As Seen on TV Archives

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indy Parks has unveiled the official lineup for it’s popular Summer Concert and Movie Series.

The Park Department will be kicking off the season on Wednesday, May 31 with performances at Garfield Park and Eagle Creek Park.

The Summer Concert and Movie Series offers free performances at six parks across the city, including POPS Series at Garfield Park, the Freedom Series at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, the Monumental Concert Series at Riverside Park, In Concert with Nature at Eagle Creek Park, and many others.

Indy Parks is planning over 70 live performances and seven movie showings this summer, with performance locations including Garfield Park, Broad Ripple Park, Riverside Park, Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Watkins Park, and Eagle Creek Park.

The Garfield Park Arts Center will also be hosting the Garfield Park Art & Music Festival on August 12 from 4 p.m. – 9 p.m. This free event will have over 40 artist booths, food trucks, and a lineup of musicians such as Public Universal Friend, The Brothers Footman, and more.

Concerts will run through the end of September, with the last show taking place at Riverside Park on September 29.

To view the full summer lineup and more, click this link.

NOBLESVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — Legendary pop singer Janet Jackson is bringing her “Together Again” tour to the Ruoff Music Center on Friday, May 26.

Gates open at 5 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:45 p.m. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office is anticipating a late-arriving crowd.

“From some of the other venues, what we’ve heard about the Janet Jackson concert is we have people that are arriving a little later than normal to the venue,” said Lt. Dan DeYoung. “So as a venue, and as a department who runs the security out there, what we’re hoping for is people do a little better job of arriving on time.”

A late-arriving crowd will not only cause a traffic jam in the parking lot, but at the box office as well. Concertgoers are encouraged to use rideshare services if possible.

“Hopefully people have already figured that out beforehand, because I’m sure it’s filled up with racegoers that are traveling into the area, and there is some possibility that heavy traffic appears. I would hope that the traffic at the concert times is going opposite directions,” said DeYoung.

Drivers could also encounter traffic along Boden Road and East 146th Street, and many of these drivers who are headed out for dinner and a movie could also be sharing the road with concertgoers.

“Hopefully living here, you have some other routes that you can take. They may add a couple minutes to your travel time, but hopefully lower your headaches on a Friday night after a long work week,” said DeYoung.

Drivers should also be aware of construction at 146th street near Allisonville Road which could slow down traffic.

“That shouldn’t affect concert traffic, but at the same time, if people are coming from the west side of the county from the Westfield and Carmel area, that’s probably a way to avoid or if they’re heading home back to those areas. That would be something to avoid,” said DeYoung.

Coolers, signage, non-clear bags, selfie sticks, frozen water bottles, and alcohol are all prohibited through the ticket gates.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Here’s an I-Team 8 exclusive on the effort to keep you safe at the Indianapolis 500.

That effort includes a low-flying helicopter tracking potential radiation around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

If there is a nuclear threat, law enforcement needs to know where radiation already exists in the area. We can’t see the radiation, but the instruments inside of a special Huey helicopter can.

I-Team 8 got an exclusive trip inside. Flying at 80 mph and 150 feet off the ground, this radiation-detecting helicopter is mapping the radiation around Speedway. Chief Scientist Scott Suchyta earned his PhD in nuclear chemistry, and he is the one sitting in the back seat of the helicopter reading the results.

“That’s correct, We are looking at the background radiation. it is important to know what normal looks like, and that is really what we are doing. We are very sensitive. There are a lot of natural and man-made isotopes that we see, so medical procedures and industrial work. There are signatures that we see, so we want to look at that and know what all those regular signatures look like,” Suchyta said.

Anything radioactive will show up on a scanner-like device in the helicopter. A medical facility will look different than a construction site. A threat such as a dirty bomb would look much different that the surrounding area.

Charles Mansfield is with the Department of Energy. He has decades of radiation detection work on his resume. I-Team 8 asked him if the equipment could detect a small homemade radioactive device. “It could depend on what the dirty bomb is shielded with or configuration or how much radioactivity is in the dirty bomb.” Mansfield said.

On Sunday, fans will not see the helicopter flying around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Department of Energy and other private contractors have SUVs equipped with radiation-detection devices.

Mansfield said, “I very seriously doubt that you will know if there is detection going on. It all depends on how overt the city of Indianapolis wants to be. Normally, with my organization, you would never know.”

I-Team 8 agreed not to show what the devices used on the ground look like.

The helicopter will continue to map background radiation in and around the track through Saturday.

