Big Miracle (24 page)

Cindy resolved to wait for daybreak. When she did fall asleep, it wasn't long before her phone rang unexpectedly. It was 5:30
A.M.
and her initiation into a most unwelcome daily ritual. Instead of a standard wake-up call, the hotel operator just let an outside call through at around the time Cindy wanted to get up. Since she got so many phone calls, there was bound to be one at right about the time she wanted to be awakened. Whenever she picked up the phone, it was invariably a reporter from the Lower 48 asking about the whales.

Ron Morris wanted to meet everyone before the day got started; perhaps over breakfast at Pepe's. Over gigantic six-egg omelets, greasy home fries, and butter-soaked Wonder bread, the assembled rescue crew listened as Morris chaired the morning meetings. The biologists noticed Morris glance around the dining room to see if nearby reporters could eavesdrop. Then, in a whisper, Morris told them he was carrying an official document issued by the United States government. Tapping his left index finger against the right breast pocket of his faded red-checked flannel shirt, Morris said the piece of paper gave him full and final authority over the whales. “I can kill them whenever and however I want,” he joked. Cindy was appalled. Geoff and Craig laughed nervously. Who was this man? they thought. The nearby reporters who, in fact, could hear everything, eagerly scribbled down the quote their editors would never use.

“Who is this bloke?” inquired Charles Laurence, a photographer from England's influential
Daily Telegraph
. “He must be out of his bloody mind.”

Other reporters sitting near looked Laurence's way and nodded their silent approval. But that was all they could do. Unlike other stories where they thrived on the imperfections of their subjects, the reporters assigned to cover the whales were met with a most unusual reality. It was the whales people cared about, not the bizarre idiosyncrasies of their rescuers. Like him or not, Ron Morris was the only official source of rescue information. If we reporters wanted access to Morris (which, of course, we all did), we had to stay on good terms with him. We laughed at his jokes—some of which were actually quite funny—while no one reported on his drinking, because he did not visibly drink anymore more than anyone else. Many invited him for meals, drinks, and late-night bull sessions—all of which he was happy enough to oblige. Morris enjoyed visiting the television edit suites where he could watch footage of himself and the rescue on fascinating equipment. It was fun and he had the chance. Who wouldn't have?

Whatever we thought about the biologist-turned-rescuer, none of us thought Ron Morris a fool. He possessed a remarkable sense of how the media worked and how to use that knowledge to maximize his own personal prominence. Just a day after his arrival, Morris cornered Geoff and Craig and told them not to talk with any members of the press unless he approved their doing so in advance. By blocking the press's access to rescuers other than himself, Morris felt his own stature would be enhanced.

He was quoted in every story and appeared on every newscast. He created his own image of a gentle, tireless rescuer that the obsequious media passed on in his stories.

For all of the private confessions of people who claim to dislike Ron Morris, how would any of us had behaved if thrust unprepared into a similar situation? We were the ones who rewrote the rules of journalism, allowing Morris to run the operation free of the scrutiny or criticism we applied to everyone else examined under the microscope of American journalism. We risked starting to forget that the story was not about Ron Morris, it was and should have been about the whales. Morris became a convenient and unfortunate fall guy for too many of us, myself included.

11

The President Watches TV, Too

It was Monday morning, October 17. The three trapped whales had already survived ten long days in a shrinking Arctic Ocean ice hole. What would have marked the end of a fatal ordeal for any other creature was, for this lucky trio, only the beginning.

Meanwhile, Cindy Lowry was on the scene. The woman whose efforts to aid the helpless animals turned their plight into a national obsession was on her way to see them for the first time. Before driving out onto the ice with Geoff, Craig, and Ron Morris at about 11
A.M.
, Cindy checked with the hotel desk clerk for messages. She had no idea what to expect. It was her first morning in town. She thought maybe Kevin might have called to say hello.

As she walked toward the desk, she saw a frazzled bleached-blond receptionist frantically trying to write messages while hunching her shoulders to hold a telephone to each ear. In one of the two-second intervals when the hotel phone stopped ringing, Cindy meekly tried to sneak in a request for her own messages.

