354: Mistakes Were Made

27:02newscast. ...protecting the patient biologically for the cold temperatures that he is going to be exposed to. You ever seen, you heard the movie Three Faces of Eve, you know? This is the two faces of Bob Nelson. The dual role of my life was to, on the one hand, be a spokesman for chronics, And then, on the other hand, was my nightmare responsibility of keeping this antique capsule running. The publicity worked. It attracted new people to be frozen, some of them with the ability to pay for it. Then, in July of 1971, Bob got a call from a Canadian man named Guy, the father of a 7-year-old girl dying of a rare kidney cancer.

27:47One day, everything was fine. The next day, doctors are telling him his child had weeks to live. The way Guy saw it, it didn't matter if cryonics was a long shot. Bob Nelson presented the only slim hope his daughter had left. Guy didn't have a lot of money, but he managed to fly Geneviève to California, where he got her admitted to a children's hospital. Bob remembers meeting her there. She was sitting on the bed, and her dad was with her. and she always had the expression of so sad, so, so sad because she knew how sick she was. She knew she was dying and she didn't want to. Did her parents talk to her about the idea of being frozen?

28:29Yes, they did. And she didn't seem to have much of an opinion one way or the other because it still meant that she had to die. And she didn't want to leave her sisters and her family. She wanted to go back to school. Bob knew he shouldn't be performing another free suspension, but he couldn't help it. He had a daughter of his own, just a couple years older. He went to see Geneviève a lot. One day, she made a request. Geneviève only spoke French, so the mother would interpret. And her mom said, Mr. Nelson, Geneviève wants to ask you a question. So I said, what? And she said, did I know where Disneyland was?

29:15And I said, yes, I do. As a matter of fact, my buddy Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse worked there. And so she told Geneviève that and Geneviève, ooh, like that, you know. And I said to her, Mom, why is, she says, the doctor said that it would be okay for her to go because sitting here is not good for her, you know. I said, I can't believe it. So I said, tell Geneviève, could she be ready to go to Disneyland tomorrow morning? We went the next morning and picked up Geneviève and drove to Disneyland. And we got her in a wheelchair and drove her, you know, pushed her around and she got in the teacup and the different things with my young daughter.

30:01And then at one point, she was in one of these little kid, turtle game, I think it was, And her mom says, Mr. Nelson, Jean-Vievre wants to ask you another question. And I said, sure, what would that be? And she said, would I learn French so that she could talk to me? And I said, I will do that just for you.

30:35For a little while, it looked like Jean-Vievre was improving. Then one morning, Bob was back at the hospital. Guy was sitting on the bed, and he was holding her. And I stopped. I knew this was a sacred moment. So he looked up and he said, Get the nurse. I think Genevieve has passed. And so I got the nurse, and sure enough, she had passed. So he put her back on the bed, and then it was all business. It was, you know, critically important to get her temperature down. That's the most important thing about a cryonic suspension, is that once the heart stops, the temperature has got to drop. Nothing is more important than that.

31:18They packed her in ice and put her in what's called a body bag. It's a plastic bag that they put ice on the bottom, and then they lay her on that and then totally cover her body with ice and put her on a gurney and put her in the hearse. So within an hour and a half, she was on the mortuary table, receiving her perfusion and having her temperature further lowered. According to Bob, Guy hoped to raise$10 ,000 to pay for a capsule, but he just couldn't manage. He had a pile of medical bills and two other kids to worry about. So Bob found himself back in the same fix, short on funds, with a couple of bodies and temporary dry ice storage.

32:00He did the only thing he knew how to do. In 1972, Bob arranged to take custody of a cryonics patient named Stephen Mandel, who'd been frozen and sealed in a capsule in New York. It was the Marie Bowers capsule all over again. He opened it up, added Genevieve and another woman he'd frozen, Mildred Harris, and welded it shut again.

32:26By now, the first capsule was breaking down more or less constantly, and Bob had hit a wall. The way he describes it, it's as if he was the captain of a sinking ship, throwing cargo over the side to stay afloat. He couldn't save them all, and so he'd come to a decision. He would let the first capsule fail. This much is clear. He kept it a secret.

