Unexpected Iowans

For over 3 decades, thousands of Star Trek fans, also known as Trekkies.

They don't even feel like they're on Make their way to the small Iowa community.

They come to celebrate the birth of a fictional captain from a sci fi TV show.

That won't happen for another 200 years.

And it's all the brainchild of this man.

I'm Steve Miller, and I came up with the idea of Riverside being the future birthplace of Captain Kirk.

In the mid 1960s, Gene Roddenberry created the science fiction TV show Star Trek.

He assembled a diverse cast of characters where humanity set aside their differences to work toward scientific discovery.

The show captured imaginations of countless people across the world and sparked enthusiasm to create over a dozen movies, several spinoffs, fan clubs, conventions and even a small town festival.

Steve: came out in 1966, and I was a senior in high school.

Usually when you're a senior in high school on Friday night at 8:00, you're not home watching television with your family.

But I like the show.

It was a show that captured a lot of people of my generation of my age at that time.

Star Trek was there and pervasive Enterprise.

Log: Captain James Kirk, commanding.

I read the book The Making of Star Trek by Stephen Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry.

And Roddenberry, of course, created Star Trek.

There was a biography of Captain Kirk, and it says he appears to be about 34 years old and was born in a small town in the state of Iowa.

Well, being born in a small town, the state of Iowa, that, of course, was something I latched on to.

And so the evolution of that came when I was on the city council.

And the mayor, Robert Schneider, asked us to come to the next meeting and discuss how we would promote our community.

And so I had this low hanging fruit out there.

So I brought it up at the council meeting.

The rest of the council, there was only three other members there.

Then one guy said, you know, there's not much going on here now, this might help.

So he seconded the motion and one motion passed.

And the next day I called a friend, Tom Walsh, who was a writer for the C Rapids Gazette, and told him, This is what we've done at the council meeting the night before.

He ran a front page story on the Cedar Rapids Gazette the next day, and then it took off.

This final frontier starts in Riverside, Iowa.

There it is, a monument honoring the future birth of Captain James T Kirk.

Every television station in Iowa came.

Radio stations were calling.

I don't want to say it was a slow news time, but it was kind of a fun thing.

Claiming to be the future birthplace of Captain Kirk was the easy part.

Convincing the community and Hollywood lawyers proved to be a different challenge.

We hadn't really prepped the community for what was going on, and so the first response was a little out there.

I've said the most difficult thing I had to do when I first came up with this was go down to our senior citizens dining, our congregate meal program and explain to people in their seventies and eighties a fictional character in a television show they'd never paid any attention to is going to be born here in another 238 years.

Hard concept to get out there.

In the meantime, Paramount Studios is offering to sue me into poverty and the community because they think we're stealing something.

And so we exchanged certified letters and things back and forth.

I had told the city council that I'd take responsibility for any legal action, not realizing that there would be any.

So this then became incumbent on me to figure out.

Steve was facing an uphill battle and Riverside's claim was in a tenuous position.

But with the continued media attention, Steve's idea eventually reached the ears of Mr. Gene Roddenberry.

But once it started getting into the bigger newspapers, Gannett News called him and got a hold of him, and he thought it was a his quote was, It's a very enterprising idea.

And as far as I'm concerned, the first volunteer has it.

But I've been in discussion with their attorney.

And I said, you know, we're not ever going to do anything to harm Paramount or the Star Trek franchise.

We're giving you millions of dollars in free publicity.

And she goes, you know, you're right.

And so that was the end of it.

that summer of 1985 was the first trek fest, it's a small town celebration with the Star Trek theme and the only one like it on the planet.

This is an event, like I would say, no other convention that takes place, Star Trek wise, throughout the whole entire year.

The locals, this is for them, the Trekkies.

This is also for them.

If you're not a Trekkie, don't worry about it.

This is home for everybody.

We're just here to have a good time and celebrate.

Like I said, the future birthplace of Captain James Kirk.

