by Hoda Kotb
“Cars were being flipped, people were screaming,” he described. “Bodies were getting washed everywhere.”
We raced back to dry land and began writing what would be the first story we fed back to our hungry Dateline producers. (By the way, we and other journalists on the scene were lined up on the side of a mountain, desperate to feed our videotapes. A Turkish guy was the only one in the area who had a working satellite dish. He did not know what hit him. Reporters from all over the world were begging him to feed faster in order to keep the line moving. Those pesky deadlines . . .)
Our hunt for more compelling stories took us to one of the island’s hospitals. There we met a man missing one of the two most important things in his life: his youngest daughter. Steve Fitzgerald had two girls, and while one was safe, the other was nowhere to be found. Twenty-one-year-old Anna and twenty-three-year-old Kate had been vacationing in tropical Phuket when the tsunami hit. The two were hunkered down in a bathroom and were literally snatched up by the wave and tossed into the mayhem. Like so many others, the girls fell victim to the water’s fast and ferocious attack. Once Steve flew in from South Africa, it took him eighteen agonizing hours to get any word on his daughters: Kate was in the hospital; but Anna, a business student in her final year of college, was missing.
Where to begin? As you can imagine, there were constant reports of survivors and bodies being found. Steve raced to every location that held promising news. He put up flyers. He even identified bodies at makeshift morgues around the island. An aid worker told Steve he thought he saw Anna’s name on a hospital log. But each time, no Anna. “You can’t have the luxury of thinking about your past with your daughter or contemplation of your life or your lack of life going forward,” he reasoned. “You just deal with what you can do now to try to find your daughter.”
Imagine the horror of having to peek inside body bags, not even sure what you’re hoping to see. Which is worse? The agony of never knowing? Or the horror of reality staring you in the face? After too many days passed, Steve began to realize he’d lost Anna. “At her twenty-first birthday recently, I said that I didn’t know of many parents who could say that after twenty-one years,” he said softly, “their child hadn’t given them one single moment of problems. That was my child.” His head dropped into his hand like a lead weight and he began to sob. I asked Steve, in this unthinkable situation, what he said to God.
He just looked at me—for a long time. I thought maybe he didn’t want to answer the question. Finally, he said, “What do I say to God? I say, ‘Thank you.’”
“Thank you?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you for not taking both of them,” he said.
Boy. I was not expecting that. I remember thinking, I can’t believe what people can withstand. How could this man retain the right perspective, the grace of gratitude? I was so blown away—and so not excited about what I knew I had to do next. I had to get the tape fed for Dateline. I had to get up immediately and walk out of that room. Every reporter faces these horribly awkward moments that deadlines create. There’s just no easy or smooth way to say to someone whose heart is on the table, “I’ve got to go.” The reality is this: You realize you’ve gotten what you need for the story, the damn clock is ticking, and leaving is the only way you’re going to get this person’s important words on the air. So you strip off your microphone and head for the door. That’s how it was in Phuket with Steve Fitzgerald. I simply had to cut this poignant, painful moment short. I hugged him and hoped he understood. How could he understand anything that was happening? Nothing made sense in Phuket at the moment.
In the final segment of our tsunami series, we featured a married couple from Toms River, New Jersey. They were inseparable, married for thirty-three years. What brought Ed and Helen Muesch to Thailand was a round-the-world boat rally. Theirs was one of twelve boats gathered at Phi Phi Don, a small island fifteen miles off Phuket. The plan was for all the rally friends to celebrate Christmas Day together.
When I met Ed, he was walking with a cane. And he was rattled. He was still trying to process how the beautiful memories he and his wife had set out to create were literally washed away, and why he was forced to make a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Visibly tired, Ed began to describe the wave’s sneak attack.
Just before eleven o’clock in the morning, Ed and Helen returned from breakfast on Phi Phi Don. They were headed back to the beach to get their inflatable and board their boat. But strangely, when they arrived at the beach, there was barely any water left where the boats were anchored. How could it be? The boat was floating in 40 feet of water when they left. As they dragged their inflatable across the exposed sand to reach water, skippers in Thai canoes were waving them back and jumping from their vessels. In the distance, Ed said he made out what looked like a small foam line on the horizon. He and Helen decided to abandon the dinghy and head back to the beach.
