60 Minutes - The Bus on Route 62, The Last Best Place, The Empty Rooms

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Correspondent Scott Pelley returns to Ukraine for his 13th report inside the war-torn country since Russia invaded. As President Vladimir Putin’s attacks have hardened into a brutal stalemate, Pelley travels to the city of Sumy, where two ballistic missiles struck four minutes apart on Palm Sunday. One obliterated a crowded city bus on Route 62. Pelley reports on the civilian toll. The old license plates read “Big Sky Country,” but Montana has an unofficial state motto: “The Last Best Place.” Correspondent Jon Wertheim reports from a state that’s seen a development boom in recent years and found itself at the center of a national debate over what to do with America’s vast reserves of public land. Wertheim speaks with locals and officials for a look at the bipartisan fight to preserve what many Montanans hold most dear. For seven years, CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp have documented the rooms of children killed in school shootings across the United States. Their bedrooms – virtually untouched as the children left them on the day they were killed – have become memorials to young lives cut short. Correspondent Anderson Cooper visits these spaces and speaks with the parents about their significance. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Ella McKay, coming to theaters December 12th. Your father's here. Why? A heartwarming new comedy from James L. Brooks. I'm a different person. I have never been in my life out this way about any other woman. Jesus! I wasn't counting your mother! It's a perfect holiday comedy about an imperfect family.

You can use a scream, Ella. Starring Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Camel Nanjani, Iowa Debery, with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. You should do that every afternoon. Ella McKay. On Palm Sunday, the bus on Route 62 happened to be on Peter and Paul Street. At the same moment, a warhead was bearing down at 2,000 miles an hour. One blow on more than a dozen cameras.

The attack in Ukraine. is being investigated as a war crime, one of thousands in a Russian campaign against the innocent. The attack seems to be calculated to make as much destruction as possible and to terrorize the civilian population. Montana's landscape beguiles as it unfolds, a patchwork of golden prairies and green mountains

with rivers that run through it. So when politicians in Washington, D.C. suggested selling off public lands for development, Montanans of All Stripes stood in opposition. It's a red, white, and blue issue. It's not a Democrat or a Republican issue. This is an American issue, and once you sell land, you're not going to get it back.

Steve Hartman, a veteran CBS News correspondent and Lou Boe, a photographer, have spent the last seven years asking parents whose children were killed in school shootings, for permission to take pictures of the empty rooms they left behind. Rooms that have become sanctuaries, a tangible link to a child they can feel but no longer hold. All these physical things are tangible ways of reminding me. Like, she was real, she was here, she lived with us. I'm Leslie Stahl.

I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alphonsey. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm John Wertheim. Those stories, and in our last minute, one of the world's best soccer players, tonight on 60 Minutes. threatens to draw in all of Europe. Targeting civilians has been an international war crime since 1949.

The crimes you're about to see are hard to watch. Putin is hitting homes, schools, hospitals, and seven months ago, a city bus. In the city of Sumi, bus route 62 takes you to the university, the mall, and on to the airport. The fare is 20 cents. Last April, Palm Sunday, there was only standing room as two ballistic missiles bolted through the sky of a clear, holy day. The body is wrapped to preserve the evidence in the hope of a future trial. But a Ukrainian war crime prosecutor wanted us to see it, wanted the world to see, the steel

corpse where 16 civilians were killed. We climbed aboard with prosecutor Vitali Doval, who showed us the shrapnel that sliced through the bus. This is from what the military calls an anti-personnel warhead. It's designed to kill as many people as possible. And it doesn't distinguish distinguish, Noval told us, whether it's a soldier or a child or a retiree. This little square will not spare anyone, and this is exactly why this is a war crime. The crime scene is a city of 250,000 less than 20 miles from Russia. Most days, in Sumi, are interrupted by an air raid.

