increase in side. researchers say the tyrana saur us's growth happened suddenly. what triggered it is a mystery there's more video along with the latest news and analysis at the website aljazeera.com. >> he's always looking out for you, it is part of his dna. >> "america tonight" remembers. jay la monica. our program is different tonight as is our world. a little dimmer as we mourn the loss of a very dear part of the "america tonight" team. so many people you never see play a role in bringing our

stories to air. we've lost one of them. but we won't ever foresight the impact jay la monica made on the work we do. our program tonight honors hits memory and we hope reveals how much he touched each of our lives. jay led our "america tonight" investigative team. never letting up on the drive for accuracy for proof and urging us to tell the hard stories as he helped our sheila macvicar do in an under cover investigation on how the state of florida warehouses kids. >> this is a hidden camera video from inside a florida nursing home. children in wheelchairs parked in a hallway in a place called kids corner at fort lauderdale. >> more like a storage of kids. >> marcel la martinez knows

about it, his son andrew has lived there for more than a year. andrew martinez was an outgoing high school senior .his genome was to become a firefighter when a freak accident changed his life. we're on our way to meet andrew martinez, just ten days after his birthday he had a cardiac arrest. could you if you had help care for him at home? could he be at home? >> that's what i would love. >> martinez was never told he could have in-home care for his son. since he left the hospital andrew has only lived in nursing homes. the state of florida has pushed parents to send their children to nursing homes like this one according to a department of justice investigation. >> what are days like when you don't come to see him? what does he do? >> not much of nothing. because when i show up there,

there's no interaction. >> with other people? >> yes. >> or with staff? >> yes with staff, there's nobody there to really care to him. there's no -- it's more of a -- more of a system okay, 12:00, feed them. give him his meds, that's it. done-deal. >> and is that the way those kids are treated? >> yes, that's basically it. so it's nothing new to me. but that's the reality i have to deal with. i'm sorry. >> other families told us they had seen the same thing. children neglected for hours. parked in the hallway, ignored. >> isn't it more expensive for the state to keep kids in nursing homes? >> well, the state has acknowledged that it is 20% more expensive to have a child in a nursing home than it is to have a child in their own home.

so it ends up costing the state almost $250,000 to $300,000 a year. >> i love you. >> the state pays nursing homes up to $550 a day for children, twice as much as elderly patients around 20% more than full time nursing care at home. sheila macvicar, al jazeera. >> the warehousing of disabled kids, as reported by our sheila macvicar in an investigation led by executive producer jay la monica. children especially the vulnerable ones had no greater champion than jay. he guided the reporting of all of our investigations including a look into history. and the nearly unbelievable attempt to create a super-race, in america. in an "america tonight" exclusive, correspondent lori jane gliha met victims and a courageous nurse who now admits her role in destroying their futures.

>> i thought at the time, i was doing the right thing. it's what our legislators wanted at that time and what my bosses wanted. even the president of the united states, you trusted all of those people. so i went right along with them. >> 87-year-old celia vanzegrift remembers her time in the operating room as a nurse in the colony known as the epileptic and feeble minded. teens from broken homes alcoholics and others whom the state considered inadequate. >> how many sterilizations do you think you observed during your career there? >> oh my goodness, i continue begin to tell you.

>> she witnessed severa many sterilizations. >> was everybody pretty calm? >> they were asleep by the time they got to the operating room. >> reporter: it is the first time vandegrift has talked about a dark period in the history, the height of the eugenics period. in 1924, lawmakers passed the virginia eugenic al cal sterilization act. according to vandegrift, a group of officials would hold meetings to determine who would be sterilized. >> the doctor would talk about their physical condition, the psychologist would talk about how they did on the psychological testing.

the nurse would talk about what they were doing on the unit, what they could do. everybody had input. it was just disgusting. it was a general decision. if anybody opposed they would speak up about. >> more than 30 states passed similar laws leading to approximately 65,000 forced sterilizations nationwide over several decades. the virginia law remained on the books until 1979. >> our executive producer jay la monica guided that exclusive look at that tragic moment in virginia's history and he led investigations that crossed our borders to expose the exploitation of workers, the cheap labor many of our luxury goods depend on. tens of thousands are at work each day in mexican border towns in often frightening conditions. "america tonight's" christof putzel found many at work for electronics joint lg a brand you

