After writing more than 150 books, Columbus native Michael J. Rosen is still not done. He continues writing children's books and adult poetry.
Beyond writing, he is an artist of many forms, and a teacher. We’ll learn about all of his trades and more.
Sometimes, it just takes one person to change something many people overlook. For Melanie Barrett, her late sister inspired her to create a company dedicated to making safe and stylish outerwear for people in wheelchairs.
Research suggests that African American girls are significantly exposed to more traumatic stressors than children of other racial groups.
That’s the statistic that inspires Black Girl Rising, a research project exploring urban adolescent African American girls’ experiences.
It's all part of this week's Fascinating Ohio.
Guests:
- Michael J. Rosen, author
- Melanie Barrett, founder, Bailey Bug
- Fran Frazier, founder/executive director, Black Girl Rising
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides at WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye state with an interesting story to tell. Today we're talking to an artistic jack of all trades, a master of many, Michael J. Rosen. He is an author of nearly 150 published books. He's also a poet, a visual artist, a teacher and a Columbus native. Michael Rosen's work has drawn inspiration from the earth and many creatures that inhabit it. And we'll be talking about his many artistic endeavors and how his central Ohio roots inspire the work he makes. Welcome to All Sides, Michael.
Michael J. Rosen: My pleasure. Thank you, Amy.
Juravich: So you grew up in Columbus. Tell me how your childhood here inspires your work today.
Rosen: I don't think I grew up, basically, so whatever it was that I was as a child, and I mention this in a silly way, but I have a letter from my preschool teacher when I was three, almost four years old. I read it to myself every now and then because I haven't changed a bit. Michael is talkative. Michael enjoys being with other people. He loves the crafts. He loves ironing and dishwashing and playing with the food. You know, he needs to be reminded occasionally to hang up his coat in the cloakroom. I mean, this is in essence. And I think my work really is about preserving creativity because we value that in kids and we lose sight of it as we... Become a teenager or a college student, an adult. And to me, that is such a vital resource. It's really like an essential vitamin. It's something you have to have to function.
So as a kid, I lived in a small neighborhood, a neighborhood that was, well, Berwick, that at the time was mostly pasture. And so the fact that my father loved to go fishing and we did that. Every weekend if it wasn't too cold. The natural world was a genuine part of my environment. And having lived in Columbus most of my adult life, well, half of my life, I'm now sharing 100 acres in Northern Perry County, just in the foothills. And I have three miles of trails and my zoology degree, as it were. Is liberally applied. I mean, I feel that that sense of curiosity and wonder, what my partner Cathy Sullivan always talks about in terms of every time you're curious, you're an explorer. Every time you see a puzzle that you want to scrutinize and engage with, you are exploring in some way.
So I think to me that's really what creativity is and all the forums that I've. Take on problem solving, being engaged with something that maybe everyone does, but more so, but for longer. Like so many people will say to me, oh, you know, I have a great idea for a story. I'd love to do, and I would say, I will say, then take it from the side of your desk and put it on your desk. Because you know that side of the desk project It's kind of like, well, one day... Yeah, you know, one day doesn't arrive. Yeah.
Juravich: Well, you've published around 150 books. They range from adult to children's books. Do you ever run out of ideas or do you always have a million ideas on the side of the desk, in the middle of the desks? Yeah.
Rosen: I think that's a curious question. I start a lot of things. I feel it's a discipline to just make things and some of them have traction and some them go into idle and I can't seem to get them moving again. I would say in all humility, I've probably written twice that number of books and they are sitting in folders. They were rejected. The market wasn't right. And increasingly, I hear that kind of thing. I love this, but I don't know that it would find an audience in the current marketplace. So to me, it's just like any kind of exercise. You just continue to do it if you want the results, if you wanna stay in that shape.
Juravich: You're not just an author, though. You've worn many hats in your career. Can you talk about your visual art? I mean, you make ceramics and drawings. I think I saw paintings on your website. Is that a big part of your career right now, the visual art.
Rosen: It is, I would say less career than, I don't try to, much of my time is not spending. Marketing, promotion, trying to monetize, I just try to make. That's probably to my detriment, but the visual was always there. When I was a kid, I just drew all the time. And partly, I will admit, when I went to junior high, the concept of bullying was permitted. It wasn't, nobody talked about anti-bullying. It was just, there was bullying. And my refuge, you know, because here I was a smart, not particularly athletic kid, I went to the art room.
