- [Host] Coming up on "One Detroit," as we prepare to welcome the new year, we're taking a look at some of our favorite stories of 2025: from reports on Michigan's contributions to LGBTQ+ history and efforts to restore wild rice in our state, to our "Destination Detroit" and caregiving initiatives.

We'll share highlights of these stories and others that stood out for our "One Detroit" team.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Presenter] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Presenter] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(uplifting music) - [Host] The holiday season is upon us, and our team at "One Detroit" hopes you'll have a peaceful time with family and friends.

As we reflect on the stories we've produced in 2025, we decided to put together this special episode featuring clips from some of our favorite reports.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy our look back.

- Hi, I'm Zosette Guir of "One Detroit."

One of my favorite stories this year I actually got to work on with my colleagues, Bill Kubota and Chris Jordan.

We took a look at how Michigan has made its own mark on LGBTQ+ history.

You may already know about the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 in New York and the Pride March that happened a year later, but there were historic events happening in Michigan too, including the first Detroit Pride March down Woodward in 1972.

It was really cool getting to talk to some of the people behind that march and what it meant to them.

I also got to talk with Kathy Kozachenko, who made history as the nation's first openly gay political candidate to be elected to office, right here in Michigan.

Take a look.

- Christopher Street was a combination of that.

You know, we're here and we're queer, and we want the laws against us changed, 'cause there were still laws against gay men in particular.

- For most of us, you know, we didn't fit in.

So the march was a place where you could celebrate who you were.

- It felt good.

It gave purpose to my life.

I've always wanted to help people, and here I was helping my own community.

- [Host] Another speaker at the march, Jim Toy, an Ann Arbor resident active in Detroit.

- This is another great picture of Jim Toy.

This is what he looked like at the time.

- [Host] Toy, already an activist, was part of the Detroit Walk to Freedom March in 1963.

- He heard Martin Luther King give the first version of the "I Have a Dream" speech in Detroit.

- [Host] Toy was among those protesting the Vietnam War before Christopher Street.

- They took part in the anti-war movement rally that was held in April of 1970, and that's where Jim Toy became the first person to publicly come out as gay in Michigan.

- And a lot of people have asked him, "Did you plan to come out in that speech?"

And he said, "Well, I wasn't planning to speak and do that that day, but I just decided that's what I would do."

Like just a few minutes beforehand.

- I probably said, "My name is Jim Toy.

I'm 40 years old and I'm a gay man."

Well, I had not thought about the press, and the "Detroit Free Press" and the "Detroit News" were there, and they published articles, and so I was out.

- [Host] Ann Arbor led the nation observing Gay Pride Week in 1972.

- And then last but not least in terms of the gay liberation period, Kathy Kozachenko ran as an out lesbian in Ann Arbor in 1974.

- [Host] Kathy Kozachenko ran for city council and won.

- This is my favorite picture from back in that era.

This is me.

- [Host] The first out person to win public office in the nation.

- We knew that it was a first, but there's no way that I would've ever thought that I would be talking about it 50 years later.

When I talk about that time period, people have to remember that what I'm talking about is a very liberal, liberal isn't even the word, radical college campus.

So things were different where I was than they were in the rest of the country.

- [Host] At U of M, she was another sixties activist, fighting for better conditions for farm workers.

- I found an organization called the Human Rights Party that sort of articulated my passion for economic justice as well as social justice.

- [Host] Two Human Rights Party candidates had already won Ann Arbor City Council seats in 1972.

Jerry DeGrieck and Nancy Wechsler would be the first openly gay elected officials, who came out after they were elected.

They spearheaded the campaign for Gay Pride Week but were leaving office as Kozachenko started her city council run.

- Young man, we started talking.

He said, "I'm really religious," and I'm like, "You know, oh, okay."

And he says, "But God works in mysterious ways.

I'm gonna vote for you."

And I said, "I thank you."

- [Host] Kozachenko won by 109 votes in a ward well-populated by college students.

She served one term.

- Hi, my name is Mila Murray, and I'm the digital content generalist for "One Detroit" and "Great Lakes Now."

One of my favorite stories from this past year was the piece we did on indigenous wild rice, also known as Manoomin, which is Ojibwe for "good berry."

"One Detroit" partnered with "BridgeDetroit" and "Great Lakes Now" during Native American Heritage Month to shed light on this part of indigenous history in the Great Lakes region and the efforts to bring the abundance of Manoomin back.

I hope you enjoy it.

- It is the food that grows on the water.

Manoomin, it means "good berry" in English.

- I didn't know any of this, or I didn't have any of these feelings about rice until I got to come out and rice and realize like, oh my God, this is why I exist.