might very well have in your home right now. >> 26-year-old carlos castro was born in reynoso, he went to work for electronics giant lg electronics. carlos was assigned to operate a machine to stamp lg machine on tvs. but on the second day on the job there was an accident. >> can you tell me what happened to your right arm and the fingers of your right hand? >> lg has this system where they use these different companies and they give them all different faims and then they go in and make these products in the shell companies basically and they bring them all together and put them together in the lg factory and put their name on it. around essentially the companies

that are making their products are not following the rules. workers are injured constantly and in the end lg doesn't have to take responsibility, it says my name is not on the tront doosh. front door. >> we were introduced to luisa mowe samoreno. as a single mom raising six children her pay of $1.50 an hour had been the only thing keeping her family afloat. moreno filed a lawsuit but the company fought back. since the accident happened at hg electronics and not their plant, it was not their fault. the suit was thrown out. the case is still pending in court. >> what do you want americans understand about the people

making their televisions? >> christof putzel, al jazeera, reynosa mexico. >> a look at just some of the investigations led by executive producer jay la monica for "america tonight." in a moment here the other side our great story teller. one of the great stories he loved and the stone that inspired a great spirit.

so many of our "america tonight" investigations were led by jay la monica. our executive producer who lost his fierce bament agains battle against an unrelenting illness but who urged our reporters to tell a great story. a project so complex it's been 70 years in the making and not over yet. bury. >> in the rugged gra granite ofe black hills, a figure is emerging, its figures emerging from the lakot

a sioux crime tribe phone as crazy horse. the horse's head all 250 feet has been painted, from the jagged rock, call it a work in progress. who started carving it in 1948. >> he was determined it was going to be completed no question about it. and i don't think he realized when he started how long it was going to take or how much work it was going to be. and -- >> so he underestimated the task. >> he did. >> now 87 years old, ruth came to south dakota with stardust in her eyes at the age of 20. she came from connecticut to work with the famous sculptor from her state, the man she would later marry on a thanksgiving day because he would not take another day off from carving crazy horse. >> when he started it, he wasn't going to quit. e. that wasn't his way.

he honestly believed, in one thing he told me, you can do anything you wanted to do. absolutely nothing is impossible as long as you are willing to work lard enough and stay with it. >> he had been a sculptor on mt. rushmore only 17 miles away. the lakota sioux indians who once owned all of this, asked him to carve a likeness of crazy horse. who refused to sign away sioux lands. >> why did he wanted it? >> because it was so big, we started out with absolutely flog and we had to make everything owrsourselves. >> her husband died in 1982 at the age of 74 when the carving had barely begun to take shape. >> when your husband died did he

think that his dream was going to die with him? >> no. i don't think he did. he had made the statement that if the mountain stopped when he died, his whole life would have been wasted. >> so ruth and their ten children decided to forge ahead. six of them still work on the mountain. daughter jadviga is the fourth oldest. >> he wanted us to have a commitment just like he did. >> was obsessed with this project? >> yes. did he teach us to be? yes. downtown. if you lay down the feeling then you have to find something else to do. >> her younger sister monique wears the hard hat in the family. supervising the actual carving of the mountain. as a young woman she learned to scale the mountain from her father's model.

the first tv cameras ever allowed here with a scale model monique gives us a progress report. >> give us a sense of where we are and what we are going on below this face? >> we are below the horse's nose, we have to go 70 feet to get to the horse's nostril. the rock we are standing on will be gone. >> the rock several million tons of it has already been dynamited away. to protect the sculpture. >> how excruciating is this work? >> it's not excruciating. it's big. it's a challenge, for many reasons. but it's a labor of love. >> in her battered blue pickup monique takes us to the top of the mountain. here crazy horse's face was finally finished 16 years after her father's death. >> a lot of people say it's too

bad dad wasn't here to see crazy horse's face carved but dad has already seen the whole mountain carved. >> he kept the entire sculpture in his head. imagined. at the foot of the mountain, is a scale mountain, showing crazy horse gripping his stallion, his long hair into the rock. he did not think spall, his figure is taller than the washington monument, a six foot tall man would fit easily into one of crazy horse's eyes, eyes at a see the entire mountain according to the legend. >> there's something about walking out on crazy horse's hos arm, you look at crazy horse and he's looking at you. there is an eerie feeling. >> the only thing crazy about

the crazy horse memorial is the man who started it. over the years his family has come under criticism from some native americans who claim this endeavor is more about an eccentric artist than a proud indian warrior. >> tim is founder and publisher of the native sun news. >> i wrote in an editorial, i wrote who is this monument dedicated to? an oglala horse. >> this is their memorial. >> the family is adamant that this endeavor is not about them. down the road is another piece of his le legacy, the indian sculpture. >> in the four years we've funded this we have readied