I arranged with the art teacher that, hey, can I come in during my lunch period and fill glue bottles? Or take down the bulletin board and put up something new? And so that was indeed where, art was where I found refuge and how I was able to observe the world. And be more comfortable in it. So it's a form of resilience, I think. It's a from of finding your way in the friction that is growing up.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about literature, art, and more with author Michael J. Rosen. You mentioned briefly that you have a degree in zoology. So I know you have an interest in animal behavior, you have interest in animals. How does that impact your work? And you're using your zoological degree in kind of like a non-traditional way, I guess. Yeah.
Rosen: It all was supposed to be medical school. I intended to be a doctor.
Juravich: Oh, you were pre-med, I did read that, yeah. Oh, pre-Med.
Rosen: So most of my college years were spent in a lab for three hours twice a week, a chemistry lab, an organic chemistry lab a physics lab. So that I regret because it serves me not a bit. Now the animal behavior, the oceanography, the ecology that I still use ornithology. So living where I do, my books, I have an imagination, but mostly... I take from what I experience. So I've done three novels set out in a kind of rural area, not specified Ohio in every case, but mostly.
My picture books are often set in the country and I often have a protagonist or a character that is different in some way, that maybe is the city mouse in the county, maybe is the Thank you. The person going against the current, or who doesn't have the nuclear family that we were brought up in. That tension or that friction is, I think, something I need. So if something occurs to me, like for example, when I first moved to the country, I had never hunted anything. I'd never been in a community where I knew no hunters. And suddenly in Perry County, I'm the person who isn't. You know, I'm the absolute difference.
Likewise, I was brought up Jewish and the idea of living in Perry County, literally someone came up to me after knowing me many, many years and said, I have a personal question. I'm like, okay, okay what? Are you a Jew? I'm, like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, got that out of the way. You
Juravich: way. Okay, yeah, yeah. So you were like, you've written books, children's books about Hanukkah, but yeah.
Rosen: But for me, that moment would be, okay, I was, let's say, 54 when that happened. What if I were 14? How would that, so that to me became a story. Now, did I finish that one? No. But that's an example of how I often think that my own experiences at whatever age, when translated to a kid, might make a bigger burden, a bigger challenge to try to write.
Juravich: You are also the founding literary director of the Thurber House. Can you talk about your time there, your time working for the Thirber House, your connection with James Thurberg? You know, I also read that you helped create the Therber Prize for American humor, so that's a big deal. It is, it is.
Rosen: When I graduated from Columbia, two incredible things had happened. One is I published a poem in the New Yorker and I published drawings in the New York.
Juravich: Oh, yeah.
Rosen: Like sheer luck or whatever, sheer blessing. So when I came back to Columbus, knowing I wasn't gonna be able to support myself in an apartment in New York, I got a job with the Ohio Arts Council as a illustrator, as a graphic designer, and worked on my first book of poems. And one of the first clients that received like a support grant for visual arts was the Jefferson Center for Learning, which housed the Thurber House, which was a derelict building. This was 1982.
And I was hired to help the community create like a brochure, like who are we? Who is the Jefferson Center? It was also called the Metropolitan Learning Community at that moment. So as I began to know the people that were involved in the whole historic circle there, the Thuber House was in the planning stages. They had a steering committee. And. My literary interest and background became as valuable to the institution as my graphic design skills. So while I made stationery and a logo and signage, I also began saying, well, if you want to have a writer in residence, I've been involved in residency programs.
I've involved in teaching. So my first job there was more like a member of the staff. And as the doors opened in 84. It was my responsibility to be the program director, like how will these writers and residents be found? We had one in journalism, one in playwriting, one in English, they each came for a whole quarter back then. Likewise, the Evenings with Authors programs, the literary picnics, they were all, at that point, a very difficult process because you had to write letters.
Juravich: Mmm.
Rosen: In the mail to the author. And wait whatever to hear back from them. And we wanted nationally known people. At the same time we had a bookstore because then independent booksellers and independent presses didn't really have a way to really meet. And so we had catalog, we had distribution center for Midwestern literature. Again, this was before the internet, before there was a real resource.
Juravich: I knew you worked at the Thurber House, but I didn't realize how ground floor you were with it, like right there from the beginning. That's amazing. Before we run out of time, because we're getting there, I wanted to pivot to your most recent book, because you mentioned working with Katherine Sullivan just very briefly earlier. So the book is called "How to Dive to the Deepest Place on Earth," and it was a collaboration with former astronaut, oceanographer, and explorer Katherine Sullivan. We had Katherine on the show to talk about this book a few months ago. Tell me about your role. What was your role in this book?