And this is what allowed my ancestors and my family to thrive and sustain themselves.

Just really special, and I want more people to understand that story.

- [Host] Eryn Hyma, she's from Grand Rapids, Michigan, on the water harvesting Manoomin.

Wild rice buds used to grow all over the state.

It's an uncommon sight these days.

- I think when Antoine de lamothe Cadillac came to Detroit, he described it as an earthly paradise.

The northern section of Belle Isle was more of a marsh, and there were coastal wetlands where all of these rivers exited Detroit.

And wetlands is truly the place where wild rice thrives and grows.

- [Host] Long ago, Manoomin grew along the Detroit River in Detroit.

As the city grew, it went away.

- The history of draining wetlands and clearing swamps is the history of displacing wild rice in a lot of ways.

- [Host] September 2025, Northeastern Michigan, a rice camp on the Au Sable River.

On this expedition, a couple dozen Anishinaabe people with indigenous roots from around the Great Lakes.

- Right?

Yeah.

- [Host] Here, the best way to harvest Manoomin is the traditional way.

- These are knockers; this is cedarwood.

And the reason we use cedarwood is 'cause it's lightweight, it floats, and it's soft.

You don't hurt the plants when you're knocking it.

The central part of any Anishinaabe life would've been his wiigwaasi-jiimaan, which means birch bark canoe.

And for us, that would've been like our car.

We lived on waterways; we used the waterways for transportation.

You couldn't hunt, fish, gather without your canoe.

So first and foremost, there's gonna be at least two of you in each canoe, all right?

There's gonna be a push-poler and there's gonna be a rice knocker.

You guys can switch throughout; you can hand off your equipment to each other.

This is how we get through the Manoomin without damaging it, because it gathers all of those up and they're strong together.

- Our lives and our practices helped wild rice: the way we harvest it and the way we would care for it.

And wild rice returned that favor, right?

So it was like a reciprocal relationship.

- What makes the second-generation Holocaust survivor segment so meaningful is watching the children of survivors step into the role of storytellers.

With so few survivors left, their families are now the ones keeping these memories grounded in real people and real loss.

Hearing David Labi, Gail Offen, and Jeffrey Cymerint speak about what their parents endured is powerful.

They describe the cruelty and hatred their families faced with such honesty and care that the history becomes impossible to distance yourself from.

Their stories are a reminder of just how devastating the Holocaust was, not just on a large scale, but in the daily personal ways it shattered lives.

Their willingness to keep talking and to keep remembering is what ensures these stories don't fade, and the lessons we learn from the Holocaust stay alive.

- My father was in a camp with my uncle called Gusen, and it was a rock quarry, and their job was to take rocks, big rocks, and break them into smaller rocks, but not just standing still.

This quarry has 186 steps, and I know this because I've been there and I counted the steps.

And their job was to take big heavy rocks and go run up and down these steps all day long, carrying these rocks.

And I mean run.

You know, hot weather, cold weather, you didn't have shoes, you were sick, you still had to run, because if you didn't run, the guards would shoot at you.

And as my father said, once in a while, they missed.

So this was one of the horrible camps my father and my uncle were in.

And of the 500 men that were in this camp, only five or six men survived.

And my father and my uncle were two of the lucky ones.

- My father was born in Tripoli, Libya, in 1938, and he was taken by the Nazis with his mother and his sister in 1943.

The thing is, he had a British passport from his father.

His father was put in prison by the fascist authorities and he would eventually catch typhus and die.

But because of the British passport, my father and his mother and his sister, they had value.

They had perceived value from the Nazis and they were taken across the sea with a small group of Jews.

It's a story not many people know about actually.

So he was only four years old when he went into the concentration camp.

So he had very little memory of the details of what had happened to him.

- My father was a Holocaust survivor, from Ostrowiec, then Starachowice, Poland.

Germany invaded Poland, started the war.

And after that they were moved out to the Starachowice Ghetto, which was an ammunition, it was a chemical and pharmaceutical plant.

And him and his brothers worked at the plant with my grandfather.

And what they did is they created opioids, but instead of testing 'em on animals, they tested 'em on the Jews in the camp.

They were there from '39 to '41.

'41, they closed down the camp and then he was taken by cattle car to Auschwitz.

My aunt at that point, Paula, had a 4-year-old baby boy.

They miraculously made it to Auschwitz and they were separated at that point, and my aunt was holding onto the baby.

They were trying to take the baby away from my aunt, and she was holding on the baby with all her might, and she didn't see the other car come and shoot 'em both.

After that, my grandmother, grandfather, and the youngest uncle that I had, Morris, were told to take a refreshing shower, which killed them.