“We held hands and we started running really fast,” he recalled. “The wave wasn’t that tall, but it was this white, foaming froth.”
The boiling wave gained on them with tremendous speed. Ed and Helen were driven underwater by its pressure and brute force. Now submerged, he described the water above them as stewing with debris and bodies. Neither could get air. Twirled and tumbled by the angry froth, the couple ended up on the other side of the island. Ed realized, in terror, that they were getting pulled back out to sea. Helen was unconscious and just out of his reach.
“I tried to get up and she slipped away from me,” he said. “My hand grabbed a piece of pipe and I was able to pull my head above water.”
Sucking in a huge breath of air, Ed reached down for Helen and brought her up. Pure white. That’s how he described his wife’s face. She was barely breathing. Clawing about for safety, Ed somehow grasped the propeller shaft of a Thai canoe. A dazed man standing in the boat seemed oblivious to Ed’s screams for help. He begged the man to help him get Helen aboard. Finally, the man came to life and helped yank Helen into the boat. Ed scrambled up and in next. Holding tightly to his wife, Ed was horrified by the view. Drowned people floated past, along with broken boats and random debris. Survivors were clinging to whatever they could with barely any strength left. In all the chaos, Ed was faced with a cruel choice in the form of a board. A simple, wooden board had presented him with the most complex and heart-wrenching decision of his life.
As Ed was screaming at Helen, trying to will her back to life, a desperate woman in the water reached out for him with a long, wet board. He was her only hope. Ed tried to grab the board, but it was too short. And he couldn’t let go of Helen. He said he reasoned, “If I don’t jump in, this woman will die. But I can’t jump in because if I leave Helen, she’ll die.” Ed was crushed. “I made the choice not to go in the water.”
With the help of a series of spared boats, Ed managed to get Helen to the hospital, where she barely survived. She spent two days in Intensive Care, developed pneumonia, and battled a heart infection. Still, she pulled through. Helen was weak but full of life when we interviewed her from her hospital bed.
“I would have drowned. I would be out at sea for sure. He has to take care of me for the rest of my life.” She smiled. “That’s the rule. If you save someone’s life, you’re responsible.”
The lives he didn’t save are what will always haunt Ed. I could read it on his face and in his answer when I asked, “What did you lose that day?” A long pause.
“I would say, self-respect.” In his anguish, Ed said he sought out a crisis counselor on the island. “I just wanted one person to hear my story and really understand.” He added sadly, “I didn’t need anybody to forgive me, because the people who had to forgive me are gone.”
Cruel. I looked down at Ed’s cane. It clearly relieved only the smallest part of his pain.
As we left the island, it was amazing to see how soon after the tsunami people were again enjoying Phuket’s beaches. Wasn’t that disrespectful to all who’d so recently lost th
eir lives? People I asked said no. They saw the flip side—the sunny side—the appreciation of being alive.
That’s the lesson, I imagine. Like a huge wave that barrels across the ocean, or a gentle wave that laps the shore, there is an undeniable ebb and flow to life. I try to remember that. Move forward, move forward, move forward.
7
MS. GROVES
One of my dreams has always been to become a teacher. Because of Dateline, I got a rare ride on a neighboring cloud next to a woman who thought teaching would be heavenly, too.
I got the story assignment by default. Dateline correspondent Sara James had initially pitched the idea: follow someone in the Teach For America program during her first year instructing in a low-income community. The nonprofit organization was well established, created in 1990 to encourage people to teach in underserved areas. The idea required some cajoling of management because the financial commitment would be large. The budget would include daily camera work and frequent flights to the story site for producers and talent. Plus, what about the payoff? Would twelve months in school be interesting enough to watch? The bosses bit, but Sara’s daughter became ill, so she could not take the story. Dateline passed it on to me.