And so it was, last April 13th, Palm Sunday, for passengers on bus route 62. Tettiana Porahlova was taking Lisa to her grandparents. Lisa is a little girl, she told us. She wants to pick her own outfits, and we are always late. I wanted to catch that bus. The next one wouldn't come for an hour. Natalia Turnitska and her son Maxim were headed to the mall. It was the day before my son was going to have his school picture.

We were going to buy some nice clothes. On one of Ukraine's holiest days, the bus happened to be on Peter and Paul Street. At the same moment, a warhead was bearing down with great precision at 2,000 miles an hour. One blow on more than a dozen cameras. It got dark inside, Natalia told us, My ears started ringing. People were shouting to open the doors. The first thing I thought was that I could feel my body, Tetiana said.

I thought, okay, I can feel everything. Lisa is screaming, so we're alive. Lisa's screams carried on into the street. Tetiana is saying to her daughter, Wait, my little sunshine, it's going to be all right. You have a little cut, a little cut. I'm going to be over the bus. Tettiana told us, everything looked destroyed.

I saw broken branches, there was the smell of burning and soot, and there were people lying on the ground. People who, you understand. Maxim told us, in the front of the bus, everyone was dead. I was walking on dead bodies. I urged him to leave me and run, but he said, no, that's never going to happen. He broke what was left of the window with his feet so we could escape. That's Natalia and Maxim.

Among 25 surviving passengers, many others on the street were cut down. In the lower right corner, a 47-year-old musician, a pianist, Olena Kohut, had watched the bus pass. Hit by shrapnel, bleeding out, she would live two more steps. All together, 35 civilians killed, two children and 145 wounded. Prosecutor Vitali DeVal responded from his church. He told us, I have never seen such a horror in my life. Doval said lots of people were lying on the pavement. I saw that bus that had burned.

Doval told us, it was all mud, dust, blood, crying, and bodies. You seem to be saying this isn't war. This is murder. In my opinion, yes. It is just unimaginable to use such powerful, high-percision weapons in the central part of a city. Dobal's investigation shows there were two missiles, among the most accurate in the Russian arsenal. The first wrecked Sumi State University's conference center. The second, Peter and Paul Street.

They're among hundreds of Russian war crimes, and we have seen many over the years in Ukraine. A school in Chernihiv. A hospital in Izzyam. Apartments in Borodiyanka. Mr. President, I'm glad to see you again, sir. Last April, President Volodymyr Zelensky met us on a playground where a missile killed nine children and ten adults. All of those, so many more, and now this, make Ukraine the largest crime scene in the world.

Ukraine's top prosecutor told us that the number of war crime investigations now open at the beginning of the fall is 178. 1,391. They are systemic, literally everywhere that Russia's troops have been deployed. Few know the big picture like Beth Van Skok. Until recently, she was U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice. She directed American support for Ukraine's investigations. Attacks happen in towns and villages where there are no discernible military objectives. the attack seems to be calculated to make as much destruction as possible

and to terrorize the civilian population. So it's an effort to subjugate and to terrorize the community in order to get the country to essentially capitulate. The reason for Russia's terror is to take back territory it lost with the fall of the Soviet Union. Ukraine won independence 34 years ago. It's a democracy about the size of Texas. Of all of the crimes here, Putin faces one arrest warrant.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court charged him in a campaign against Ukrainian children. He is accused of abducting Ukrainian children in a systematic way. It's a war crime. It's a war crime of unlawful transfer of civilians, and in this case, dozens and dozens of Ukrainian children. And these children are being kidnapped? They're being kidnapped. They're being subjected to Russification, to military. military training, they're forced to deny their Ukrainian roots, and ultimately they're often put up

for adoption or placed in foster homes in Russia. What is the point? The point is to ultimately undermine the idea that Ukraine is an independent country and to raise these children as Russian children who deny their own cultural heritage. Putin and his allies who are secure in Russia are unlikely to face justice. But Ukraine is holding trials. there have been 211 convictions, many Russian troops, though nearly all of the defendants are at large.