For me, IDIC it infinite diversity and infinite combination that everybody just accepting of everybody.

And the fellowship over the years, you build with everybody.

I mean, we've known most of these guys for decades.

I mean, just the vastness of the story that you can tell because it's like it's all the space.

Yeah.

So there's infinite stories and possibilities to capture.

Also, like Captain Kirk being just the space cowboy that he is, makes it that much more fun.

For three decades, Riverside has embraced itself as the birthplace of this iconic fictional character.

But why?

Why, of all places, Iowa?

Steve has a theory.

I was trying to get a hold of Gene Roddenberry forever to ask him why he said Captain Kirk was born in Iowa, and after he was dead, I did get a hold of Marjelle.

Barrett is his wife, but she kind of alluded to the fact that when you said you were from Iowa in the sixties and the fifties in California, that meant something.

It meant that you had a good education and B, you knew how to work.

And that's part of what of what I think was in Gene's mind to us being Iowans.

Like I said, it's it's such a rare occasion for us to feel like we're somebody this this, this really, really helps.

Don't tell me you're from outer space.

No, I'm from Iowa.

I only work in outer space.

I never had a pet in my life.

And then all of a sudden, Oh, you like to eat them off the ground?

Here, have my hand.

You know how you like those.

And I was mesmerized by these birds.

We've had these birds since probably 1981.

See, when he gets his wings up, that means he's going to fly.

And it's no different than it was then.

I still can sit there and watch them for hours.

And then I was taking notes down while she would say, Are you coming in for supper?

Do you ever want to come to eat?

Yeah.

Producer Off Camera: How did the peacock farm come to be?

You know?

Yes.

He gave me a pig when we were dating, and we called up Charlie.

So when we got married, took a left, and he grew to about 800 pounds, and then he died.

We think he got struck by lightning.

And then he said, What do you want next?

And for some weird reason, I said, Peacocks.

And I'm glad you didn't say elephants.

Well, we didn't know anything about them.

And then we found that when our first Peacock junior died, the vet said, Oh, she had a bad heart.

And I said, she.

He said, Yeah.

And so she I thought we thought it was a boy.

He says, No, I hate to tell you, Junior is a girl.

And I said, I got to study this, but nobody would tell us anything.

So we learned firsthand.

We wrote books.

We wrote books, and I wrote down everything I could.

I took every still shot as the years went on, we got more and more birds.

And then all of a sudden I was substituting because we were out promoting our first Peacock book, which sold out our first thousand copies within the first month.

They're like any other barnyard poultry.

You feed them crack corn.

We have oats and wheat here.

We mix those up together and that's their diet.

And the only bird in the poultry world that does not lay an egg.

And is sexually mature until their second and third year, a male will not have his full tail feathers until his third year.

Now, if you were to have them, you have to make sure you have space for them.

So you have to have a cage that's at least eight foot tall.

I do admit that they are able to withstand the heat better than the cold, but they do well and 25 below zero temperatures which we've experienced over the 37 years.

Like other farmers, Dennis and Deborah Fett feed and water their livestock each morning among the goose and gennies are their pride and joy.

The birds are peacock farmers and this is where it all started.

The first TV we ever were on at the minute the book came out.

It actually started with Goosey Yes.

David Letterman.

Like my left foot, don't you?

In the mall in Council Bluffs.

I went there and they had a TV thing.

I said, Hey, I got a goose that unties Shoes.

David Letterman was going to put us on the show, but he said he'd only pay us $50 and we'd have to get our way to New York.

And I said, Well, we're kind of poor at this time.

And so we didn't go.

And then once we got to this place, peacocks are not as mysterious as everybody is led to.

The big thing happened was Iowa Public TV.

They came back in 1988, the film US four take one series.

So we lost our favorite pet.

And then I was about ready to give it up and I think Deb encouraged me and from then on in, people saw us all over the state and then we were invited to visit Davenport, be on TV and we were invited to Kansas City and we did all the TV stations in Des Moines.

