ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Guest Column
SOURCE: JOANNE ANDERSON
The two recent tragedies - the crash of TWA flight 800 and the bombing in Centennial Park at the Olympics - pressed me to tune into CNN Headline News a little more than usual. So when I went to the kitchen to prepare dinner around 5:30 p.m. two weeks ago, I turned on the TV.
Another tragedy was broadcast. Five people had been killed and 70 injured on the cruise ship Universe Explorer off the coast of Alaska. I ran to my office to check my notes, though I think I already knew. My parents were on that ship.
My mother and I joked the week before about my having the telephone number to the ship. We're of the old school that writes letters more often than reaching for the phone. It's a combination of thrift, habit and the possibly outdated pleasure of sending and receiving mail; uh, make that snail mail.
With a shaking hand, I pressed the numbers. Surprisingly, it rang and was answered. Not surprisingly, there was no information to be garnered from the man on the line.
So I called the Juneau police department to find out where the passengers were being taken. They gave me the number for the "command post" in Juneau, and they gave me the number of the ship's owner in San Francisco.
From the call to San Francisco, I learned that the dead were all crew members and the injuries were minor. If I hadn't heard anything, my parents were probably not among the injured.
At 10:30 p.m., my sister called. At 10:40, my brother called. The phone rang again at 10:50.
"Hello."
"Hi, honey," my mother said.
She told me they were alerted at 3:15 a.m. and reported to their fire stations as instructed in a fire drill. The life boats were lowered. And then they waited. And waited.
They disembarked some 15 hours later and were bused into Juneau.
"We can't talk long. There's a long line," she said. I flashed on all these older folks in line waiting to make a call. Sort of a reverse of summer camp, where the kids wait in line to call parents.
She handed the phone to my dad. "This was nothing compared to the typhoon that blew apart the USS Pittsburgh in World War II," he stated.
I chuckled, wondering how many - dozens probably - World War II vets had been swapping stories for a dozen hours or so.
They told me everyone was wonderful. Mom was a little tired and hungry. They thought they'd be flown to Seattle, but no, they weren't coming home to Abingdon yet.
They would go back to Vancouver and finish their vacation there. Everthing was gorgeous, and they were fine.
Typical of these people I've known all my life, there was no complaint, no bitterness. That this was a dream vacation of a lifetime is an understatement.
But as my most admired role models, my mom and dad exhibited a predictable and comforting resilience along with their characteristic thankfulness. Thankful, of course, to be safe. But equally as thankful that they had an Alaskan cruise vacation; albeit a very short one.
Joanne Anderson is a free-lance writer and innkeeper in Blacksburg.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB