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Coming up on this episode of Iowa Life. Visit a Pomeroy bar that has become a mecca for music lovers and musicians.

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See how one Iowans is inspiring the next generation of scientists.

I've always wanted to make learning fun for myself, but now that I have the platform to do that for others, it just blends very well.

And find out how service dogs can be trained to support veterans in meaningful ways.

These veterans connect to their dogs and the fact that we are able to help facilitate some type of comfort, some type of assistance, if it's just the mobility issue, it just fills your heart with gratitude that you can be a part of this.

It's all coming up next on Iowa Life.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by the Gilchrist Foundation, founded by Jocelyn Gilchrist, furthering the philanthropic interests of the Gilchrist family in wildlife and conservation, the arts and public broadcasting and disaster relief.

Mark and Kay De Cook Charitable Foundation, proud to support programs that highlight the stories about the people and places of Iowa.

The Strickler Family, in loving memory of Lois Strickler, to support programs that highlight the importance of Iowa's natural resources on Iowa PBS.

And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for Inclusive Programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.

 

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Pomeroy is a town of just over 500 people situated among the cornfields and wind turbines of Northwest Iowa. Like most small towns, there's a highway, a water tower and a bar. But it's no ordinary bar. It's Byron's Bar. And it comes to brilliant life every Sunday evening with live music.

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Byron Stuart: It has been a bar since 1893. I was the first one to bring music in here. I knew as soon as I bought it that I wanted live music in here. I just love live music. There's just nothing better than live music.

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Byron started by asking a singer-songwriter friend to come in and play. Word got out about this quirky bar in Iowa and he was soon booking national acts.

Byron Stuart: Oh boy, there's a ton of great people that have played in here in 27 years. I had Commander Cody in here. I've had a David Olney from Nashville. I had Canned Heat in here. And it just happened to be my 50th birthday. And I had a huge crowd in here. By the end of the night everybody was bouncing up and down. I thought the floors were going to go in. Wow, I can smile just thinking about that one again. I'm living a dream I didn't know I had. Just my Sundays are just so much to look forward to every week.

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Byron Stuart: I grew up in this town. All I'd ever heard was Top 40 AM radio. I moved down to Iowa State to go to school there and I had to move back to Pomeroy to farm because my dad had a heart attack. I would go to this bar every night and they said, you're here every night, how would you like to work a couple of nights? And 27 years ago I bought this place. I've got a name out on the road I guess that this is a really cool place to play on a Sunday.

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Music lovers come from miles and miles away to see a show.

How many of ya'll have been to Byron's 10 times? Wow!

And the bands love to play here because Byron has one very important rule.

So, if you would like to pretend you're at a picnic and carry on a conversation, would you please go out front? Outside the door, down the street and when you're done then you can come back in.

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Byron Stuart: One thing that I want to stress is that my place is a listening room. You don't come here to get drunk and have that as background. This is, the music is the most important part.

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Jesse Dermody: In his fierce, subtle, extremely humorous way, Byron teaches people that live music is to be listened to.

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Jesse Dermody: There's like an atmosphere that glows because people are listening, they're rooting for you and it makes performing possible.

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(cheering and applause)

Byron Stuart: Well, one guy even told me, first time he played here and he says, this is already one of my favorite places to play. And I said, well why is that? And he goes, well you're nice. They're the ones with the talent. I just supply a place. I think it's much better to be nice.

(applause and cheering)

Right now, let's have a drawing!

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Here's an LP record decorated by Cinda back here.

(applause and cheering)

9-7-6

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Well, it's the first Thursday of the month. That means I have the privilege and honor of hosting the jam here down at legendary Byron's.

Byron Stuart: There's a gentleman from Barnum, Clint Riedel, that he's running my jam sessions.

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Byron Stuart: And it's just area musicians bring their guitar over and they'll start playing a song and everybody will jump in. It takes me, it just takes me. I never know where it's going to take me and it just takes me. And I just enjoy the hell out of it. I enjoy watching other people enjoy the hell out of it too.

