Thanks for joining us. Well,
you likely heard this year our
dear friend and colleague, Boyd Hooper was
diagnosed with an uncommon blood cancer.
Multiple myeloma Boyd usually hosts the
best of land special every holiday season
to recap the best and brightest stories
that he brought us over the past year.
But he can't do it this year.
So we asked that I present it
to you and I will humbly do so.
Some of the favorites over
the next two nights,
so let's start with the story that touched
a chord with people across the world.
A backyard fence in Minneapolis
didn't keep people away.
It brought together Benjamin and Mary
who forged a beautiful friendship.
Two houses separated
by a fence. Benjamin
Olson in one just turned
2, you knocked
the tower down.
Mary O'Neill, in the other, just shy of 100
this is yazi. For more
than a year, both found
themselves pandemic prisoners. A
lot of just
us in this House playing against myself.
He has never really had any other
friends until Mary and Benjamin.
Hey man, found each other
kick. There comes the rainbow.
Here comes we can't keinmal
their name or hitting
one over the fence.
Hold his first best friend
stuck at home. Yeah Benjamin's
mom watched go as barriers fell
work the bubble schools and the
friendship blossomed bubbles bubbles
those old Tonka toys Mary
said that she had these trucks for Benjamin
my sons Lee passed away so
they've been sitting down in the
basement for years and years.
Mary also lost her husband
37 years ago her grand.
And great grandchildren
all live out of state Valentine's Day,
but new photos of Benjamin and
his baby brother also now occupy
places of honor.
Though the closest thing to
grandchildren I have around here.
And as the pandemic
eased its grip, Benjamin
discovered gonna open the fence.
The grass is even greener when
you can share a friendship.
Same side of the fence.
Thank you. That's nice dirt.
Days passed during the course of the year
when their yards remained empty.
I missed them. Missed seeing them
when it was too cold for them to
come out, or when it was raining
over the top. When she said that she
misses him, I had never known that. Yeah,
but I'm so happy they have each other.
When friendships form,
powerful forces are engineered.
Look no further
than Marion Benjamin,
who built a bridge over 98
years. You gotta hold my cane.
Minneapolis
Mary turned 100 in August and
you better believe Benjamin was
there to party and so was Boyd.
He went to to share that
chapter of their friendship as
well after being featured
on care. 11 the world
got a story for
the ages, found them
the Daily News in the UK,
picked it up USA TODAY,
the Washington Post.
This ones in Vietnamese.
This ones in Icelandic
300 birthday cards mailed from
21 states. We would
go to the post office and he would
just love to open it up. Wanna see
all the cards that we got?
She just keeps touching everybody
Mary's daughter Sue believable
boy I'm gonna get some dirt none
of this happened by accident
thank you oh that's nice dirt
Benjamin was sent to her to
make her move and make her go
in addition to Momma and Dadda.
Benjamin recently started saying.
The same Mimi gracing the church
basement walls through the year.
Graduate wife and mom,
grandmother and great grandmother.
And even as she celebrates a
century, great song still room
for Mary's latest role. As
Benjamin's best friend
and get this Marion Benjamin story.
First came to us as a viewer idea
so if you have a story you want to
share with any of us with Boyd,
you'll find a place to leave your
suggestions on his land of 10,000
stories page at care11.com,
we'll be right back.
Welcome back to the best of Boyd
Hupertz land of 10,000 stories.
If you have ever been to the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
you may have noticed people playing
the piano in their grand atrium.
It can have quite the impact on patients,
their families and visitors,
so much so it actually changed the
course of one woman's life. So
George, where are you from?
Nursing has a rhythm 123. I'm a staff nurse,
radiology staff nurse
zhanneta Benson wallsten
to the Mayo Clinic
three years ago, a brand new nurse.
Have you had a CT scan before
but with previous experience on the keys?
Each day after helping heal
patients upstairs. Great job.
Jhenaidah gives life to
the atrium 3 stories down.
Jhenaidah began playing at age 4.
By her 20s, she earned a master's
degree in piano performance.
At home, in concert halls till
the Michigan musician changed
course when her father was diagnosed
with stage four liver cancer.
Here for surgery and chemo,
Jhenaidah and her dad often found
themselves among the patients
stopping to listen to the
Mayo's volunteer piano players.
Just gives you hope.
And I wanted to do that for others.
What if Jhenaidah could
combine 2 disciplines?
First goal reached when
Jenna De earned her nursing
degree perfect. Second,
we're going to turn this
way when she applied and
was hired at Mayo
and 3rd. There we go.
When Jhenaidah finished work. And play. It
has become my concert hall.
That's George Jose enhance and
his wife Martha, listening to
the nurse who two hours earlier,
prepped George for his cancer scan,
believable here from
Illinois clinging to hope.
