|
 |
CNN CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT
Two Rescued Miners Tell Their Story; The Incredible Tale of What it Took to Save the Somerset Nine; Shatner Continues Working at 71
Aired July 29, 2002 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CONNIE CHUNG, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Connie Chung. Tonight, a miner miracle, nine for nine; the inside story.
ANNOUNCER: Nine alive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All nine are alive.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Tonight: the real story from the survivors trapped for three days in a coal mine, their families who never lost hope, the rescuers who refused to give up.
How do you pull off a rescue mission? A minute-by-minute timeline of the plan that saved nine lives.
Plus: the investigation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The company owes answers to the mining families. The company owes answers to me. The company owes answers to Pennsylvania.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The latest on the search for answers.
Starship captain, tough-guy cop, Celebrity pitch man. Life as a pop culture icon, and of personal pain.
Tonight: William Shatner...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "Star Trek")
WILLIAM SHATNER, ACTOR: To boldly go where no man has gone before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: ... on a career of comebacks.
This is CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT.
Live from the CNN Broadcast Center in New York: Connie Chung.
CHUNG: Good evening.
You can call it a miracle if you want, but it really was a triumph of smarts, technology, character, and sheer guts. We're still learning just how extraordinary the rescue of the nine trapped miners was. It was an unprecedented operation, one that rewrites the manuals and, more importantly, one that worked.
In a few moments you'll meet two of the miners who knew what they had to do to survive, and had the courage to pull it off.
But first, we begin with CNN's David Mattingly on the story of the Somerset nine.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For 28 years John Unger has been coming home from the mines, this homecoming possibly his happiest and his last.
JOHN UNGER, RESCUED COAL MINER: When the water first broke through, I've never seen anything with so much rage if my entire life.
MATTINGLY: Unger, one of two miners released from the hospital today, echoing thoughts among the nine survivors who were trapped 240 feet underground.
If not for the expert drilling of an emergency air shaft, all would have been lost.
UNGER: When we cut through, the air was bad. And when the air was coming through there, it made us kind of really sick. And they punched that six-inch hole and put that other pipe in there and started bringing air in to us, and it saved our lives.
MATTINGLY: Nine lives saved in a situation that could have easily killed them all. A 77-hour-long brush with death that continues to weigh heavily on their minds.
Randy Fogel is the only miner who remains in the hospital, but not the only one rethinking life as a coal miner.
RANDY FOGEL, RESCUED COAL MINER: We've all thought about it and what everybody went through. I don't know if too many of us will go back to what we did do.
MATTINGLY: Some of the miners, however, say what happened to them is not likely to happen again. A few want to go back, making the decision even tougher for people like John Unger.
UNGER: My family don't want me to go back, and I almost didn't see my family again, so they're kind of the key.
MATTINGLY (on camera): And as the miners continue to go home one by one, concerns about their future include emotional issues, the possibility of post-traumatic stress, remnants of an ordeal that has profoundly affected nine lucky lives.
David Mattingly, CNN, Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: Given the fears about hypothermia, decompression and worse, there was a great deal of surprise about how quickly most of the miners were released from the hospital.
A short while ago I spoke with two of the rescued miners, along with two of the women who spent more than three days waiting and praying.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: Joining us now are rescued miners Bob Pugh, Ron Hileman. And with them is Bob's girlfriend, Cindy Thomas, and Ron's wife Cathy.
Thank you so much for joining us. It's just great to see all of you.
Tell me, Ron, how are you feeling?
RONALD HILEMAN, SIXTH MINER TO BE RESCUED: Oh, I'm not bad. Pretty good. Better than I did. A lot better than I did, for sure.
CHUNG: Good.
And, Bob, how about you? Any injuries?
BOB PUGH, EIGHTH MINER TO BE RESCUED: No, not really. Just a couple bumps and bruises.
CHUNG: All right.
PUGH: Other than that, I'm feeling pretty decent.
CHUNG: All right, let's take a look at the miracle moment on Saturday night, and that's the moment we all realized that you all were alive. Now, the doctor who examined both of you and the others said that he thought you survived because you had this incredible inner will to live, and that also all of you made such smart decisions about what to do to survive.
What kept you going, Ron?
R. HILEMAN: Just the family at home, knowing that you had to get out of there and get home. And, you know, you wanted to see your wife and your children, you know. You had something to live for, you had to get out of there.
CHUNG: And Bob, what emotions were going through your mind when you realized that you actually were going to get out?
PUGH: Oh, I was one happy camper. I was very happy. All I wanted to see was some daylight out there, a little bit of sunshine.
