For children and their families dealing with a cancer diagnosis, there are a myriad of variables that have to be navigated.
Ohio is working on helping families with that process, so that no family or child gets left behind. An organization called AngelWorks is also helping to achieve that mission.
As society largely moves to being paperless, ancient methods of paper making contain rituals rich in cultural heritage. Hanji, an ancient Korean way of making paper, is meditative for some and is being kept alive by an artist from northern Ohio.
This Saturday is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Pirate life is a romantic way to live. A passion for pirates is what inspired two Buckeye Lake residents to start the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival.
Guests:
- Ellie Hite, director and founder, AngelWorks
- Aimee Lee, award-winning artist and author
- Captain Kelly Collins, co-director, Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival
- Nina Collins, co-director, Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival
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 on WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye state with an interesting story to tell. There are certain things people overlook when dealing with family stress and trauma. Obviously there are emotional and physical tolls. For children and their families dealing with a cancer diagnosis, there can be so many variables that families have to navigate. Ohio is working to help families with that process so that no family or child gets left behind. Angel Works is also helping achieve that mission. And joining us now to talk about navigating childhood cancer is Ellie Hite, Director and Founder of Angel Works. Welcome to All Sides, Ellie.
Ellie Hite: Thank you so much for having me.
Juravich: So in 2004, you founded the Angel Works Foundation to bring central Ohio family's presence to unwrap at Christmas time basically. But tell me how Angel Works Mission has evolved since then, since the Christmas presents.
Hite: Sure. But when I founded Angel Works, it was only ever supposed to be my Christmas time hobby. And one day, many years later, I was driving to work and I got a call from a young man named Joe Friend. He had osteosarcoma. He knew that he was terminal. And he knew that his family had spent all of their resources on trying to save his life for many years. And he just wanted help trying to pay for his funeral. He shared that somebody had given him my telephone number. And just said that I might be able to help him find a resource to pay for his funeral.
Juravich: Oh my goodness, did your heart just stop when he said that when he said the word funeral?
Hite: It did. When he said terminal, I wasn't qualified at that time to have that conversation. And I did a really poor job. So much that he said, Ellie, it's okay, I know that I'm dying. You don't have to tiptoe around it.
Juravich: Oh, wow. So, I mean, you ended up raising money to pay for his funeral? Or is that how it expanded? Or was it? Yeah. Did it start as just the one?
Hite: Yeah, I didn't think that it was something that we would ever continue. We spent the last months of his life going to high schools and radio stations and churches and pretty much anybody that would let us in the door. For him to not only share his story, but to share childhood cancer statistics and the lack of research funding and how poor the treatment options are for children. So when he when he was passing he asked if I would keep doing it So we just changed Angel Works bylaws and now everything that we do is to raise awareness and funds for kids with cancer.
Juravich: So Angel Works now has eight programs, so you got a lot going on. They all involve assisting families with a child battling cancer. But the one that your website says is the most difficult to keep funding is paying for funerals. I mean, first of all, that's very heavy, right, to be paying for a child's funeral. How do you handle that? I mean not just the raising the money for it, but just the actual like you're for funerals.
Hite: Sure. It is. It's very difficult. I cry a lot in my car. My car is my safe place. My job is to be strong for the family, to support them, help them get through. We very often go to the funeral homes with the parents to help them from the very beginning of planning the funeral. So it is very difficult and I typically can do really, really well until after and then I need a few days too. To just kind of let go of the stress from that.
Juravich: So why is it so hard to raise money for this part of your mission? Part of it is the funerals are expensive, right? Yeah.
Hite: Yeah, yeah, so part of it is just because funerals are expensive, so it means we have to keep raising a lot of money. We're very lucky. We have like Cotner Funeral Home in Reynoldsburg. They do a lot funeralls for us, like completely free every year. And then we're able to get some funeral homes to help negotiate the costs. But it's also not a really happy thing to talk about. So everybody wants to be involved in our Christmas program. That's really fun. But when you're asking people to get involved to help raise money for a funeral, it's really difficult to think about, so it's just harder to get people involved.
Juravich: What does it mean to the families that you're able to help them with this final part of the journey?
Hite: I think there are two sides to that. Financially, many of the families really don't have any resources left. Typically, families with a child with cancer, one of the parents is either taking a leave from work or missing a whole lot of work for years, not just for a few months. So by the time their child passes, they don't have any resources left, so they wouldn't have the money to pay for the funeral very often, but then just even emotionally. Having us to be able to lean on emotionally to help them get through that. And then we even do grief retreats after to try to allow families to have each other and meet other families that have lost a child with cancer just for that support.
Juravich: Well, yeah, your your shirt that you're wearing says that you are shining a light on childhood cancer. So it's hard to think about a light at a funeral. But, you know, talk to me about the shining the light part.
