The World and Everything in It - December 27, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today, we will remember those who made a mark on this world and left this world in 2021.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today: the WORLD History Book, a difficult chapter in U.S. history.

And prayers for the New Year.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 27th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: COVID variant disrupts holiday travel » Many travelers found themselves stranded in airports over the weekend as one word repeatedly appeared on airport video screens: “canceled.”

In San Francisco, traveler Ratan Nair told KGO tv he’s hoping for the best.

NAIR: We’ve been constantly checking all kinds of different websites, you know the airport site, the airline sites and all of that. So we’re crossing our fingers and hoping we’ll be able to make this trip.

Airlines canceled more than 700 flights Sunday, as positive COVID-19 tests led to staffing shortages. And that was after canceling more than a thousand on Christmas Day.

Globally, airlines scrapped more than 5,000 flights over the weekend. And cancellations are likely to remain a big problem this week.

Henry Harteveldt is a travel industry analyst with Atmosphere Research. He said you can more or less predict the risk of an air travel interruption by checking the latest data from the CDC.

HARTEVELDT: That will tell you what travel is going to be like. If you see a lot of people getting sick, you can assume that a lot of those folks work at the airline that you’re supposed to fly this week.

New U.S. infections, fueled mainly by the omicron variant, have exploded in recent weeks with positive tests now topping 200,000 per day.

But omicron does appear to be less lethal. COVID-related deaths have not risen significantly over the past month.

Holiday sales make biggest annual gain in 17 years » The virus wreaked havoc on travelers, but shoppers shrugged it off.

Mastercard Spending Pulse, which tracks all kinds of payments, reported that holiday sales, from November 1st through Christmas Eve, rose 8.5 percent from a year earlier.

That marked the biggest annual gain in 17 years. And sales were up more than 10 percent over the pre-pandemic 2019 holiday season.

Officials in Congo urge vigilance after Christmas Day suicide bombing » Authorities in Congo urged churches, restaurants and hotels to step up security Sunday after a deadly suicide attack in Beni on Christmas Day.

Five people died, including the bomber, when a terrorist set off explosives at the entrance of a busy restaurant. Thirteen others remain hospitalized.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. An ISIS affiliate earlier this year took responsibility for a suicide bombing near another bar in Beni, which caused no other casualties.

Desmond Tutu dies » Desmond Tutu, who helped to end apartheid in South Africa, died Sunday at the age of 90.

Tributes continue to pour in. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby…

WELBY: It’s not a zero sum game. Can we be a humanity that says my gain need not be your loss. Your gain need not be my loss. We can both flourish and grow. And that is, I think, the greatest part of Tutu’s legacy for the world.

Tutu worked non-violently to tear down apartheid — South Africa’s decades-long regime of oppression against its black majority.

The clergyman used his pulpit as the first black bishop of Johannesburg and later the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town to galvanize public opinion behind racial equality. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts.

When Nelson Mandela became president a decade later, he appointed Tutu to be chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that uncovered the abuses of the apartheid system.

Mary Robinson is the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She said Tutu tirelessly fought for peace, justice, and human rights.

ROBINSON: Starting with his fight against apartheid. He was very courageous in that. Going on then to supporting all the kind of lost causes around the world.

Tutu is survived by his wife of 66 years and their four children.

Spider-Man: No Way Home first $1 billion film of pandemic era » At the weekend box office, Spider-man swung into first place once again.

TRAILER: When Mysterio revealed my identity, my entire life got screwed up. I was wondering if you can maybe make it so that he never did?

Spider-Man: No Way Home hauled in roughly $100 million dollars domestically over the holiday weekend. And globally, the latest Marvel blockbuster just became the first pandemic-era film to top $1 billion in ticket sales.

Universal’s animated comedy Sing 2 finished second, earning about $24 million over the weekend.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: remembering business leaders who died this year.

Plus, prayers for the new year. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 27th of December, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

EICHER: Same to you! We did have a wonderful day.

REICHARD: Busy, fun, joyful times here at the Reichard Ranch, beautiful Christmas Day!

I have to admit though, I did refresh the website a few times to see how our December Giving Drive was going and was just blown away to see that our readers, listeners, and viewers propelled us past the goal and on Christmas Day, no less.

I’m usually not at a loss for words, but I just cannot say adequately how grateful I am to you for that vote of confidence to continue growing our coverage, and building our news organization. Wow!

