A Man Who Really Earned His Labor Day.
This is the day we take a day off work in order to celebrate going to work. Work is an important part of who we are. Take old Marty Peters, for example.
"We were calculating that you've worked for UPS something like 15-thousand days," said Dean Reynolds, CBS News Correspondent.
"It's been 15-thousand good days, too - I'll tell you..." said Marty Peters, with a luagh.
Since 1946, in his 63 years of delivering packages for UPS, Marty Peters took only five sick days. Imagine that.
"Anybody that keeps working, you roll with the times and your health is rolling with you." said Marty Peters.
Marty may not think that's exceptional, but his doctor does.
"My doctor, the last time I went to him, he said: 'You know, Marty, you're one in a million..." said Marty Peters.
He and his wife Christine live in suburban Detroit. They've been married for 58 years. It's going to be an adjustment having Marty at home every day.
"Maybe I'll have to go to work, and he can stay home and keep house," said Christine Peters, with a laugh.
Just as a point of reference, Dean Reynolds did a little research on how things were back in 1946, when Marty first took the job.
"When Marty went to work for UPS 63 years ago, the average price of a home was around five thousand dollars - a car cost a thousand - and Marty was making 95 cents an hour,' sai dDean Reynolds, CBS News Correspondent.
He's got a lot to look back on, now that he's 87. Dean Reynolds was with him a week ago Friday for Marty's last day on the job.
"Marty was a force of nature and a fact of life here. It will be hard to let him go.," said Dean Reynolds.
"Come visit us once in a while, OK?" said a driver to Marty.
On this Labor Day, here's to you, Marty. Here's to all the Martys...
Former Foes in the Vietnam War Come Together.
Thirty-seven years ago, in the Vietnam War, Dan Cherry was piloting an American F-4 fighter plane - and actual cockpit voice recordings tell what Dan heard on his radio.
"There's a MiG. There's a MiG-21. Go get 'em, Dan..." (from a radio)
And Dan did go get 'em.
"(Explosion) Got him, I got him! He got him, he got him! All right, beautiful..." (from a radio)
Dan Cherry saw the MiG go down in flames and the pilot ejecting and his parachute opening. And decades later, he would think back and wonder...
"The fate of the MiG pilot. I wondered if he really did survive when he hit the ground, was he OK, was he injured, did he have a family, what was his name and all that…" said Dan Cherry.
But Dan Cherry did more than wonder.
Dan Cherry did some research and learned that the pilot of the MiG he had shot down 37 years ago was named Nguyen Hong My, and that he had survived.
Cherry then tried to find him, says our Steve Hartman.
"...Dan heard about a TV show in Vietnam called 'The Separation Never Seems to Have Existed," said Steve Hartman, CBS News Correspondent.
"That's the name of the show!?" asked Steve Hartman.
"That's the way it translates," said Dan Cherry.
"Is it like 'This is Your Life?'" asked Steve Hartman.
"Exactly," answered Dan Cherry.
Dan wrote to the TV show, which set up their second meeting - after all those years.
"We had a very firm handshake. And he says, 'Welcome to my country. I'm glad to see that you're in good health. And I hope that we can be friends...'" said Dan Cherry.
Hong My invited Dan to his home, where he met the family - got to hold his little grandson.
"And I held him in my arms land. It was a special thing and I thought to myself, 'How quickly has trust developed between the two of us...'" said Dan Cherry.
Hong My flew over here and was met at the Bowling Green, Kentucky airport by Dan - who brought him home to meet his family and fawn over his grandkids.
"To be able to actually meet the guy I fought a life-and-death duel with - to be able to put all that behind us - it was the right thing to do..." said Dan Cherry.
Thirty-seven years - maybe time does heal old wounds.
"We hope that the fact that we've been able to reconcile our differences and develop a friendship might somehow help Vietnam veterans on both sides," said Dan Cherry.
Tiny Tubes that Could Fight Cancer.
Alex Biris and Vladimir Zharov, two university researchers in Arkansas, are experimenting with ways to use nanotechnology in place of chemotherapy in the treatment of cancer.
This will take a lot more testing before it can be tried on humans. But in experiments on lab rats, they were able to get tiny carbon tubes measuring billionths of a meter to latch on to cancer cells - and then watch them, using a device similar to an MRI machine, as they traveled with those cells through the body - and then zap them with focused laser beams that warm the tubes up to 90 degrees Celsius - hot enough to kill only the cancer cells that they're attached to, but to do no damage to the healthy cells surrounding them.
Such nanotechnology could conceivably reduce or eliminate the need for surgery or chemotherapy.
Surgery carries risks - and chemotherapy, although it does kill cancer cells, also destroys healthy cells - and can take a terrible toll, make the patient even sicker.
So, the idea of being able to attach these nanotubes only to cancer cells and kill only those cells could be an important breakthrough. However, nobody knows how the human body would respond to those nanotubes.
In a study that was done last year, mice injected with carbon nanotubes responded as if they had been injected with asbestos - they developed inflammation and lesions.
So, Biris and Zharov, the Arkansas researchers, acknowledge that a lot more work will have to be done to understand any potential toxic effects before this sort of nanotechnology can be tested on human cancer patients.
Zharov has received a five-year, one-and-a-half million dollar grant from the National Cancer Institute to begin some clinical trials.
This won't save any human lives now. But someday, maybe...
Celebrating the Great Comedy Wave.
Just about everything in the world has changed since our "Sunday Morning" TV program started on CBS 30 years ago - including comedy.
As Rick Newman of the comedy club "Catch a Rising Star" said...
"Young people didn't wanna hear their father's comedian that used to be on Ed Sullivan. They wanted their own voice," said Rick Newman.
Our friend and CBS News colleague Russ Mitchell reminded us of what happened to comedy in the 70's...
"Just consider the groundbreaking comedians of the day: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman, Richard Belzer..." said Russ Mitchell, CBS News Correspondent
Stand-up comedy used to be mostly two-liners: setup and punchline, the sort Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield were so great at.
Russ Mitchell showed us...
"So, here's how it used to go - setup..." said Russ Mitchell.
"I went to the doctor; I said it hurts when I do that..." said Henny Youngman.
"Punch line..." said Russ Mitchell.
"He says don't do that," said Henny Youngman.
"Setup…" said Russ Mitchell.
"I tell you with me, eating has replaced sex completely..." said Rodney Dangerfield.
"Punch line..." said Russ Mitchell
"In fact, I had a mirror put in over my kitchen table," said Rodney Dangerfield.
George Carlin - who died last year - was a one-man transition: he reinvented himself.
"I had been leaning toward ending this kind of artificial self of mine that was entertaining these people I didn't believe, you know, their values and I didn't like them. And I was heading for a more truthful comedy, true to myself,' sai dGeorge Carlin, in 2001.
Richard Pryor was true to himself, in his own way.
"I don't never want to see no more police in my life. (laughs) At my house... (laughs)" said Richard Pryor.
Today, the change goes on, as Colin Kane told Russ...
"I talk about things that bother me. And as we know, a lotta humor comes from that..." said Colin Kane, with Russ Mitchell.
"I live in New York, in apartment. The cost of living is so expensive, isn't it? It's ridiculous. I used Craigslist to find an apartment. I typed in my minimum-maximum for rent, and a picture of my parents' basement popped up. (laughs)" said Colin Kane, on stage.
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