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Byron Stuart: One female singer and I can't remember who she was, but she said, just walking into Byron's is like when the Wizard of Oz turns from black and white to color.

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Imagine this, you're sitting in the classroom and your teacher poses a question that can change your life forever. How many of you would raise your hand with no hesitation?

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That's what I thought. Well, this is precisely what happened to me as a high schooler and that one simple act of raising my hand changed the entire trajectory of my career.

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So, my mom always told me to always sit in the front of the class.

This is where it all began.

Dasia Taylor: I was taking chemistry during my junior year and my chemistry teacher had just put this offer out to the entire class of hey, if you would like to participate in the science fair just let me know and if I can get a show of hands that would be great so I can identify who to double back to. My mom also said, if you have a question or you want to do something you raise your hand regardless of whether you feel embarrassed or you think people are going to make fun of you. It doesn't matter. So, I literally raised my hand without hesitation and my life changed that day.

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I developed color changing stitches to detect infections using beet juice. And the whole purpose here is to create an equitable, medical solution for our most vulnerable communities most susceptible to surgical site infections. I spent Fridays after school in this lab working on my project for about six months straight. I was able to apply to one of the most prestigious science competitions known to man. And I ended up advancing all the way to the top 40. Now, for context, there were about 2,500 applicants that year and so it was a really big deal. That propelled me into a couple of local papers and then those local papers got picked up by other organizations and I was featured in the Smithsonian, People mag, USA Today Woman of the Year for Iowa, Ellen DeGeneres --

Dasia!

Ellen!

I mean, come on!

PBS Newshour, CBS Mission Unstoppable --

Her name is Dasia Taylor.

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Dasia Taylor: I still maintain like I'm a very humble person so it's actually pretty difficult for me to talk about this type of stuff. But I've had quite the journey to only be 20.

 

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Dasia Taylor: I was born on the west side of Chicago, raised on the south side. I was born into a single parent household, very, very young parent. My mom ended up moving and finding Iowa because of a relationship that she was in at the time. And we moved to a very small town, Hills, Iowa, right outside of Iowa City and that relationship ended up failing and we ended up staying here. There's not much going on in Hills, Iowa, not very many people around, certainly not very many people who looked like me. And so, I spent a lot of that time by myself, in a sense. I would find peace with my thoughts and would pursue any sort of hands-on activity. I have always embraced being a nerd in some sort of capacity. And I've just, I've always been a smart kid, I've always been curious and I've always wanted to make learning fun for myself. But now that I have the platform to do that for others, it blends very well.

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Dasia Taylor: The common denominator throughout everything that I do is this want to change the world somehow whether that is through my invention, like an actual medical device, whether it is through giving back and being a mentor to the next generation. I enter a lot of spaces that are not historically meant for me. That's just a fact. And, in fact, as I was in the beginning of my science fair journey, I did my very first science fair, which I wrote a 20-page paper to enter and I got there and there was no, no other black person in the room. I feel like that was a realization for me that if I do go far in this whole science thing that I would reach back and be that representation for other kids, period. I just want to nurture young scientists of color to let them know that hey, it's okay to try new things, you do belong here and just share my story for other adults to also reach out into communities of color to get other scientists involved in these STEM initiatives and all of these STEM competitions. So, you're absolutely right, equity work is top of my work.

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All right, so we're going to be doing elephant's toothpaste today. How many of you guys have done that?

How many of you are bakers? Who likes to bake in here?

Dasia Taylor: It's my goal to go to every single elementary school in the Iowa City Community School District because my fondest memories of school were when we had guests come in and talk about their job and do cool stuff. We would ditch the regularly scheduled programming and we would go out and have fun and learn at the same time. You'll see that's the basis for everything. Learning and fun.

There we go. It's rising. Cheer it on! Go! Go! Go! Go!

(kids cheering)

Dasia Taylor: It's really engaging for them and I hope that they carry that experience with them throughout the rest of their academic career whether it's just a funny memory or it inspires them to go into STEM or it inspires them to be a cool person and also come back to their school when they do whatever they do. I enjoy going back and giving back to the school district that played a big part in who I am today.