Still, prosecutor Vitaly Doval has patience. He showed us where evidence for future trials is warehoused, including crashed drones and mangled missiles. On each part, we find a serial number. We identify the part where the part was manufactured, and when this missile was assembled in a factory. In the Palm Sunday Massacre, serial numbers, like fingerprints,

identified Russian ballistic missiles with 1,000-pound warheads. Ukrainian intelligence pinpointed the Russian units involved. Noval told us, we already know the individuals who gave the orders to carry out the attacks. Do you have any reason to hope for justice? I am convinced that those responsible for the strike at the central part of the city on Palm Sunday

will be punished. The military commanders who made the decision to launch these missiles, I am convinced. Natalia Terninska told us They're killing civilians, its elimination of the Ukrainian nation. They're just wiping our cities off the face of the earth. We interviewed Maxim and Natalia, Tatiana and Lisa, in the conference center, destroyed by the first missile. We could see where the warhead crashed through to the basement.

The Russians claim they were aiming at a military award service. ceremony. But prosecutor Vitaly Doval says that doesn't explain how no troops were hit and why two missiles fell on civilians. You have quite a stake in the future of Ukraine, and I wonder, what is your hope? Tettiana told us, I would like the Russians to answer for what they've done. I don't wish death on those people. I want them to learn how it feels to live in fear. I wish Ukraine could see the end of the war. And I want people to be able to live in their own homes. That's it.

Near our interview, we found a room where it looked to us like a victim may have fallen. Close by, in the bomb dust on the table, someone had drawn a line. We don't know what they meant, but with so many innocent victims murdered without justice, perhaps the question was why. The old license plates read Big Sky Country, but inside Montana there's an unofficial state motto, the last best place. Hemmed by the plains in the Pacific Northwest, Montana is a patchwork of golden prairies in Green Mountains, with rivers that run through it. And the last best place suggests a warding off of the onslaught of outside forces. So this year, when Washington, D.C.

politicians suggested selling off public lands for development as part of the so-called big, beautiful budget bill, Montanaans of all political stripes stood in opposition. Is this a rare example of modern bipartisanship, proof that there are some issues that can knit Americans together, or are these frontier folk just delaying the inevitable? Montana's landscape beguiles as it unfolds. The kind of sheer beauty that could stop traffic. If there were traffic to stop. The scale is hard to exaggerate.

It's a state roughly the size of California, with roughly the population. of Greater Fresno, just north of one million. Montanans speak fondly of their neighbors who might live 50 miles away. As for the land itself, it's not mere real estate. It's there for recreation. A corridor for wildlife. It's symbolic, too.

The open frontier is an emblem of freedom and possibility. It's something deeper, sacred even. Like spiritual, right? It's like some people find that in church, or in other ways. And for me, it's just being out where your feet are on the ground and actually connecting with this space. And then if you spend enough time in those spaces

and on that landscape, it's like land is kin, right? It starts to feel like land is kin. Yeah. Brian Manix is a rancher who, along with his uncle Dave and cousin Logan, raise cattle in western Montana. They've been on this plot since 1882 when their forebears first homesteaded here. With lineage comes perspective.

As ranchers, you guys have talked about feeling like you're stewards of the land more than your owners of the land. What's the difference? It's not ours. It's just our turn. If you're going to steward that land, you're going to treat that land in a way that maybe doesn't maximize your life, but is better for multiple generations of human beings, because this place is going to outlast all of us by a long ways. The Manix's operation relies on a mix of land. Around 55,000 acres all-told, more than three Manhattans.

It's land they own, private land they lease from others, plus federal plots they pay a relatively small fee to use. So earlier this year, when members of Congress proposed the wholesale sell-off of cracks of public land, the first serious effort of its kind in more than four decades, the Manix's, well, bridled. Yeah, to me it's worrisome because I think that you can have a very nuanced conversation about management, but whether or not should we have these lands as public lands, to me, is a no-brainer. The federal government owns and manages about 640 million acres of American land, most of it in the West and Alaska.