Rosen: So my role was to be the journeyman. Cathy had the experience. I wanted to translate it to the audience that I know well.
Juravich: So you didn't dive to the deepest part of the ocean. No, no. No, exactly. Yeah.
Rosen: In fact, in our first book, "How to Spacewalk," I have a picture of Kathy flying her small plane, and I'm in the back, and the caption says, Kathy, 3,000 hours in the air. Michael, 600,000 Hours on the Ground.
Juravich: Okay, there you go, yeah.
Rosen: So I'm more than happy to be the person who can sit in awe and use my science and use creativity to create a book that best reflects her passion and her drive to encourage particularly young women to seek out science and all the rest of us to expand our willingness to appreciate this incredible you know, planet on which we are merely one figure.
Juravich: So what would you want people to take away from how to dive to the deepest part of the earth?
Rosen: Well, given the fact that you're not going to go in as submersible, most likely.
Juravich: No, probably not.
Rosen: I would say that it's that same spirit of we know so little even though we think we know so much. You know, Kathy was even talking about, we know... Maybe the large animals that we bump into or we see on the nature channel. But we don't even know some of the smaller ones or the ones that are deeper, or you have to remember, even wherever we've explored occupies a small fraction of what's unexplored.
Juravich: Yeah, she said we know more about the moon than we do about the deepest part of the ocean, which is amazing to think about. Yeah, well, just to end on, I wanna thank you so much for joining us and you have about 150 books. Is there one book in particular that you're most recognized for or like, do you have a favorite? I don't wanna make you pick a favorite book. Do you have one though?
Rosen: Probably the book that's had the most awards, reviews, celebration, sales, is one of my very first about the local woodcarver, Elijah Pierce. I knew Elijah during my college years and frequented the barbershop and Amina Robinson, I never ran into there, was in a similar apprenticeship with Elijah Pierce, and I. Wanted to tell a story about that remarkable environment and that remarkable lay minister, Wood Carver, who recited Bible verses while he was cutting hair and carving, just a remarkable environment. And so my book "Elijah's Angel," which I enticed Amina Robinson to illustrate, became a real benchmark in my career. It was later turned into a play. Was produced at the Gallery Players. So it's been a book partly because of my friendship with both Amina and with Elijah Pierce that's meant a whole lot to me.
Juravich: Well, you can check out that book, and you can check out his newest book, How to Dive to the Deepest Parts, to the deep, how to dive to the deepest place on earth. That's what I'm trying to say. And I wanna thank you so much for joining us today. We've been talking with author, artist, teacher, and Columbus native, Michael J. Rosen. Thank you for joining. Thank you. And coming up, we're going to talk to the founder of Bailey Bug. It's a company making outerwear for people in wheelchairs. And that's when Fascinating Ohio from all sides continues. On 89.7 NPR News.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye state with an interesting story to tell. Sometimes it takes one person to change something that many people happen to overlook. For Melanie Barrett, her late sister inspired her to find a solution to a problem that many people including her sister are challenged with. Melanie Barrett is founder and CEO of Bailey Bug, A company dedicated to making safe and stylish outerwear for people in wheelchairs. And she joins us now. Welcome to All Sides Melanie.
Melanie Barrett: Thank you so much for having me.
Juravich: So you started this company after being inspired by your late sister, Bailey. Can you tell me about her?
Barrett: Yeah, absolutely. She was incredible. And people didn't get to really know who she was, because when she was 20 and past, her brain was still six months. So she didn't go to school like regular kids. But I got to experience her at home and through the seizures and everything she had to go through and how she was so strong. And I always really admired that about her. We didn't to talk. We didn't get to chit chat like sisters. But there was still this connection of family that you can't deny. And just seeing the strength and learning that from her.
And then getting to solve these problems for other wheelchair users through all the different things she had to go through and went through. I'm hoping to carry on her name, but she was so fun. My parents always dressed her up in polka dots, like you see me wearing now because her name was Bailey, but she couldn't tell us her favorite animal or her favorite color because she was legally deaf and blind. And so my parents gave her the nickname Bailey Bug and dressed her up in polka dots and ladybugs. So that's where the company named Bailey Bug came from. And now I try to represent that with all the fun polka-dots and fun patterns that we offer as well.
