life, liberty, and fame

" …one of the rights of being an American is the right to be famous."

-From a Today Show clip about people paying for “Paparazzi Parties.” Basically you pay $250-$2,500 for paparazzi to follow you around while you’re out on the town. You can even hire a bodyguard to “protect” you from the fake paps and be on the cover of a fake gossip rag.

Is fame part of the pursuit of happiness?

Is Baby Jessica responsible for the Britney Spears crotch shots and the death of Princess Diana?

According to a report by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press in 1997:

"In an era in which virtually all Americans share very few things, the story of Princess Diana's death captivated the nation. . . Modern communications have spawned an ever increasing diversity of tastes and interests and decidedly smaller audiences for everything from news stories to sit-coms. Add to this growing public cynicism and distrust, and the consequence is that there are very few things to which everyone pays attention. . . Jessica McClure is the only other individual to have ranked with Diana in news interest."

One of the most interesting conversations I had with D. Lance Lunsford in Midland was about how the Jessica McClure rescue was the first story that all the networks covered at the same time. I don't have all the research to back this up, but apparently it was when CNN's 24-hour coverage was still new (CNN started in 1980 but wasn't profitable until 1985.), and the other networks discovered that when they didn't continuously cover the rescue, their ratings went down and CNN's went up, so the other networks had to cover the story incessantly in order to compete. As Lunsford put it to me, the Jessica McClure rescue was the "proving ground for the 24-hours news medium as a conduit to the masses."

I know that nothing exists in a vacuum and no one person could be a single contributing factor to the insanity surrounding us today. BUT, I also wonder if, in a very broad sense, the Jessica McClure rescue was a catalyst (perhaps even a partial genesis) of our modern Us Weekly mentality? Did the coverage of the rescue help to feed the frenzy that led to things like the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, and even more tragically, to the paparazzi chase that ended Diana's life? It's a rolling stone that only gathers more moss when you think that coverage of Diana's death further fueled our culture's demand for incessant media coverage, the kind of coverage that leads publishers to introduce to the world the "gift" of the Britney Spears crotch shot?

If Baby Jessica and Britney Spears are both All-American Girls, America's-sweetheart types, how did we get from rescuing a baby to publishing pictures of a pop idol's snatch?

Did Baby Jessica, in a metaphorical sense, grow up to be Britney Spears?*

*more on this later. I've got a billion Baby Jessica=Britney Spears theories.

Where were you when Jessica fell down the well?

". . .I remember very clearly when the whole Baby Jessica thing went down (no pun intended). I was seven years old and it freaked the bejeezus outta me. I didn't understand how the grown-ups in her life could have allowed her to fall down the well. It scared me to think that something like that could HAPPEN in this world....wasn't it the job of grown-ups everywhere to keep children--especially babies--safe?? If something like this could happen to a cute little baby, what could happen to ME???"

- The Milkman's Daughter.

Brooke covers in her post a lot of the initial thoughts and questions I had when I first started my Baby Jessica research.

If anyone else remembers where they were or what they were thinking when Baby Jessica fell down the well, please email me. I'd love to hear it.

"Lightness isn’t stupidity. It’s actually a philosophical and aesthetic viewpoint, deeply serious, and has a kind of wisdom—stepping back to be able to laugh at horrible things even as you’re experiencing them."

- Playwright Sarah Ruhl in an interview with John Lahr in The New Yorker.

abyss

A well is also an abyss.

If your whole being is dedicated to an abyss, what does that leave you with at the end of the day?

And if you stare into the abyss, what does it reflect back?

Halo Over The City

Baby Jessica's Dad, Chip McClure, co-wrote a book about the Jessica McClure rescue, and now I get to read it!


So far my favorite part is a letter from a little girl to Baby Jessica that says, "I've been watching the news when you were on and I saw you at your parade even my stiuped [sic] brother did."

Wells in Folklore & Fairytales

3. Fountain: In some versions of the story, the fountain is a well. Traditionally, good spirits live in wells, and from thence came the tradition of throwing coins into wells in hopes of having a wish come true (Philip 1997).

-SurLaLune
Notes on The Frog King

The Middle Land of Texas

Adrienne made this video of our pilgrimage.

Sending Our Love Down the Well

Thanks to Eric for finding this Simpson's Parody for me!

Jessica?