Hite: Sure, so childhood cancer has been overlooked for a really long time, and people don't realize it. Everybody believes that childhood cancer is very rare. There are kids all over Ohio with cancer. We pay for up to three funerals every month, and we certainly don't pay for all of them. But it's been overlooked for so long. I always say that childhood right now was where breast cancer was about 40 years ago. There's not a lot of awareness about it. Insurance companies don't pay for everything that they should, and there isn't money for research. So we're giving kids in 2026. Most of the drugs that we give them were approved in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. So we have a lot of our kids that actually die from the treatment, not from the cancer.
Juravich: I think we could do better than that.
Hite: We definitely can do better than that.
Juravich: Um, back to the fact that you have eight programs, um, uh, we can go through some of them, but pick another one that you want to highlight.
Hite: So, the Christmas program is my favorite just because it was what we started with. It's called Angel Claws. Yes. Yes. And we help over 150 families every year all over the state of Ohio, and we provide a complete Christmas, not just a Christmas for the kiddo that has cancer, but for every member of the family. The siblings are going through it too. The siblings may not have cancer, they're still suffering, they are still struggling watching their sibling. Go through this really awful disease and then their parents are torn and they're not getting the same amount of attention that they're used to getting. So we provide it for the entire family and we deliver it. And we work with every children's hospital in the state of Ohio. So when we are delivering presents, we have delivery elves going every direction in the seat and it's kind of hectic and crazy and really awesome all at the same time.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We are talking about navigating childhood cancer with Ellie Height, Director and Founder of AngelWorks. So is AngelWork just in Ohio or are there divisions or like other things like you in other states?
Hite: So we are just opening a chapter in Florida. So it will be the exact same thing, mirrored, but in Florida, and currently, because we work with every children's hospital in Ohio, our bylaws require that the child be a patient of one of our children's hospitals. So we somewhat frequently will have a family either in West Virginia or Michigan or Indiana or Kentucky that we end up helping because they're coming to one of our children hospitals to be treated.
Juravich: What is your background? I mean, do you have a background in nonprofit work?
Hite: I do not. Yeah, I just kind of jumped in. You made it up as you went along.
Juravich: Made it up as you went along. Yeah. So what is your background in?
Hite: So I was actually a dancer. I was I was a professional dancer and then it's very different and then I am to dance schools Yeah, the only the only kind of comparison is that I still work with children
Juravich: Yeah. Oh, you own dance schools?
Hite: I did, yes, I don't any longer.
Juravich: That must have been fun, though.
Hite: It was very fun except stage mommies aren't so fun.
Juravich: Oh, okay. Well, I'm a stage mommy. Give us a little bit of a break. But it was this here in Ohio that you had dance schools? Okay. So September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I know everything has an awareness month, and we should talk about it all year long, not just during the month. But Governor DeWine happened to have a press conference related to that. So Governor De Wine's new pediatric complex care navigation program was announced this month. Tell me about the goal of the program. So the navigation.
Hite: Program will help families understand how to navigate through state resources that are available to them. Currently there are resources available but it was discovered that it's very cumbersome and difficult to try to figure out what's available and how to get all of the pieces of the puzzle to work together in order to get those resources. So what Governor DeWine is putting together is, um... Is a program that will assist families in doing that. And they'll work with each of the hospitals and the social workers to make sure that the families have the resources that they need.
Juravich: And you mentioned Ohio is becoming a leader in this area. Is it just because of lack of awareness, lack of funding, or is it like, what makes it, what makes you like one want to be a leader in this are?
Hite: So, first of all, our children, regardless of what state we live in, our children should be our priority. Um, and we, we are very lucky to have a governor that was so willing to embrace, uh, the entire childhood cancer community and, and really think outside of the box. So last year we were successful in getting Ohio to be one of the first states in our country to have state funded research dollars just specifically for childhood cancers and at the end of the year last year we were able to award it was five million dollars we were able to reward the entire five million to Children's Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic right here in Ohio for for research to help with research projects so next year we're gonna try for a lot more than five million
Juravich: You were at this event when Governor DeWine announced the navigation program. What does it mean to you to have the support of the state like this, and how does it help your mission for your nonprofit?
Hite: Sure. I mean, ultimately, I would love to never have to pay for a funeral again. By having, we have great legislative support, and that gives so much hope to the childhood cancer community. For a long time, kids with cancer felt very invisible. I had a little girl speak at one of our events, and we had AEP lit up gold. And as soon as it lit up gold, we came back in and it was her turn to speak. And she started sobbing. And I just thought it was so heavy that she was talking about her cancer. And I got her calmed down and she wanted to continue. And then she shared with everyone that the reason she had gotten so emotional was because it was the first time that she had ever seen anything go gold for her cancer and that up to that point, she believed that grownups didn't think that her cancer mattered, which in turn meant her life didn't matter. Oh. Because she saw all of the adult cancer things, breast cancers everywhere.
Juravich: Oh, like there's ribbons everywhere, oh. Yes, you know.