I wake up and I choose this life every single day. Like, I love med tech and I love this community service aspect that I get to do, these school visits, and I have to choose that consciously every day, even when it gets rough. And when it gets rough, I mean sometimes I fall out of love with med tech. It gets hard. There are very big words that I have no idea how to pronounce or say. There are very big, intimidating people in this world that I have to face. If you really want what you're going after, you're going to have to find a way to get through it, get over it and get back on track.

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This one is a book that I am featured in.

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Dasia Taylor: I do what I do for Dasia's like me that are in the younger generation and looking for inspiration from someone. I hold a variety of identities and so I am very proud of who I am and because I needed someone like that when I was growing up, I want to be that someone for all of the little kids growing up.

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Dasia Taylor: I want them to take away the same sentiment that I received from my mom and that is, you can do anything you put your mind to, period.

I want to embark on this journey together because truth be told, the world is waiting for your contribution, your vision, your invention. And in light of that, we can all become beacons of hope, sources of inspiration and catalysts for change.

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Welcome back. My name is Tabitha. So, we'll be going over the public access skills today here at Puppy Jake and we are going to go out in public today. For right now we're just kind of building relationships, having the dogs learn how to work with us.

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Lisa Russell: A service dog is a dog that can provide specific tasks. The type of dogs that we do here at Puppy Jake are very specific to PTSD and mobility. Any veteran who has been discharged from the military with some sort of disability is eligible for a Puppy Jake dog.

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Lisa Russell: We have right now 28 dogs that we are training for veterans. We have six that come in about every quarter. And we have about 40 veterans that are actively out there with their service dog.

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Lisa Russell: We're at the Indy Car races.

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Lisa Russell: So, one of the reasons that we bring dogs to the event is that it gives us an opportunity to train them in an environment and what we call public access, so that ultimately what we want our service dogs to be able to do is to go out with their veteran in an environment like this. Why we bring them out also is because everybody loves puppies and that gives us a chance to tell more people about what we're doing and how we do it and how we need help.

Kernel, between.

Zac Fox: So, my name is Zac Fox and my dog Kernel.

Lindsay Fox: With rescue, we fostered probably 75 dogs or so, but it can be really hard on you. So, we decided to take a break from rescue. That lasted about two weeks. It's really important to our family to give back to the community. So, we decided to start with the Puppy Jake Foundation. We started training dogs to be service dogs for our wounded warriors. And I am the wife to a veteran that has received a placed dog.

Zac Fox: My time in service is about I'd say nine or ten years. I learned a lot about, I don't know, I always say that PTSD is realizing that you'll never be that cool ever again in the eyes of your peers because when you do go overseas there is that feeling of you are in control. I would not wish combat on anyone. But it is definitely an awe-inspiring experience. But coming back from that and realizing what happened and how close things were, that's what really makes you think, maybe I need to choose a different line of work. And I didn't really realize that I had an issue until I met my wife and she was very understanding and was able to say hey, you might need to get some help. So, my wife and I decided to, we wanted to give back. We needed to do something with dogs. So, one day she said, how about the Puppy Jake Foundation? As a veteran, I could think of no better way to give back and I love dogs. I said, no puppies. And within two days we had a puppy.

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Zac Fox: And that puppy was Kernel. And --

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Lindsay Fox: So, currently with the Puppy Jake Foundation, the longest that you would really have a dog as a foster would be six to eight months. But when we got Kernel it was the very beginning of the pandemic and things were wild. So, of course we didn't want to be passing dogs from house to house. So, we ended up keeping Kernel for the full two and a half years before he was placed.

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Zac Fox: We were still going to give him up. We were still going to make sure that he went to the right veteran. And it just so happened that during the training process my wife, my friends, my therapist, the VA counselors are like, what can you attribute your success to? You're improving. You're getting better. You're coming off of medications. You're happier. The common denominator was Kernel. And so, I applied and he is amazing.

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Zac Fox: I mean, it changes your life, it really does.

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Lisa Russell: So, Puppy Jake is a non-profit and so we exist through volunteers and donations. And it takes two years and $25,000 and countless, countless hours of volunteers to train a dog.