CHUNG: All right, well, let's start -- yes, let's start from the beginning, exactly what happened. Now, you accidentally drilled into this abandoned mine. Did you immediately see this wall of water coming at you, Bob?
PUGH: Yes I did. It broke through and immediately it started running down pretty fast. It was like a massive wall of water, maybe four foot high or something like that. It was like a raging river running down through there.
CHUNG: Did you try to outrun it, Ron?
R. HILEMAN: Yes, we tried to get ahead of it, but it was just moving too fast.
We were mining up a little bit of a grade there and, you know, uphill. And when we punched into the old abandoned mine there that was our initial thought, was trying to get ahead of it. If we could have got ahead of it, we then would have come out.
But as fast as that river was moving, you know, there was no way we could get ahead of it. It got ahead of us real quick.
CHUNG: So what did you do?
R. HILEMAN: Well, we tried to go down the belt, go on the escape way. But, like I said, the water was already there when we got there. The water was to the roof; there was nowhere to go. So we had to turn around and come back up into the section, you know, to get out of the water.
PUGH: It beat us down.
R. HILEMAN: Yes. The speed that it was traveling, I mean, there was no way you was going to outrun it.
CHUNG: Now, at some point you were able to warn nine other miners and they were able to get out. They call you heroes.
When did you all do that, and how were you able to warn them?
PUGH: Well, that was about -- we warned them approximately, maybe two minutes after the water started running down, three minutes, somewhere in there, by a mine phone that we use underground. Another partner of ours, he radioed ahead and got ahold of them and told them to evacuate immediately.
CHUNG: All right. Was it difficult, at that moment, to breathe, or did you still have some air?
PUGH: No, at that time it was all right breathing. We had no problem breathing. The oxygen was all right at that time. CHUNG: I see. Then a six-inch drill came down. Did any of you see it? Because that's where this warm air was being piped in.
R. HILEMAN: Oh, yes. When they put the six-inch drill down through for the fresh air to come in, we was right in the vicinity of that. I mean, we was right there, you know, when they put that down through.
CHUNG: Isn't that amazing? It was one in a million that that six-inch drill would hit the place where you were.
R. HILEMAN: Yes. I heard that later that that was a one in a million chance that that came. But -- excuse me -- they put it right on the mark. I mean, it come down exactly where it had to.
PUGH: Come real close to us.
R. HILEMAN: Yes, right, it did.
CHUNG: Right. Doesn't that just blow you away?
PUGH: Yes. It's something.
CHUNG: I mean, they had a...
PUGH: I was glad they hit the mark.
CHUNG: Exactly. They had a whole mile to choose from, and they came down right at your spot.
All right. So that is helping you breathe, right? You could tell it was warm air. Was it helping you in terms of the temperature?
R. HILEMAN: In temperature?
CHUNG: Yes.
PUGH: A little bit, I thought.
R. HILEMAN: I couldn't really see it a whole lot...
PUGH: I didn't either.
R. HILEMAN: ... you know, as far as raising the temperature in the mine.
PUGH: The oxygen level was good, though. The way it felt, breathing right before that.
R. HILEMAN: Right. That was the important thing.
CHUNG: All right. So let's talk about the 77 hours. How high was the water?
PUGH: When it first broke down through?
CHUNG: Yes.
PUGH: About four foot. Then it -- our height is about four-and- a-half, five foot. And eventually it come to five foot. It kept coming our way.
CHUNG: Oh my gosh. And most of you are probably about six feet, you think?
R. HILEMAN: Yes, right around that, yes.
CHUNG: All right. Were you afraid, Ron and Bob?
R. HILEMAN: Oh yes, definitely. I mean, I never went through anything like that in my life before, and I don't want to ever go through it again. But, I mean, it was experience that -- I'm sure all the nine of us was scared at one time or another. I mean, it was a terrifying experience.
PUGH: Yes, I'll say.
CHUNG: Bob, did you have any food, anything to drink?
PUGH: Well, we had about, like, three gallons of distilled water which we use on batteries. We had it to drink, which was all right.
As far as food, no, not really. We had a bucket that floated on by, and we grabbed it and it had a soda and a sandwich. We all took a bite of the sandwich, nine of us, and we all shared the soda for a little bit of sugar, get a little bit of energy. Things were getting pretty weak.
CHUNG: Was that about midway through your stay of 77 hours?
PUGH: I'd say a little over halfway, somewhere in there. It was so long in there.
CHUNG: Yes, sure.
Ron, were you able to keep track of time?
R. HILEMAN: It was hard under there. You know, out here you know when it's 5:00 morning or 5:00 evening, but under there it is hard to keep track of time. But we tried the best we could, you know, to see if it was a.m. or p.m.
But, you know, I think we done pretty good on the time, trying to keep track of it.