Hite: Yes, you know she would go in a store even in September and see breast cancer awareness t-shirts. So she truly believed that grownups thought that their cancers were more important than hers. And now it's really starting to catch on. We have legislative support helping to get better research. We have businesses that are starting to do things. There are a lot of buildings in Columbus this month that will be lit gold. Lavec is gold. City Hall, we're having an illumination ceremony on Tuesday the 29th. Uh... Columbus city halls let go
Juravich: Is gold the color just here in Ohio, or is it becoming a national thing that the gold is?
Hite: It's the color nationally.
Juravich: A gold ribbon for childhood cancer. I could see like certain cancers have different colors. You know, there's like, there there's a lot of different colors with different ribbons. So I could some childhood cancers being looped in with the adult ones too. So is this trying to give, you know, the kids their own, their own thing, yeah. Yes.
Hite: Yes. Yeah. So it's trying to be specifically just for a childhood cancer, and it feels a little odd because we always say childhood cancer as if it's a single disease. Right. There's all different kinds. Yeah. There are 12 major childhood cancers and hundreds of subclasses, but they all kind of get lumped into a bucket. Even with our federal research funding, 96% of the funding goes to different adult cancers, but it's split out. Breast cancer gets a certain percent. Lung cancer gets certain percent when we talk about adult cancers, we talk the specific cancer. But then childhood cancer gets just 4%. And then that 4% has to be split between all of the types.
Juravich: Well, I wanted, before we run out of time, I wanted to just touch on a couple of the other programs you have. You have Angel Picks, which is professional family photos that you help pay for. You also have Angel Wish, which funds family vacations. Tell me about that, being able to give families these experiences.
Hite: Sure, so we can't do wishes as grand as make a wish, but our wishes are typically when a child relapses or when they find out that they're terminal. So it can be anything from us trying to raise funds to get them to Florida or to a beach, or we have a company, Purple Monkey in Hocking Hills that donates these gorgeous cabins to us to let families go there for a week and they have indoor pools and. You know, just trying to allow the family some time before all of the awfulness of treatment starts up again.
Juravich: Your website says that you provide financial and emotional support. So tell me about that emotional support part.
Hite: And the emotional support is a little different depending on where the family is in treatment or if their child has passed. I don't think that I'm like a typical director of a nonprofit. I'm very boots on the ground. I become very close with the families. And like I said, we often go to funeral homes with the parents. So very often, most often at the beginning of treatment, or if their child passes, we'll have a lot of, especially the moms that will really lean on me for a while, and we just try to make sure that they know they're not alone and that we'll try to help them through their darkest days.
Juravich: What, tell me the most rewarding part of the work. I mean, what, what sticks out to you? Do you have a story you want to tell to just end on or, um, like, cause, you know, I, like how do you, how do you keep doing this? You know?
Hite: So I learned early on when I met Joe, but then every child that I've ever met with cancer has this really unique quality about them. It's an amazing quality and I don't have an adjective for it, but it's very unique and they are very mature beyond their years. They go through their cancer treatment with the most amazing grace and the most positive outlook. I've never seen an adult do anything like that. They always have a smile on their face and they are so fiercely protective of their family and their loved ones that even on their very worst days when they're going through really awful parts of their treatment, they're more concerned about everybody around them and they want to make sure that everybody knows that it will be okay. And that's an unbelievable thing to actually get to witness. Um, but, but for me... Getting to know these kids, it's so rewarding and it makes all the bad days worth it.
Juravich: So the cancer diagnosis kind of turns them into an old soul.
Hite: Absolutely. Yeah.
Juravich: Well, thank you so much for telling us about this. We've been talking about navigating childhood cancer with Ellie Height, director and founder of Angel Works. Thank you for your time and thank you for what you do, Ellie. Absolutely. Thank you having me. Coming up, we're going to talk about the ancient art of Korean paper making. That is when Fascinating Ohio continues from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
Juravich: This is All Sides, and 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. As society largely moves toward being paperless, ancient methods of paper making contain rituals rich in cultural heritage. Hanji, an ancient Korean way of making paper, is meditative for some, and being kept alive by a Northern Ohio artist. To tell us more about Korean papermaking, we have Aimee Lee, award-winning artist and author. Welcome to All Sides, Aimee. Thank you so much, Aimee And you are an artist with expertise in ancient Korean papemaking. The technique is called hanji. Can you tell me about it? What is it? Describe it for our listeners. Sure.
Aimee Lee: Hanji is actually the name of the paper. So han means Korean, chi means paper. So hanji means Korean paper. And it's kind of a catch-all term that some people will say should only refer to very traditional paper made by Koreans in Korea. And I just try to use it as a term to share with the wider world. That there was a very rich history of Korean papermaking and paper culture that happened on the peninsula that not as many people are aware of as papermakings from China where it originated or Japan where it eventually migrated to after being in Korea and being taught by Koreans to the Japanese. So it is a way of making paper from plants. In concert with all the cycles of nature and ecosystems. And it produces many, many different types of paper. It can be very thin or very thick. It can use for books. It can used for housing as an architecture. And it's something that I studied with people in Korea so that I could.