EICHER: Right and we’re just going to leave up the campaign banner this week and invite you if you’d planned to make a year-end gift, please do that. Everything that comes in goes to quantity and quality of content here at WORLD. That’s the consistent message you’ve sent us: Do more, add more, dig deeper. We are bombarded in this culture with bad content and WORLD is the only place that provides a reasonable, Biblical balance, rigorous, fair reporting, trusted opinion to help navigate these times.

I just want to add: We clearly can’t do this work without you but with you, it seems there’s nothing we can’t do and you’ve shown us this year after year—and again this year—thank you.

REICHARD: First up: remembering those we lost in 2021.

Every year, WORLD Magazine devotes part of its last issue to notable people who have died in the preceding 12 months. Here at WORLD Radio we have continued that tradition.

EICHER: Every person is an image-bearer of Christ and in that most important sense, everyone is notable. Those whose deaths we call your attention to this year, we’ve selected as notable for what they’ve done here on earth, for good or for ill.

This year you will hear about notable deaths in five categories: business, politics, religion, sports and music, stage and screen. Some of these names will be familiar to you. Others will not. And that’s intentional. Our goal is to tell you interesting life stories you may not have heard before.

REICHARD: The business world lost several well-known figures this year. Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. And J. D. Power III, who founded the consumer research firm that bears his name.

WORLD Radio managing editor Leigh Jones picks up the list with some enterprising men and women with whom you might not be as familiar.

LEIGH JONES, EDITOR: Ron Popeil began pitching inventive consumer products on TV in the 1950s. He eventually built a business empire by leveraging the power of the infomercial.

AUDIO: You can make pasta with the Popeil automatic pasta maker in under three minutes. From scratch? From scratch. Now, let me show you how the machine works and I’ll do it for you in under three minutes here, OK?

Popeil peppered his pitches with phrases like, “Set it and forget it!”, “Now how much would you pay?” and “But wait … there’s more.”

The products sold by his company—Ronco—included the Veg-O-Matic, Mr. Microphone, and Great-Looking Hair—better known as “hair in a can.”

Ronco Teleproducts went bankrupt in 1984. But undeterred by failure, Popeil reinvented himself and began doing late-night, full-length shows on cable to promote his products.

In 1997, he told the Associated Press he couldn’t help continuing to invent things as long as he saw a need for his creations.

Ron Popeil died in Los Angeles in July. He was 86 years old.

From automatic pasta makers to vegan ice cream.

TOFUTTI: My name is David Mintz. I’m the president and chairman of Tofutti Brands. I’d like to welcome you to the world of Tofutti.

David Mintz grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Brooklyn and later owned several kosher delis across New York.

Because observant Jews can’t mix meat and milk, Mintz saw a need for a non-dairy alternative for ice cream.

TOFUTTI: We spent 30 years of hard work, burning the midnight oil, and we finally got products that will knock your socks off.

He began experimenting with tofu in 1972 after buying a carton of soy milk in Chinatown. Ten years later he had perfected a dairy-free product he called Tofutti.

TOFUTTI: We started off first with our delicious pints, the frozen pints that you find in all the supermarkets all over the country, and abroad.

From there, Mintz went on to develop 35 different products, including tofu-based cheeses, ice cream bars, pizza, and ravioli. But Tofutti is best known for revolutionizing the non-dairy dessert industry, a market that is expected to top $1.2 billion dollars by 2025.

Mintz died in February. He was 89 years old.

Next, a man who made wishes come true.

Frank Shankwitz was serving as a motorcycle officer for the Arizona Highway Patrol in 1980 when his boss got a call about a little boy with a big wish.

SHANKWITZ: And this little boy, Chris, unfortunately, had terminal leukemia. And he told his mother, “When I grow up, I want to be a highway patrol motorcycle officer, just like Ponch and John.

Touched by the boy’s story, the department arranged to pick him up at the hospital and make his wish come true, at least for the day. Shankwitz got assigned to be Chris’s personal escort. They gave him a custom-made uniform and his own hat.

SHANKWITZ: But most important to him, his motorcycle wings, making him a full police, motorcycle officer.

The little boy died a few days later. Shankwitz and his partner flew to Illinois to help give him a full police funeral.

SHANKWITZ: And flying home I just started thinking, here’s a boy who had a wish and we made it happen. Why can’t we do that for other children? And that’s when the idea of the Make-A-Wish Foundation was born, maybe 35,000 feet over Kansas or somewhere.

Six months later, Shankwitz founded the Make-A-Wish Foundation for children with life-threatening illnesses. It granted its first official wish in 1981 and has gone on to grant more than half a million more all around the world.