- [Host] Cymerint explains telling his father's story was something that had to happen.

- I knew I had to do it.

Like I had to say it.

I had to tell people.

What I want other generations of my family to remember is the kind of person he was, not what he went through; what he went through and how he treated people with kindness and respect.

- Bill Kubota with "One Detroit" here.

What to do with heavy industry wants to move into a neighborhood?

In Detroit's Core City, it was a concrete crusher, but people there put a stop to it.

Filmmaker Nicole McDonald and I documented their efforts over a two-year span, and we showed "One Detroit" viewers how they did it.

- A hundred years ago in Detroit, industrialists were happily establishing plants and mills and refineries right in the middle of neighborhoods, and nobody thought anything about it.

Fortunately, a hundred years later, we know better.

- Thank you so much.

We wouldn't be able to do this without you.

I'll say Core, you say City, all right?

- [Host] This is Core City, not far from downtown.

- Core!

- City!

- [Host] This is just north of Corktown, that hot development area where Ford Corporation's Michigan Central Station now sits.

I've been following the Core City concrete crusher story since 2022.

The residents here stopped it from being built, but how did they do it?

Venessa Serna moved here from Toronto two years ago.

- Detroit has been trying to attract people to move here from other states, from other countries, to make it blossom in the way that we know that it can.

And then people like me move here and then this happens.

- [Host] The proposed crusher site, just hundreds of feet from her house.

There are piles of rubble waiting to be processed for an operation that had not even been approved.

When I first met Cerna and her neighbors, Crystal Ridgeway and Andy Chae, we took a walk over to the site.

- We've got multiple house, 1, 2, 3, 4.

There's one over there, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

There's nine houses right here, the closest one being 300 feet away from the concrete crusher.

- To the right when the door opens.

- I mean, honestly, the residents over there have been such great advocates on their own, have been so great at getting the city to sort of adopt their perspectives and see their issues that luckily there hasn't been a robust role for lawyers like we to play at, which is always great.

'Cause, you know, when we come in, it usually means something hasn't gone the way community residents want.

- The location is 4445 Lawton.

- [Host] There were a hundred letters sent against the concrete crusher.

Almost 1,800 signatures were collected in an online petition opposing the project.

- Can you state your name and address for the record?

And you have one minute.

- [Host] 27 people testified at the appeals hearing by Zoom or in person, and no one spoke in support.

- I know the board has received letters from restaurants that we work with, and I think it's undeniable that the restaurants in Detroit are also a big part of the economy here.

And so this would have an even wider reach than our neighborhood alone.

- I'm a long-time resident who has gone away and seen many different things in many different countries, and to understand that this is actually an option that a business person would propose is a travesty.

- I want to first of all congratulate you on your organizing efforts.

This is absolutely phenomenal.

- To be honest, I did visit the area, drove around, and I saw the number of houses that weren't there, but I did see the residents that were.

If it affects one person, that's enough, but I'm happy you all showed up because typically when people do not engage and they don't show up, it could go the other way.

Okay, any questions?

Anyone readies?

All in favor indicate of by saying aye.

- Aye.

- Any nays?

Ayes have it.

Thank you very much.

(congregation cheering) - Hi, I'm Chris Jordan, editor and producer for "One Detroit."

My favorite story from this past year was our haunted Detroit Halloween episode, which I had the privilege of producing about the notorious Eloise Asylum in Westland.

I and my colleagues, Andrea O'Reilly and Nate Turner, spent a long, very memorable day at Eloise, learning about the psychiatric hospital's long history, going behind the scenes of the haunt that operates there every Halloween, and trying to make contact with spirits with the resident paranormal investigator.

It was a genuinely spooky experience, which might also teach you some cool stuff about Detroit history.

Check it out.

Eloise Asylum, the notorious psychiatric hospital in Westland on Michigan Ave, which is often said to be among the state's most haunted places.

- Just like the living, they have characteristics about 'em that just make them individual.

Some of them tend to move very quickly; some of 'em tend to be a little grouchy.

- I've seen shadow figures.

I've had equipment physically moved and manipulated.

I've been touched, I've been grabbed, I've had things whisper in my ear.

- As you're going through the haunted house, not only do you have the actors scaring you, you have the animatronics giving you stuff, getting loud noises pushed at you, bright flashing lights, fog, and all that.

There's the extra activity that we can't even plan for or account for.

That will definitely happen throughout the haunt still.

- What is that extra activity like?

What kinds of actually ghostly or paranormal things have happened to you?

The staff, the people walking through.

- When I was first an actor, you know, just in my scene for the night, you hear the same soundtrack over and over, so you know what cries and what wails and things like that that you know, you hear throughout the night every night.