The time frame would cover the school year August 2004 to May of 2005. The focus of our story was twenty-one-year-old Monica Groves, who agreed to begin her teaching career in Atlanta at Jean Childs Young Middle School. She had graduated from the University of Virginia, was accepted into the program, and was very excited to meet the children. I flew to Atlanta and met Monica in her new classroom. I liked her instantly. She was an optimist, a real glass-half-full girl.
“I’m so excited about meeting my students,” she bubbled. “I haven’t met them yet, but I already love them.”
Our challenge was going to be our presence. Or our omnipresence, I should say. We would need to fill the classroom with cameras and microphones—all the things that make people nervous. Our hope was that after a while we’d become invisible. There were no guarantees on what we’d capture, but we were pretty sure any teacher’s first year would involve some trials and tribulations. Monica would teach English to eighty-three sixth-graders. She and they were all African American, but beyond that, they didn’t have much in common. She had grown up in a relatively privileged family; her students were not as fortunate. She was tiny at 5 feet 2, maybe 100 pounds; many of her kids were tall and big. Still, Monica believed love and enthusiasm would bridge all gaps.
Within a month, the water in her glass began to evaporate. The warm and fuzzy approach she’d taken was not working. Very few kids were listening to her or doing what she required. Homework was not getting done. Students were constantly showing up late. Kids were asleep at their desks. Monica kept working harder and harder but getting zero results. How could this be? In her mind, she was doing everything right, but everything in her classroom was going wrong. After two months, Ms. Groves decided to abandon Ms. Nice. Monica got angry. She yelled. And the more quiet she demanded from her students, the louder she got. This new stony approach to teaching came from a foreign and desperate place. And the worst part? It didn’t work. Her students were still misbehaving and not learning. On her video diary one night in her bathrobe, she told the camera, “I am officially going through a tyrant stage. I spend more time yelling and correcting and discussing what we can’t do than I do teaching.”
Over the months, I would fly to Atlanta to interview Monica. I watched her agonize over all the things she was doing wrong. There was a time when she literally was beating her head up against a wall in frustration. Her dream of being the perfect teacher was as invisible as our cameras had become. And boy, were those cameras busy. Outside the classroom, we were taping an important aspect of Monica’s kids—their troubled home lives. When an A student’s grades began to plummet to D’s and F’s, we knew it was because her father had been sent to prison. When a boy whom Monica nominated for the gifted program didn’t finish his final book report, we knew it was because his mom died, his dad was absent, and he was being raised by his elderly grandmother. When a B student with promise would not excel, we knew it was because his family was homeless and living in a hotel, five people to a tiny room. “Sometimes I do my homework in the car on the way to the hotel,” the homeless student told our cameras. “Or sometimes I do it on the bed with my face turned to the wall so I don’t get distracted.” Monica was battling to overcome problems she knew nothing about. What she did know was that more than half her kids were being raised by single parents. Still, she had set a goal for her students that 80 percent would achieve a final grade of B or better. Four months into her teaching career, that goal was looking unattainable. “F, F, C, F, A, D, D, D, F, D . . .” she said, scanning grades from final exams for the semester. “This is just in one class. Not good.”
In the middle: Ms. Groves
Monica’s evolution as a teacher launched an internal revolution. Many times, she would cry during our interviews, exhausted from the Herculean effort with Pauper results. I asked her after semester finals how much gas was left in her tank. “I would say . . . about a quarter of a tank.” She began to cry and choked out, “I love my kids and a lot of the stress I go through is me wanting to make sure I’m giving them everything they need . . . and me wanting to make sure I’m stepping up for them.” Wiping away tears, she added, “It becomes a whole semester of ‘not good enough, not good enough, you can do this better . . . ’ and it is emotionally draining.” Monica was also struggling financially, making a very low wage. Socially, she was isolated. The classroom required all of Monica’s energy. She also coached the cheerleading team and helped tutor kids after school. During one visit, we joined her for a typical night at home—eating ice cream and grading poorly done tests. “A 57. This is bad. This is really, really bad.” More than half her kids scored a D or worse. “I keep asking myself, ‘Did I set them up to fail? Did I not teach it well enough? Did I not give enough review?’”