CHUNG: All right. Ron, you said that you were getting maybe 15 minutes of sleep here and there. What would happen if you dozed off -- I mean, and someone else dozed off? Did you take turns?
R. HILEMAN: No, you know, as far as us all sleeping together, I mean, you know, we was all confined there pretty well. And then we conserved body heat, you know. We all had concern of hypothermia setting in, you know, and we -- somebody started getting chilled or something, we'd surround him and try to keep warm.
But if all nine of us would doze off, there'd be no problem with that. But that never happens.
PUGH: That never happened.
R. HILEMAN: There was always -- if there was one or two sleeping at a time, that was about it because nobody slept much under there at all. You're sleeping on a wet, hard rock bottom, and that was about as uncomfortable as you can get. So, I mean, you wasn't sleeping.
CHUNG: Bob, did you, at any point, really believe that you weren't going to get out alive?
PUGH: Yes, there was. I was holding up pretty well until I -- I found a point that I did think we was done. Actually, two points.
CHUNG: What was that point? Tell us, what was that...
PUGH: That was the point when the water was rising, it was like halfway through. And it was really rising. We were trying to build a wall in this one place.
Then the time we were laying a block down, and the bottom blocks were starting to float away. It was coming that quick. And that's when I thought we were gone. We were done at that point.
CHUNG: Ron, you too?
R. HILEMAN: Yes.
CHUNG: Were there moments that you thought, this is it?
R. HILEMAN: Yes, definitely. Where I'd have been on the 25th of July we wrote some final notes off to our, you know, immediate family and put them in a bucket there because the way the water was rising at that time, that was 12 noon on the 25th, we figured an hour at the most at the speed that the water was rising, and we would have all been underwater.
But somehow, you know...
PUGH: Pump.
R. HILEMAN: ... the water stopped rising.
PUGH: The big pumps they were putting in.
R. HILEMAN: It stopped rising. It come real close to us, you know, but I don't know, it stopped, that's all I can say. And it held it's level for...
PUGH: It stayed for about 12 hours, stabilized.
R. HILEMAN: About 12 hours. And then it did start to recede. CHUNG: Was it at that time -- when you said you were writing notes to your loved ones -- was that the moment you decided to tether yourselves to each other so that you would all live, or all go down together?
R. HILEMAN: Well, we was going to all go down together, you know. I mean, we tied ourselves together to, you know, a heavy machine -- a bolting machine that was use in the mines there, so, you know, if we did drown, they were going to find all the bodies at one place. They wasn't going to find one now, a week later find another one, you know, they were going to find them all at one spot.
We went in as a team, and that's what we was going to go down as, as a team to that.
CHUNG: You know what? I do have so many more questions to ask all of you so -- including the big one, which is: Would you ever go back into a mine and, for your wife and girlfriend, would you let them.
That's when we return. We'll be right back.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: We are back with four survivors of the Somerset mine accident. Ronald Hileman and Bob Pugh were trapped below ground, but Cathy Hileman and Cindy Thomas also survived, enduring more than three days of not knowing whether they would ever see their loved ones again.
Welcome back, and thanks for being with us.
I'm going to ask the camera to pan to the left, because I saw a whole bunch of kids there. They may not be able to hear me, but can you ask them how many -- raise your hands -- are Ron and Cathy's kids?
PUGH: Ron's kids? Ron and Cathy's kids?
R. HILEMAN: Raise your hand.
CHUNG: All right, now how many of you belong to Bob Pugh?
R. HILEMAN: How many belong to Bob Pugh? Raise your hand.
CHUNG: There we go. Are you glad to have your dads back?
PUGH: Glad to have us back?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
CHUNG: Cathy, tell me, what were those three days like for you?
CATHY HILEMAN, WIFE OF RESCUED MINER: Pretty rough. Just sitting around, not knowing.
CHUNG: Have you been through anything like this before?
C. HILEMAN: No. Never.
CHUNG: Really, what was going through your head? Were you thinking to yourself, "I've got to keep up my hope." Or were you thinking, "I won't be able to stand it, you know, if this goes on any longer"?
C. HILEMAN: No, I done pretty good. I done pretty good, because I figured they'd come out.
CHUNG: Did you really?
C. HILEMAN: Yes. They're strong.
CHUNG: What gave you the belief that they were going to come out OK, and especially Ron was going to come out and be back in your arms again?
C. HILEMAN: I think just praying.
CHUNG: As you watched him come up, he was -- wasn't he something like the sixth?
C. HILEMAN: Yes.
CHUNG: You must have been a little anxious, weren't you?