I looked in trash cans, cemetaries, Wal-Marts, Goodwill, Walgreen's, a hot tub, at stoplights, on sidewalks, in parking lots and even at her own house, but I didn't find her.

I left her a note with my phone number and email. Maybe one day she'll call me.

36 hours for Jessica

Jessica was in the well for 58 hours, we were on our pilgrimage for 36.

We're back in Austin now, but stay tuned, because I've got a lot more blog where that came from.

I'm going to leave you now with a very special song and photo montage:

Jessica's House, Round 2

We tried again at Jessica's house, but she was not home. I left her a note and some Kona Coffee. As I walked away I noticed this:

That's a well in her front yard.

I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

Jessica's Well, Round 2

Remember that ferocious St. Bernard who made my first attempt at peeking over the fence around the well so lively? Well, someone must have given him a Xanax, because this is what he looked like today:

I swear he was much more fierce the day before.

Here is a better picture of the well and also of the backyard. Imagine it filled with drilling equipment, rescue workers, paramedics, firemen and cops. The rescue literally took over the neighborhood.

Do you see how small the well is? It's hard to believe that someone actually fit inside of it. The rescue shaft was dug parallel to well. After the rescue, the shaft was filled with dirt and a redbud seedling and chrysanthemums were planted above it, but those have since died and you can't really tell which dirt patch was the rescue shaft.

Here is a tv screenshot illustrating what was dug to rescue Jessica.


The entire rescue took 58 hours, largely because the soil was hard calachi, which is basically prehistoric cement, and very hard to drill through.

Midland Fire Station

We happened to drive by the Midland Central Fire Station, which I believe was central to Jessica McClure's rescue. Also, I am obsessed with firemen and I really wouldn't put it past myself to make up the whole Baby Jessica play just as an excuse to get to chat up some firemen. We didn't see any firemen, but the fire museum was open. Strangely enough, there were plenty of pictures of Midland's biggest fires over the past century, but there was no mention anywhere of the Baby Jessica rescue. There was however, this awesome fire truck and a real fire pole, which I took full advantage of.

Robert O'Donnell

Robert O'Donnell was a paramedic with the Midland Fire Dept. and one of the men who rescued Baby Jessica. He was chosen to wriggle into the rescue shaft because of his wiry frame. It took him two attempts to finally rescue her - the first one was aborted because the hole connecting the rescue shaft to the well was too narrow for him to reach Jessica. O'Donnell was able to touch her leg, but couldn't get a hold of her. He had to come back above ground, empty-handed. After he told the drillers what work had to be done, it was reported that he sat on a curb and wept. On his second attempt, he was able to lube the well with KY Jelly, reach Jessica, and bring her out. He passed her to another paramedic, Steve Forbes, who brought her above ground.

After the rescue, Robert O'Donnell was considered a hero. He was asked for a lot of interviews and made a lot of appearances. There are a lot of things that contributed to the stress of his sudden fame, which are well-covered in Lisa Belkin's article "Death on the CNN Curve" and even better covered in D. Lance Lunsford's book, The Rainbow's Shadow. In the end, it appears he suffered from Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, which led him to commit suicide on April 24, 1995, just a few days after the Oklahoma City bombing and less than eight years after he rescued Jessica McClure from the well.

I went to Resthaven Memorial Park today to pay my respects at his grave, which was located next to a mausoleum that was twice the size of my New York apartment. Normally, I would consider it tacky to post a picture of a tombstone on a blog, but there's something on it I think you should pay attention to.


See, if you're following the Baby Jessica story, and if you follow the story of his life, it would seem that O'Donnell's rescue of Jessica McClure was the defining moment of his life. It certainly shaped everything that came after it and ultimately led to him ending his own life. So you would expect to visit his grave and find an Eternal Flame or some sort of hero's tribute. Instead, on his tombstone are cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, a fireman's helmet and the Star of Life, the symbol for emergency medical services. The only other text besides his name and dates of birth and death are the words: "Loving Father."

I like that. It seems like we spend a lot of time in our lives trying prove something to the world, trying to be a hero for someone. In life, everyone's got a Jessica to rescue, and everyone has a well they're trying to get out of, but are those the things that really make up who we are and what our impact is on the world?

Robert O'Donnell was a good paramedic. One time he got a baby out of a well. But I think that, somehow, his life as a father will resonate further into the world than his life as a hero. I just wish that, for his sons' sake, he had stuck around long enough to see just what that impact could be.