Frank Shankwitz died in January. He was 77.

From portable wishes to portable documents.

Charles “Chuck” Geschke co-founded the software company Adobe in 1982. He and his business partner, John Warnock, were working at Xerox when they began developing a new way for computer users to print documents.

What started as Adobe Post Script eventually became the Portable Document Format, or PDF. It helped launch the desktop publishing industry and has become the standard for sharing files across platforms. The company also developed other groundbreaking applications, including Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Photoshop.

But for Geschke, the company’s culture was just as important as its products.

GESCHKE: We have one very simple principle. And that is, if you are a member of the Adobe family, you treat your employee, you treat your boss, you treat your customer, you treat your shareholder, you treat the people in the community in which you are running your business the way you’d like to be treated. If you do that, those people will be your allies.

Geschke’s wife of 56 years, Nan, recalled him as a humble man who put family first. Although Geschke told Adobe employees they could work after dinner if they had to, he expected them first to go home and eat with their families.

Geschke retired from Adobe in 2000 but continued to sit on its board until last year. He was 81 years old when he died in April.

And for our final entry today, a restaurant mogul turned philanthropist.

AUDIO: I snuck into Friendly’s late last night. I wanna go to Friendlys! Yeah yeah...

S. Presley Blake and his brother, Curtis, opened the first Friendly’s restaurant in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1935. They sold ice cream cones for 5 cents, half what the competition sold them for.

They soon added hamburgers to the menu and opened a second location. By 1974, the company had expanded to 500 restaurants in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

Five years later, the brothers sold the chain to Hershey for $160 million dollars. At its height, Friendly’s included more than 800 locations. The company changed hands several times but could not retain its former glory. It now includes only about 130 restaurants.

Several years before his death, Blake donated a large part of his estate in Somers, Connecticut to Hillsdale College. It included a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello that is now known as The Blake Center for Faith and Freedom.

S. Presley Blake died in February. He was 106 years old.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, December 27th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: living history.

Eighty years ago this month the United States Congress declared war on Japan after the surprise Pearl Harbor attack. Three months later, the federal government created the War Relocation Authority. That agency forced more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans on the West Coast to leave their homes, farms, and businesses.

REICHARD: WORLD senior correspondent Katie Gaultney now with the story of a resilient woman who spent her adolescent years in a US internment camp during World War II.

AUDIO: [SINGING “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” AND APPLAUSE]

KATIE GAULTNEY, REPORTER: Sadako Okada turned 90 this year. She lives in a senior community in Menifee, California, an hour outside of Palm Springs. She’s a social butterfly; about a third of her church came out to celebrate her birthday. A real-life pageant queen in the 1950s, Okada is still striking, with bright white hair and a contagious smile. And she has strong opinions about sports. She loves to watch football and picks her favorite teams based on their quarterbacks. And despite living most of her life near Los Angeles…

OKADA: It's funny. I never rooted for any LA team. Be it basketball, football. I just never did.

She likes to root for the underdog. And maybe that’s because she knows what it’s like to struggle. Okada was 10 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

ROOSEVELT: The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions...

That’s President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his address declaring war on Japan. The bombing of Pearl Harbor flared existing attitudes toward Asians in America. Citing caution and security, government officials overstepped. Two and a half months after the attack, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, allowing the U.S. Army and War Relocation Authority to set up 10 permanent camps to house over 100,000 people of Japanese descent.

Okada, her parents, and her seven siblings had lived on a farm on the border of California and Mexico.

OKADA: So we had tomatoes, lettuce and, you know, just stuff like that.

And suddenly, the government forced her family to leave the farm. She recalled a crowded bus ride, then a train ride, that carried all 10 Kawanamis—Okada’s maiden name—to Poston Camp 1, in Arizona. It was confusing for her and her younger siblings.

OKADA: Being that young, we didn't know why we were going, we didn't understand why, why do we have to leave our farm and go to the desert?

Native-born American citizens made up two-thirds of those interned at the camps. The rest were their Japan-born parents and grandparents. Okada and her siblings were American-born. So while the government forbade them from living on the West Coast for security concerns, they could move farther inland after a brief stay at the camp.

The government released a film in 1944 in an attempt to justify the wartime decision.

FILM: Their evacuation does not imply individual disloyalty, but was ordered to reduce a military hazard at a time when danger of invasion was great.

Her brothers got jobs and moved out of the camp. Her older sister had been a student at UC Berkeley, and once she was allowed to leave the camp, she transferred to the University of Utah. But Okada’s parents were born in Japan. There was no “get out of camp free” card for them. So the rest of the family remained.