C. HILEMAN: Yes.
CHUNG: What were you thinking when you finally heard that they were alive and well and Ron was going to come home?
C. HILEMAN: Very happy. Very happy.
CHUNG: How did you stay strong for the kids, and did they help you, or did you help them?
C. HILEMAN: Oh, yes, they were there the whole time, so we all helped each other.
CHUNG: Cindy, tell me, what was it like for you those three days?
CINDY THOMAS, GIRLFRIEND OF RESCUED MINER: Well (UNINTELLIGIBLE) were so excited, we knew they were probably going to come out. And then sometimes we just didn't think they would.
Especially when the drill bit broke that time, we thought that, you know, they weren't going to survive, because it's going to be longer and longer. I mean, they kept telling us 18 hours; every time they'd come back so, it's just always more time.
CHUNG: Did you go out to the site and see it?
THOMAS: Yes, they took us out two different times.
CHUNG: I would find that so hard to look at. Did you find that to be true?
THOMAS: No, actually it gave us hope that, you know, there was going to be an opening for them to get out.
CHUNG: When you had heard that they were tapping early on, that was probably a very hopeful moment, right?
THOMAS: Oh yes. We were all screaming at the fire hall. We were very emotional.
CHUNG: But then when you didn't hear from them for a long time, it had to be hard.
THOMAS: It was hard, but they kept assuring us that there was too much sound going on, too much drilling that the guys, they couldn't hear. I guess the machinery that they had used wasn't going to pick anything up because there were too many other noises going on.
CHUNG: All right. You know, I'm going to bring in someone that you may or may not have spoken to you. His name is Robert Zaremski. He's the communications worker who volunteered for the rescue effort and was the first to make contact with the Somerset nine.
Thank you for being with us. Robert, tell me, when you first made contact with the survivors, what was going through your head?
ROBERT ZAREMSKI, VOLUNTEERED TO HANDLE RESCUE COMMUNICATIONS: I've tried for the last day-and-a-half to come up with some way to describe what I thought or what I felt.
It wasn't so much through my head as it was through my heart. We were tired, but that didn't even slow us. It was just -- for a day- and-a-half of not hearing anything but dripping water and things of that nature, it'S just total elation. I likened it to the birth of my kids.
CHUNG: That's wonderful. And do you remember what you said to each other?
ZAREMSKI: As we were lowering the probe, it's kind of a standard protocol to start talking somewhere around halfway down the bore hole. And I was hearing a lot of top-side noise from the rescuers. And we had asked them to stay where they are and "Can you hear me?" The "stay where you are" is in the event that they did build a wall, that they wouldn't try to come out. There could have been water between the wall and the rescue shaft. We had no idea what their situation was like down there.
And I thought for sure, even before halfway down, that I heard someone from the bottom. But it wasn't until about three-quarters of the way down -- and guys, I apologize, I know I asked a number of times if you could hear me and I think, at the end, I asked if you were the trapped miners. And part of that was just disbelief.
Like I said, after listening for a day-and-a-half to nothing but dripping water from the old mine, it was amazing to hear someone. And I knew I heard them, I just -- I was stuck. I was stuck asking those questions, I think.
CHUNG: Ron and Bob, I don't know if you were happier to his voice or he was happier to hear your voice.
Is this the first time you've talked to him, or have you had a conversation before this moment?
PUGH: No.
R. HILEMAN: No, we hadn't had a conversation...
PUGH: Not unless he was at the other end of the pipe we were tapping on. I don't know who was up there returning our signals...
ZAREMSKI: That's where it was initially. Bob was -- just before the rescue capsule came down, that was were we took the communications equipment in. When they took the air off of the shaft we lowered the communications equipment into that six-inch, so that...
(CROSSTALK)
ZAREMSKI: I think I asked you the first five or six questions before I handed it over, I believe, to the doctor.
CHUNG: Bob, I had heard that you actually didn't really want to sleep last night, you wanted to see the sun come up because it was the first time in quite a few days. Is that true?
PUGH: That's very true. I didn't want to go to sleep, I wanted to see the sun come up. And which I did, and it was very nice. After being in the dark that long I just wanted to make sure I was alive, see the daylight.
CHUNG: And indeed it was dark. How -- you know, I know that you all did have some of -- some light left, but you were preserving it.
So tell us how you handled that.
R. HILEMAN: When we had to go anywhere we teamed up, you know. Two guys would go and take one light with us and when we did, wasn't moving around, and we was all together ...
PUGH: Shut them all...
R. HILEMAN ... shut them all off, you know, and just sat and talked in total darkness. You know, we conserved it as much as we could because we had no idea how long we was going to be down there.
CHUNG: Tell me, Ron, first you. Are you ever going to go back into a mine again and go underground?