Yes, those breathtaking national parks, but also huge tracks for conservation, recreation, and moneymakers like ranching, mining, and logging. Interior-managed resources hold a significant port position on Americans' balance sheet. The Trump administration, including Interior Secretary Doug Bergam, have made clear federal lands could be generating much more value if there were better management, fewer regulations, and more vigorous extraction. One of my top priorities has been to make a small percentage of underused federal land available to address housing affordability.

But Utah Senator Mike Lee went further this year, putting forward his measure as part of the big, beautiful budget bill that proposed selling public land, as much as 3 million acres across the west. Federal land is a massive underutilized asset. Lee's proposal did not list specific parcels, but he and some Republican colleagues reasoned selling land would address America's housing shortage

and also help pay down the nation's debt. If the public land that you use were sold off, could you run your business? The answer is yes, but it would be something less than what is now. If we lost our public leases, we would lose a significant amount of income, so absolutely it would impact us. In Montana, selling public land was perceived as an attack on a way of life already under stress. In recent years, the money class has descended. Westward Ho.

Exclusive enclaves like the Yellowstone Club, studded with eight-figure residences, are proliferating. In the last five years alone, home prices in the state have vaulted nearly 70%. So much private land is being sold and developed. Construction, sprawl, for sale signs, they're everywhere. In big sky, in Bozeman. Boz Angeles, they call it, in the remote Ruby Valley. When we all come together. Which is where we met Donna McDonald, a hunting and fishing guide,

John Helly, a sheep rancher. Chris Edgington, a fly fisherman and river health advocate. Emily Cleveland, a conservationist. They come from across the state and across the political spectrum. They find common cause and a devotion to public lands. Could you run your business if the public? Public lands were sold off? No.

There would not be a business to run. From the ranching community to the guiding community to the wildlife that the hunters and the anglers use, spent a lot of time on public lands. In some states, the vast majority of the territory is federally owned. Montana is about 30%. How did we get here? As the nation expanded in the 1800s and as Native Americans were forcefully removed, Some land was settled by homesteaders or sold to industrialists, but much fell to the federal government.

Further out that way. Good work, good work. McDonald, who grew up in this valley, makes a living taking guests out on the private and public lands that surround her property. She invited us to do some fishing. How long have you been doing this? I can't remember not doing it, John. You're out on the river. It's a nice day. You're in nature. and it's for saving. Preservation is often, literally and figuratively, a grassroots endeavor.

Really good to see everybody. Donna, John, Chris, and Emily sit on the Ruby Valley Strategic Alliance, one of many local land management groups across the state and the West. At a time of hyper-polarization, these folks, the Birkenstock crowd and the Cowboy Boot crowd, do something radical. They respect their differences and get along. Well, it's kind of like when neighbors get together to build the fence. We can stand there and argue about where to put the post, or we can roll up our sleeves

and build the fence together. A little glimpse into Montana. Yeah. Well, I think we finally came to realize that we all had kind of the same goals in mind and, you know, save some of the last best places here. And now we have more tree growth. In response to the land sale proposal, hunters and hikers locked arms. Not one acre became a rallying cry.

The Ruby Valley group spoke out publicly and lobbied Montana's two senators and two congressmen, all Republicans. That was an easy one to all come to agreement on. Not a lot of dissent. We all realize the importance of the public land. And once it's gone, it's gone forever. I suspect there's some people saying,

wait a second, you've got all this land. What's wrong with converting that into housing and using it in other ways? Yeah, I think a lot of our public lands aren't really close to infrastructure that would be necessary for wide-scale housing developments. And selling public lands to generate income and revenue is just not something that makes sense. I think it's a slippery slope. It is. What do you mean?