32:56The second capsule was practically as bad as the first, constantly malfunctioning, boiling off liquid nitrogen. But Bob kept it going. Then a few years later, he had to leave town for a week. He paid a groundskeeper$100 to babysit the capsule, and the pump broke. And when the groundskeeper called the company to fix it, they never showed. I came back, drove up to the vault, looked at the capsule. There's a nozzle that comes out of the capsule that has steam visible because the liquid nitrogen is evaporating away. When I drove up and I looked, that steam wasn't there. So I just didn't want to acknowledge what that meant.

33:40But the test was to go and touch that pipe. And if it was cold, then there was some hope. That means that it was still cold inside. And then going through my mind, what if it's hot? What if those bodies have decomposed? So I walk up to the capsule, I put my finger on it, and it was like touching a hot frying pan. It was the most painful experience, emotional experience of my life. I had failed that little girl. I promised her dad that she was gone.

34:26Bob says he immediately flew to Montreal to tell Geneviève's father in person.

34:37In Montreal, though, is where this story really starts to get interesting. And that's coming up in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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35:52Get unlimited talk, text, and data for just 15 bucks a month on the nation's largest 5G network. No catch, no gimmicks, no gotchas. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash American. $45 upfront payment required for new customers on first three-month plan only Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan Taxes and fees extra, restrictions apply See Mint Mobile for details It's This American Life, America Glass Each week in our show, we choose a theme Bringing different kinds of stories on that theme Today's program is a rerun Mistakes were made Sam Shaw's story about Bob Nelson continues Bob has just discovered that his second freezing capsule has failed liquid nitrogen is leaked out.

36:36And he says the first person that he went to tell was the little girl, Jean Vievre's father. So he met me at the airport in a little snack shop, coffee shop. He was right in my face instantly. What happened? And I tried to tell him as gently as I could. Then when he pressed me, how many, how many days, how long? I said, I don't know, three, four, five. I don't know. And what he said just totally blew me away. He said, well, I guess we'll just have to start it up again and continue on. And I said, okay, I think I should have fought it out with him right there. But I didn't. I turned around and walked away.

37:20Cowardly, I think. He was shook. He left and I could see his face was red. He was upset. Next, Bob says he flew to see Terry Harris, whose mother Mildred Harris was in the second capsule with Geneviève, and whose father Gaylord was also in the vault. And he met me at the airport and introduced me to his wife. I told him what happened, and he just said, Oh, well, did you fill it up again? I said, yeah. So he essentially said the same thing that Guy said. Did he understand what it meant? It's almost like he didn't care, you know. I mean, no, let me take that back. Not that he didn't care. No, it was more like, oh, well, far enough into the future, they'll be able to fix that too.

38:13A few days after Bob told me his story, I talked on the phone with Genevieve's father, Guy. He was polite and, I must say, very patient with my questions. But he didn't want to be interviewed on the radio. The memory of Geneviève's death and suspension was just too painful. He said, a little ruefully, that the whole idea of cryonics might be a moot point anyway, given the state of the world. The way things were going, even if the science panned out, there might not be a future to return to. And then he told me something else. That meeting at the airport Bob remembers so vividly? Guy said it never happened.

38:50So next I contacted Terry Harris, and I told him Bob's version of what transpired. Terry, you know, as you know, Bob tells this very detailed story about coming to tell you that the capsule... Terry says Bob never told him about the failure of the capsule. He had to hear about it from an article in a California newspaper that his aunt sent him in Des Moines. They said in the article that the machinery had, you know, broken down. And I just, it was just incredulous. I just couldn't believe it. So I called Bob and he reassured me that everything was fine and the paper was just trying to generate sensational readership, you know.

39:33And so I never saw him. I just talked to him on the phone at that point. Right. So there was never a time when Bob flew out and met with you at the airport? it. No. That would have been, you know, the right and honorable thing to do. And I wish it had occurred, but it's just not accurate.

40:06Terry Harris was in his early 20s when he met Bob Nelson. He'd lost both his parents in a span of three months, and cryonics had seemed like this great thing he could give them in return. He sometimes imagined what it would be like when they were all reunited as a family in some distant, dreamlike future. It gave him hope. And then everything had gone so wrong. So I called Bob, and I told him about my conversations with Guy and Terry. He was shocked, and he stuck to his story. Later that day, he sent me a long, pained email calling the situation a heart-wrenching predicament. He called Terry Harris a liar.