R. HILEMAN: I don't know yet. It's too early. I mean, I would like to work a little bit longer in the mines, but I'm not saying whether I'm going back or not yet.
CHUNG: How about you, Bob?
R. HILEMAN: I probably won't, but I don't know.
PUGH: About the same thing here. And my family don't want me to go back in. I have 31 years underground now. And I don't know, if something else would come up, I think I'd rather take it.
CHUNG: And Cathy and Cindy, would you say that's just fine with the two of you?
THOMAS: No, I don't want him to go back ever.
C. HILEMAN: I don't either, no.
CHUNG: All right, I think it's unanimous. Ronald and Cathy Hileman and Bob Pugh and Cindy Thomas, Rob Zaremski in Pittsburgh, thank you all so much for being with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: Still ahead: Everyone has his own story to tell. But what still strikes me is just how all the pieces of this rescue actually fell into place. A dramatic minute-by-minute account.
Keep it right here.
ANNOUNCER: Still ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: Warp drive, Mr. Scott.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: The man who is Captain Kirk now starring in the role of a lifetime...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: Impossible to stop the music.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: ... as himself.
William Shatner, still moving at warp speed when CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHUNG: The story of the Somerset nine is really two extraordinary stories. One is the story of survival against horrific odds. The other is a story that played out for the world as rescue workers and volunteers broke new ground, literally and figuratively, in their desperate dig for life.
CNN's Bruce Burkhardt puts both sides of the ordeal in focus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: There's a lot going on this morning. So, let's get started right away with our "News Alert."
BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It seemed like just more horrible news.
COOPER: ... in a flooded mine in southwestern Pennsylvania this morning, a team specializing in deep mine...
BURKHARDT: Nine miners using what turned out to be inaccurate maps accidentally break through a wall into a neighboring mine. The breach releases 50 million gallons of water into the working shaft.
FOGEL: By the time we could get out, now this is talking 3,000 feet, from where to face to where we can go to make the turn to get out, to head out of our mine, by the time we got to the point, to the bottom of our section, which we had to walk, and you're talking in five feet high to four feet high, a little bit less, by the time we got to the bottom it was already too full. We couldn't get out. The water beat us to the bottom. And it just filled up to the roof at that point, and we then couldn't go any further.
BURKHARDT: The trapped men crawl into a small chamber while also warning via radio another crew nearby. That crew manages to escape. Above ground, rescuers could only wonder and hope. No radio contact. They drill an air hole into the mine. The air is heated to help the miners fight off hypothermia.
THOMAS FOY, RESCUED MINER: Once they started drilling, I mean, that meant a lot. When they said, we got the air, I mean, that's the air. That's what we needed more than anything. We wouldn't have to worry about the water because the air -- we were going to run out of oxygen before we ran out of anything.
BURKHARDT: Meanwhile, above ground, signs of hope.
GOV. MARK SCHWEIKER, PENNSYLVANIA: We did hear tapping. That was tremendously encouraging for all involved.
BURKHARDT: By late morning, however, the tapping had stopped. For the first time, the possibility looms there may be no survivors. That evening, a large drill begins boring into the ground to make a rescue shaft, an expected 18-hour process. But at 1 a.m. Friday morning, another kick in the gut when the drill bit breaks off while attempting to bore through dense rock. SECY. DAVID HESS, PENNSYLVANIA EPA: This is a very tricky operation. You have lots of different people cooperating on this effort. And a lot can go wrong.
BURKHARDT: At 10:30 a.m., drilling begins on a second rescue shaft while workers try to retrieve the broken bit from the first hole. They succeed. And by Friday night, drilling is resumed in the first shaft. All day Saturday, families, fellow miners, in fact, all of us wondered if it was still possible. It had been more than two days since any tapping, any sign of life. Then, at last, the drill bit broke through into the tiny chamber. A phone was lowered down the shaft. Would anybody answer?
SCHWEIKER: All nine are alive. And we believe that all nine are in pretty good shape. And the families now know that.
BURKHARDT: It's been dubbed the Miner Miracle. But in fact, it seemed major; 2:45 early Sunday morning, the last miner had been pulled safely from the earth. In a world where there's been such bad news, the first sight of those nine men rising out of the ground wasn't only an answered prayer for the families, but for the rest of us, it was the sun finally poking through the clouds.
Bruce Burkhardt, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: If you were watching early Sunday morning, you would have seen CNN's Jeff Flock covering this extraordinary story from a bird's eye vantage point. Jeff saw it all, the fear, the pain, the sheer emotion. Jeff joins us now with some final footnotes on this human drama.