We'll be married 60 years and each other.
This music always makes you feel better.
That's caring music
that really is it's medicine.
Doesn't matter.
To Jeneda, it's even more
as I'm playing. I pray for each one of them.
I ask that God will bless them going
through what they're going through.
Janita thinks often of her father
standing in this very space,
having been given two to three
months to live. Eight years later,
Berlin Benson is back at Mayo Cancer free
for a check in
on his health.
It's just and his daughter.
It's just wonderful. That to me
is better than Carnegie Hall
and unfair comparison, really.
Because no musician at Carnegie
Hall has ever started her day.
With a better warmup.
Well in times like this we could
all use some comedic relief,
and there is a man in Wisconsin
who's pretty good at delivering that.
Boyd introduces us to a Midwest
comedian making his mark at a time.
You could argue we need it the most,
if not for the voice inside him.
Charlie Berens unlawful assembly
might still be doing the news.
The one unifying
aspect of the speech,
the voice inside him that had to come out.
Now. Mrs Simon come on, I'm not
gonna hear another word about it.
OK, I'm doing your walk so you
just turn your touch around and
go sit on the Devonport. OK
the voice heard 15 million
times in this Facebook video.
Oh sorry sorry, sorry Charlie's
voice of the upper Midwest.
Todd how are we doing?
Missed you at the scene.
Aloysius Meat raffle on Friday.
We've had so much humor about the South.
We've had so much humor
about New York about Boston,
about the West Coast,
I think that people comedically
flew over the Midwest for awhile.
Oh yeah, come on over.
Whatever reason I was lucky
enough to have my videos take off
Jeepers cripes or Friday.
If you haven't seen Charlie's
videos, there's a good chance
you're not on social media.
The Midwest Voice Translator works
on simple phrases. Jeep did you eat
this? One's been viewed
more than 16 million times,
so where my blaze torch up
top my camel down below.
I am wearing my church clothes.
Charlie's view of the Midwest
shaped in a family of 12 kids
growing up in suburban Milwaukee
with summer vacations up north,
everything that I put in the
characters mouth is something I've
heard. I thought I was gonna be
like the next Brian Williams.
Charlie created a stand up Act
based on the Texas TV news bosses.
We tried to rid him of his skinny accent.
The man for me I swab from that stop.
You need to stop and go light which
morphed four years ago into this
figure folks. Welcome
to them and walk minutes
Charlies Manitowoc. Minute News
parodies started racking up shares
concert. Gore gets head stuck in tailpipe
at Winstock waits an hour for help.
She must have been exhausted.
Is catchphrases? Keep her moving.
Began moving merchandise sponsorships
and sold out stand up appearances.
Soon Wisconsin Coverboy was broadening
his reach to the entire Midwest.
Hey? Got some new jerky you want?
You wanna try some this video about a
group of husbands who bond in the parking
lot while their wife shop at Target?
Has been viewed 64 million times
while a newly released album produced
with friend Adam Gruell just topped
the Billboard Bluegrass chart.
Comedy with an edge but always
a Midwest sweetness.
Will there
be some jokes about maybe
sneaking a beer into church?
Possibly OK, but you know at the
end of the day, God just wants
everyone to be there together. OK,
yeah, the fact is you're
still going to church, right?
Exactly at a time we can use a few laughs.
Finding love that
the quick trip Charlie
Berens is giving voice to them
that Charlie quite a character
but we need you to keep doing it.
Thanks buddy. We'll be right back.
Minnesota's Mighty Ducks are back this year.
Disney plus rebooted the classic
movie and turned it into a series.
The series is set in Minnesota.
The movie was shot here.
Boyd had the chance to meet up with
the original actors in that movie.
When they reunited in our state of
hockey a while back before COVID.
When we last met in person for a
state high school hockey tourney.
The usual jerseys were present that
one and this one and without fail.
Charlie Conley, the jersey representing
Minnesota's best known youth hockey team.
This 30th anniversary of the
filming of Mighty Ducks,
the puck hasn't stopped.
Not here nick.
Nice to meet you.
I'm at one time child stars
back in town Averman pre COVID
restrictions and what's your
name for an autograph session?
I'm at 30. I played averman.
And I'm Jane plank.
I played Tammy Duncan.
What do I know about hockey?
My name is Garrett Hanson
and I play G Jermaine
Soft hands full and
I'm Danny Tamberelli and
I played Tommy Duncan.
You want me to figure Steven,
you gotta play hockey.
I had not played hockey
when I got the film, yeah.
Few of the young actors had
before shooting started in the
Twin Cities in the fall of 1991.
They really suck. Yeah, they sent us
to a hockey hockey camp for like
4 weeks and this crash course
every day we were skating.
