I'm done closing in the morning WRJN.
Look what I brought for you, Mayor.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Look what I brought for you out of my own stats.
Thank you.
Mayor Corey Mason that received mayors here is on to you to talk about a variety of topics
this morning.
I'll let him get a drink of liquid and then we're into it.
All right.
You feel all refreshed now, right?
I do.
I do.
That's the water.
I was told by John Dickard that that's the best water tap water in received.
It goes, that's the best water.
Yeah.
If I make alcoholcresselter, I make it with that.
No, absolutely.
I mean, we just, I don't know how that was talking to a woman afterwards who moved here
after living in Caledonia, most of her life and she actually said, the water here just
tastes great.
It's just amazing.
It doesn't taste like anything.
I'm like, well, it's not really supposed to, but yeah, you know, my wife gets the water
from petrifying springs.
Yeah, yeah.
She is an aqua for work.
To me, that sludge, but she likes it.
It's just, I get so used to it that I, you know, if I could drink tap water, if I put
like an aquacelter in this, I'm going to go with flavor, right?
But other than that, I just, I just like that kind of water.
And that's what I'm giving you today.
I appreciate it.
I just talk about Memorial Day, just happened the other day.
Yeah.
I go down to Union Grove where my father-in-law is buried.
And they always have a service down there for the American Legion.
It puts on a service.
Yeah.
This is the first time in 18 years.
We missed it.
No.
It was so fast that they don't march anymore.
They take a car from the high school east to March, but nobody marches anymore.
And they made it down there.
Look at East split.
Did a quick dosido and left.
And so we missed it.
I'm there in the, some of the people were there and I said, did we miss it?
Yeah.
It's not supposed to start for another 15 minutes.
Well, they started early.
So I missed mine.
I would have your schedule.
Yeah.
The West you're seeing Memorial Day for it was great.
I mean, they do a great job with every year.
You know, it's a lot of military folks, so it's supposed to start at 10 and it started
at exactly 10 o'clock, right on the nose.
And you know, it's a great parade.
It starts at West Boulevard and Washington Avenue and you walk down to Grace and Cemetery
and it ends there.
And then in our later, they start this Memorial Day service in the cemetery by the War Memorial.
And it's really a pretty meaningful service with the Bell City brass works there with
the Killmore Fine Arts choir there with speeches that were given and remembrances that were
given.
It took this year's opportunity to talk a little bit about Sergeant Bodie, who was this
World War II service member who'd gone down in 1944, but they just found his remains last
year.
I think I remember hearing that.
Yeah.
And they brought him back to Racine and he was buried at Grace and Cemetery with his
family.
But 19 years old, he was a tail gunner in a, you know, went down in an air fight on his
way back in a run over Germany.
And you know, five of his crew members survived as POWs, three of them perished, but with
all these forensics that they do now, they found the crash site and found Sergeant Bodie
and two of his crewmates and they were laid to rest last year.
And where was it?
Where did they find him?
In Germany, with a multi-consonant name that I can't remember how to pronounce right
now.
But it was, it was an amazing story.
And, you know, probably the last service member of World War II that we will bring home
to later rest.
My dad was a tail gunner for four years during the entire war.
He came in right after Pearl Harbor, seventeen, he was a tail gunner till the end of, till
Japan surrendered.
Wow.
And made of the life.
His whole crew made of the life.
Yeah.
And you know, we tell the story of Sergeant Bodie, which is an incredible story for him
to come back.
But you realize him a moral day.
You know, there's countless numbers of stories like that, right?
Who gave their lives in defense of this country.
And so it was a, it was a good way to remember a specific story, but also put it into the
larger context of the people who died fighting for our country decades and decades.
I'm so mad.
He didn't even crave over there.
Yeah, he's home.
You're the, I didn't get to use this on Memorial Day, but I saved it.
The difference between Armed Forces Day, Veterans Day and Memorial Day, Armed Forces
Day celebrates those or remembers those who are still in uniform today, Veterans Day
for those who hung up their uniforms and Memorial Day for those who never made it out.
Of their uniform.
Yeah.
And those are the three days because people forget Veterans Day and Memorial Day are different
days.
And sometimes they confuse the two.
Yeah.
Again, that doesn't think wrong.
It's thinking somebody who served any day, but a Memorial Day were specifically there
to remember those who gave, as they say, the last full measure of devotion to giving
your life like that.
Yeah.
Even, we can't forget that people in Afghanistan and Iraq gave their lives as well.
We don't think, we always think of World War II, Vietnam War, the Korean War.
We think of those, but people lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and they're still losing their lives.
All right.
Let's talk about the main, totally different, how the Main Street cop house.
Yeah.
So, we see a C.O.P. office, community or a policing office that's open on Main Street.
Just pretty close to Monument Square there on the west side of Main Street there, but we
have officers that are stationed there and it's meant to be a community resource just
to help solve problems on Main Street and make it a little bit safer for everybody.
And so, it's been well received by the public and retailers alike, so we're excited to have
the presence down there.
It was, I should say, it was paid for in large part with a grant from Fist Johnson and
SC Johnson and the Racine Community Foundation who both have stepped up in a big way to fund
it for three years.
So, where was it exactly?
It's, so you know where the Racine Art Museum is?
It's right across the street from there on the west side.
Literally on Monument Square.
Right on Main Street Square, but just one door down.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, I hope I never have to go in there and get information.