We did stuff.

We we promoted our books at the Iowa State Fair.

The wacky world of Peafowl.

That's what we're going to talk about today.

I went over to the poultry barn this morning at Debra.

That's some place you've been a number of times, right?

Oh, yeah, we used to.

And her all the time.

We got tired of winning, so we quit entering.

Did that both for today's show?

Yeah.

Good morning.

I'm Eric.

Hi, I'm Deborah.

Hi, I'm Dennis Fett We're here on our pick up farm in Mindanao, Iowa.

Good Morning, America.

From the Minden Iowa Peacock Farm, we know what a difference today makes.

It was crazy.

And it was just like constant.

People found us and I promoted, but I could never get that.

It just.

It just no.

Magazines, radio.

Oh, yeah, I, I think we we have a total of perhaps 4 hours of air time of all our peacock stories.

I got a DVD of it.

I was a music teacher.

I started off as a band teacher in South Dakota, then came to Iowa, how I met her and we dated for three years and got married.

Now I'm a good clarinet player.

I I've taught for many years, but I'm not a songwriter.

About 1989, we were at the Iowa State Fair and we saw this gospel group on the Bill Riley stage, and I was so inspired by them, and I went home that night after the fair, and I woke up in the middle of night and heard a song in my head, went down, got my cassette recorder, I hummed it into the recorder and the next morning I woke up, I said, I think I had a dream.

I wrote a peacock song and I said, Can you write words to this song?

She says, Yeah.

And the next day she had words.

And it is the wacky Peacock song, Oh.

One Heart.

And Sunny.

Day.

Our Pet Pig Charlie passed.

Away.

We flew out from Omaha, Nebraska, to the water to the airport with four peacocks.

We did a seven minute segment where we talked about peacocks.

We walked around the cage and we sang our peacock song.

And from then on, then it was crazy.

Oh, yes, we got peacocks.

Lots and lots of peacocks.

We got.

Black shoulder.

White and India blue.

Then I got invited to be on the Animal Planet.

You lie like a dog where I was the peacock expert and the guy next to me wasn't.

But you're on The Tonight Show.

Well, we did The Tonight From Minden Iowa.

Please welcome Dennis Fett.

Dennis, Come on.

I got a call to say, Can you play Jingle Bells on your clarinet and 28 seconds and take it apart where I have it?

Just below the clarinet.

I said, Yeah.

And they flew me up and I did it.

And I talked about peacocks.

They cut it out.

But that's okay.

Here we are.

I'm a YouTube guy now, and I love making videos.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

You just got your clipboard.

Yeah.

You know, we're gonna say no.

Are you okay?

I'll.

I'll be right back.

Mrs. Peacock.

Do you have some questions that our viewers sent from our channel?

Yes, I do.

And the first question is.

When it started off, I didn't know anything about it.

We were videotaping.

I had old fashioned camcorder, VHS, and I was running around.

I went from still pictures, which I love with I books to video.

Maybe I need to go pro you this morning in a screen so I could get a good go for all of you.

I kept making videos and I learned about YouTube.

Didn't know what it was, and I put videos up and had a peacock video that's now almost 2 million views.

Peacock Yellen.

And it's probably my worst video that I think I've ever taken.

But the best part about it is, is Debbie's in the beginning of it, right?

trying to do a standup for one of our DVDs we made and the peacock went to let her talk and hear her speak.

And I put that in.

Apparently she always claims it's because of her.

And I agree.

Welcome to Mr. Peacock and friends.

I wonder what Mr. Peacock will be doing today.

We we average about 29 to 30000 views a month.

I really don't care.

I just make videos.

And like I said, I'm an educator of people find them an interest.

Fine.

If not, who cares?

[clarinet music] I grew up in a concrete jungle, Paterson, New Jersey, and I never thought in my dreams that I'd even have five feet of grass, let alone four acres, is what we have here.