Juravich: I could do it and then also brought it back to the U.S. You were recently featured in the New York Times with photos and videos of the papermaking process. So for our radio listeners, tell me a little more about it because I saw the videos and the photos. It looks like a lot of work. Is it really hard to do? I mean, you're an expert, but it looks like it's a lot work. It is a lot a work. Uh, but.
Lee: But to me, it's just work. It is a long process depending on where you start. If you start by cultivating the plants, which are the paper mulberry tree, which is related to Ohio mulberry, but not exactly the same. So it's a different species that is native to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Um, but it's actually grown in Cleveland at the Morgan Conservatory, where I built my first hungee studio. And I also have modified it to, or modified the technique so that I use sometimes milkweed and other native plants from the Northeast Ohio region so that it makes more sense and is a lot more sustainable. But essentially, you start by cultivating the plant. You have to cut it down at the end of the growing season. Each year, you cut it, down which is just coppicing. It's not killing the tree. It will grow right back the next year. And then you have to steam it. You have strip the outer bark. You have scrape off the outer layers of that bark to get to the inner white bark. You have cook that in a solution that is caustic. So the alkaline solution will neutralize any acids in the bark. Then you have rinse it. And then, you have pick out any remaining bits by hand of dark bark. And then you need to beat it to a pulp with wooden bats and then you put it into a big vat with water and also a mucilage that you harvest from another plant which is the root of the hibiscus plant and then um you can actually pass a bamboo screen through that slurry and form sheets and one by one place them down on another station, which eventually the water gets pressed out of it and then the sheets are separated and then one by one dried with a brush onto a board and and then you peel it off and then I like to age the paper for at least a year but usually 10 years before it's used.
Juravich: Oh I didn't know 10 years. Wow. Okay.
Lee: It depends on what you're using it for, but I have, I mean, I have 20 year old paper and I still am waiting.
Juravich: So, um, well, listeners, I encourage you to find the "New York Times" piece. Just see, um Aimee doing this. I don't know if on your website, do you have videos of yourself making it? Yes, I have many.
Lee: Videos on my website, especially in the research section. I have a lot of different videos, photos, articles, interviews. I try as much as possible to share this kind of information for free online so that people can access it even if they can't directly go to Korea and learn. But of course, I also teach it. So that's how you would learn. Well, that was my next question. You, I mean.
Juravich: It's an ancient art. You don't want it to die, right? You want people to keep making this paper, even as we become a paperless society. So you're teaching it to people? Do you have many students?
Lee: Yes, yes. So I teach every January. I teach a class at Oberlin College in paper making and book making to Oberlin college students. But otherwise in the summers I run what I call a Hanji retreat and it's a five day intensive where people come from all over the US and actually all over the world to learn the different steps from the plant all the way to the final sheet. And I also teach various workshops that are maybe shorter, that are during the year, that it just depends on who invites me. I am 100% freelance. So, but it's the summer workshops are the kind of mainstay. And I have wonderful, wonderful students who have gone on to teach themselves and incorporate it into their work and share it with more people. So that's the goal that it just becomes this branch. Of the second, the American branch of hanji that's growing here that eventually will just get bigger and bigger.
Juravich: I hope. Now, not only do you make paper, like what people would think of as a piece of paper, like a sheet, but you make objects. You make books. You make knitted objects. You make dresses out of paper. Can you tell me about some of the objects you make using paper?
Lee: Yes, so I wanted to learn about the things that Korean people did with hanji so that I would have more context to show people why it was important to continue making and using it. So one of the methods is to cut down the sheets into strips of paper that you twist and ply into what looks like paper rope. And then you turn that into essentially use a basket, basketry technique to turn it into objects that were functional. So you could weave things like chamber pots and teapots and teacups and all even furniture and you would lacquer it with a sap of the lacquer tree so that it was totally waterproof and sturdy. And then I also there is a tradition of making paper clothing. And so I make it... To hang as art. So instead of doing it as clothes to wear, it's just as art to hang. But that's the crux of the show that I have up right now at Kent State University Museum. And it's all just dresses of all different sizes, from doll size to adult size, that are made out of this paper. And then the weaving technique, again, the basketry technique is how I also will weave ducks. And that's based on Korean wedding traditions.
Juravich: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the ducks. I was like, she makes bowls and vases and clothing and then little cute ducks.
