(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (calming music) - It is a very unique culture living, you know, in a 18th century style.

(calming music) - Our tour guide here, he went to school here and then he taught school here and now he's giving tour guides here.

(calming music) - I asked her to marry me when I was home for Christmas vacation.

She kind of said, "I'll think about it."

(laughs) (calming music) - So I guess it just gets in your blood and you just start collecting and then one thing leads to another.

Campbell's Soup displays out of an old diner.

You pick out your soup, open it up in the can, put it in the container, plug it in.

- So I can bend good and able to my will.

I mean to our will.

(calming music) - It's kind of the dream to, you know, to have them come together.

They're here, they support each other all through the love of arts.

(calming music) (calming music continues) (calming music continues) (calming music continues) - The Amish Heritage Center is a not-for-profit foundation that was set up in 1995 on the 300-year anniversary of the beginning of the Amish movement.

(light upbeat music) An Amish owner of this land was willing to part with seven and a half acres so that we could develop this campus and we're deeply grateful.

Now we have a nice seven and a half acre campus here with a real farmstead, very central setting, right on a highway that's easy to find for visitors.

(light upbeat music) Well, the house where we are located now was built in 1880.

We're ready to demolish the house and build a new one on its location.

And because of its historical significance, we asked if he would be willing to donate it to our foundation.

And he was.

(light upbeat music) The other house across the driveway called the Bulls Yoder house was also to donated to us by an Amish family - Called the Yoder House.

And it was the first Amish built house in the community by Mose Yoder, which is my great great grandfather.

This area right here was for the, they had their services, their church services in the house.

And so the preacher would stand here and the ladies would be over here and the men would be over here and that would have their church service here.

(light upbeat music) - Another Amish family had a one room schoolhouse called the German School.

So we were fortunate that a family donated one of the German schools first built in 1900.

- We are in the German school built over 1900 years ago.

Everything's original in this building, including the paint.

This is a coal burning stove.

All the desks, the flooring, everything is original from 110 years ago.

Our tour guide here, he went to school here and then he taught school here and now he's giving tour guides here.

So it's kind of original and we're really fortunate to have him and he's still old order Amish.

(light upbeat music) - The Amish, again, who've been very supportive of what we're doing because of the way we go about it, giving a true educational encounter with the Amish culture.

(light upbeat music) We decided to build a 10,000 square foot museum and welcome center.

And that is now under construction, hope to have it completed next year.

It's going to be a welcome center and a museum.

And so we get about 400,000 visitors a year to the Amish community that are here to observe and learn from the Amish.

- So why is it important that we are building this?

It's a way to show visitors, give them a glimpse into the inside of the Amish life without having to more or less expose the Amish to being in an exhibit, if you will.

(light upbeat music) Moses Yoder was my wife's fifth great-grandfather and he was one of the earliest settlers in this area of the Amish settlers.

So I actually have a personal connection to that.

It's a way of having my own personal touch, I guess, on the story of the Amish, it's my contribution, however small it might be.

This is one way to kind of set the record straight and kind of do an accurate representation of who the Amish are.

(light upbeat music) - It is a very unique culture living, you know, in a 18th century style.

The amazing thing is that, you know, without adopting all of the conveniences of modern life, including electricity, telephone, cars, internet, they can have a very successful and prosperous future.

Quite a number of people come here now already who vaguely know their great-grandfather was Amish, but we don't know much about what that is.

So they come and we can help connect them to the line of descent.

A lot of people leave appreciating the fact they were able to step into a rather calm, non-hectic environment.

(light upbeat music) It gives visitors to the community a more complete encounter with the Amish culture and Amish religious beliefs.

And that's important to the visitors.

They go away knowing more than when they came.

I think this will give an alternative view for people who want to learn that you can have a happy life without being plugged into all of that.

(light upbeat music) (calming music) (calming music) - Custom in the small town in Iowa, when you got married, you rode in the buggy around town.

There's the famous cake in the face picture.

(calming music) (calming music) This is my wife Nancy.

I'm Alan George.

We've been married for 67 years.

We've known each other for 75 years, I think.

(calming music) Oh gosh, our first date was when she was 14 and I was 15.

(calming music) Nancy was a year behind me in school and I thought she was the nicest girl in school and there was a physical attraction for a 15 old.

- I thought he was wonderful, I did.

- We double dated with a friend who was old enough to drive a car and so we sat in the back seat when we double dated and that's how we really got acquainted.

Went with each other in high school.

And then Nancy went off to Mount St.

Clair College.

She had a scholarship from the superintendent of schools of Clinton County.

We had just completely lost track of each other and went our own ways.

(calming music) One weekend we just happened to be in Grand Mound, Iowa, at the same time and ran into each other.

So we said, "Hey, let's go to dinner and find out what's been going on."

And at that point we were very different people.

We weren't in high school, very different.

I had a renewed greater respect for Nancy.

She was going to college.

She didn't have the funds that most of the girls had.

(calming music) I asked her to marry me when I was home for Christmas vacation from the University of Illinois.

And she kind of said, "I'll think about it."

(laughs) And so that went on for almost the whole vacation while we were home.

- We were ready to get married, yeah.

- We got married in the following July.

July 5th, '58.

Well, we had three, a daughter and two sons.

(calming music) - He was a very, very good dad.

Very good.

His kids would all tell you that.

- Well, we're both very proud of our kids.

They're very good human beings.

I hope maybe we had a little to do with that.

As Nancy said, we did a lot of traveling.

We bought pop-up trailer and then Caterpillar vacation.

We were on our way to somewhere.

- Well, we're thankful for them, always thankful for them.

(calming music) - Well we have 11 altogether, but we did some cheating to get to 11.

We had a set of triplets in that 11 and we also had two of granddaughters came from China.

(calming music) Well, we have four at present.

(calming music) - We were very lucky along the way.

(calming music) - The Lord's been very good to us.

- Yes, well I have a wonderful husband and he's been very good to me.

We've had a lot of wonderful times together.

- Yeah, we have always have a big family get together as a family and the whole family comes in for a big Christmas party.

We used to have it at our house, but we don't have the room for it anymore, so our kids have taken it over.

And when we are sitting there watching all this going on and including great-grandkids now you just kind of sit back and say, "Oh my gosh, how lucky are we?"

Look all these people, well you can even shed a few tears over when you realize how lucky you have been.

Just humbles you to see how did all this happen.

(calming music) I mean we're so lucky.

(calming music) (calming music continues) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Franklin Theater got Clark Kent got this phone booth, flying out his Superman, it's done up as a movie theater ticket lobby adjacent to the barbershop, beauty shop, (upbeat music) candy counter, candy machines, popcorn machines.

(upbeat music) The "Mayberry" theme a lot of people touches on with Barney and Otis has this one bullet and the motorcycle and the siren.

It's got the old air siren that (siren blaring) (upbeat music) Drove by the building, it had been setting empty for about 20, 25 years.

It's a school building built in 1936.

It was a grade school 1-6 and it was open till the mid-'70s when it closed.

I bought the building in 1996, started collecting in 1999.

So yeah, 20, 25 years of collecting and had the building 30 years this year.

(upbeat music) When I bought the building, all I had was one automobile, a 1926 Studebaker car.

And I worked on the building for a few years and then when I brought the car down here, I wound up buying a gas pump to set beside it.

And then that led to more purchases.

Currently we have a transportation display, which consists of a few automobiles.

It actually has a Pekin wagon.

And the Pekin wagon is, Pekin had a wagon company here in the 1800s.

They had a plow company as well.

They made all kinds of farm equipment and these all date back in the 1800s.

(upbeat music) We've got various transportation modes from motorcycles to many bikes to just a little bit of everything in the transportation line.

Goes into a gasoline business, gas station with actual mannequins, period correct clothing.

(upbeat music) (bell dinging) Actually have a car with the, we call it the world's oldest oil change.

He'd been under there about 15 years, but the car actually overheats here.

Got a lot of the detail with that, all period correct clothing, testing equipment.

You leave the gas station area and then we go into a movie theater ticket lobby.

There's a barber-beauty shop next door to that.

You go into a '50s diner that's all detailed out how it would've been back in the day into a Pekin and history room.

Shoe shine shop next door to that and then into a toy store.

(upbeat music) The gas station I named after my dad, which he did.

His name was Paul.

And he had an Owen station.

So the gas and oil collectibles I kind of got into because it brought back memories of my childhood and my dad and my brother as well.

I've always had kind of an interest in old stuff, antique stuff, architecture, you know, I think that's part of the reason I acquired the building for the architecture and I really thought it was a really neat building.

I guess it just gets in your blood and you just start collecting and then one thing leads to another and that's kind of how this developed.

You know, a barber chair led to a barber shop.

You know that purchase usually led to another venue.

The diner the same way.

(upbeat music) The potato chip cans, potato chip used to come in the metal cans instead of the bags as we know them today.

The best part, I guess was spending time with my daughter when I bought the building.

She was 10 years old and we've worked at this together for 20, 25 years now.

And we've had a lot of fun with it as just her and I as an event that we did.

And we still share that to this day.

She helps out with a lot of the tours and stuff we do.

My daughter says that I'm not allowed to bring anything else in or purchase any more stuff because it's full, but when I sneak in she doesn't know, doesn't hurt anything.

(upbeat music) Everybody comes through here, pulls something that they remember.

A childhood memory or... That's the fun part.