Juravich: Yeah. So you picked out basically her favorite color, an animal, but what made you settle on the ladybug? Is it just the alliteration with Bailey and the bug, or did it come from the nickname?
Barrett: It's that as well as the way that the ladybug looks at like a wheelchair, the circle of the lady bug, if you turn it sideways. It's kind of in our logo too, if you see it, but it represents her in all different ways. It's also a good luck charm. I see them everywhere and I think of her and it was a really good omen and polka dots as well. I mean, it's a way for the parents to connect to their child that can't speak having like polka-dots or stripes or butterflies or whatever it is that you wanna connect with. So I wanted to make sure that that translated into the business as well
Juravich: Oh, that's very sweet. And I love the name Bailey bug. So OK, so but to get to why you make the product you make, your sister struggled with coats due to her wheelchair. And on your website, you mentioned that it created unnecessary frustration for both the individual and the caregiver. So tell me about the daily struggle, because I'm someone I've never had to put a coat on someone in a wheelchair. So describe that to me.
Barrett: Yeah, and it's funny because you never understand the product really until you know somebody in a wheelchair. You see it in action, and then it's like, oh, my gosh, that makes so much sense. But when I was little, my family went out to Ponderosa. That was really the only place we could go for dinner because there were no steps up, and she had a wheelchair, so we went there a lot. And she had five-point harness, a vagal nerve stimulator to help with her seizures that was implanted in her chest. And when a zipper were to get stuck, you can't get to the vagal nerves simulator easily.
You have to pull her arms through the coats of the wheelchair, shove the fabric behind her back, get her other arm through, get it around all the bulkiness that already exists. The fabric in the back causes lumbar support issues. And then of course the zipper getting stuck. You can't put anything in her pockets because when she's in a seated position, everything would fall out. So just these little things that took up so much time that I saw with Bailey.
And then it wasn't until afterwards when I was working in a memory care facility after college that I sell aids putting wheelchair. Users in coats for transitions, or to go meet with their loved ones outside, and to see the hardship and the time it took to do it and how uncomfortable it was for the wheelchair user to have to be restricted in another way with a tight coat and not just their wheelchair even, and then the frustration of the aid as well, trying to make it all happen, trying to keep the person comfortable. I knew there had to be a solution for that as well. So that's when we went from B to C, just helping families to the B to B space, where we also started. Selling to assisted living facilities.
Juravich: Hospitals. So did you, I don't know, did you set out on the internet and you were like there has to be a better coach, someone has to be making it and you discovered they weren't?
Barrett: So at first I learned how to sew from my mom and I just made something that worked for Bailey. And that's what we used for her growing up was a rendition, the first rendition of this wheelchair coat. And it wasn't until she passed away that I thought maybe other people could use something like this. And maybe that's how I could tell her story. I was actually an opera performance major at the time. I went to the business department at Woodenburg University and said, I have this idea.
So I entered into their version of Shark Tank, which was called Tiger Tank for the Wittenberg Tigers with my product and won and got an internship and started product development and got a manufacturer and that's how it all kind of spiraled. And then we started talking about patents and I was like, well, surely this exists somewhere. There's no way that I'm the first one to think of it. And sure enough, my patent went through and there started...
Juravich: You were the first one to think of it. Exploration. Wow. Wait, so backing up, you were an opera performance major. That's unique.
Barrett: I thought I was going to be a singer for a while, now I just sing for fun.
Juravich: I was gonna say, do you still sing? Just for fun in a church. Okay, so you pivoted from opera performance to more of a business degree, right? I like that idea of the shark tank though. So your college had a place for entrepreneurs to get started? Absolutely. Okay, the first coat you made, you mentioned was homemade for your sister. Talk to me about what it looked like, because it's kind of, describe it like, I don't wanna describe it wrong by just calling it a blanket, it, but tell me more about it. Yeah.
Barrett: It's almost like you're going to get a haircut and they put the cape over you to keep the hair from falling. It's that kind of design. And then it Velcros down the back and it has holes for the wheelchair handlebars and the sides fold into the buttons so you can still use your mechanics on your wheelchair and push yourself. It has a big front pocket too, but the overall design is basically like a cape. And then, it has an attachable hood. And like I said, the back is fully adjustable too with Velcro for headrests and feeding tubes end. Breathing machines and all of the necessary equipment that hangs on the back for reliability and safety reasons as well. So you can open that up and change it based on the wheelchair and the user.