“My name is Cindy Lowry,” said the pretty, smiling whale saver. “Do I have any messages?”

“Do you have any messages?” the receptionist asked, accusatorily, in her thick Colombian accent. “You must be kidding.” She then shoved a stack of fifty coffee-stained messages directly into Cindy's startled face. Nervously thumbing through them, Cindy was amazed at how quickly all these people found out who she was, and where she was staying. She counted about thirty reporters from newspapers, and radio and television stations across the country who wanted to schedule interviews.

But what really struck Cindy were the other non-reporter messages. Like the one addressed to “the Greenpeace Lady” from a woman in Columbia, South Carolina: “Why don't you use dynamite to blast away the ice?” the message read. Another woman from Louisiana had a similar idea: “Why not drop napalm from helicopters to melt the ice around the whales?” A man from California asked Cindy: “Why they didn't drop some bait into the water and pull them out like fish on a hook.”

People were spending their own money and time to track her down at the top of the world to offer their advice on how to save the three trapped whales. Cindy always knew whales were special, and now Middle America did, too.

Cindy didn't know until she read the paper the next day that even more calls were coming into Tom Carroll's command center in Prudhoe Bay. Hundreds of them came from the same kinds of people with similar ideas. The suggestions ranged from the impractical to the downright ludicrous. Nonetheless, Cindy could not help but be touched by the concerns of people so far away.

One person who called was a young businessman from Minneapolis named Greg Ferrian. On Monday, October 17, he heard Peter Jennings on ABC's
World News Tonight
describe the Eskimos' losing battle to keep open the lone breathing hole. ABC correspondent Gary Shepard reported that, despite the Eskimos who worked around the clock, the falling temperatures made it almost impossible for them to keep sections of the hole from freezing over.

Greg Ferrian was familiar with the problem. His father-in-law owned a company called Kasco Marine that manufactured small water circulating pumps designed to keep ice from forming around boats in the winter. Kasco sold most of their five-hundred-dollar “deicers” to marinas and duck-pond owners throughout the Great Lakes region. Alaska was a vast new sales territory. Greg figured the deicers would work just as well for whales as they did for ducks. The deicers worked just fine in the dead of a Minnesota winter when temperatures regularly dropped below the readings presently being recording in Barrow of minus thirty degrees.

True, Greg thought, the machines might not work well in the coldest Arctic weather, but this was only October. Barrow was still several months from becoming that cold. Ferrian convinced himself the deicers could do the job. They could help the three whales buy the time they needed to survive until the hoverbarge arrived from Prudhoe Bay. And the deicers could do so better and cheaper than anything else.

Greg wanted to help but he wasn't sure where to start. Finally, he decided to call a local television station, KSTP-TV, ABC's Minneapolis affiliate. The KSTP newsroom told him to call ABC News in New York. After speaking with seemingly everyone else in the 212 area code, Ferrian finally reached someone nice enough to help him. She was a desk producer who was helping the ABC crew in Barrow cover the story. Although she had taken dozens of other calls from like-minded people trying to help, the woman was good enough to pass on Colonel Carroll's National Guard phone number.

Ferrian was surprised that the connection to a place three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle sounded so clear. Greg tried to describe the deicers to Colonel Carroll's press aide, Mike Haller, who told Ferrian that the colonel would have to approve the plan, but, of course, he was out on the ice. Haller suggested if Greg really was serious, he should call back after dark, around 4:30
P.M.
, Alaska time. By then, the colonel might be back at the ARCO/VECO command center.

When Greg Ferrian finally reached Colonel Carroll, his warm and personable manner seemed a welcome relief from much of the rude treatment he encountered en route to the top. The colonel listened patiently as Greg repeated his confident claims about the deicers. Carroll told Greg the deicers sounded like a great idea. They might be just the thing to keep the holes open and the whales alive, Carroll said. If it were up to him, he'd use them in a minute. But it wasn't. Ron Morris had to approve.

Ferrian cleared the line for a new dial tone to call Ron Morris. Remarkably, he got through on his first try. But Morris abruptly cut him off before he could explain his device.

“I've got to go,” Morris barked. “I've got a helicopter waiting to take me to a press conference.”