Lee: Yes, so that the ducks are based off of a Korean wedding tradition that it started as you would bring a male and female goose to newlyweds and that in agrarian times was very useful and then it became more symbolic and you would give male and females carved wooden ducks to look like, painted to look, like mandarins which are a species that mate for life to promote marital fidelity and fertility. And I remember seeing a version in a picture of a version made out of paper using this back Basketry technique which is called cheese and I just found it so compelling that I wanted to make my own and I Just kept on trying I took an extra trip a research trip back to Korea to my teacher to learn how to do more advanced Techniques and it's just taken off from there. So that's what it's based off of but I use a lot of different natural dyes for the colors a lot different gestures and different pairings and it's not just about weddings and it is just not about men and women but it's about the births themselves and the stories that they might have to tell. Do you have a favorite object that you make?
Juravich: Out of your paper.
Lee: I think it depends on when you ask me. I really try not to do that. It's like asking who's your favorite child.
Juravich: Well, I really like the ducks, but go ahead, yeah.
Lee: Yes, no I love the dogs but right now I really love the dresses that I've been making out of this bark lace and bark lattice work that I instead of transforming the bark completely into paper there are intermediary steps and you can turn it into a different kind of substrate that I make it so that you can see through it and so these dresses are at Kent State University Museum and you see you can the shape of the form and yet you can all the way through it. There's just something really exciting about combining paper and then re-imagining the bark that it comes from. And I plan to do a lot more work.
Juravich: In that vein going forward. This is Fascinating Ohio from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Korean papermaking with Aimee Lee, award-winning artist and author. This exhibit at Kent State, I know it's up for a while, so people will see basically all of these different things that you made out of paper. Tell me about what people will say if they go see the exhibit.
Lee: With this exhibit, it's very focused on the dress because this museum is a fashion museum for the most part. So I have, I want to say, I don't remember. I think almost 60 pieces that are all different kinds of dresses. There's also pants, but, and they're all fashioned out of paper that I make and that I dye and out of the bark that it comes from. And just, it just a whole re-imagining of traditional Korean dress forms, but also Western dress forms. And I'm not a clothing designer, but I just think that there's so, I think humans, because we wear clothes and it's the closest thing to our skin every single day, it is a really intimate, but public thing that we participate in, that we often so just take for granted. And I just wanted to be able to render that in. Hanji and so that you can see all the things that Hanji can do but it also will just make you think about all the thing that you could do with other materials or other, you know, think about what happens in other cultures when it comes to paper.
Juravich: Well, I saw some pictures of the exhibit. And I think you are a clothing designer now. You said you're not one, but you definitely are. Now, traditionally, hanji is made by men. And you went to Korea to learn the process. But is it just thought to be more difficult for women? Or is that something that people think women can't learn this? Yeah, tell me about that. Yeah.
Lee: It's traditionally there are certain steps that are done by women and certain steps that are by men and certain that both could do. But the part that I really wanted to learn was the sheet forming step which is at the vat because it's the most unusual. Whenever people ask how is hanchi different from other kinds of paper making that is the really big difference and it requires different tools and different techniques. But it is also extremely hard on your body. You need a lot of strength to be able to perform it. And traditionally, it just was the men would form the paper at the vat, but the women would press and dry it. And the women also did all the work ahead, you know, at the preliminary steps, which is extremely hard labor. So it doesn't make, I don't necessarily think it's that women were weaker. It's just, that's just how it happened. I mean, in Japan, the rules are actually reversed. The women form the sheets and the men dry it, So. Um, but I insisted essentially that I learned this and I went to a lot of different paper mills where people just straight out would say you are not strong enough. They would look at me and look at my body and say, you can't do this. And, um, but, I had already trained as a papermaker and that is not a common things. So maybe they didn't believe that I could. And I think I also am just very stubborn. So I, I fortunately found a teacher who was willing to show me. And then years later, I was able to go back and study with another teacher who is now the national treasure of hanji making in Korea. So it is, it is usually done. That part is done by women, but I mean, matters when it comes to making paper.
Juravich: You've also written some books about the art, documenting how it's made. Why is it important for you to document this process? Why, you know, why you're showing people, you're teaching people, but you also wanted to write about it.
Lee: Well, I mean, people die. All people will die. And I hope that I can leave something behind. And so at a certain point, I won't be able to share directly in the way that I can, and so I wanted to document everything that I had seen on both of my Fulbright grants. And one of the ways you can do that is through books. And so I wrote "Hanji Unfurled, One Journey into Korean Papermaking," and that was published by the Legacy Press in 2012. And that is essentially, it's not a how to, but it's, it is very, very literally my journey through the effort of trying to find a teacher and all the things that I went through, or not even all because some of that is not appropriate to be published. And you can learn about that if you take a class with me and I'll tell you all kinds of stories. But, but I wanted to make sure that it was written in English somewhere because when I myself as a Korean American was learning in grad school. About papermaking history there was very little information in English. There was some but it was not by people who actually knew the Korean language and I thought it was important for someone who's bilingual and could hear about the stories and the folklore and the history and really bring it to life and also that it was important that it's someone who makes it because I think there's a difference between historians writing about something that feels very foreign or separate from them and then the practitioner who actually does it.