40:45But Guy was another matter. Bob said he was devastated that Guy didn't remember their talk in the Montreal airport. He wondered if it was possible that Guy'd repress the memory. Then I spoke to him a few days later, and he offered this take. I would say this about that, that if Guy said that I never came to the airport in Montreal, then he's right. I have to concede that it's possible that what happened, because I've been mulling this over for the past few days, it's possible what I'm remembering is going through this scenario with him over the phone. Yeah. I mean, when you talked about it, it sounded so vivid.

41:34You remember it like being in the sandwich shop. Well, in my mind, you know, I must have been over it a thousand times, what it was going to be like to face him, to talk to him. And it was just the horror of my life because, you know, it just—so anyway, I have to agree that most likely I didn't go to Montreal. To be clear, Guy says he never heard from Bob at all. No visit, no phone call, nothing. I'm just wondering if when you look at that memory, that seems like it was a faulty memory, if it gives you any pause and makes you wonder whether there are other parts of this set of memories that you have that may also not be totally trustworthy.

42:24Other parts, such as? Well, such as Terry Harris. No. Sam, you know, I'm never going to budge one speck from that. You know, you need to believe what you need to believe, Sam. You know, I'm only telling you, you know, I'm telling you what I, what I, and there would be no reason for me to make up that I, that I went to see Terry Harris and them. That's not part of the story. That, that, that, that isn't, you know, important to my story. But don't you think that there might be a reason why it would be important for you to believe that you went out and had those conversations with them face to face?

43:09You know, how do you defend yourself? I don't know. How do you defend yourself against something that, you know, that's not true? I don't know. What's clear is that Bob's convinced he did right by Terry and Gee, and Terry and Gee are equally convinced that he didn't. If it sounds like Bob is harder on Terry than he is on Gee, there's one more thing you have to understand. When the truth about the two failed capsules and the nine bodies in the vault finally came to light, when all those hard decisions Bob had made on the fly became sound bites on the 10 o 'clock news, there wasn't just a public reckoning.

43:49There was a trial. Terry and his brother were two of the plaintiffs. and they won, to the tune of$800 ,000. The half they actually collected came out of mortician Joe Clockether's malpractice insurance.

44:11In 1979, the Harris brothers flew out to California to meet an attorney who led them to the vault at Chatsworth along with a local TV news team. By that point, Bob had washed his hands of the cryonic society. He was dead broke, and his marriage had fallen apart, and he just walked away. And for the first time, Terry saw the reality of his parents' situation with his own eyes. Well, the door in the facility was made of steel, and it was then chained and padlocked, closed. The chain was rusty, and there was grass growing around that door where before it wasn't. and our attorney brought a pair of bolt cutters and removed that lock and chain and slid the door back and we went down and you could just see that there was pieces of equipment here and there and the capsule lid opened and it was unbearable just unbearable and I was just I was just numb you know just numb I well I I couldn't you know look inside that capsule but I just you know backed away when I realized that there were just you know remains inside and we'd brought flowers and so we laid them there but a capsule and then I just went up the stairs and left.

46:02I felt guilty because I should have, you know, been there night and day, which of course isn't very realistic, but at the time I felt very guilty.

46:26Here's the entrance. This is the management office over here. I mean, it looks identical to the day that I was here 40 years ago. This little shack was here. This chapel was exactly the same. Bob and I drove out to the cemetery in Chatsworth on a sunny afternoon in March. We spent about an hour wandering the grounds. Bob pointing out landmarks and citing names and dates like a breezy tour guide. He said it felt good to be back. Oakwood is a really beautiful spot, a rolling park surrounded by jagged sandstone hilltops. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are buried there. And the cemetery staff will point you to the grave sites of a half dozen lesser stars.

47:07But none of the groundskeepers we talked to had ever heard of a cryonics facility there. And really, it's no surprise. Where the vault used to be, there's just an empty swath of grass. No padlocked opening. No monument or plaque. See where the ground rises up over here? This is where the vault is. See where these, they've put two benches right here. Bob says all but two of the people he froze are still sealed in the vault, now covered over with sod. But the cemetery management tells a different story. They say the bodies were all disinterred years ago, which leaves one final question. Again, Terry Harris.