It's peaceful, but it's fun to watch animals.

Animals are so much fun.

They all have personalities.

Its like a connection with the birds and wildlife and animals.

The peacocks never paid the bill.

After the book sales dwindled, that was it.

By looking inside the egg during the incubation process, you can see what's really happening or not have the ball.

That's that's moving.

I'm a teacher.

I want to teach people about peacocks.

I'm just happy to be retired, to be here on the farm and hear the peacocks yelling in the background and enjoying life.

Very interesting.

Pig to a peacock to.

Who.

Never think to songs.

I mean, it's endless.

It takes a really special and unique dog to do this job, and I think it's something that's very unique for Drake University to have a live mascot.

We give this little love that.

Oh my God.

Because we are the Bulldogs, we can have an actual live animal to represent the university.

All right, all right.

Ready?

Three.

Two.

One.

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

He is kind of the living embodiment of what it means to be a Drake bulldog.

That he is Des Moines hometown dog.

Brings back.

Griff is Drake University's beloved live mascot.

His story begins with John Griffith, the athletic director who founded the Drake Relays.

He often brought his Bulldogs to the stadium, prompting the Des Moines Register to rename the athletes from the Drakes.

Yes, that's right, they used to be male ducks to the Bulldogs in 1908.

Fast forward to 2009, when a dog named porterhouse won the beautiful Bulldog contest.

He became the unofficial mascot, bringing his charm to campus events through 2013.

In 2015, Drake University launched their official Live Mascot program with the help of Aaron Bell, Porter House's owner.

That's when Griff arrived on the scene.

Now, Griff two carries on this legacy, connecting the past to the present and bringing the Drake community together in the cutest way possible.

I just adore dogs.

Every dog.

I love big dogs.

I've always wanted a bulldog.

We've had about 35 different foster dogs through the house, and then we've owned a number of them as well.

He is very much a part of our family.

He lives with me.

He lives with my family.

He is 100%.

A huge, important piece of this family.

Here we go.

Yeah.

About my kids.

Adore him.

We all love him very much.

We're on the move a lot.

He gets best about once a week.

He always has to be clean and and looking very fresh.

We get it all clean.

He represents the university and everything he does.

We're involved in everything that happens on campus.

No two days are the same.

Who stay.

We do a lot of photo shoots.

Video shoots?

It's just grown so much that finally I was able to get an intern for the live mascot program, which has been amazing.

It's just really special to see how much one dog can do for a university, and how special Drake is, because we're one of the few schools that has a live mascot, both in the country and especially in Iowa.

Show off these muscles.

Come here.

Come here.

You look good in that.

Come here.

Come here.

All the way.

Put your butt.

Down.

Put your butt.

Down!

Go!

Put your butt down!

There you go.

You stay.

I think a lot of people would be surprised at how much effort and hard work goes into this.

Good job.

That's so good, bud.

Come on.

You're all done.

You know, there's a lot of pressure to be a good representative of Drake.

It's a it's a huge responsibility to be the voice of Drake.

He's with me most hours of the day.

Well have visitors on campus that we have to greet.

The night.

We have, admissions visits.

We do a lot of recruiting for the university.

So organizations that put things on on campus, which is nonstop.

They often want Griff there to interact with people that come.

Hi.

Hi.

Oh.

Every single day that I have him on campus, which is just about every day I hear over and over again.

Oh, this made my day so much better.

Or.

Or I needed this today.

Or for coming.

I need good luck on my test.

We built a website to track Griff around campus.

He really does mean a lot to these students and to everybody in the Drake community.

And.

I definitely think that a lot of students view Griff as their dog.

A lot of them say they miss their dogs at home, just like I do, and so they have the chance to pet Griff and see their dog here on campus.

But it's really rewarding to see how happy that Griff is able to make everyone.

You're totally by me.