Juravich: Well, just to end on, the new exhibit that you have at Kent State University's Museum is called "Every Last Scrap." We neglected to say the title before. Can you tell me the significance of that title, "Every Last Scrap"?
Lee: I learned that in Korean culture, when it comes to sewing, the greatest virtue is to use every single piece of fabric. So you obviously will have to cut patterns and they're off cuts and Koreans have figured out so many ways of using all these little scraps all the way down to these tiny tiny pieces that I had seen sewn onto children's clothing and. It just astounded me. And the person who was showing this to me and telling me about it, Jomi Suk, she said, imagine how loved this child is that someone would go through the trouble of doing this with every little piece and sewing it to their clothing, especially given how quickly children grow up and outgrow their clothes. That is the way that I work too. I keep all of the scraps of my paper. I know that I can reuse them in art. And if I don't, I can always repulp it and turn it into more paper. And so I think of my art always as a cycle. And I will, you will see, if you go to the show, you will pieces that I've actually recycled from other pieces. And so the other, the former piece is gone, but now it's existing in another form. And it's possible that in the future, I will take that and recycle it again into something else. So it's really about using everything we have and not thinking of anything. As waste or garbage, that is a modern concept that isn't useful to us anymore, I think, in the environment that we live in now.
Juravich: We've been talking about Korean papermaking with Aimee Lee, award-winning artist and author. Thank you so much for joining us, Aimee. Thank you, Amy! And coming up, we're going to talk about pirates. Yes, pirates. That's when Fascinating Ohio from 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 Sides in WOSU, where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye state with an interesting story to tell. And this Saturday is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Pirate life is a romantic way to live. Always traveling to new places, living each day to its fullest, enjoying the moment. And a passion for pirates is what inspired two Buckey Lake residents to begin the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival. And we're talking about pirating today with Captain Kelly Collins, Director of the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival. Welcome to All Sides, Captain.
Captain Kelly Collins: Ahoy mateys!
Juravich: And we also have with us Nina Collins, Skipper Charlie, as well. Is that? Do I have that right? Welcome to All Sides, Nina. Thank you very much. So, Kelly, let's start with you. Have you always been a fan of pirates or did this love grow over time?
Captain Collins: It started right around the time I turned 40, and I met Nina, and for our wedding, I actually, wedding reception, I dressed like a pirate. So it's been 30, 30-some years I've been dressing up like a pirate. Well, even before that, I would go to parties dressed up as a pirate, this is something I've always enjoyed doing.
Juravich: Yeah, Nina, what started it for you? If you brought him along, like what started for you.
Nina Collins: Oh, gosh. Well, we're both huge Halloween fans. And at one time I had a whole bedroom full of costumes. So pirates is, I mean, I would just dress up all the time. But yeah.
Juravich: For our radio listeners, they are dressed as pirates right now. Very lovely hats. Nina's has tassels on it. And yours, it looks like more of a traditional pirate hat, but it's not. So I'll post a photo of them on our Instagram page and on Facebook later so you can be sure to see these pirate outfits. But we found out about both of you because you lead the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival, which just celebrated its third festival. Now, the festival was in May. But I mentioned that national talk like a pirate day is this weekend. So that's why you're here right now. Do you have anything special planned for that day?
Captain Collins: Well, not necessarily for that day. We actually, what we're gonna do, your timing is just right, because we're going to make an announcement on that day for the fourth Buckeye Lake Pirate Fest. We're making a big change in the Pirate fest for next year.
Juravich: Oh.
Captain Collins: So we are going to be promoting that on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Juravich: Okay. And I'm in a pirate type accent or something. Like, are you having like a press conference?
Captain Collins: Well, we haven't figured that out yet. We'll send out a press release, but we'll see who calls us and wants to do it. But we'll be out celebrating as pirates.
Juravich: All right, and you're not going to give me a teaser. You want to keep it for Saturday. Stay tuned. You're allowed to say stay tuned.
Captain Collins: No, actually, we thought we would give a sneak peek. We're going to give you the sneak peek here of what's going to happen.
Captain Collins: Okay
Captain Collins: Well, so you mentioned this, we've been doing this for three years. Yeah. We average about 5,000 people attend the Pirate Fest over the three-day weekend. And we have pirate bands, we have got a treasure hunt, we got kids pirate ship play lands, there's even pirate costume contest, and there's a fashion show, pirate fashion show. And there's Renaissance market with one big location each May. And so the whole community, the businesses all participate in this and so forth. So for next year, for 2027, we're gonna have a one-day event on May 22nd, and it's gonna be all around the lake, and we're going to call it Wake the Lake. And it's a pre-season pirate party. And Skipper Charlie came up with that name, by the way, so that was fun. And we'll promote the businesses around the Lake that are participating for this one- day event. And they'll have all their staff dressed up as pirates, and they'll the pirate flags hanging everywhere. The businesses will have food and drink specials throughout the day, and some retail businesses will have discounts for pirates.