Okada remembers rows and rows of tarpaper barracks. Each house was made to hold four families, one family per room. But since the Kawanamis were a family of 10, the authorities gave them two rooms.

OKADA: It was just built with wood. On the outside was tarpaper. We had to cover it because the wood wasn't snug, so the wind would come in.

Her parents did what they could, cleaning it and constructing temporary walls within the rooms for privacy. Okada says they didn’t speak English—so looking back, it must have been extra unsettling for them.

But the kids made the best of things. Okada went to school and remembers that her teachers—who were not Japanese—were “very nice.” She said camp personnel hosted a weekly outdoor movie night. And with the other children in camps, Okada just got to be a kid.

OKADA: We played all kinds of hopscotch and we played the little marbles. We played cards, lots of cards, and we used to play basketball. We loved that.

She doesn’t remember much about leaving the camp, but she knows she was 14 years old. Her family never went back to the farm. After they left Poston, her family stayed in a hostel and at the home of friends in the LA area. They eventually settled there permanently and became gardeners.

In 1990, the U.S. government began sending letters of apology to surviving internees, along with individual redress payments. Reagan announced those plans in 1988.

REAGAN: No payment can make up for those lost years. So, what is most important in this bill has less to do with property than with honor. For here we admit a wrong…

Okada recalled those reparations.

OKADA: The government gave them $20,000 to compensate for our loss, which really didn't cover half of what we left behind, you know, what can you do? You can't say, “I want more,” or, “This isn't fair.”

That “roll with the punches” attitude characterizes Okada. She married a Japanese-American dentist in 1957. Her mother-in-law modeled strong Christian faith and helped Okada remember that life is too short to hold grudges. That attitude served her well in the post-war era, as anti-Asian sentiment persisted for decades. She recalled trying to buy a house in a middle class part of Covina, California, in the 1960s.

OKADA: I would see “for sale” signs, and the real estate agent would say, “Well, I can't show you that,” meaning they would not sell to Asians.

But, just as when she played hopscotch on the dusty Arizona ground at the internment camp, Okada made the best of it. She did buy a house in that neighborhood; a difficult resident decided to sell her house to the Okadas to spite her neighbors. But Okada won them over with her hospitality and bubbliness.

OKADA: And, you know, it turned out, it was the nicest neighborhood. I couldn't have asked for a nicer neighborhood.

Today she has 12 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and two more on the way. She likes to take her grandkids to Dairy Queen when she visits them. Okada’s husband of over 60 years died in January. She went from living with 10 people in two rooms in 1941, to living by herself in a big house 70 years later. But with her can-do attitude, Okada continues to adjust.

OKADA: When you're used to living with somebody for 63 years and suddenly being alone is kinda lonesome, but I'll get used to. There's always that little bit of lonesomeness. So I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Katie Gaultney.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday morning, December 27th, the final Monday of 2021. Good morning to you! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Next up, prayers for the New Year.

All this week we are ending each program with Scripture readings and prayers from listeners for the year ahead. Our goal is that through the hearing of God’s word and the intercession of His people, you will be encouraged and hopeful for what God has in store for 2022.

VARNER: Adrian Varner reading from Joshua 1, verses one through nine. Now it came about after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses his servant saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people to the land which I'm giving to them, to the sons of Israel, every place on which the soul of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses, from the wilderness, and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the great sea, toward the setting of the sun, will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous. For you shall give this people possession of the land, which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that has written in it. For then you will make your way prospers and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not tremble or be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

LIPA: Doug Lipa praying through Psalm 121. Father, whether we find ourselves today in anguish or joy, the light or despair, we returned to you your own words in recognition that you are sovereign, and you are good. from Psalm 121 Father, we lift up or rise to the hills from where shall our help come? Our help comes from you the Lord who made heaven and earth. You will not let us be moved. You are keeper will never slumber. Behold you who keep Israel, your people, you will never slumber. You never sleep. You are our keeper. You are our shade. Nothing shall harmless by day, nor by night. You Lord, keep us from all evil. You will keep our life you will keep are going out and are coming in. From this time forth and forevermore. Amen.

JOHSON: My name is Marcia Johnson from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Heavenly Father, as I await the coming of your son this Advent season. I recall the promise made through your prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 43:19. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow, more year-end remembrances: Religious leaders who died in 2021.

And, rebuilding Notre Dame. We’ll take you to Switzerland to meet a man cutting wood for the historic cathedral.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

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The Bible says: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.