Juravich: So do you have a patent on a cape type coat over a wheelchair or like? Yes.
Barrett: Yes, it's a design patent. The utility, I couldn't really get utility because it is kind of a cape. But for the design patent, it is covering the wheelchair handlebar holes that makes it easier for the caregiver to hold onto the wheelchair going up and down in slippery conditions, as well as the short back, the foldable sides, the large front pocket design that we've curated for wheelchair users in the front, and then the attachable hood with the mechanics of how it Velcros down the back because it's breakaway safe.
So if someone's not harnessed into the wheelchair and they fall forward in a typical coat that's hooked on, that would choke them. But through lots of safety testing, we figured out that this style of Velcro and the way that it's made if they fall forward, the coat comes with them. But it's strong enough that it also stays on through different transportation methods as well.
Juravich: Wow, okay. So how did this new coat shift the dynamic of like getting ready to go outside? Did it make everything easier, keep everyone in a good mood, both Bailey and the caregiver?
Barrett: Absolutely. Made it easier. It took way less time. It takes probably five minutes to put on. I think it's four minutes and 37 seconds, but don't quote me on that. So around five minutes, to put a coat on as I was timing it over and over again with the memory care facility, but a BaileyBug wheelchair coat takes 30 seconds. So the time that it saves the aides and facilities to then go take care of other patients and do what they need to do.
Is huge, and then also just for the individual at home, the parent at home. It takes so much less time to put on, but the real safety measure here is to take off when there's a seizure, when there is a problem, when you have to get to a feeding tube, when there an emergency, this cape comes off in two seconds, and you can get to the full body. Whereas a regular coat, you have unzip it, you have pull it off, it takes a much longer time. So, it can be the difference between. Unfortunately life or death in a seizure situation, you never know timing is crucial. So to have something that's fast and safe and easy, especially in an emergency situation, which happens often with people that have daily seizures was necessary.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about accessible and stylish coats with Melanie Barrett, the founder and CEO of Bailey Bug, a company dedicated to making safe and stylish outerwear for people in wheelchairs. Tell me about the stylish part. So you just talked about the safe part, but yeah, what makes it stylish?
Barrett: Absolutely, and I'll have to kind of take you through some history of the company. But when I started this business, before I had the manufacturer, I was making them all at home in my living room, sewing with myself or families. We'd go to Joanne Fabrics together, we'd pick out the fabric that they loved for their child or their loved one, I'd sew it and deliver it to them. So we had so many options with Joanne of fabrics. And it was so fun because I wanted to keep that joy of Bailey and the ladybug spirit alive in all the different fabrics.
Then when we transitioned to Amazon, I had to choose the most popular five to 10 because of inventory reasons as you ramp up production. So that took the fabric and design down a little bit. And then when Joanne Fabrics went out of business, we started using a fabric mill instead, keeping it here locally, of course. But I had get rid of some of the patterns, which was tough, but we still offer color. And that was so important to me. I fought back and forth a lot between Well, do we wanna mass produce or do I wanna keep it feeling like Bailey? And there has to be a balance.
That's been the toughest thing as a business owner with a company about my sister is making sure she stays alive in my heart and in other people's hearts, in her memory and her aura, but also running a business in the back and forth. So we offer a lot of colors now still, which I love. They're mostly solids, but we have blue and green and pink and purple and red and black and gray, so. As we partner with different facilities and they choose their color to put their logo on it and sell in their facility, we still have options of brightness. And what I feel like is Bailey still continuing her spirit throughout all of the products that we sell.
Juravich: Now, I'm guessing you're not still making all of these in your living room, though. No, thank goodness. Okay, so tell me more about the making of them process.
Barrett: Absolutely. So they get manufactured at a company called Isaac that's in Detroit, Michigan. And we've been with them for about a year. We started with TAC Industries in Springfield, Ohio. And they were absolutely incredible. But unfortunately, when COVID hit, because they are a facility that hires in people with disabilities, they had a lot of rules about how close you can be to one another and they couldn't mass manufacture cut and sew department at the time.
So we switched to a place called VGS in Cleveland, Ohio, which also hires those with disabilities and gives them personal vocational rehabilitation services. And they were also incredible, but our capacity kept expanding. And then we found Isaac. So we've been with them for about a year. And I find so much joy in the fact that these products are made by people with disabilities, and they are getting to create more jobs and more opportunities for that community as well to get to support that. We've been able to do that through every step of the process. Every move and transfer that we've had to make, we've been able to keep that alive, which I'm thankful for.
