One moment can teach many lessons. For me, such a moment took place on a Friday morning in late May, when an email from a source made two things very clear.
First, you never know where a good story can come from. Second, the Ideastream Public Media motto, "we take you there," does not apply only to the 22 counties in our regional coverage area. Locally relevant stories can take place anywhere in the world.
The email was from a source at Global Cleveland whom I worked with on my coverage of the Parma-based Ukrainian American community and efforts to provide medical supplies and equipment to residents of Ukraine and prevent infectious disease outbreaks in that war-torn country. That source alerted me to a friend of hers with ties to Northeast Ohio who was working on an entirely different project on the other side of the globe.
This led to my story about Shaker Heights native Steve Kleiman's work on an expedition in Papua New Guinea to discover the wreck of a famous World War II fight plane. The plane, a P-38J Lightning, had been flown by Maj. Richard Bong, America's top aerial ace. The aircraft was named who "Marge" after Bong's girlfriend and, later, wife and it was shot down while being flown by another pilot, who ejected and escaped.
Two stories, separated by nearly 8,000 miles and 80 years, but both with ties to our local community. Go figure.
And so, just like that, I found myself on a call at 7 a.m. that Saturday morning, or 9 p.m. in Papua New Guinea, with Kleiman and the rest of the expedition team at Pacific Wrecks, the nonprofit responsible for the search. Kleiman serves as project manager for Pacific Wrecks, whose mission is to locate and document those missing in action from World War II by discovering and documenting the wrecks of their aircraft.
He was joined on the call by Pacific Wrecks' founder and director Justin Taylan, photographer, Joel Carillet, and local guide Norman Nayak.
As the crew was still deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, we had to connect by satellite phone, which would freeze up periodically and without notice. This required me to mark where the conversation stopped and tell the team when the signal was up again where we left off, so that the interview could continue.
Over the next two hours, the crew members told their story, including how Kleiman's upbringing in Shaker Heights inspired him to do these kinds of expeditions across the world. According to Kleiman, it was his parents who inspired his current work.
"Instead of going to Florida like other people, my parents took us around to Civil War battlefields on our vacations, and they instilled in myself and my two sisters a sense of history," he said. "Something stuck from Antietam and Gettysburg."
Fittingly, as it was just after Memorial Day, the team also spoke about what inspired them to do this work in the first place; providing closure to the families of these lost American soldiers.
Kleiman said, "The part that touches my heart is the notion of closure for these families where their grandfathers went off. Just no one knows what happened to them. There's 72,000 missing in action from World War II — 72,000 of them didn't come home. For me to be part of bringing closure to those families is just always such an honor."
In the case of "Marge," it wasn't closure for a family, but the finding of an aircraft that was a piece of WWII history. Tragically, Bong, the flying ace, later died while testing another military aircraft in California after his service overseas.
Over the next days and weeks, Kleiman would send me pictures and video documenting the search and discovery of the craft, which was found on a jungle-covered hillside in Papua New Guinea’s Madang Province. These assets allowed me to tell the fullest possible story, including a celebration of the discovery by local villagers and a "sister city" agreement between Madang Province and Poplar, Wisconsin where Bong was born.
Such sound, pictures and video are essential for me and other reporters at Ideastream because "we take you there" also means our goal is to take you to where the story takes place, making it feel as if you are there yourself.
Doing so requires more than the written word. That is why when I or any of my colleagues work on a story, we are always thinking about sound and other ways to engage the senses. Even if we aren't there in person, we work with contacts who are on the ground to get the sights and sounds to really bring you into the story.
Since that story was produced, Kleiman has left Papua New Guinea and is on his way to a former airbase in Laos used by the CIA during the Vietnam War. Kleiman will be meeting there with local groups about threats from unexploded ordinance remaining from wars in that country and Cambodia.
I hope to check in with him again for another fascinating story taking place far away from his hometown in Shaker Heights.
"The Cut" is featured in Ideastream Public Media's weekly newsletter, The Frequency Week in Review. To get The Frequency Week in Review, The Daily Frequency or any of our newsletters, sign up on Ideastream's newsletter subscription page.