Captain Collins: Wow, all right.
Captain Collins: So that's what's gonna replace what was the three-day event for the last three years. It's gonna be a one-day on May 22nd. But wait, there's more. Okay, I'm ready. So this is the big announcement. So for next year, we're gonna have a five-day event starting on September the 8th. So it's gonna go on Wednesday, we'll have a pirate hat making class. Thursday, we'll pirate bike night at the Mill Dam. And then Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we'll events going on at businesses. All around the lake.
Nina Collins: Wow. In a tri-county region.
Captain Collins: Yeah, Troy County, yeah.
Juravich: Tri-County. Oh, wow. Okay. Like you're like your Tri-Corner hats.
Captain Collins: So businesses all around the lake will be having specials and pirate bands and there'll be another Renaissance market. So It's the show's gonna grow and get bigger. But instead of having everything at one location, it's gonna be all around a lake
Juravich: Yeah, I read that the Pirate Fest really grew from year one to year two to year three, so did it get a little big for your britches and you had to branch out a little?
Captain Collins: Well, that's part of it, it just got to the point where we were working on it for six to eight months and it's just the two of us to plan it. Now, the weekend we'll have about 90 volunteers that help us run the festival. But for the planning, it's the two us. We need to slow down a little bit.
Juravich: Talk to me about the move from May to September. Is it to be closer to national talk like a pirate day or is it because weather and voting?
Captain Collins: All three. It's because the weather's been a real challenge. Now this year, even because it'll be the same as last weekend and it rained last weekend.
Captain Collins: Yeah.
Captain Collins: But normally September is a drier month, so we're hoping it's a little bit drier next year. It's better for heavier pirate costumes, plus it's Halloween adjacent as well. It's typically cooler in September than it is right now, so we are hoping next year it will be back to normal September temperatures.
Juravich: Yeah, May can get a little rainy too, so you must have got your pirate festival is rained on.
Captain Collins: It's rained every year. Yeah, just like the memorial tournament
Juravich: Oh, yes. When you declare a pirate festival, rain will come. That's it. Yeah. So is the Buckeye Lake community pirate loving or did you insert that into them, the two of you?
Captain Collins: Well, when we moved out there eight years ago, there's an event called Winterfest, and it's the last Saturday in January, and it a community celebration of the coming of spring. And so we were told that people dress up in costume, and it like a pub crawl. And they go around the lake, and they celebrate the coming the spring. So we decided to dress up as pirates. There were six of us. And everywhere we went, people were thrilled to see us. And so, how can we join your gang? So we decided to start a gang, and we're called the Buckeye Lake Pirates. We're on Buc-eye Lake, and we are pirates. If you can't remember that, you're not smart enough to be in our gang. And so we started a Facebook group, and now there's over 1,000, actually 1,200, last I looked, members in the Buk-eye lake pirates.
Juravich: Oh, I looked yesterday you have 1,500 now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah growing. It's growing. Yeah Nina you there's quite the community on the Facebook group. I mean very active There were lots of posts even yesterday people commenting. Tell me about this this community you've developed. What does it mean to you?
Nina Collins: Well, it's pretty awesome, and it's just something that, as Kelly mentioned, when we moved out to Buckeye Lake, we're like, hey, you know, we're on the water. Are there any pirates out here? Because that's the way we think. So it started and grew and grew. And the local businesses that have participated in Pirate Fest, they've embraced it. And they've had fun. It's just a fun theme. And as Kelly said, when we started going to Winterfest, people smile and their faces light up and they're like, hey, the pirates are here. And makes us feel like celebrities, but the fact that it makes people smile. And we're hoping to be more involved in the end of the festival next year ourselves, rather than being tied down to a massive trade show. We're gonna be actually out and about. And the good thing about us pirates and pirates in general is that rain or shine, we're going to be out having a good time.
Juravich: Weather doesn't break a pirate. Yeah, this is fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking about pirating with Captain Kelly Collins, director of the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival and co-director of the Buckey Lake Pirates Festival, Nina Collins. So tell me about Kelly. You were actually in the Coast Guard. So you kind of you know your way around a boat. So you're not like completely fake in the whole pirate thing.
Captain Collins: No, and actually that's what led to my love of the water, was being in the Coast Guard. I just fell in love with the water and I had a lifelong dream that someday I'm gonna retire, have a boat on the lake, and do the whole summer fun thing. Yeah. And that's we did.
Juravich: You're living the dream.
Captain Collins: And then I ended up, so I retired, and then I end up starting a business called Buckeye Lake Boater Training. I come to your house, get on your boat, and I teach you how to operate your boat. So it started, you know, this Coast Guard experience kind of led into doing the boater training, and then the pirating just came right after that. So I retired and started two businesses.