LATEST: UPDATE: IndyParks announced Friday that, due to maintenance issues, Garfield Park Pool and Perry Park Pool will not open as planned for Memorial Day weekend.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indy Parks announced its summer pool schedule Thursday. The first wave of pools will be open for Memorial Day weekend Saturday, May 27 through Monday, May 29.

The pools will close for additional lifeguard training and re-open for the start of the summer season on Saturday, June 3. The pools included in the first wave are Broad Ripple Park, Broadside Park, Frederick Douglass Park, Garfield Park, Indy Island Aquatic Park, Perry Park, Rhodius Park, Riverside Park, and Thatcher Park.

Indy Island Aquatic Park and Thatcher Park indoor pools will remain open during normal business the week of Memorial Day and will switch to summer hours staring June 3. Gustafson Park Pool will open on June 3.

Admission fees for the pools will range from $2-$5 depending on age and location of the pool. Attendees can purchase an Indy Parks fun card for $40 per person for ages three and up, which gives attendees access to one pool per day for the season. Fun cards can be purchased in person at any open family center or pool, at the customer service in Riverside Park, and online.

Staring June 3, Pools will be open Tuesday through Sunday with varying hours. To learn more about specific hours for indoor and outdoor pools, admission prices, and more, click this link.

Swim lessons are available at select pool locations this summer. Scholarships for swim lessons are available and can be applied for by calling 317-327-PARK.

Indy Parks is looking to hire for aquatic positions. 170 lifeguards have been hired this year, over double the number at this point last year. Applicants can learn more and apply for open positions by clicking this link.

FARMLAND, Ind. (WISH) — A Farmland volunteer firefighter died Thursday morning while responding to a barn fire in Randolph County.

Kyle T. Osgood, assistant chief of the Farmland Volunteer Fire Department was driving a 2000-gallon fire tanker on 1000 West and County Road 400 North when the single-vehicle crash occurred, according to a release from the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.

DHS said the vehicle approached an S-curve, lost control, left the roadway, and rolled over on top of 31-year-old Osgood and 19-year-old Zachary Lee. At 7 a.m., officers found Osgood pinned under the truck and pronounced him dead at the scene. Lee was airlifted to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne in critical condition.

Randolph Co. Sheriff Art Moystner told News 8 that Lee has since been taken to Parkland Hospital with “very, very serious injuries.” Moystner also says the investigation into the firetruck crash has been handed over to the Indiana State Police Pendleton Post.

According to DHS, Osgood and his family have a rich tradition in the Farmland Volunteer Fire Department, with his grandfather previously serving as fire chief.

Farmland is about 15 miles east of Muncie.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Each year, the 500 Festival Princess Program selects 33 academically driven Indiana women attending college in the state to serve as ambassadors for their hometown and school.

Mykah Coleman is a junior education major at Marian University and a graduate of Shortridge High School in Indianapolis. She hopes her experience in the princess program will inspire her future students.

“I plan to go back and teach at schools that need me the most, that don’t have that much recognition, and that have students from low socioeconomic backgrounds just to give back to the community because that’s how I grew up and look where I am today.”

Coleman is the 2023 500 Festival Queen Scholar and received about $2,500 in scholarship money.

“The Queen Scholar is just the representative of the class of princesses for the year so luckily I was chosen due to the number of outreaches I’ve done and the type of outreaches I’ve done,” Coleman explained.

As Queen Scholar, she will wear the unique 500 Festival 500 Queen’s Crown at 500 Festival Events, will take part in pre-race and Victory Circle celebrations at Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, and represent the 500 Festival at events throughout the year.

Since the program’s founding in 1959, more than 2,000 Indiana women have experienced the honor of being selected as a 500 Festival Princess.

Coleman is the program’s fourth Black Queen Scholar.

“I get to represent and speak up for the underserved and underprivileged communities, especially the little black and brown girls; this is just warming my heart.”

Click here to check out the interest form for the 2024 500 Festival Princess Program.

WALLER, Texas (AP) — A.J. Foyt was 15 when a boat that he and two friends were riding in capsized in a storm. The young Foyt clung tightly to a buoy until a fishing vessel found him, too late for one of the other boys that had already drowned.

Not long afterward, Foyt and some buddies were climbing towers and one of them grasped a power line and was electrocuted. Foyt will have you know that he never considered touching those lines.

So began a life spent cheating death, one that one of the greatest auto racing drivers in history has been forced to reflect upon in recent weeks during what usually is a time of joy. The month of May means the Indianapolis 500, the biggest race in the world, and it’s a crown jewel event that Foyt won a record-sharing four times.