Well, actually, you should go in there.
If you go in there, say hello, say you want to check it out and glad they're there.
It's nice to have a film.
The mayor sent me in for an inspection.
Sure.
You know, not an inspection.
But I'm not trying to say hello.
I mean, they want to be a welcome to the place.
And, you know, the way community oriented policing works is, you know, you want people interacting
with the police.
Not when there's only a crisis or something bad's happening, but, you know, other times
too.
It helps you build relationships with the community and build trust within the police
department and community members.
So we're excited.
They're there and hope that it makes things a little bit better on Main Street and the
downtown area.
That's a job I would never want in a million years being a police officer.
It's a hard job.
You got to deal with all kinds of people from, you know, nice people to nuts.
Yeah.
I watch all those YouTube videos.
I don't know how some of these police officers have the patience to deal with these nuts.
Yeah.
I mean, they can violate their rights, but the person they're talking to can violate
the policeman's rights.
Well, it's, I mean, there's many hard things about being a police officer, but generally
speaking, you're not often interacting with people in their best moments, right?
And there's usually something bad has happened or they're behaving really badly and that
takes a lot of effort and a lot of patience and a lot of commitment to public service
to be able to do that.
I said, I don't know how Walmart and Target are turning profits.
Everybody stealing from those stores are these YouTube videos.
Every day, there's another person stealing out of Walmart.
I don't know how they, but they don't get away with it.
Liza and don't get away with it.
My wife worked for the police department, Caledonia, and I heard stories of some really
horrible people coming through that small town, well, dealing with those nuts.
Yeah.
I know.
So here's something that surprised me.
The common council meetings are relocating to the Racine Public Library on the second floor.
That's right.
So we are having the elevator repaired in City Hall and there's only one elevator in
City Hall, which means that for two months, June and July, that City Hall will not be
ADA compliant.
The Americans with Disabilities Act.
So in other words, we have to have our meetings in a space where all members of the public,
including somebody who might be in a wheelchair or difficulty with chairs can attend.
So we are relocating our meetings for June and July in the library.
So it's that second floor there, the community room on the east side of the building.
You can either enter on Lake Street or come in around the back and take the elevator
up, but it is an ADA accessible place.
And frankly, you might give that opportunity for not just members of the council, but
members of the public who frequently come to council meetings to get reacquainted with
the library.
Man, one of my best friends in radio, he's the guy who brought me from Atlanta to Milwaukee.
He's been in the wheelchair almost all his life.
And after I came here and he was kind of semi-retired, I brought him here to do some
voice work for us.
Now we built a ramp in the rear of the building, nice ramp for wheelchairs, and it's got a
slow incline.
So it's not, you know, so I say, I'm looking waiting for him back there.
And he's up in front of the building, parked in front of the steps.
I said, what are you doing here?
He said, I'm looking like the poster child for the American Disabilities Act.
I said, knock it off.
You know, there's a ramp in the back.
Don't have to show off.
Just go in the back.
There's a ramp.
I slept him in that chair all over America, trying to do business meetings and everything.
And when I spoke to his funeral, I said, I've got stories about that chair that you wouldn't
believe in trying to get into buildings when we're on the West Coast.
And in us, we went to our headquarters in the south, we went all over Chicago.
And you can't believe how difficult it is sometimes for people in wheelchairs to get
around because there aren't ramps ever.
Now it's better.
It is better.
I mean, it's not perfect, but it's better.
I mean, it's a, if you are blessed to not have to think about your ability every day,
you think, well, what's the big deal?
You just go up a flight of stairs.
But if you don't have the ability to do that, you know, and we don't make accommodations
for those people, it just makes their world just a little bit smaller every time you make
it hard for people to access things.
So we want people to be able to access those city council meetings.
And so we'll be doing it in a library this summer.
All summer.
Yeah.
Well, so here's what I will say about construction projects.
It's supposed to be done in two months.
But it is not unusual for construction projects for whatever reason to go long.
And that's been particularly, and I don't want to put that on the country to themselves.
Sometimes it's sort of with supply chain issues.
If there's one part that's supposed to be there and suddenly they're like, sorry, it's
going to be, you know, a week later before that widget arrives that can delay the whole
project.
We hope that doesn't happen.
But it may be the summer that we're, but for June and July, for certain, we will
be at the library doing our city council meetings.
We're talking.
There was honor.
We're seeing Mayor Corey Mason.
And when we come back from the break, the mayor with the wrecking ball.
I'll tell you that story coming up in just a moment.
It's honor.
Receiving Mayor Corey Mason is here.
We're going to talk about the YMCA.
It's kind of sad seeing a building come down.
I don't care what building it is because you think about all the people that went through
that building.
On the memories.
But you had, did you actually use the wrecking ball?
Do you think it was a wrecking ball?
It wasn't a wrecking ball, but I got to use the crane that took down the first wave
of it.
I mean, again, it was a bittersweet thing to see the YMCA come down there.
I mean, I learned how to swim there.
I taught my kids how to swim there.
I exercise.
Yeah, I'm in the exercise.
There are a lot of people who have a lot of memories of that YMCA.
And so it's sad to see it close and the YMCA, you know, leaving the city ever seen.
But I will say, you know, it's a building that needed to come down or to have been abandoned
for far too long.
It took us almost a year to get all the asbestos out of it.