Juravich: Will you, no one ever actually retires. Will you show up to the pirate training or to the boating training, will you show as a pirate or non-pirate?
Captain Collins: Oh, no, when I do boater training, I'm Captain Kelly. Oh, you are? Okay. Yeah, it's three hours. Yeah. Well, yeah, I go by Captain Kelly when I'm boater-training. Whether or not you're...
Juravich: Whether or not you have a pirate hat on, yeah.
Captain Collins: That's no no pirating involved with that. No, it's it's serious. You want people
Juravich: It's serious, you want people to know how to operate a boat properly.
Captain Collins: Safely and dock. Docking is what people struggle with. So I teach them and even how to back their boats into the water. So many people have a struggle with that. So, I teach how to do that too.
Juravich: Yeah, my my sister and brother-in-law have a boat and they said if you want to test your marriage try docking a boat, right? That's a great
Nina Collins: It's a great way to do it.
Juravich: Would you agree with that?
Captain Collins: More canoe together, that's another one. Yes, good starter boat. Right, you can survive a canoe experience together. Yes.
Juravich: So for on Buckeye Lake, I mean, do you do you decorate your boat to make it look a little bit like a pirate ship to?
Captain Collins: We do for the 4th of July there's a boat parade and we always decorate the boat for the and we'll have six to eight pirates on the boat with us and we're in the boat parade. And so we and we have pirate flags on the boats. Of course, of course. Yeah, what's your boat's I am. Nina's pony. Oh, she she wanted a pony. So I bought a boat named at Nina's Pony. Okay, but really it's we call it the Mirage That's our pirate ship now the official pirate ship for the Buckeye Lake Pirates is called the Miraj Okay So when you join the Bukkeye lake Pirates, you need to come up with your pirate name and your duties on the ship So for example, do you drink rum?
Juravich: I, yes, I've been known to.
Captain Collins: Then you can't guard the room, so we'll have to find another duty for you on the ship. I always tell people we offer free health care on the ship. So we have a doctor, well actually he's, well he's not even a veterinarian, he likes to walk dogs, okay, but he prescribes lemons and leeches for whatever ails you, and there's, that's our health care program.
Juravich: Good qualifications, yes, yes. Nina, I also read that you used to run a scare, I don't know if both of you did, but you used run a scaratorium, a haunted attraction near Columbus. Yeah, is that just a part of your love with Halloween and dressing up? Yes. Yeah, tell me about that.
Nina Collins: Well, we actually started as consultants for Terra Park at Cooper Stadium, the old Cooper Stadium. Oh, yeah. And when they built Huntington Park, we were like, well, we don't want to give this up. We have great crews. We love entertaining and building sets and all that. So we were at three locations before settling in the Northland Plaza, which is near the Columbus Bowling Palace, and it was a massive attraction. And it was... One of the benefits of the things that we did where we brought diverse groups of people together as far as our team, our actors, and it was a beautiful thing, bringing people from all walks of life together that shared the community spirit of loving Halloween and working together. It was great.
Juravich: Well, Kelly, before I run out of time, I mean, I have to ask you, like, do you have a favorite pirate movie or TV show? Like, what gets you in the pirate spirit? You're always in the spirit.
Captain Collins: You're always in the spirit. Pirates of the Caribbean, I like all of them. They're all good shows and good costuming and we love the acting.
Juravich: Yeah, well, I wasn't sure if you would say that that one that one, you know, that's what I would expect. But yeah.
Captain Collins: Now that's my fallback whenever I want to feel like watching some pirate movie, I'll pull up one of those, so yeah.
Juravich: Well, I look forward to next year's Pirate Fest in 2027 and the event that you have. So one event in May and then a big Tri-County area event now in September. Correct. And yeah, do you wanna just, just to end on, do you want to just tell me a little bit about why you love the pirate life?
Captain Collins: Well, it's part of the costuming, really, just being able to get in costume. And as Nina said, we do the party pirates. Our costumes aren't the heaviest costumes, but we love dressing up as a pirate and having fun and entertaining.
Nina Collins: It's all about people smiling and being friendly and making, you know, just temporary friendships.
Captain Collins: We parked in the parking garage and we probably had a dozen people compliment us on our way crossing the street. All wondering what you're doing. Yeah, you guys look great, love the costumes, and of course I respond with, argh. And Nina does her, prepare to be boarded.
Juravich: Yes, and I mean everyone's a little happier on Halloween. So you just have a little bit of that joy every day, right? Yeah, we have been talking about pirating and the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival with Captain Kelly Collins and Nina Collins Skipper Charlie Co-directors of the Buckeye Lake Pirate Festival. Thank you so much for joining us.
Captain Collins: It's been our pleasure. Our pleasure.
Juravich: This has been Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. Be sure to look at our Instagram or Facebook page to see a picture of these two. Thanks for listening. I'm Amy Juravich.