Lucy, his beloved wife for nearly 68 years, died last month. For Foyt, now 88, the prospect of mortality has finally become inescapable. And few have had so many escapes.

Foyt was retired when he suffered two near-fatal attacks by killer bees, one sending him into shock. He once flipped a bulldozer into a pond on one of his Texas properties, emerging to shout: “I ain’t no Houdini! I needed some air!” He has had several staph infections, one leading to a concrete spacer in his leg that eventually led to an artificial knee.

When Foyt had triple bypass surgery a decade ago, he was left comatose; Lucy was told his organs were beginning to fail. Yet his high school sweetheart had seen him defy death so many times that she refused to turn off his respirator. Naturally, he recovered.

And then there are the wrecks, so many of those. Like his 1965 flip in a stock car at Riverside, when doctors on site pronounced him dead. Parnelli Jones stepped in, scooped dirt from Foyt’s mouth and that was all it took to revive him.

Or the crash in 1972, when Foyt had to leap from a burning dirt champ car. It ran over his ankle and broke it as Foyt, engulfed in flames, ran toward a pond. His father grabbed a fire extinguisher to save his son.

That brings his story to March 7 of this year, when Foyt went to a Houston hospital to have a pacemaker installed. He was deeply opposed to the procedure, mostly because he believes a pacemaker killed his mother in 1981. He asked the doctors what would happen if he didn’t get it.

“I think they were scared my heart was slowing down too much,” said Foyt, who has never slowed down a day in his life. “(The doctor) said the bad thing was you can pass out or have a stroke. Well, I didn’t want to be driving from Houston out here to the shop and pass out and kill somebody. So that’s the reason I did it, because I still like to drive my own car.”

He showed up on time for the procedure, Lucy by his side, and they waited — and waited and waited.

“They told us to be there at 5:30, so OK. It got to be about 10:30-11 and they said, ‘It might be another hour or two,’” Foyt recalled. “I said, ’You can forget it and stick it up your ass.’ I started to put my underwear and pants on and was walking out. They said, ‘No, no, no, we’re gonna get you right in.’ If it was an emergency, it would be one thing. But they want me to sit there another couple hours? They can go to hell.”

The Associated Press recently spent a day with Foyt at his race shop in Waller, reminiscing about a colorful career that made him famous far beyond the track. He was same ol’ A.J. that day, cracking jokes, talking about his ranches, career milestones and how, unlike longtime rival Mario Andretti, he had no issues with isolation or depression during the pandemic.

“That’s Mario Andretti. That ain’t A.J. Foyt,” he said with a snarl.

The tough-as-boot-leather Texan was irreverent about death that day, too. Foyt drove during one of the deadliest eras in motorsports, and far too many of his racing contemporaries pulled off pit lane never to pull back in. The number of those who survived is dwindling with time, of course; two good friends not only died on the same day earlier this year but had funerals on the same day, too.

“What do you do when your friends die? You get new friends,” Foyt said with a shrug.

It’s not so easy to replace Lucy, who died unexpectedly just seven days after AP visited Foyt.

“Super Tex” had just spent the first weekend in April at Texas Motor Speedway, attending his first IndyCar race of the season to watch his two drivers compete. He and Lucy have what he called “sugar diabetes,” and when Foyt called her over the weekend, she mentioned that she wasn’t feeling well.

By the time Foyt arrived home Sunday night, she was far worse. Foyt on Tuesday finally got her into an ambulance to the hospital, but Lucy suffered a massive heart attack. She died the following morning.

“The nurses, they knew who I was,” Foyt said, “and they came out and told me the treatments weren’t doing nothing, and they said, ‘Mr. Foyt, it’s bad.’”

The nurses promised to get him from the waiting room to her bedside at the end; in a blink-or-you’ll miss it moment, Foyt’s eyes briefly welled with tears and his voice choked as he discussed their final goodbye.

“Me and my oldest son sat there next to the bed with her,” Foyt said, taking a long pause, “and it was hard.”

Foyt said he once told Lucy she couldn’t die first, yet that’s what happened. And he was relieved by it.

“I’m kinda glad she died, and I hate to say it like that, but once your heart stops, your lungs, your kidneys, never recover,” Foyt said. “She couldn’t live like that. I wouldn’t want her to.”