Juravich: You're not just making coats for kids. I mean, I saw on your website, you're making them for seniors, assisted living facilities, school programs. Are they bulk ordering? Are you making individual ones for like... Tell me more about that process.
Barrett: Absolutely. So we used to do one at a time, but now, unfortunately, we do bulk boarding. I say unfortunately, because I personally loved getting to be the person on the ground picking out the fabric. That was just so joyful for me, and still I get to.
Juravich: Or fortunately, because your business is growing and you're getting the coats on more people.
Barrett: Absolutely, which is also a joy. And the business model of a V2B is also really nice, too, just for me, for ordering now from a fabric mill and having to order 400 yards at a time instead of two yards to make a coat. So that's been really nice as well. But yet they are bulk ordering. So we have school districts ordering 10 to 20 in their colors. So Vandalia Butler City Schools in Dayton, Ohio, for example, has an adaptive classroom. And they bought purple coats and then put Van Daly Butler City School logo on the pocket in their colors. So it was branded as them. And then they got to provide those coats to the students in the classroom. So they could take it out and be spirited for football games and soccer games and different school events. So companies can partner with us in that way.
Juravich: That way. Well that and that seems like a good example of the time-saving thing too because I can imagine in a classroom with multiple kids in wheelchairs the the one or two aides that are in the room have to if they want to go outside for recess it probably took forever to get coats on everyone so tell me about the time saving for like a school program like that.
Barrett: Absolutely. So if you think about the number five minutes per child, and we're looking at 10 kids, that's almost an hour of putting coats on. Just putting coats. Just putting coat on, getting everybody ready, and then the aides taking them out one at a time. It cuts down tremendously, and it's so much easier for the kids. The other thing about it is really just how much easier it is to not be restricted. So you put the coat on but then they're at recess and, you know, coats don't have a lot of maneuverability.
It's not like you can lift your arms and catch a ball and play because they're tight, especially winter coats in the winter. So the cape opportunity gives them the chance to still be able to move underneath their cape. The sides fold in so they can still take their arm out and catch a ball. So it gives them so much more opportunity in a classroom setting where we have children to still get to be fun and playful while in a winter coat that's going to keep them warm.
Juravich: How have you, how much have you expanded? I mean, is most of your business in Ohio or have you expand it elsewhere?
Barrett: I have not expanded outside of Ohio yet, but the Columbus community. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. Bailey was taking care of the Dayton children's and that's why we have the connection to the Indaly-Beller City Schools. But moving to Columbus has just been tremendous. This community, the different adaptive camps that they have and the people involved and the entrepreneurship community and the women business owners here have made so many connections to Hilliard Assisted Living over in Hilliards, Ohio, they have an Assisted living and memory care unit.
And Just getting to expand this local network has been incredible for the start of B2B. And I'm excited to announce we also just put in our first order for COSI, which is really exciting. Oh, wow. So we're going to get to have branded wheelchair coats in their gift shop with their wheelchair exhibit for kids that come in who use wheelchairs. And they'll be able to have a COSI branded wheelchair coat to take around this winter, which I'm very excited about.
Juravich: Well, great. Well, tell me what has the response been like from the people wearing them, the caregivers who are using them?
Barrett: The caregivers that are using them has been my largest response. I love hearing from the nurses that tell me how much easier it is. Of course, we know that it's easier on the wheelchair user as well. A lot of them are non-verbal. So it makes it a little bit difficult to get that feedback, but even just a non-grimace and a smile instead is so rewarding because I know what that feels like. As a sister, watching Bailey struggle to put on a coat and then having the one that we made her make it so much easier her last few years to travel around. It's been incredible, but the nurses and the aides that have told me how much easier it is and how much time it saves and how they really think it's making an impact on the wheelchair user, I just love Bailey's name, can do that.
Juravich: Yeah, in just the 30 seconds we have left, you know, your initial goal was to make a coat just for Bailey. How has your goal shifted? Are you going to continue to grow?
Barrett: Absolutely. So I'll try to keep this in 30 seconds. I always thought when we took her to the Reds games, I wish there could be a Reds, you know, like different themes and we could expand on licensing. And we haven't done that yet, but I picture a little girl as I look at my goals, you 10 years out, a little and like a Disney princess wheelchair coat and feeling like a princess, like she has something branded just for her because they don't make that for coats and they don t make it for children in wheelchairs. And I want Bailey's name to represent that change. So we're growing. I have much larger dreams than I did before because it seems when I dream big, I can reach them. So I try to keep them as big as possible.