I mean, if we sell this chunk or that chunk, I mean, where would it end? Which is precisely the case they made to their representatives, like Ryan Zinky. We kept hearing you have zero political future in this state, unless you oppose the sale of public lands. I think Montanans are very passionate about the public lands because we live out here. You heard pretty clear on this one. I think it's absolutely crystal clear. Zincki grew up in Whitefish, Montana, and served as a secretary of the interior during President Trump's first term. Now he represents Western Montana in the House.

he called the land sale proposal his San Juan Hill, a nod to Teddy Roosevelt, noted conservationist. Rough translation, over my dead body. Public lands is not, to me, on a balance sheet. Public lands is our inheritance of this great nation, and we're blessed with it. There is no other country on the face of the planet that has the public land experience that we do.

On this issue, Zinke is no ideologue. On a case-by-case basis, within the existing laws, he says he's open to rethinking public land use. What he does oppose wholesale sell-off. You could sell the entirety of the federal state. It's not going to get you out of debt. If you have a hotel and the hotel is being mismanaged, you don't sell the hotel. You get new management. And then if you sell the public land, you sell it all, right?

Have you changed why you're in debt? No, you've just sold your assets. People supporting the same, what's the harm of unlocking some of this so we can build affordable housing? Why are those people wrong? Well, if we want to discuss, you know, reality, you know, selling all our public land for housing, one, it doesn't, won't solve the housing crisis. And secondly, you know, public land itself, if it's managed well, you should be able to bring timber off of it. You should be able to graze energy, oil, coal, gas, all that. A lot of that comes from our public lands.

Zincki was instrumental in getting the land sale proposal killed in the House. He then coordinated with his colleagues in the Senate where Mike Lee had crafted a special carve-out exempting Montana. But that didn't win over the state's delegation. The measure was abandoned. In a statement to 60 minutes, Senator Lee said in part, quote, the federal government controls more land than it can manage,

hurting the growth and prosperity of American families and their communities. Perhaps more than any other state, Montana stood in the breach, thwarting the sale efforts. Though there is widespread expectation, public land sales will come up again in Congress. This is an era where party unity

and the Republican Party is strong. You went against the grain here. You stuck your neck out. It's a red, white, and blue issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an American issue. And once you sell land, you're not going to get it back. The challenge is this.

On this point in particular, Zinke has seen his state transformed. My highness is the Yellowstone River, and below us, the Yellowstone dumps into the Missouri. What's changed? When I grew up, you know, there was less people. You see all these houses in there. There wasn't maybe one or two houses in this whole valley along the river. Zinky knows changes to land bring changes to culture. Locals complain they no longer know their neighbors. no trespassing signs suddenly abound.

Montanans, like the Manix's, are tracking the public lands issue closely. If an unsentimental government gets in on the sale, there really goes the neighborhood. Often, what we see is the most valuable thing to do with this land, probably forever now, will be to chop it up and sell it in small chunks for people to have a little piece of paradise. And I think that's going to be true whether it's a ranch that sells or public land that sells.

To borrow a phrase, this land is your land, this land is my land. People here just hope it stays that way. Since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut 13 years ago, more than 160 children have been killed in school shootings across the U.S. They've left behind devastated families and friends

and empty bedrooms they once filled with life. For many parents, these rooms have become sanctuaries, a tangible link to a child they can still feel but no longer hold. Steve Hartman, a veteran CBS News correspondent and Lou Boe, a photographer, have spent the last seven years asking parents whose children have been killed for permission to take pictures of the empty rooms they've left behind. No easy task. They are, after all, portraits of a child who's no longer there.

Up a flight of stairs in their Nashville home, Chad and Jada Scruggs took us to see their daughter Hallie's room. It remains as she left it one Monday morning two and a half years ago. I don't think anything's changed. Hallie Scruggs loved Legos. Tennessee football, and hiding things in a toy safe from her three older brothers. The books she and her mom read together at night are still stacked by her bed. A school project with important milestones in her life,

a reminder Hallie was just nine years old. First two, first soccer game. First Tennessee game. That was a milestone. Yeah. This is the first time they held her. I love that picture. I do wonder sometimes, like, what will.

we do with this room eventually. All these physical things are tangible ways of remind me, like, she was real, she was here, she lived with us. In some ways, this room kind of holds the space for her. And so... And it still does, right? Yeah, yeah.