The couple shared four children, eight grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. They owned several properties across Texas, many of them working cattle ranches that Foyt tends to to this day. He now has to handle her affairs, too, and when he talks about the challenges ahead it becomes clear that he remains every bit as ornery as he was his entire career. Heck, in 1997, at the age of 62, he wrestled Arie Luyendyk to the ground at Texas Motor Speedway when the Dutch driver showed up at a Foyt victory celebration claiming he had won.

Take Foyt’s trip to the funeral home, where a relative made an outfit suggestion for Lucy’s burial. Too many people suddenly had their own ideas about the memorial. Foyt sat silent — for a while.

“I said, ‘Let me tell you, you ain’t making one goddamn decision. I’m gonna bury her the way I want her buried, not what y’all think,'” Foyt said. “I probably shouldn’t have blowed up, but I got mad and said, ‘Y’all shut your (expletive) mouths — excuse my language — I’m making the decisions so you all get the (expletive) out of here.

“The lady at the funeral home, she said, ‘You don’t put up with no nothing!’ And I said, “No ma’am, not when it’s my decision.’”

Foyt decided his wife would be buried in yellow — “Yellow is what she loved, and what she looked good in” — and he picked out a casket and draped it in yellow flowers, which he had given her each year. He refused to have the casket lowered into the ground while he was present.

Foyt didn’t want to go to Indianapolis this month, worrying about what could happen at home without Lucy to oversee things. But he figured Indianapolis Motor Speedway, that historic gray lady on Georgetown Road where he had spent many of his best days, was the right place to help process his grief.

“I said, ‘Well, I need to get away,'” he said, “so that’s the reason I’m here.”

From the garages of Gasoline Alley to the yard of bricks on the front stretch, Foyt is surrounded by old friends and foes, racers everywhere — his kind of people — along with adoring fans who believe Foyt is the best to walk the hallowed grounds.

“I still consider him the greatest driver to ever pull on a helmet,” three-time Indy 500 winner Johnny Rutherford said.

Foyt won his first Indy 500 in 1961, then again in 1964 and 1967, while his 1977 victory made him the first four-time winner, a club that has grown to include Al Unser Sr., Rick Mears and Helio Castroneves. Foyt qualified for “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” for 35 consecutive years, and he is the only driver to win in both front- and rear-engined cars.

His legacy extends well beyond the Indy 500. In 1967, Foyt became the only driver to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Indy 500 in the same year, and he’s the only driver to have won Indy, the Daytona 500, Le Mans and the 12 Hours of Sebring. He has 12 major racing championships – his seven IndyCar titles are a record – and his 67 IndyCar victories are most in series history.

Foyt even holds the closed-course speed record, which he set in 1987 on a test track near Fort Stockton, Texas, where he drove an Oldsmobile Aerotech at an average speed of 257.123 mph. He was 52 at the time.

The track is where he belongs, and it is why he reluctantly left Texas to spend another May in Indianapolis.

His eponymous race team has gone through some lean years, split between shops in Waller and Indianapolis. The Waller facility has only eight full-time employees, but it is where Foyt said his flagship No. 14 will remain “until the day I die.”

Santino Ferrucci is driving it this year, and the chassis for Sunday’s race was on display in Waller the day the AP visited. His crew felt confident it had built a bullet, and the optimism wasn’t misguided: Ferrucci will start fourth — the same position Foyt started when he won his final two Indy 500s — while rookie teammate Benjamin Pedersen will roll off 11th.

Foyt, who has lost about 50 pounds this year but whose mobility is slowed by foot problems, watched some of the qualifying laps last weekend from a golf cart on pit road.

“It’s good to see him,” Ferrucci said, “and I know for a fact in the garage he was really, really happy to see the car and see the progress, to see something he hasn’t seen out of this team in a long time as far as build quality and all the work and development that has gone into this car. He’s super excited. It’s a huge confidence boost for the whole organization.”

The excitement of qualifying weekend was tempered a bit when Foyt turned toward Anne Fornoro, his publicist since 1985. Her husband, an accomplished racer and National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Famer Drew Fornoro, died May 1, and the Foyt and Fornoro families are tightly intertwined. Fornoro and her daughter were overcome by emotion, and Foyt looked at Fornoro and made a sobering realization: “I have no one to call now.”

It would have been Lucy awaiting the day’s results back home.

The thought brought Foyt’s son, Larry, to tears. He is the one that runs the day-to-day operations for the race team. Born to Foyt’s only daughter, Larry was adopted and raised by A.J. and Lucy and he recently named his newborn daughter Lucy.

Running an underfunded race team is hard enough. Doing it with Foyt over your shoulder is pressure that Larry Foyt has learned to accept.