I was maybe born in ice skates.
Jane plank. The exception I grew up in
Golden Valley so I was the only one
on the team from Minnesota.
Just think of it as figure
skating with the stick
all recall vividly.
Minnesota 91 Halloween Blues.
Because a 910 year old kid.
From New Jersey I was just like
how do people do this?
Yeah I was coming from California
so I I mean,
yeah, I didn't know that cold could hurt.
While none envisioned what their
Minnesota made film would become,
you know what you're doing?
I don't think we knew we
were making mighty ducks.
It was like they're giving
me a breakfast burrito.
You know what I mean?
Yet 3 decades later?
And what's your name here? They are
at least 500 times.
I've seen the movie. I'm excited.
Super geeked out a little bit
and can tell you every shooting
location. Mickey's diner.
This is it right here. New hopes.
Ice Arena Mall of America.
For me, it's a lot of folks
that you know, represent
kids like me. When I was
growing up in Minnesota,
what's your name? Brittany, Matt.
Nice to meet you.
There's a certain age group.
I would say the 25 to 40 crowd
rather than most like oh mighty
ducks, quack, quack, quack.
But the Ducks are also transitioning to a
second generation. Although Adam Banks do
you really? The real Adam Banks
Ethan Comer couldn't believe.
Who he was seeing from the real
Mighty Ducks movie across the table,
it's been a couple years.
I'm getting old.
Actor Vincent Larusso isn't surprised
that a ragtag team of skaters turned
champs still captivates, I think.
Underdog stories endure.
Two sequels followed,
after which several of the actors
continued skating on their
own. I loved it. I loved
it. It became my sport exactly right.
I played Beer League hockey on Wednesday
nights and my guys and like the only reason
I'm on the team, is 'cause I'm a duck
grown but still ducks.
Thank you so much.
Do fans still flock quack
quack. In case you were wondering,
the mighty Ducks films did in fact
inspire the name for the NHL franchise,
the Anaheim Ducks.
That's the lasting impact for sure.
We'll be right back.
While the pandemic has caused great
harm to people and their livelihoods,
there are some Silver Linings
we've begun to notice.
Here's one what's going on in Warroad,
Minnesota,
where COVID restrictions inspired the
birth of a new winter attraction.
Kids in Warroad don't arrive in the
world with their skates already laced,
but almost I was born to skate,
my mom said Anderson Myers,
birthright growing up in
Hockeytown USA till hockey.
Went away. They said
that we can't go skating.
Couldn't skate at the start
of hockey season when Kovid
shut down war roads arenas.
News Hockeytown USA didn't
take standing still.
No indoor rinks, no problem.
Just cut its own path 21 feet wide,
snaking through town on the war Rd,
River and Ice Pack 2 1/2 miles long.
We're in Hockeytown USA, so go big
as Jared Olson tells it.
This started with a slew of
COVID inspired outdoor ice
rinks. I have a rink in
my backyard on the river.
My brother has a rink in his
backyard on the river and then
the neighbor has a rink and
one day the neighbors daughter
said can you connect our ranks?
There's no school, there's no hockey.
Connect the rings.
So we connected the rinks and decided
why even stop, keep going and after going
and going and going people started coming.
20 years since I've had skates on
we had to get him out and get him
sharpened and we're going to give
it a whirl. He travels at Docks Harbor Inn.
We had food stamps, bonfires,
it is bringing people together.
It's been huge for our community.
And all it took
was a global pandemic to remind
war room at the winter resource
running right under its nose.
I happen to have a place right
on the river here all day,
nonstop from the like right
away in the morning all the
way until the sun is studying.
Weekly volunteers, men, fire hoses
to keep the massive rink smooth.
Said, let's do it while Sam Glenn.
Is among a team of high schoolers that
helps tend to the daily brushing,
all of which inspired. Steve Christianson,
65 was the last year I played
to pull from the basement.
His high school skates pretty awesome.
I mean, those things are about
twice my age or I used to think
that in another ones and where
they have canals would be so
neat to be able to skate on.
And now we have it here.
Here where kids all but born on skates
are witnessing the re baptizing
of Hockeytown USA on a river.
Boyd, Hooper Carol Levin News wardrobe.
Even though it was inspired
by the Pandemic War roads,
Ice Path is on its way to
becoming an annual tradition.
Organizers plan to add lights this year
and expand the length of the skate path,
maybe even double it.
That's pretty awesome if you
want to watch more of Boyds
land of 10,000 stories you do.
We have the complete collection
now at carollevin.com/land,
and we're going to have Part 2 of
Boyd's favorites and our favorite
land stories over the year.
Tomorrow night at
6:30. Thanks for joining us. Good night.