'Big Miracle' for President Reagan's liaison, too

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During a wild period in October 1988, the world seemed consumed with the fate of three gray whales that became trapped in the ice off Barrow Point, Alaska, during their annual migration.

Ronald Reagan asked Bonnie Carroll to go to Alaska to help coordinate efforts by the president's office and the Alaska National Guard.

By Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Ronald Reagan asked Bonnie Carroll to go to Alaska to help coordinate efforts by the president's office and the Alaska National Guard.

By Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Ronald Reagan asked Bonnie Carroll to go to Alaska to help coordinate efforts by the president's office and the Alaska National Guard.

After a local news story made it onto Tom Brokaw's NBC Nightly News broadcast, interest in the whales took off. News crews gathered at tiny town just 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Bonnie Mersinger was the executive assistant for Cabinet affairs in the West Wing of the White House and was asked by President Reagan to head to Barrow to serve as a liaison between the president's office and the National Guard's rescue efforts.

"President Reagan was just a huge animal 校园鬼故事person, so he asked me to find out how I could help," she says.

Mersinger would go on to marry Col. Tom Carroll, who was leading the efforts of the Alaska National Guard. Their fledgling relationship is depicted in Big Miracle, a fictionalized account of the 1988 madness.

"But it was pretty spot-on," says Bonnie Carroll. "The story is so good. All of these disparate groups coming together to overcome all of these obstacles."

Environmentalists, Big Oil, the local Inupiat tribes, the Army — all worked together in subzero weather to free the whales. Even the Russians played a role in a marked transition from their Cold War stance.

Critics called it a distraction from pressing 中国十大灵异事件issues. But Cindy Lowry, the Greenpeace environmental activist who was central to the story, calls it "an amazing story of the human spirit's goodness."

And the two whales (the third died under the ice) that did swim to freedom from the ice?

"I believe they made it to safety," Lowry says.短篇鬼故事 "And they were young ones. It's been more than 20 years, but they can live to 80. So I believe they have a long time to live yet."