Oops! Hally was killed along with two classmates, Evelyn Dickhouse and William Kinney in a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville in 2023. What has grief been like for you. Felt like everything collapsed, everything, internally.

Pain that, I mean, gosh, it's just hard to endure. And then, you know, you have to relearn how to do everything, like how to eat, at sleep, and you just have a new relationship with pain and sadness and anger. There's been joy too, but the sadness. The sadness was, has been, was just, I mean, overwhelming. Chad is a pastor at the church that's part of the Covenant School. He was drawn to Halley's room the day she was killed. I wanted her room to lay under bed to smell.

I knew that would go. And I wanted... You knew the smell would disappear. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And her blankie was there and everything was there. And you could smell her then. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, that was true probably for a week or two after. So you're trying to get her back. It's not possible. But you don't believe that. And so anything that draws that possibility closer, I wanted to be there for that. So, yeah, I went in and just laid under bed and cried by myself. Has your relationship to the room changed over time?

Maybe it's not as frequent that I go up there. but the feelings haven't changed when I go in the room. You know, it kind of captures all the feelings of sadness and joy just because it's a capsule of time. I think initially that room was, for me, it was an indication of, like, presence. And now it feels more of an indication of absence. You know, and it feels more like a relic now.

Like a relic. A relic. Yeah. Some 2,000 miles away in Santa Clarita, California, another room. Another child killed. This is Gracie Muleberger. She was 15. She adored her brothers and her van sneakers.

She was killed six years ago in the Saga's high school shooting. Cindy and Brian Muleberger are her parents. Do you remember the first time you went into Gracie's, room after? Right when we got home from the hospital. You went right to her room? Right to her room. And that's where I spent like the next week or two. Yeah. I slept in her bed. I just it's the closest I can feel to her. So did that feeling though of the room providing comfort did that last for a long time? Yes. Oh yeah? Always. Always. Yeah. Gracie Muleberger and Hallie Scruggs's rooms are two of eight that were photographed as part of the project begun by

Steve Hartman. On the very first day back at school, who began covering these tragedies for CBS News 28 years ago. This was his first, a shooting at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, two years before the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. It was news at the time. A school shooting was actually big news. As opposed to now?

As opposed to now, it still gets coverage, but it's usually a day or two. people forget about them, I'd say by the end of the week many times. Initially, in your mind, what was the idea? I wanted to shake people out of this numbness that I was feeling whenever there was a school shooting now. I was moving on quickly. I was forgetting the names of the children who were lost, and I knew the country was doing the same. So seven years ago, he began writing letters to parents

asking to photograph their murder children's rooms. Because when you go into a kid's room, you go into my kid's room, you see their whole history. You see every dream, every desire, everything they value. It's all there on the walls and sitting on the shelves. Or scattered on the floor. Or scattered on the floor in some cases. It's all there. And I don't think there's really a better way to get to know a kid and to remember a life than to look around that room.

To stand in that space. Eight families whose children were killed in five. different schools agreed to let photographer Lou Boep into their kids' rooms. At a recent exhibit in New York, he showed us some of the 10,000 photos he's taken. You know, I'm trying to take a picture of a child who's not there. Dominic Blackwell's room is still filled with SpongeBob. He was killed, along with Gracie Muleberger at Saugas High School. Dominic was 14. A basket of his laundry still waits to be washed. A toothpaste tube remains uncapped in the bathroom of 14-year-old Alyssa Al-Haddeff,

killed at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Charlotte Bacon loved pink. She was six, killed at Sandy Hook. There's a library book in her room that's now 13 years overdue. If that's not a little girl's room, I don't know what is. And even this, this to me, that it's so poignant the way the head is tilted down. It's such a reminder that while everybody else moves on from what is this story to them, the families never move on. That's part of the reason the families did agree

because it's very frustrating for them when the country moves on. And they certainly haven't moved on and will never move on. I think there's such a way. wait in for these parents and being the holders of the memory that they are the only ones who remember excuse me it's okay what are you thinking about I've been in a lot of these rooms as well and there's such sadness in being the last ones left to remember everything about this