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When I'm asked about what a dog does for a veteran, I often start with the story of my dad. And that is my dad was a Vietnam War veteran, he stepped on a land mine and spent about a year of his life in a hospital. But it was always fascinating because my mom was the one that fed the dogs, who walked the dogs, who loved the dogs and the family dogs loved my dad best. You could watch the dogs, now in hindsight, leaning against his leg or coming in and doing this deep pressure therapy, climbing and putting themselves over his legs with no training. And I think that that's the thing I've seen repeated is how much these veterans connect to their dogs. And the fact that we are able to help facilitate some type of comfort, some type of assistance, if it's just the mobility issue, it just fills your heart with gratitude that you can be a part of this.

Lindsay Fox: So, service dogs are a really great tool for helping someone with a disability, but they are not an end all be all. They are -- we always say that disability, specifically mental health disabilities, are like a wheel and all of the different support systems are various spokes on the wheel. So, service dogs can be one spoke, but they're not going to solve everybody's problems.

Zac Fox: A lot of the guys will struggle with they feel like they're taking.

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Zac Fox: But in essence they've given so much. If the things that you have given your country cause you to not be able to leave your house, whether you're being compensated by the VA or not with that, those are the people we're after. Those are the people who say hey, I know for a fact I can change your life. There's so many of these things that I can see, I can pinpoint in people, like this guy needs it now. I mean, I sob every single time because I'm like, you have no idea how much your life is going to change.

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Located in Woodbury County on the Little Sioux River, Correctionville is the town with the longest single name in Iowa. But does the name Correctionville mean what we think it means?

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Sonya Kostan: I think when most people hear that you're from Correctionville they assume there's a prison nearby and we often laugh at them and say no, no.

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Sonya Kostan: I'm Sonya Kostan, welcome to Correctionville.

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Sonya Kostan: Correctionville was named after the correction line that runs right here on 5th Street. You can see there's a street coming from the south there, it jogs about 100 feet and then it heads north again.

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The reason for the jog goes all the way back to the land ordinance of 1785. Thomas Jefferson proposed a grid system to divide the land into one square mile plots, each consisting of 640 acres.

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Because the Earth is round, lines running north and south will eventually converge. In order to keep the lines straight, a correction must be made every 24 miles.

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There are two correction lines in Iowa, one from Scott County to Harrison County and another from Dubuque to Sioux City.

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(If you look at a satellite map, you can see a number of places along those lines where the north south roads don't line up.

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Sonya Kostan: And we're standing on the correction line here in Correctionville.

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Sonya Kostan: It's a very old town. It was plotted in 1855. It had two railroads that came through, the Illinois Central and the Chicago Northwestern. That created a boom town in the 1880s. It's a historic town, which is always appeals to me. It has lots of old buildings. This is the G.A.R. Hall. It stands for the Grand Army of the Republic. It was a Union soldiers, veterans’ organization. But the building was originally built as a schoolhouse in 1872. The veterans have done a wonderful job of maintaining this building and they have also developed a wonderful park to honor our veterans.

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Kev Koskovich: You are presently standing in our archaeological room at the Correctionville Public Museum. Most of these came from the Oneida culture. They were a sedentary tribe of Native Americans who lived all along the Little Sioux River all the way down to Onawa. We estimate that at one time there were as many as 15,000 to 20,000 people living along here.

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Kev Koskovich: I love this town. It's so nice to be able to walk down the street and know everybody, have them know you.

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Funding for Iowa Life is provided by the Gilchrist Foundation, founded by Jocelyn Gilchrist, furthering the philanthropic interests of the Gilchrist family in wildlife and conservation, the arts and public broadcasting and disaster relief.

Mark and Kay De Cook Charitable Foundation, proud to support programs that highlight the stories about the people and places of Iowa.

The Strickler Family, in loving memory of Lois Strickler, to support programs that highlight the importance of Iowa's natural resources on Iowa PBS.

And by, the Lainie Grimm Fund for Inclusive Programming at the Iowa PBS Foundation.