Jeff, I have to tell you, you know, the whole mood of the area had to have changed so dramatically. And you were there. Tell us about it.
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, it was just a privilege to be here and be part of what transpired early Sunday morning. And I don't know if you can see the folks behind me. This is the scene, and that crowd back there represents what this has become, which is a gathering place for miners, for the folks of Somerset, for rescue workers.
What they're looking at is out here. This is what it looks like now, this beehive of activity. I don't know, perhaps you have pictures that depict what this looked like just three days ago, as all of the rigs were in place. Well, now, it's very close, I think you can perhaps tell, Connie, to being returned to what it was, which is pasture land. And out here, folks that we saw just sharing their own thoughts about now how great a thing it was, but now perhaps what's next and the investigation into what happened here. That's what they're talking about tonight.
CHUNG: Jeff, it seems as if during the whole rescue attempt, that only officials were talking. It was as if the town had drawn a collective breath and would not utter a word.
FLOCK: Yes. You know, these folks down here, of course we've been talking to them, but during this whole ordeal, reporters in my estimation were remarkably respectful of the family members. I think they kind of had some sense perhaps of what they were going through. And no one went up to that firehouse and attempted to gain entry, attempted to intrude on what those families were going through. It really was a special thing.
And, you know, that live feed that you referred to that we all looked at, that really wasn't set up for you and me and everybody else. It was set up really for the families because the rescue officials and the governor knew that the only way the families would be able to watch up at the firehouse -- they weren't here on the scene. They weren't brought down here. They didn't think it was a good idea. The only way they'd be able to see it live was if we did it on television. So we did.
And it really, permit me to be happy and glad about what we do for a moment, but, you know, this is one great thing about television, in that it can really unite everyone. On that night, it united the family members with people across America, on CNN International, all of the folks around the world. It was really a great thing. And it was -- I caught my colleagues, I'd look over at some of my colleagues that you're competing with in some sense, and we were sort of smiling at each other, at just how happy we were to have been part of this.
CHUNG: I was just about to ask you how you felt because we had such depressing news before this, kidnappings of little girls, what have you. So, it had to have been a pleasure for you.
FLOCK: Well, it was a personal pleasure and privilege to, as you say, after having been in so many bad things. You know, I was thinking, the cynical reporter that I am, that, well, at least the bad news will come overnight. It looks like they're about to get down there overnight. And, you know, we reporters are cynical, I think, sometimes because we know too much. We knew about the fact that we hadn't heard from those miners in two days. We knew that it may be possible that they drill all the way down there and they're not even there.
And, you know, the whole world in some sense has become cynical. I think the whole world is now cynical reporters because they're all so well informed. With the Internet and everything else, everybody knows what the reporters know. And they knew all the bad things. But, you know, it was just a wonderful thing to see us all be wrong. Quite happy, quite happy to be wrong about this one.
CHUNG: I'm with you there. Thank you so much, Jeff Flock.
Coming up next, a fictional hero, many, many times over, the man who played Captain Kirk, William Shatner himself. He's got a few new gigs right after this.
ANNOUNCER: Coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM SHATNER, ACTOR: I love to boogie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: We boldly go where one man has gone before. William Shatner on a lifetime mission. CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT will return in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHUNG: Even today, actor William Shatner is best known for playing the headstrong, womanizing starship captain on the science fiction classic "Star Trek." But he hasn't let the role of a lifetime define his life. He's moved on to other roles and other pursuits in film and TV, and far outside as well.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "STAR TREK")
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Captain Kirk, ready to beam up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG (voice-over): More than 30 years since his career-defining role beamed him into television sets, 71-year-old William Shatner is still working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: I don't have a gun. My ancestors were quakers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: While acting roles still come his way, he's better known for simply being William Shatner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: And I'm telling you, the undead are a real pain in the neck. Thank you. Seriously, though, vampires are almost impossible to kill.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: On August 3, he begins hosting a Sci-Fi Channel horror series. Looking back at some scary B-movies, long forgotten.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: Time now to return to the world of the ancient undead blood-sucking freaks.
(END VIDEO CLIP) CHUNG: He took his Captain Kirk character to the big screen for a series of seven "Star Trek" feature films, grossing more than $400 million. But he's done far more than "Star Trek." Shatner remained on television through the '80s and '90s as a tough cop on "T.J. Hooker," and hosting stories of real-life heroes in "Rescue 911."
In the late '90s, he became the spokesperson for an Internet travel start-up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: We're saving a truckload of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) money. You come along for the ride!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: He starred as himself in a series of self-mocking ads for Priceline.com. He chose to be paid in stock options, cashing in half his Priceline stock in early 1999, bringing him an estimated $3 million, before losing much of the rest when the Internet boom busted.