“It gets better with time, for sure. I mean, just as A.J. has gotten older, right?” Larry Foyt said. “But anything big, I always run by him. We collaborate on pretty much everything. But lately, some health things came about.”

The elder Foyt was not present for the team’s last win — a victory by Takuma Sato at Long Beach a decade ago — but that win earned Larry Foyt some autonomy within the race team.

“I think when that happened, he realized, ‘Hey, OK, maybe things are OK when I’m not on top of it all the time,’” Larry Foyt said. “And that’s what we’re working on, just trying to get the team back to where he can enjoy it. Give him something to root for and be proud of the race team.”

Team morale is soaring headed into Sunday’s race, and fans each day at the track have shown their adoration for Foyt and his drivers. The qualifying crowd last Sunday roared for Ferrucci each time he took to the track, including his run for the pole. By that point, a superstitious Foyt was watching from one of the garages, the door pulled shut.

Ferrucci wound up fourth, and Foyt couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. But he was quick to mention that, despite his own four poles, he never won the Indy 500 starting from the front row.

In the afternoon sun, a crowd was building outside his garage, waiting for Super Tex to emerge so they could cheer his team’s encouraging start to the Indy 500. The lowest-ranked, full-time team in IndyCar had out-qualified mighty Team Penske, and most of the cars from heavyweights Chip Ganassi Racing and Arrow McLaren Racing.

The fans were bursting with pride for Foyt, who simply wanted to move on with his day.

“I don’t care how anyone else feels,” he said. “I only give a (expletive) how A.J. Foyt feels.”

CARMEL, Ind. (WISH) — Conner Prairie, the living history museum and historic home in Fishers, wants to expand into Carmel.

Developers asked the planning commission Tuesday for permission to rezone 200 acres between Allisonville Road and River Road, south of 146th Street.

The proposal includes a farm-to-table restaurant, parking, a White River education center, a lodge hotel, cabins, a modern farm, and walking trails.

News 8 asked Monday about the expansion, and a Conner Prairie Spokesperson sent the following statement.

The documents represent preliminary ideas for this portion of our property as represented in Conner Prairie’s Master Plan from 2018. These specific projects have been developed in partnership with the White River Vision Plan to provide more opportunities for residents and visitors to learn about the history of the river and gain access for recreational and educational purposes. Additional community conversations and stakeholder engagement are forthcoming, which will provide opportunity for feedback on the final plans.
Conner Prairie Statement

River Road resident Mike Hannigan says there is still come concern about rezoning. “We are concerned, (though), about lights on at night and different uses,” Hannigan said.

Hannigan also says that Conner Prairie representatives have been listening to his concerns. Project consultants say a city-sanctioned study showed the new development would have a minimal impact on traffic.

Developers say they will tweak the proposal before bringing it back to the planning commission for approval.

WEST TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WISH) — An Indiana welcome center will be reconstructed off I-70 in Vigo County to honor the state’s racing history.

The Clear Creek Welcome Center will be reconstructed as part of a $53.5 million project that ceremonially began Tuesday, the Department of Transportation says. The center is located about a mile west of the Illinois-Indiana border on I-70 eastbound.

Design elements and interactive exhibits will celebrate the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indianapolis 500. The center also will have a playground, an adult recreation area, a walking path and a dog park. Parking and restroom facilities for truckers will also be part of the reconstructed center.

Hannig Construction of Terre Haute is the primary contractor. The existing welcome center will close on or after June 1.

The new facility will open in 2025.

The Center Creek Welcome Center is part of an Indiana Department of Transportation investment of over $600 million to improve 21 rest areas and welcome centers by summer 2030. More than 1,100 additional semitrailer parking spaces will be added as part of the investment.

Tuesday’s groundbreaking comes days after Gov. Eric Holcomb and others at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway unveiled new “welcome to Indiana” signs, 19 which are being installed on highways this week.

(Provided Images and Photo/Indiana Department of Transportation)

COLUMBUS, Ind. (WISH) — Columbus-based Cummins plans to buy two Faurencia commercial vehicle manufacturing plants, one in Columbus and the other in the Netherlands.

Cummins announced plan totaling $142 million euros in a Tuesday news release.

The release said Faurecia has been a Cummins partner and supplier for more than a decade. The purchase would enhance the Cummins’ Emission Solutions business. Government regulatory approvals are pending in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. The purchase could be completed by year’s end.

“Cummins intends to finance the transaction using cash on the company’s balance sheet,” the release said.