educational opportunities in 24 different tribes. >> jason sees the sculpture as a sign of respect for native americans like him. >> this project is reconciliation, i see that, i feel that, if i didn't i wouldn't be part of this. >> over the years, many of the local lakota sioux came to change their minds about the carving on the mountain and the family that carries it on. >> lakota sit back an watch, they watched and saw the mountain taking some kind of shape and they saw the people who were doing the actual work up there as good people. and i think it helped to bring about a lot of changes. >> but here, change comes slowly. very slowly. he once boasted he would finish his sculpture in 30 years. >> he wished he'd never made that statement. and that's why i don't tell

anybody when it's going to be done. >> i think it will look really good by the time i'm an old lady but it won't be done i don't think in my lifetime. >> in fact a third generation of family members is already working at their grandfather's million. 28-year-old heidi parks cars for the likers. >> i think it's really important that everything keeps going on and that's why i'm here. >> for the family, when the mountain will be finished has become less meaningful than why. and here in the black hills, outline of that heroic figure on his horse just the way he saw it in his mind's eye becomes a bit clearer every day. >> a spirit cast in stone. that's a good metaphor for the strength of our executive producer jay la monica who commissioned that story and so many more. when we return we'll turn the

tainls otell yotables to tell yy and the many lives he touched.

>> "america tonight" is different this evening. dimmer as we remember our friend colleague and leader, executive producer jay la monica. but our memories are brightened by the impact he had on all of our lives as journal r. we share the sorrow of his wife terry their beloved children and grandchildren and the incredible talents jay shepherded throughout his career. maybe you at home never knew jay la monica but some of the biggest names in our business did and they as all of us were honored to work side by side with him. what makes up a life? laughter, memories. curiosity, and dreams.

for jay la monica, life was about system and friends. history and tradition. and baseball. church, volunteer work and the news. jay was always a newsman. >> there's this kid jay la monica. and ted koppel wants to work with him and barbara walters wants to work with him. everyone wants to work with jay because he is so damn smart. >> i got the sense that jay had seen it all before and he had, you know? just about any story or situation, i would ask him about, he would sort of say, yeah, ito that guy. i know that guy. i can give you a name or contact number or he would tell a anecdote about that person and sort of wonder where were these stories, these layers coming from.

>> the when we were in doha covering the runup to the second gulf war of course we were putting a show on the middle of the night and jay was the only one who like really had his stuff together and for whom it didn't seem to be a hardship to be up all night to do what we needed to do. >> the place where i saw jay at his absolute best was in new orleans. after katrina. he reported that story with a passion for people who had been abandoned. people who had been forgotten. people who had been left behind. >> i've known jay for many years. and only became a colleague later on in the time line. but you know, all the qualities that make him a good friend made him a good producer and a good colleague, too. doesn't lose his mind when things are not going well.

quietly and calmly and rationally, figures out a good plan b when plan a isn't going well. and has your back when things don't go the way they're supposed to the first time. >> we must speak to them with our hands by giving. before we try to speak to them with our lips, said the 17th century saint peter claver. jay lived his personal life as fully as his professional one. for years he was a member of the society honoring st. claver through its charitable work. one of his colleagues told jay's son gabe, your dad is one of the most compassionate, caring can-do attitude people i know. >> in the news business you don't meet that many people who are, for example, religious, and we're both religious men and i think we both got each other. and understood what it meant not only to

us, as people trying to make our way as best we can, on the earth, but as family people, and as people who try to operate ethically in a business known for its sharp elbows. >> jay was on the board of zambia or fans u.s., a charity that provides care and a better future for the millions of african children who have lost parents to aids. children were perhaps the most important part of jay's life. >> aside from being a great friend i see him with his family. and he's a great dad. papa jay to those grand kids is the pied piper. he's just this awesome figure for his beautiful grandchildren. >> alway >> what's always clear is jay

loved his grandchildren so much. when i had a colleague who had grandchildren, he paid a big issue about asking about our families and supporting that decision in just a lovely way. >> jay is the definition of loyalty. he has a very paternal protective nature about him. he wants to make sure that you're okay. he's's looking out for you. it's just part of his dna. >> jay is somebody that goes in the category of somebody that you just can count on. you can count on him. for loyalty, for friendship. for giving his absolute best. >> people always talk about oh, you know so-and-so is such a good person or so an so is such a good person. jay is actually the personification of a good man.