His first two marriages ended in divorce. His third ended in tragedy. On August 9, 1999, Shatner made a horrific discovery. He returned to his Studio City home and found his wife of two years, Noreen, at the bottom of their swimming pool. She had been battling alcoholism, and the autopsy found alcohol and sleeping pills in her system.
The next day, Shatner shared his loss and his grief in a statement outside his gated home.
W. SHATNER: Her laughter, her tears and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.
CHUNG: A year-and-a-half later, he married his fourth wife, 42- year-old horse trainer Elizabeth Martin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: This next song is a straight up admission of a singer with a serious case of dance fever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: And tonight, Shatner begins hosting another cable series, "One-Hit Wonders" on VH-1. He seems an unlikely choice since he's made a career of coming back, decade after decade.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. SHATNER: I love the night life, I love to boogie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHUNG: I hope he also loves to do interviews, because he joins me with his wife Elizabeth. You know, I saw you reacting. Look at you, you're just tearing up when you talk about Noreen.
W. SHATNER: I hadn't seen that piece. I haven't seen that piece. But it's a long story. And things go on. You know, the thing you have on the show about the miners and coming back from what we would think was certain death? For me, and I think my wife, the lessons of life is you do keep coming back if you just hang in there, that life can regenerate. The miners found it. And so, certainly Elizabeth and I have found it.
CHUNG: Yes. Well, why don't we talk about the two of you. You got married. And because you met talking about one particular thing, and that was the two deaths you experienced. Your wife and your husband. Elizabeth? Your husband died of cancer?
ELIZABETH SHATNER, WILLIAM SHATNER'S WIFE: Yes, he did. He fought cancer, lymphoma of the bone, for a year and a half and died in '97. Within about the same week, the same date almost, that Noreen died in August, first week of August.
W. SHATNER: Two years earlier.
E. SHATNER: Two years earlier.
CHUNG: So how did you meet?
W. SHATNER: Well...
CHUNG: What exactly was it?
W. SHATNER: She...
E. SHATNER: I wrote a sympathy note.
W. SHATNER: Wrote a sympathy note, and...
CHUNG: Out of the blue?
W. SHATNER: No. My wife's -- Liz is a horse trainer, and my passion is horses. And I had seen -- seen the Martin stables in California sort of in the distance. And I knew of her story, of nursing her husband for a year and a half. And so four, five months after Noreen died, I was trying to get through the sympathy notes, the notes of condolence. And there was one note that was beautifully written, and I read it, and it was Elizabeth. And sometime after that, I called her and we started talking on the phone, and she had been through the grief processes -- mystical, strange, but almost definable thing. And she had been through it. And she helped me through that whole process.
CHUNG: Did you happen to know that she was so gorgeous?
W. SHATNER: I knew she was very beautiful, but I didn't know how intelligent and bright and funny and all that.
E. SHATNER: Oh, thank you.
CHUNG: Awfully nice. It's awfully nice.
W. SHATNER: We made a movie called "Groom Lake," which is out now. A memorial to Mike and to Noreen. Sort of a spiritual love story.
CHUNG: Now, you are doing something that I think is just crazy, wacky. But it's not the first time, huh?
W. SHATNER: Crazy, wacky?
CHUNG: Yeah. At 71, you're into auto racing, right?
W. SHATNER: I am. Yes. Well, I've raced now in two Grand Prix. I've learned to drive a car fast. I have the second fastest time in Washington.
CHUNG: There you go. Give me five on that.
W. SHATNER: Right there, and the other one too.
CHUNG: What does she think about it?
E. SHATNER: The actual car racing, I'm gaining appreciation for it more and more. Didn't like it at first. But the events are always -- the last two times have been for charity, so it makes it worthwhile.
W. SHATNER: She's worried about me.
E. SHATNER: Definitely worried.
CHUNG: Yeah, yeah. You and Paul Newman. And he's still racing, isn't he?
W. SHATNER: I'm not sure that Paul gets in the car anymore, I'm not sure. I don't know. He was really good.
CHUNG: All right. So, let's go on to my favorite, those Priceline commercials. I saw you watching our little story, you know. You were kind of shaking your head. Why?
W. SHATNER: Well, wacky and crazy. What is wacky? You take a chance. You walk a tightrope. What is wacky and crazy? Is it stupid? Is wacky and crazy stupid to somebody else?
CHUNG: No, I don't think that.
W. SHATNER: No, but you think it's wacky and crazy, does he think it's stupid? It's such a fine line that you walk when you're wacky and crazy. It's safer not to be wacky and crazy.
CHUNG: Well, you're right, because you're that other part, too loopy. Right?