Juravich: Well, congratulations on the company and good luck. We've been talking with Melanie Barrett, founder of BaileyBug. It's a company dedicated to making safe and stylish outerwear for people in wheelchairs. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.
Barrett: Thank you so much for having me.
Juravich: And coming up, we're going to be talking to the executive director and founder of Black Girl Rising. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All S sides in WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Research suggests that urban African-American girls are significantly exposed to more traumatic sensors than children of any other racial group. That's the type of data that inspires Black Girl Rising. The organization is partly a research project exploring urban adolescent African-American girls' experiences and how they are affected by them, as well as a group that provides services and programs to young black girls. And joining us now is the principal investigator and founder of Black Girl Rising, Fran Frazier. She has more than 30 years of experience in consulting, specializing in issues related to racism and racial equity. Welcome to all sides, Fran. Thank you, Amy. So Black Girl Rising covers a lot of ground. Can you give me a rundown of what you do, your title of principal investigator? What would you say you do mostly?
Fran Frazier: Well, um, so that title really is related to the research that we did several years ago. I didn't know that that's what I was even when I was doing the research, but I partnered with the State Department of Mental Health at that time and we looked at the lived experiences of 411 black girls in four Ohio cities. So Columbus, Dayton, Akron, and Lima. Mm-hmm The director at the time wanted us to look at at least three major cities and then one small city that had a large black population.
So we conducted focus groups at first to get an idea about what the girls were concerned about, what was literally affecting their mental and emotional health. And then I wanted to know a lot about how they sleep. Are they happy? What are their dreams? Who do they live with? What is their relationship with God? How do they feel about being black and female? Just to get us a really good idea about what life is like for black girls.
Juravich: So, and these girls were ages 11 to 18, is that right? Yes. And so I'm guessing because of the questions that you just said, they were, you interviewed them. Is that right, there was an interview? Well, actually they were surveyed. They were survey, okay, okay.
Frazier: So we actually had the girls in front of us taking the survey. So we worked through women's groups that I knew in those cities, because I really wanted the girls to know that what they were doing was literally creating history. So we didn't want to email it. We didn't wanna mail it to them and have them send it back to us. Really wanted them to be a part of the whole process. And so the girls came from. Two-parent upper-middle-class black families to girls in foster care because we wanted to get a sense of what the face of black girls in that particular city looked like and what their experiences were.
Juravich: I know this is a big research project and, you know, I'm going to ask you to answer this in like two minutes, but what did you learn?
Frazier: So what did we learn? We learned that. Majority of the girls liked being black. They didn't mind being female but didn't always like how they were treated as black females or how people actually saw them. They believed in God whether regardless of the name God had because the girls came from lots of different religions and different sects of Christianity. They felt like they had a good relationship with God. What was interesting, that only 16% of all of the girls who completed this survey felt that they had appropriate skills to deal with conflict. So that was interesting for me. Yeah. Because then... Giving girls opportunities to even understand what conflict is, how normal it is, and the ways in which unresolved conflict can stay with you was something that we kind of isolated and said, okay, this is something we need to address.
Juravich: You've you have written that you formed this group because you would see a young black girl And you would look at her and wonder is she at promise or at risk true. Can you tell me more about that?
Frazier: Yeah, you know, um, I don't know. I remember when I was a black girl. Um, and I think I still hold on to that girl. I was going to say you're still a girl.
Juravich: Girl, yeah, you're still a girl at heart, yeah.
Frazier: Oh, there you go. You know, you're always, you, you you're very much aware that people are looking at you, if you're a person of color, pretty, pretty much you, you're, very much always aware of your color. And so based on Based on people's experience of being with a black girl or seeing a black girl, you really don't know whether are they seeing me in a deficit way or are they see me full of promise.
Juravich: Yeah, that phrase, at promise or at risk. I mean, that's really powerful. I mean and I, you know, as a mom, I would wanna hope that everyone sees them at promise. But, were you finding, and that's why you formed this organization that you were seeing more who felt the at risk part than the at promise? You know,
Frazier: I- I started like maybe 20 years ago or longer working with school districts around climate issues, school climate issues. And at the time there was a particular concern about black girls. The girls seemed to be angry, depressed, unhappy, um, easy to get motivated to fight or push or harass. So that became what I was really interested in. What's really going on that you you want somebody to bump into you so you can hit them back.
