Becoming the Storm
47 Hurricane
RAE-RAE: So tell me about becoming the Hero of Sorority Row.
ME: It’s a bit of a misnomer. I definitely wish I had stopped the shooter. I wish I had. But really, I guess I just got in his way.
RAE-RAE: ‘Got in his way’ might be a little overly-modest. It is true that you placed yourself between the shooter and other innocent victims. I call that heroic. [Audience applause.]
ME: If that is heroic, then I would have to say that the natural state of being a human is a state of heroism. People have pointed to me as a hero, but Raymond Stiles shielded his girlfriend from the shooter’s car and was killed by it. Samantha Cortales was shot while covering her sister’s body with her own. Danielle Wood dove in front of the shooter to break up the shot he was about to take at me. Rich Fisher and George McCall threw their dates behind a stone monument and covered them with their bodies. And there were others. None of them was pointed out as being a hero, yet they acted every bit as heroically as I did. That’s why I say that the normal state of being human is to act heroically. What we need to do is reduce the incidence of people acting in a deviant manner. In other words, inhumanly.
RAE-RAE: You really believe that is the normal human state?
ME: I do. [Applause.]
RAE-RAE: I don’t think I could do that.
ME: The truth is that when the situation arises, you don’t think.
RAE-RAE: I know you have just launched a campaign to help people in the aftermath of tragedy. Tell me about it.
ME: One of the things we learned after the shooting is that the dead and wounded were not the only ones who suffered. A hundred people were on their way to various events within range of the shooter. Many saw what was happening. Many lost friends. Many were frightened to their core. All need a caring hand. Janice Gifford—the sister of one of the victims—is a psychological counselor in Indianapolis. She has dedicated her counselling practice to dealing with youth in crisis after her younger sister, Rebecca, was killed. She is not the only one that has stepped up to this all too common need. It is our purpose to raise funds for practices like hers that operate on a pro bono basis across the country.
RAE-RAE: We are always cautious about promoting contributions. What is your charge for raising these funds?
ME: Rae-Rae, neither myself nor any of the people at Hearthstone Entertainment or El Rancho del Corazón are accepting any money or donations. We are out here to stop the violence and to get help for victims. We encourage people to find the services that are located near them and contribute there. We are compiling a list of those non-profit counseling services across the country and will provide that as people inquire. I repeat, do not send money to me or to our company. Any such contributions will be returned and contributors asked to make their donations to a local counseling service.
RAE-RAE: I have one last question and it has to do with your previous reticence to talk with reporters and the public about this event. What happened? Why are you here?
ME: I have two photographs, Rae-Rae. This first is a picture that shows the memorial garden that we call the River of Life on the ranch. It is where we sprinkled the ashes of Lexi Cortales and was shown in the special produced by CEN last weekend. This next photo was taken by our security cameras two nights after the broadcast. It shows a man in the act of desecrating and vandalizing that garden in the middle of the night. He did it so he could take pictures of the shambles to submit to various entertainment tabloids. It is not the first time that he has attacked. Articles have been printed that called to question my character and that of my family and friends. I believe he is as inhuman as the murderer of Sorority Row. The only way I can think of to stop him—to act heroically, if you will—is to step between him and the publication of any of his pictures his pictures. He needs to be brought to justice.
“Where to next?” I asked when I finally got out of the studio where Rae-Rae was recorded. It had been an intense afternoon.
“Back to the hotel,” Cassie said. “Tomorrow morning you meet Sue Lion. She’s quite a crusader, so you’ll probably have good support. But it gets better.”
“Why?”
“She likes to cook. Her producer wants the two of you in the kitchen while you talk.”
“Crap! What do we have that I can cook on her show?”
“I talked to the producer,” Mary said. “We’re doing crepes. I gave them the full list of ingredients that we would need.”
“Danielle, it’s up to you, honey, but they asked if you would assist Brian like you do on Young Cooking. Sue jumped all over the opportunity to have you two on the show and is devoting a fifteen-minute slot. Her show goes out over a syndicate like ours does and there may be some overlap,” Cassie said. “Usually her guests are women—a lot like Elaine’s show. But she’s willing to go with Brian, especially if he can bring you on as his assistant and talk about what happened.”
“I’ll do it,” Dani said. She hugged my arm as we went to our room at the Crowne Plaza. It was a good thing it wasn’t basketball season. When the Bulls are playing you can’t get a room here. It was a nice hotel and we had a king suite with a huge bed. There was never a question about sleeping in different beds. Nor was there really a question about making love to all three of my girlfriends.
“Why don’t you get a shower and wash the makeup off your face,” Mary said. “Then we can go get some dinner. Did you know the Palmer House a few blocks from here is reputed to have steaks you can cut with your fork? I think we should check it out. And we can ride the el.”
“Would you like any help, uh… getting clean in the shower, cónyuge?” Cassie asked. I took her hand and she led me to the bathroom. It had a huge shower and before long all four of us were in it. There was plenty of room since Cassie and I were really trying to take up the same space at the same time. It was nice to be in Cassie. Really, really nice.
Sue Lion was outgoing and enthusiastic. And she loved to cook. Her show went out over syndication and we had quite a lot of overlap in our audiences. I had to consider that when Chick Chat became a live broadcast combined with Young Cooking this fall, we’d be competing with Sue. We did the interview sitting at the table while we ate crepes. It reminded me a lot of being on the air with Miss Polly.
“So how does a cook become a campus hero?” Sue asked. I looked at Dani and stroked her cheek.