Just the biggest word they use is wow.

(laughs) And there's a lot to see and they have a good time with it.

But our average tour, depending on the group, it was around two hours to get through it.

Like I say, we have returned people every year.

We've had people from other countries, you know, a lot of the states and the United States have been here.

(upbeat music) I guess it didn't seem like work.

It was more fun.

It was something I was really looking forward to doing.

It was a lot of work, so I get the enjoyment out of it now, of sharing it with people.

It's fun meeting the people that's gotta be the biggest reward.

And seeing them leave here a lot happier than they were when they arrived.

(upbeat music) ♪ Tomorrow I love you tomorrow ♪ You're always a day away ♪ Tomorrow tomorrow - We're an arts community center.

We really believe that the arts is the heart of any community.

It is what gives our young people, the generations coming up a sense of culture.

Not only for their current what's happening, but also for their past and a place to come to, to feel comfortable and it's home.

- So I can bend good and evil to my will.

I mean to our will.

(joyful music) - Having my background in education, I was a teacher in Florida, my husband's like, "You know you've done this before for people, why don't you do it for you?"

So I was like, "Okay."

I talked to a few parents that I had out at Eureka and I said, "Would you like to do something outside of school, an acting class and so forth."

Went to Eureka College, asked if I could use space.

They said yes.

And I had six kids in the technically first session of Nitsch Theater Arts and we had no stage space and no costumes, no props, and we still did classes in performing.

And within six months I had a class there and one in Mackinaw.

Ended up doing two different musicals that summer.

- Or C, turn it over to the proper authorities.

- We realized we really, really needed to look into getting our own space.

One of my board members happened to drive by this building and said, "Hey, there's a sign up."

And my husband and I drove here and took a look in the window and we went, "This could be our home."

♪ We got all the way ♪ Rotten to the core ♪ I'm rotten to the core ♪ Rotten to the core ♪ I'm rotten to the core ♪ Who could ask for more - We now have, we have a spot in Peoria, Eureka, Bloomington, Tremont and here in Washington.

(light upbeat music) We are set up right now for "Disney's Descendants," which is happening with our stage kids.

The stage is also, it was really important for us that it also be accessible for all of our students because we have students of varying abilities because we're a completely inclusive program 'cause we want them all to be involved.

So we're really excited about that we've been able to rebuild the space, which was a church.

Churches are hard spaces to redo and find new purposes for and we think we've done a pretty good job in this space.

♪ We were bad, now we're good ♪ Guess we just misunderstood ♪ Bad is good good is bad ♪ We're the best you ever had - [Kelleen] We never turn away a student as long as there's space in a program.

I had a teacher who did that for me once.

That's kind of why I feel like I am where I am.

We scholarship them and we scholarship about 30% of our students in one way or another.

(light upbeat music) - We've got performing of course, singing, dancing, acting, all of it.

We do straight plays and musicals.

And then we also have our acapella group.

We have a singing and dancing like children's choir too.

And then we also have Tech Kids, which is a program, they learned all sorts of different skills.

We've got teaching lighting, painting and building sets, helping with costumes, helping with wigs, makeup classes, dance classes.

We've got a little bit of everything.

- [Kelleen] We start from age three with Stage Tots.

We hold our musical theater dance classes here.

We have our Tech Kids program is also held here.

Have our Lego explorers and engineer club that is here.

So bunches of classes, imagine it and it can be done.

Our young artist program, we started doing summer camp last year in the mornings, arts themed summer camps and then fun afternoon camps.

And then we also rent out our spaces to other organizations.

(kids singing indistinctly) - [Kelleen] What we hope it does for the community is everyone's always saying that young people need places to be, quality places to be.

That's our thing, we high expectations of our students, the best quality we can give them, safe place to be, build confidence.

We're hoping we're providing that for our community here in Washington.

- For a long time I didn't have like a place where I felt like I had like friends or a place where I felt like I had community, I'd done sports and a bunch of other activities, but until I had like discovered theater, I never had any like confidence.

And so being here and being able to do theater at Nitsch has been really imperative to my life.

(light upbeat music) - Hopefully they find a place where they can be themselves and they find their tribe, they find their group.

It has been a home away from home ever since I was little.

And I'm just so grateful to see how far we've come from performing in tiny theaters wherever we can find space to having our own building and being able to have so many kids do the program has been really, really great to see our growth and support and participation.

It's a great place to be and it's really helped inspired me to, you know, pursue my dreams and chase the craft that is theater.

- It's kind of the dream to, you know, to have them come together.

They're here, they support each other all through the love of arts.

(upbeat music) ♪ The daughter of an evilicious queen ♪ ♪ Like me (upbeat music) (audience clapping) - [Announcer] Thank you for joining us on this journey.

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