is yellow. Yellow's my favorite color, too, said Samson. He
• 24:26
  reached down and gently plucked the dandelions from the snow.
• 24:31
  I found you, cried Samson. And I found you too,
• 24:34
  cried the mouse. The little redbird was too cold to reply.
• 24:38
  It's okay, said Samson. I know a place not far
• 24:42
  from here. He tucked the little redbird safely away and
• 24:45
  continued on. Sampson's passengers hopped down into the dry cave floor.
• 24:53
  Thank you, said little redbird. She shook the snow from
• 24:56
  her feathers, and look, she said to the mouse. I
• 24:59
  brought you, oh, said the mouse. Exact is exactly what
• 25:04
  I needed today. The three friends huddled together and told
• 25:07
  stories of their adventures in the snow. Not long from then,
• 25:14
  the storm passed. This concludes the children's story I are
• 25:19
  for today. Please join us next time as we will
• 25:22
  read more stories, fables and fairy tales. Thank you for listening,
• 25:26
  and please stay tuned for the Lexton Harrald Leader on
• 25:29
  Radio I