“I guess she sees her foolish boyfriend about to be shot and throws herself between him and the shooter,” I answered. That smoothly shifted the focus from me to Dani.
“Did you do that, Danielle?” Sue asked.
“I guess so. My uh… boyfriend, as he likes to call himself, didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the reign of terror.”
“How can you joke about being shot in a campus massacre?” Sue asked. She was truly shocked.
“When you use an emotionally charged word like ‘massacre’, you inflate the event and give it more importance than it should have,” Dani said. “If some random asshole starts shooting up a shopping center and leaves ten dead, what will you call that? A nuclear explosion?”
“But you were nearly killed.”
“Believe me, I am not minimizing the impact on my life,” Dani said. “I lost a dear friend in the attack. Four people I love were seriously wounded. But we need to focus on helping the survivors and creating a world in which that kind of terrorism no longer exists. Hyping the tragedy and cruelty, the anger and hatred, does more to make the assailant a hero than those who survived. That’s why we are fighting the battle against tabloids that want to exploit this and find sensationalism where none exists.”
“You are striking very close to home, Danielle. Talk shows like this one are referred to in the industry as tabloid talk shows. We are not in-depth reporters. We cater to human interest entertainment,” Sue said.
“And you freely admit that,” I confirmed. “We have no problems with entertainment. We’re in the entertainment industry ourselves. We try to make Young Cooking an entertaining and enjoyable show. And you know that we produce a women’s talk show at Hearthstone Entertainment as well. The problem comes in when entertainment is passed off as journalism. People actually believe that what they are reading is news. What’s even worse is that they believe it is important. The truth is that it is only important to the people who make money at it.”
“We are going to show the photographs of your memorial garden that I understand you call the River of Life,” Sue said. “The first photograph shows this Zen garden where you scattered the ashes of Alexandra Cortales, killed in the April eighteen shooting. It is beautiful and peaceful. The second is a photograph of a man vandalizing the garden in the middle of the night earlier this week. While we freely admit that we are a tabloid talk show and are here for entertainment value, we also recognize the brutal and thoughtless act of violating this grave. We call on other tabloids in media and in print to ban any photograph taken by the vandal that night and will boycott any publication that publishes one.”
“Thank you, Sue,” Danielle said. “We lost a dear, sweet woman that day. It hurt us tremendously to think that someone would try to hurt her again, even after she was dead.”
“Brian and Danielle, thank you for appearing on the Sue Lion Show. And even though you graciously avoided mentioning the name of my competition, I want people to know that Young Cooking with Chef Brian will become a featured part of Chick Chat with Elaine Frost when it goes live this fall on many of these same syndicated television stations. Thank you all!”
Our bags were in the car when Cassie and Mary picked us up at the station. We headed straight for O’Hare Airport.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“You and Danielle have tickets waiting at United. You’ll be heading into Newark for an early morning taping with William Morgan. He’s distributed through CBS. It won’t be live, but he’s becoming very popular. Then you’ll head into New York for an evening interview with Quincy Adams. That covers PBS. Brian, that’s everything that we can get this week,” Mary said. “The ranch is flooded with phone calls, requests for interviews, and people wanting to donate. Jennifer worked with Janice Gifford to compile a list of counseling services. We’re mailing it out to all the callers. We’ve had to keep the gates closed at the ranch because of the number of ‘pilgrims’ who want to visit the River of Life.”
“I don’t want it to be a tourist attraction,” I said.
“It’s under control, but showing the pictures has made it a very public site. Larry has a crew working on a path we can use to get to the garden and circulate around it. In fact, everyone is working on it. We’ll open it this weekend for two hours a day and will have ranch security positioned along the path and at the garden. Angela has been brilliant in creating the path with the same type of stones as the River and positioning rakes along it so people can rake a portion of the extended river. We plan to ask people to go barefoot on the path.”
“No money. No donations,” I said firmly.
“That’s understood,” Cassie agreed.
William Morgan was pretty cool and reminded me a lot of Lamar. He’d been in the Marines for several years before he turned to entertainment. He was just developing a following, but was a good host and interviewer.
Quincy Adams was a little more hard-hitting. He actually had credentials as a news reporter and was a substitute anchor on one of the networks. We were more of a resource for his story rather than the subject of an interview. What he had, surprised us.
“The pictures of a man vandalizing a memorial spread through the networks this week,” Quincy said. “They were accompanied by the plea of this young man next to me to boycott any tabloid that published pictures taken by the vandal. One tabloid, which has seemed to be on the attack ever since the Sorority Row Hero awoke from his coma, defied the plea and published photos today, calling the nationwide plea a hoax to cover up a cult’s disregard for human remains. I have with me two survivors of the April eighteen shooting, Brian Frost and Danielle Wood. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”
The interview was the most probing that we’d encountered. Quincy considered his show to be investigative journalism along the lines of 60 Minutes and not a tabloid talk show. His approach was consistent with that. He avoided sensationalism and focused on the issues. He didn’t try to besmirch anyone’s character.
“So how did readers react to the publication of this tabloid story?” Quincy asked. “We may never know. In an unprecedented move, nearly every grocery store and news stand in the country refused to display the tabloid. Brian, did El Rancho del Corazón or Hearthstone Entertainment pressure distributors to take the publication off the shelves?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” I said. Fuck! What happened? “Until you told us on the show, we didn’t even know the photos had been published.”
Quincy indicated that they had confirmed this with Rose Davis, Co-CEO of Hearthstone Entertainment earlier in the afternoon. As far as his team could discern, the message had been passed from one grocery store owner or manager to another throughout the week. Word had spread to independent vendors.
Wow!
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