W. SHATNER: Yeah. CHUNG: Yeah. But the Priceline thing, tell me something, is that a parody on celebrity? Is that William Shatner doing a joke? Or, you know, what is it? It's so captivating, I'm telling you.
W. SHATNER: Well, that's the reason -- I think that's the reason why. The line between the sincerity of a true performance and the farcical irony, however you might characterize what it is I'm doing, is so fine that you don't know when you tread it. You don't know where it is. But somewhere in that area is an ironic look at that.
CHUNG: And that is what?
W. SHATNER: That is a performance character.
CHUNG: Got it. It's sort of like the lounge lizard, no?
W. SHATNER: I think so, but less.
CHUNG: Right. Not so overt?
W. SHATNER: Exactly.
CHUNG: There you go. We analyzed it. So the Priceline -- you're back with them. You left them, and now you're back?
W. SHATNER: No, I never really left. I was doing radio commercials for them. They didn't know which way to go. And now we're planning a new campaign. And it will be out in September. You'll be able to see and hopefully laugh with it.
CHUNG: Elizabeth, how come he just continues working and working? He never stops. I mean, he's got it; he gets jobs like that. And at 71, he will not stop. I get the impression. True?
E. SHATNER: He couldn't. He has too much energy.
CHUNG: And he doesn't look 71 at all.
E. SHATTER: Absolutely not.
CHUNG: Are both of you great riders and horse people?
E. SHATNER: We love them. That's our passion.
W. SHATNER: She's a professional who recently got her amateur status back because she married me.
(CROSSTALK)
E. SHATNER: As far as the riding and training, but then I'm maintaining my judge's card, so I judge different breeds.
W. SHATNER: So yes, she's a fabulous rider and horse trainer. And I love to ride. And riding a horse, at its peak and its perfection and its ultimate way is not dissimilar to driving a car fast. The balance. The -- a car needs to be balanced, front or rear balance. A horse needs to be contained, needs to be balanced as well. Shoulder (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
CHUNG: At some level, you have control but you don't, right?
W. SHATNER: Yes.
E. SHATNER: There's an edge. There's an edge.
W. SHATNER: There's an edge. The limits of adhesion in both horse, car and life.
CHUNG: Oh, there you go. You took it right out there.
W. SHATNER: I took a straight line out to the infinity.
CHUNG: And I thank you so much. It's great to see you.
W. SHATNER: Pleasure.
CHUNG: And aren't we all so happy about those miners? Isn't it great to have a positive story?
W. SHATNER: The miners are here. That's a fabulous story.
E. SHATNER: Yeah, we can all celebrate life.
CHUNG: Exactly. Thank you so much.
W. SHATNER: Thank you.
CHUNG: And I can tell you two are celebrating life.
E. SHATNER: We are, every day.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHUNG: As if Shatner's "Fright Night" and "One-Hit Wonders" weren't enough, he's got a new book, called, appropriately enough, "I'm Working on That."
And we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: The voyages of the starship Enterprise were the brainchild of producer Gene Roddenberry, a decorated World War II pilot, who originally conceived of the series as a science fiction version of "Wagon Train." The show was never a big hit. It only got to its third season thanks to a massive letter writing campaign. It was in syndication that the series' popularity really took hold, and sparked a huge cult following. And it wasn't for the special effects.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENE RODDENBERRY, CREATOR, "STAR TREK": We talked about sex, and war, and labor management. The reason I could get away with it in television without being censored was they thought, well, it's just a silly show. We introduced the broad variety and excitement of science fiction to the American audience, and made it a staple -- one of the staples of American literature.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: "Star Trek" went on to spawn several spin-offs and almost a dozen movies. Its stars have continued to do projects both in and out of "Star Trek." But what ever happened to the man who created "Star Trek?"
The answer when we return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: What ever happened to "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry? He died in 1991. But what happened to him afterward was a fitting tribute. NASA took his ashes on the Shuttle Columbia, sister shuttle to the Enterprise, for a few trips in orbit in 1994. But in 1997, a private company flew his ashes into space and released them to orbit the earth on their own, allowing Roddenberry at last to live up to his nickname as "the great bird of the galaxy."
CHUNG: Tomorrow, the murder trial of David Westerfield, the man accused of killing little Danielle van Dam. The trial is winding down. We'll get an insider's look at the trial. To get a preview of our program every day, sign up for our daily e-mail, by logging onto cnn.com/connie. And coming up next on "LARRY KING LIVE," the attorney who defended Alejandro Avila.
Thank you for joining us. And for all of us at CNN, good night.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
of What it Took to Save the Somerset Nine; Shatner Continues Working at 71>
|
|
|
|
|