I love I hope he's asleep.

He's sleeping.

This is me in class.

Yeah.

Morning.

We do a lot in the community.

Oh, he's going to get himself out, apparently.

Griff, give us back.

Pet Food Drive is an annual initiative that was started with Griff one the OG.

Lots of boxes.

Come on.

We gotta take care of you.

That first year and we got maybe, maybe 100 pounds of food.

And since then, we have just gone big and we've had over 130,000 pounds of pet food donated for pets in need in the Des Moines community.

All of the food that's collected is donated to the Pet Project Midwest, and they are a local pet food pantry.

And their mission is to keep loved pets in their homes where they are loved, rather than surrendered to shelters due to an inability to feed them.

It makes a huge difference to pets in this community and keeps dogs out of shelters.

Hi, buddy.

You are so Cute!

We love the Grand Blue Mile.

It is such a fun community event.

Inaudible It's a chance for us to be around the Des Moines community, people that are affiliated with Drake, but also people that have no connection to Drake other than the fact that they showed up for the Grand Blue Mile.

It's a great opportunity for us to interact with people from all over the community.

He is a huge source of pride for Drake University.

She does so much work for Drake, so much behind the scenes that a lot of people don't even realize.

Congratulations.

I'll see you soon.

She's running all his social media pages.

She's making sure that he's cared for and making sure that he has breaks and making sure that he's healthy and safe.

And that's a big undertaking for one person to do with one dog that serves a university of 3000 people plus the community.

Having a unifying figure is more important now than ever.

We're living in very divided times politically, and there's just a lot of negativity.

But there is nothing negative about Griff.

inaudible.

I do believe deep in my core that this program is making a difference.

[Hoda Kotb] After 12 years at NBC News, this man down here at the end of the couch, Harry Smith, is moving on.

Ah, Harry.

What's next, Harry?

[Harry Smith] So, I am going back to my alma mater, Central College in Pella, Iowa and I'm going to teach a course this fall.

Can I sign up?

[Harry Smith] On curiosity.

Oh!

♪♪ For nearly 40 years, journalist Harry Smith was a mainstay on American network television telling stories across the world for CBS and NBC.

But before that, he was a theatre and communications major at Central College.

♪♪ [Nebbe] What brought you to Central College?

Because you grew up in Illinois.

And you have said that you were not particularly an engaged student in high school.

[Harry Smith] I'm the youngest of eight children, but I was that kid who sat in the front of the classroom like this falling asleep and found questions on tests ambiguous and I didn't do homework much.

I wanted to be a cross country truck driver.

That was what I thought, because I knew I wanted to see America.

Senior year comes along, I had a very good senior year playing football and they said, you need to get straight A's, so I got straight A's and did whatever I needed to do to get into college.

[Nebbe] So you could keep playing football.

[Harry Smith] Yeah, yeah.

[Nebbe] You talk about how you were basically just a Roman candle waiting to be lit.

What happened when you got to college that set you on fire?

[Harry Smith] Professors and coaches.

I got the idea when I was in college that I could write a little bit.

I couldn't, but I had the idea that I could.

And my senior year I lived off campus in a really bad trailer in a really nasty part of Pella.

I know, it's kind of, that's an oxymoron.

But it was just out there somewhere.

And there was a brand new English professor who lived next door and for reasons I don't understand to this day, I would write all this stuff on a legal pad and say, would you look this over?

And he said, sure.

And I would get it back a couple of days later and it was filled with red ink, just seas of red ink.

And that was really instructional.

And I just kept thinking, I have some, I bet I can do this.

♪♪ [Nebbe] After college, Harry moved to Denver where he worked for more than a decade in local news before joining CBS and later NBC News as a reporter and anchor.

Throughout those jobs, Harry recognized the importance of being curious and made it his mission to teach others to keep their eyes open to the world around them.

[Harry Smith] So, at NBC we had a writing class that met a couple of times a year.