And that's why they can't surrender the rooms, because you surrender the rooms, and that's just another piece of their kid that's gone. Steve Hartman's project is now the subject of an upcoming documentary on Netflix. It follows him and Lou Boe as they travel across the country, visiting rooms, including Dominic Blackwells and Gracie Muleburgers.

This is what she was going to wear on Friday. Well, she was either going to wear this outfit or this outfit? Or this outfit. Or this dress. Did you do this often? Yeah. Yeah. Monday through Friday. When Brian and Cindy Muleberger received Steve's letter in 2024, they were considering moving,

but didn't know how they could leave their daughter's room behind. How much of the discussion was about what do we do with the room? I would say that was the primary driver of us not moving sooner. I mean, after the shooting, we wanted to get out of town. But you didn't want to leave that room? But we didn't want to leave that room. Yeah. You know, it's like, do you take a lot of pictures of it

and then try to recreate it somewhere else? We didn't know what to do with it. And it really wasn't until this opportunity to work with Steve on this film that we started feeling a peace about it. Earlier this year, the Muleburgers felt ready. They sold their house and packed up Gracie's room. This was from, I believe, when she was in Girl Scouts.

It's cute. They found mementos, artwork, and cards she made they hadn't seen in years. You are the best dad a girl can have. Love Gracie. Read. P-S. I love you. Oh, my goodness. All these treasures, right? For now, they placed them in a storage unit while they build a new home and a new life in Georgia.

When you found this, did you know how you wanted to kind of incorporate Gracie? Not initially. In September, they showed us the plot of land where they'll live, and an area they're going to create called Gracie's Point. So this is going to be Gracie's Point? Yeah, this kind of area right here, where when you're out here, You know, all you've got is nature and the water. And a place, a fire pit, a place where people can come together.

Yeah, come together. She loved doing s'mores and things like that. It cannot be a more beautiful spot. Yeah. So peaceful, which is what we were looking for. Is this project over for you? No. If parents want us to, we'll continue to document the rooms, just so they have the picture. I wish this project would end, but I don't anticipate it will.

Back in Nashville, Chad and Jada Scruggs have no plans to change Halley's room, but they did send some of her drawings and journals to an artist, Brenda Bogart, who created this collage portrait of her. Everything on this canvas is something that was made by Halley's hand. Brenda went through and noticed a theme of I am happy, I am happy, I am happy. She pretty much ended every journal entry with, I am happy. She wanted to make sure that that got put on Hallie.

When people see the photos of Hallie's room, what would you like them to take away? This is not a generic person, you know, someone that uniquely... bore gods that mention the world and irreplaceable and we just want you to know her. You know, she's worth being known. We don't have a lot of aspirations beyond that. We want you to come step inside of our world for a moment, so...

Step inside the sadness. Yeah. And feel it. People can talk about solutions, but... until they feel the weight of the problem. I don't know how to really talk about solutions. How the Mule Burger Family lives by Gracie's words. You only have one life to live, so why not live it great?

At 60 Minutes Overtime.com. Now we'll look ahead to next week, and our story on La Mignon Mall, a Spanish sensation who ranks, among the brightest stars in the soccer cosmos, and routinely pulls off feats like this. He may play in Barcelona, but like a global pop star,

his appeal rockets around the world, his skill set as gleaming as his smile. And he's only 18. The goals and the assists are all well and good, but you've made braces cool. Doesn't get better than that. Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm John Wertheim.

That story and more next week on another edition of 60 Minutes.