Ferrian plaintively appealed one more time. “All I need is one word, a yes or a no. Can't we at least try?” he begged.

“One word?” Morris teasingly asked. “No,” he snapped. Ferrian heard the click as Morris hung up.

But Greg didn't give up. Morris's response only further emboldened him. He called his brother-in-law, Rick Skluzacek, who ran Kasco Marine in his father's absence. Greg felt Rick should know something about his scheme to drag his company's deicers all the way to the Arctic. Turning truth on its head, Greg told him that Operation Breakout wanted to use deicers to help save the three stranded whales. Rick knew Greg had a penchant for crazy ideas, but this was definitely the craziest he ever heard. Experience taught him to beware. But Rick's initial suspicion gave way to the opportunity and challenge of demonstrating the deicing machines to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Now Greg had a real problem. Rick was actually interested. What would happen if Rick really did want to go to Barrow? How could Greg tell him the truth? That he lied to his own brother-in-law? Instead, Greg opted against panic and decided to worry about minor technicalities later. Greg Ferrian called Carroll back and lied again. This time he told him that he and Rick had already decided to help. They were booked on the next flight to Barrow with six deicers.

Undaunted by the colonel's repeated reminder that their machines' use was not his decision to make, Greg asked the colonel if there were gas-powered electric generators they could use in Barrow. The colonel said he thought there were, but he wasn't sure. Before he could say that only Ron Morris could authorize their use, Greg had hung up.

“Damn,” Carroll said, impressed at the Minnesotan's tenacity. “This guy doesn't fool around.”

Ferrian called his brother-in-law and lied again. It got easier each time. He told him that everything in Barrow was set. All they had to do was pack their deicers and go. After a sleepless Sunday night, Rick called 3M, Control Data Corporation, and other Minneapolis Fortune 500 companies. He tried to convince them to donate their private jets to fly the equipment to Barrow. The whales were such a great story and Ferrian such a great salesman, that three of the companies actually said yes. Each one had to back down, however, when they learned that none of their planes were available.

When Greg priced commercial flights to Barrow, he had a new reason to worry. There was no way he could lie about that. He knew Rick wasn't 100 percent sold on leaving merely chilly Minnesota for the already bitter cold Arctic. The $2,600 round-trip airfare to Barrow might end the charade once and for all. Even Greg wondered whether the whole plan was too farfetched.

Greg knew the more time Rick was given to think about going to Barrow, the chances increased he would have to rule against it. Greg decided to give his brother-in-law no choice. He not only booked the seats, but he called KSTP-TV in Minneapolis and told them that he and Rick were going to Barrow to help the whales. Now, there was nothing Greg's brother-in-law could do. It was on the record. Jews called it chutzpah. Minnesotans called it guts. Whatever it was, Greg Ferrian displayed it in abundance. He and Rick Skluzacek were on their way to Barrow.

Greg Ferrian hoped that KSTP-TV might mention the duo's trip to Barrow on the six o'clock news. The second KSTP news director Mendes Napoli heard about the call, he threw down his red pencil and dashed out the door to find his reporters. Napoli instantly knew he was onto the hottest story in the Twin Cities. The trapped whales, now leading all the network newscasts, had a local angle and KSTP was the only station that knew about it. Coming right before a critical ratings period, the news was almost too good to be true.

Napoli ran to the other side of the newsroom to use the radio phone. He desperately tried to reach Jason Davis, one of his top reporters who had left with a crew to prepare to do a live report for the upcoming six o'clock news. When Napoli found him in the microwave truck, he informed Davis there would be no live shot. He told him to go home and pack lots of warm clothing. Davis had a new story that would take him to Barrow, Alaska, with two local men who thought they could help free the three trapped whales.

Napoli read Greg Ferrian's home number to Davis over the cluttered radio. Davis pulled a portable cellular phone out of his nylon day pack and called Ferrian to introduce himself. “I'm Jason Davis, from
Eyewitness News,
” the reporter said in his unmistakable Australian accent. Ferrian didn't need any introductions, he was a local-news junkie and instantly recognized the voice of Jason Davis. Ferrian's gamble paid off more than he hoped let alone expected.