And then sometimes there's extra sounds that you're not sure of if that's part of the track or if that's something else that might be visiting us for the time being.

Other times we have actors that at the end of the night have scratches on them.

We've had actors show up with bite marks the next day.

- [Host] Have you experienced anything paranormal here yourself?

- Mm, random chills.

You?

- I've heard footsteps and seen nobody there.

And then I've heard a lot of the animatronics go off, but nobody's there.

- Down in the basement, a few motion sensor lights have gone off.

It's supposed to trigger when someone walks through the haunt, so we know when to jump out.

No one's showed up at all and sometimes they'll get stuck repeating.

- From what I've heard from most of our paranormal team, they actually generally enjoy the presence here and the fact that we're bringing energy back into the building and bringing people around and doing stuff and, you know, making it a lively place again.

- Hi, I'm Marty Fischhoff, the Director of Community Engagement.

If you've been watching "One Detroit" or "American Black Journal," you know about our ongoing caregiving initiative.

As part of our reporting, we talk to lawyers and doctors and other great professionals, but we also talk to the caregivers themselves and to their loved ones.

We are so grateful when they invite us into their home so that others can learn from their experiences.

Recently we visited the home of Judy Page and we spoke to her and her daughter Erica about the conversations they've had as they plan for Judy's future.

Why did you decide it was time to meet with the attorney and talk about your mom's future?

- Her older sister is a year, almost a year older.

Her and my cousins, her daughters, had sat down to talk about her final wishes probably about 10 years ago and had urged us to do the same.

And just, you know, it's not an easy subject to breach and so just had put it off for a while.

But I saw an email that invited the community to come and learn about estate planning and wills and trusts and the like.

And I signed up.

I figured it'd been time enough to put it off.

- Judy, what made you think it was the right time to do this?

- I wanted to leave my daughter the house, and it was trying to proceed with the workings because I had a stroke and I was not retaining everything that I wanted to retain.

- So you wanted to set down a plan for the family so they would know your wishes for the future?

- Correct.

- Erica set up a meeting with Antonia Harbin, an attorney at the Elder Law Center, to address sometimes difficult issues.

Antonia first asked to speak to Judy by herself.

Were you surprised when the attorney asked you to leave the room?

- You know, I'm a little protective of her, so I was like, "Why do I have to leave?"

You know, because we do everything together.

Antonia was very warm and welcoming, so I was able to trust her and know that my mom was in good hands.

And I wanted the attorney to understand that these are her wishes and not mine.

- Completing the paperwork, knowing that her wishes will be carried out when the time comes, brought peace to Judy and her daughter.

Now that all the paperwork is signed, sealed, and delivered, how does it make you feel knowing that that's all in place?

- It's comforting that it is all in place and I don't have to worry about it.

I at first was apprehensive and I'm glad I did it, and it was all over the way now, and I can relax.

- Hi, I'm Elisha Anderson, managing editor of "One Detroit."

This year our team launched an initiative that we call "Destination Detroit."

It's a collection of stories about how people in our community and their family members ended up here.

As part of this project, Detroit PBS set up cameras at the station at Michigan Central, which is the newly renovated train station in Detroit.

There we recorded interviews with people who have helped shape the region.

"One Detroit" has been sharing the stories on TV and our social media channels.

Here's one of them.

- I am the first generation here in United States, straight to Detroit.

I've been here since November 2015.

(gentle music) We came from somewhere else, but we have the responsibility and the homework to build this country as outsiders.

We can be more tolerant.

We can give people grace and we can understand others.

I am the first generation here in United States, straight to Detroit.

I've been here since November 2015.

I came as a refugee from Burundi.

At that time, my wife, she came before me, two years before me.

And we live in a shelter called Freedom House, not far from here.

It's a shelter for all the asylum seekers around the world, all refugees around the world.

They come and they seek asylum.

Came to Detroit.

The community was amazing.

I felt very, very accepted in the community.

As I say, it's like I was confused with the culture here, and then by asking questions, by having more friends, they did a great job to guide me.

I won't be here and be successful, to build the successful business, without the community that we have.

You know, and especially restaurants, right?

Restaurants is something that you have to trust people before you go to eat at their restaurants.

Our slogan, it's called "Detroit Ni Nyumbani"; is in Swahili.

So it means "Detroit is home."

It's a privilege for me to be in this situation because I can speak as a Detroiter, I can speak as a Burundian, so I can understand both sides.

(gentle music) - [Host] And you can see all of these stories in their entirety at onedetroitpbs.org.

That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thank you for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Ralph C. Wilson Junior Foundation, Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Presenter] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Nissan Foundation, Michigan Central, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (bright music)