Crazy Horse on CBS
The Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009, edition of CBS Evening News with Katie Couric spotlighted Crazy Horse Memorial as part of the network’s continuing “The American Spirit” series.
Atlanta-based correspondent Mark Strassmann, producer Daniel Steinberger and photographer Max Stacy were at the Memorial for a day in November. They interviewed Memorial president and chief executive Ruth Ziolkowski and her son Casimir “Cas” Ziolkowski, who is the foreman of the mountain carving crew. The CBS team also recorded a mountain blast, scenes of the Memorial’s grounds and the surrounding Black Hills. Excerpts of interviews sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski did with CBS 60 Minutes in 1977 also were used.
Strassmann, a 30-year broadcast news veteran, in an e-mail after the broadcast said he hoped to convey to viewers the scale and spirit of the Memorial’s ambitious project.
“Time and again, I’m always struck in stories I do by people who by sheer force of will or personality — or both — make big things happen,” Strassmann said. “But even by that standard, the story of the Ziolkowskis — Korczak in particular — stands out. This is a family that has literally moved a mountain. To me, carving the Crazy Horse Memorial is a story about many things. But most of all, it shows the American spirit alive and in action: visionary, daring, determined, resilient, and self-sufficient. We’re all living in a time when America needs those virtues from one coast to the other.”
Strassmann knows about traveling the country and world, logging 110,000 flying miles between assignments this year alone. Before coming to Crazy Horse, he reported on Mexican drug cartels establishing Atlanta as a distribution hub, and is in Las Vegas working on a story about the Southwest’s deepening water supply problems.
The Evening News averages 6.76 million viewers and Couric is the 2009 winner of the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in Media. She received the Freedom Forum honor during October ceremonies at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.
The “Crazy Horse monument rising” story is spreading to a world audience via the CBS News Web site and by Internet social networking links. And according to reporter Michal Sznajder, TVN24 in Poland plans to rebroadcast the story later this week. Polish media have long been interested in the mountain carving project started in 1948 by Korczak, a Polish-American born in Boston.