And so that's what really got me looking at the mental and emotional health of black girls. The APA, the American Association of Black Association of Psychologists, I can't say that correctly. We got it. Okay, good. Conducted a resiliency and strength survey of black youth quite some time ago, I think 2008. But one of the things they said was, To place black youth at promise rather than at risk literally means that the entire community has to be behind these children. That these children need to know that the people who are raising them, who are teaching them, who are mentoring them, who are providing leadership for them really have their back. And so that's where the at-promise came from. So what do we need to do to make sure that the girls that we engage with. Feel like what they're getting from us is putting them at promise.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about Black Girl Rising with founder Fran Frazier. I wanted to talk about some of the programs that you offer for young black girls. I don't know if there's any, I mean, you have several, I don't know if any in particular that you wanted to highlight, but can you tell me, do you have a favorite one or do you wanna talk to me about the real woman program? Tell me about some other programs, yeah.
Frazier: Okay. So probably two. Yeah. So the first one is we have a black girl think tank. We started that think tank maybe 12 years ago. We had a conference, and we invited the girls after the conference to help take a look at the data we collected. And the same 18 to 20 girls kept showing up all the time. So we kept inviting them back. And They started talking about the issues that were literally affecting their behavior. So I wanted them to go deeper into that. And so they did. And they decided that there were six areas that literally affected how they felt about themselves on a daily basis. That the black community. Didn't seem to recognize because they were not that helpful. So colorism. Body shaming, lack of conflict resolution skills, teen depression. Homophobia in the black community.
Juravich: I don't know if that was six, but we're close enough. Okay, so the thing, yeah, that's okay. But the think tank, so do they still meet? Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah, how often? We're probably in our.
Frazier: Um, fifth. Cohort of think tank members. So these girls are taught critical thinking, small group facilitation, how to build community with girls who come from diverse backgrounds, and how to communicate across barriers. And so they take the issues that they're concerned about. We teach them research skills. So they learn how to write white papers.
Juravich: Oh, wow. Okay.
Frazier: And how to present those papers. We have a Black Girls Summit every year. It takes the girls about six months to take a look at the issues they want to look at. So right now, they're looking at safety and they're looking at community violence against black girls. And so that's last year, they did the research on those topics. They also have to come up with policy recommendations. They also meet with elected officials and community leaders to share their findings and what they'd like to see happen collaboratively with them.
Juravich: The group you're talking about right now who meets in this think tank and who's working on these policy issues, are they all from Columbus?
Frazier: Um, actually they're from Franklin County. So our girls come from Dublin, Pickerington, Whitehall, Worthington, Upper Arlington, as well as Columbus.
Juravich: And you also have, you plan events, and you have an event called Love Letters to Black Girls. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Frazier: Sure. A couple of years ago, if you remember, Makiah Bryant was shot by a policeman. She had was being bullied and called the police, called 9-1-1 asking for help. So when the police showed up, she was trying to protect herself. She had a knife and the police came right out of the car, shot her and killed her. Truthfully, I was incensed and I emailed 100 women I knew and said, I want to talk about this later. Love for you to show up. I don't want to start an organization. Don't want a fundraise. Don't wanna march, but I want do something. And I offered the idea of writing love letters to black girls to let them know that there was a community of women who really cared about them. And so those love letters got published in a book.
Juravich: OK. And.
Frazier: And so we have groups of women, like Junior League, Delta Sigma Theta, Sigma Gamma Rho, church women's groups, my own book club, the No Name Yet book club. And these women go to schools, recreation centers, libraries, and read love letters out of that book to girls.
Juravich: Lovely. We only have 30 seconds left, but just real quickly, your logo has three girls holding hands. What does that symbolize to you?
Frazier: Collective work and responsibility, that I've got your back, I won't let you go. And it's also part of a dance song that black girls used to sing a long time ago. Rise, Sally, rise, wipe your dirty eyes. I'm with you. So that's really what that means.
Juravich: We've been talking about Black Girl Rising with founder and principal investigator Fran Frazier. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Amy. And you've been listening to Fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of the show, visit our website, wosu.org slash all sides. You can subscribe to our podcast, listen to every show that way, and every episode is in our free mobile app. This is All Sides from 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.