There was a waiting list to get in.

And one day, if I were in town, they would bring me in for one day and I'd make a list and above the things it said, unless you're curious, you're in the wrong business.

You need to be insatiable in that regard.

Over the last 20 years, as we've seen at all in secondary education this notion, it's more and more narrow.

I want to study this thing so I can get this job so I can do blank so I can make this money.

It's very transactional now.

Back in the day, we came and sort of discovered stuff.

Half of the kids who go to college now will never work in the field they studied.

Half.

So, you better -- in the immortal words of Ron Burgundy in the documentary Anchorman, he said what, you better have your head on a swivel.

So, going out into the world you had better have that.

So, the title of this class is Commencement.

And the whole idea, it's the beginning, it's not the end.

So, it's just these are the things I think you need in your toolkit when you walk out the door and first among them is curiosity because you've got to be aware of the world if you're going to succeed at all.

Resiliency, listening skills, curiosity.

That is the stuff, there are building blocks of that, that you can use to walk out the door with that will not only make you a better employee, will make you a more interesting person, but in order to be interesting, you need to be interested.

♪♪ [Harry Smith] Hands of people who read the David books.

Everybody read the David books.

Awesome.

I love that.

[Harry Smith] There's a line in the book where he talks about people can be married forever and not actually see or know each other.

We're going to do something really, really, really, really radical.

So, when I was here, I took an acting class and in the acting class we used to do sensitivity exercises.

So, in the sensitivity exercises we did this, we held hands and we looked each other in the eye.

So, this is going to happen in this classroom now.

♪♪ [Harry Smith] Actually look.

Actually look.

There's things happening here.

That's great.

Everybody sit down.

♪♪ [Harry Smith] What was it like?

I'm really curious.

No joke.

I felt like it opened you up a lot more.

I've had gauge in other classes but we've never held hands and looked each other in the eye before.

(laughter) [Nebbe] You have this really amazing opportunity to connect with young people and tell them all the things you really, really want them to know.

[Harry Smith] Right.

My life has been a gift, let's be honest about it.

I am unbelievably grateful for all of the opportunities I've had.

I have been so ridiculously fortunate.

I am in the classroom, students already exceeding expectations, exceeding expectations.

Last Thursday, I almost cried five times in the classroom, seriously, because I had given this kind of ridiculously hard, almost throw away assignment.

And it was find a stanza from a Walt Whitman poem, bring it to class, read it out loud and then tell everyone in the class why and how you connect with it.

And then on and on and on through the classroom and I could barely contain my emotions.

And when the class was over I said, my heart feels like it's this big.

And I shook all their hands when they walked out the door.

Who -- I get to come back here and do that.

♪♪ [Harry Smith] Let's do a cold brew, okay?

Okay.

♪♪ [Harry Smith] One of the great things about coming here is no 20-year-old in America has ever watched one minute of network news.

So, I can come here and I'm like this, I'm like a space alien almost.

Howdy.

[Harry Smith] And when I explain to the class why I'm here and then I ask them to explain why they were in the class and they all said, because our parents told us if I were teaching a class, they'd have to take it.

[Harry Smith] I'm big with grandmas.

No, it's a thing.

You want to do it?

Yes.

[Harry Smith] Okay.

[Nebbe] You don't live in Pella now.

But you've been back to teach this course.

You've been spending a lot of time.

[Harry Smith] I live above a garage.

(laughter) [Nebbe] For eight weeks.

[Harry Smith] Probably going to be nine or ten all together.

[Nebbe] So, what do you enjoy about being here now, being a part of the community in a way that is different from flying in and out?

[Harry Smith] When I came here first as a student in 1969, I felt like I was home.

That home is where your heart is sort of thing.

This has never not been home for me in some way.

Whenever I come back here there's a whole community of people who's here to say we love you, we're glad you're back.

So yeah, I'm still living that.

I'm still very much living that sense of this is home to me.