Monica was overwhelmed and unimpressed by her own performance. She’d set a high bar for herself as a teacher. Over the months, I began to realize that the bar had a name. “I just want to be like Mrs. Kaminga,” she’d lament. “I’m just not doing it like Mrs. Kaminga would want.” Mrs. Kaminga was Monica’s first-grade teacher. The kind of teacher she wanted to be. “Her demeanor was so supportive,” she explained. “She just made you want to be better.” The name would come up so frequently during our visits that I told my producer, Izhar Harpaz, we should begin looking for Mrs. Kaminga.
Toward the end of the year, there were still serious challenges. Monica found herself in the middle of a fist fight, Little Big Ms. Groves as they called her, trying to break it up. Thankfully, there were successes, too. The little girl’s father was released from prison and he became involved in her education. The boy raised by his grandma made the honor roll and was accepted into the gifted program. There was a new home and a room of his own for the boy living in a hotel. He made the honor roll, too. After ten months of “baptism by fire,” as Monica called it, she and her kids rose to the challenge. Eighty percent of her students achieved an overall grade of B or above. Monica found the “sweet spot” between a warm and a stern approach to teaching. She set up systems: “If you misbehave, I call your parents.” And, “If you don’t turn in assignments, your name and grades go up on a chart for all to see.”
In May, on the last day of school, Monica was clearly exhausted from the long and winding road. We were together in her empty classroom as she packed up her things. And I had a secret. I knew that in a few minutes, the fabulous Mrs. Kaminga would walk through the door. Izhar found her, retired in Michigan.
I could hardly stand it. What could be better than this right now? Nothing.
Knock, knock, knock . . .
A woman walked a few steps into the room. She was white, which is a rare sight in this district. Monica looked up and said, “Hi.”
“Hi, how are you?” answered the woman.
Aga
in, Monica: “How are you doing?”
The woman said, “Well, do you know who I am?”
Still, no recognition. Monica hadn’t seen her role-model teacher in sixteen years.
Then the teacher voice kicked in. And Mrs. Kaminga singsonged, “Can you thinnnnk baaaaack? Quite a fewwww years agoooooo . . .”
That’s when Monica’s eyes became the eyes of a child. Both hands flew up to her mouth. “Oh my gosh!” Then she burst into little-girl tears.
“Oh my God! Mrs. Kaminga! [sob, sob, sob] I remember what it was like to be in your classroom . . . if I could ever achieve that (tears) I would be so . . .”
Okay, look—very rarely do you ever get a real moment when you try to plan for it. Especially in television. Something inevitably goes wrong. Something unexpected interferes. But this was the real deal. This was one of those moments that actually worked. I can’t believe I was lucky enough to watch it unfold. And I was bawling like a little girl, too.
Mrs. Kaminga threw her arms around Monica and rocked her back and forth, patting her on the back. “You willllllll,” she said in that first-grade teacher voice. “I have noooooo doubt (pat-pat-pat).”
Rarely do any of us get the exact medicine we need at the exact moment we need it.
Monica Groves did.
We decided to call the series “The Education of Ms. Groves.” It made perfect sense, since she was the one, in the end, who learned the most. The lesson was that you can work as hard as you possibly can and give your best and still not hit the mark. The story generated a flood of responses urging teacher appreciation and a lot of interest in Monica from talent agents. She chose instead to go back to graduate school for a master’s degree and to return to Jean Childs Young Middle School to teach.
To our surprise, the raw, no-frills, not-sexy story of a year in the life of a public school teacher won Dateline two of the most sought-after awards in our business. “The Education of Ms. Groves” landed a 2006 Peabody Award and a 2008 Alfred I. duPont Award. It was a story that didn’t originate on a battlefield or at a crime scene—the kind of compelling or dramatic roots you’d think would be required to garner an award. But it struck a nerve. It made people feel something. The education of Ms. Kotb was that even the ordinary can be extraordinary. You just have to look a little harder, lean in a little closer.