47:48I have no idea where my parents are. You have no idea where they're buried now? No, no. The management of the cemetery said, well, they're gone. And I said, well, what do you mean gone? And he said, well, that one day a big pickup truck came up there and disinterred them and took them away. And he said he didn't have any legal permit to do that. They didn't provide anything. Doesn't that sound outlandish to you?

48:33This is where all Bob's secrets and lies about the bodies finally led. To Terry Harris making phone calls, writing letters, combing through legal documents. Somewhere, he figured, there had to be a record, a clue that would tell him what had become of his parents. He's never found it.

48:57Cryonics carried on, without Bob Nelson. And all these years later, when people in the field tell Bob's story, they call it the Chatsworth disaster. On Cryonics' discussion boards, he's been labeled a murderer, though, of course, all the people he supposedly killed were dead to begin with. When Bob talks about those years, he says he's gotten a bad rap. He genuinely seems to feel bad about failing Geneviève and her family, and for dragging the mortician, Joe Clockether, through the trial. But just as emphatically, he'll tell you that his main mistake was caring too much, that the secrets he kept were necessary to keep the project going, and, above all, that the people he froze had donated their bodies under the Anatomical Gift Act.

49:41Which meant that they donated their body to the Cryonic Society of California. And according to my attorney, we could grind them up for hamburger, if that's what we wanted to do. We were given the right by the state of California to carry on research and do whatever we wanted in the perfection of suspended animation. And so we just felt that, you know, there's no need to be telling other people. You know, I mean, I could have just locked that capsule, that vault up, and not told anybody that we'd stop putting liquid nitrogen in there. You know, that probably could have gone on until today. You know?

50:31But at some point, I had to settle back down to reality.

50:43Bob says a lot depends on your perspective. If the science of cryonics pans out, it'll be possible to look at Genevieve and Mildred Harris and Helen Klein as casualties of progress, or as Bob calls them, frozen heroes. Bob's not a rich guy, but he's managed to save$28 ,000 to pay for his own freezing at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. He thinks his odds of reanimation are pretty good. And in the end, that's the thing that sustains him, the hope that someday, in 50 years, or 100, or 1 ,000, he'll wake up in a world he barely recognizes. A world where Chatsworth wasn't a disaster, but the first imperfect battle in the war that saved us all.

51:33Sam Shaw. He's the creator of the TV series Manhattan and Castle Rock. Bob Nelson published a memoir about his years in cryonics. It's called Freezing People is Not Easy. As I said earlier, today's show is a rerun. And years after we first ran this episode, Bob died. That was in June 2018. And as for his body, it took some time, but his family raised the money to honor his wishes. Bob is awaiting reanimation at the Creonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan, alongside his hero, Robert Ettinger. His old friend and co-defendant, the mortician Joe Cockgather, oversaw his suspension.

52:16Act two, you're willing to sacrifice our love. So one of our producers, Sean Cole, when we came up with this idea to do an episode about people who were apologizing without fully apologizing, he put out this poem, which is basically that in a nutshell. In addition to making radio, Sean is a published poet. So the poem's by William Carlos Williams, and it's a poem that's taught a lot in all sorts of poetry classes everywhere, and particularly elementary school, which is where I heard about it. And the way it was taught to me was that it was an actual note that William Carlos Williams left for his wife.

52:54And I always sort of imagine like it's sitting there on the kitchen table waiting for her. And it's called This Is Just To Say. I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious. So sweet. and so cold. What's funny about the poem is that he never really apologizes. He never apologizes. He says, forgive me, which is kind of a command. And so I feel like it's like, oh, you know, I ate the plums and that was a bad thing. But I'm not sorry I did it, you know. It's interesting to me that it makes you mad. The thing that really breaks my heart is that she was saving them.

53:41And when he says probably saving them for breakfast, because he knew she was saving them for breakfast. There's no probably about it. They live together. Now, this is a poem that is often imitated? Imitated. Spoofed by many a poet. It's kind of become a game among poets to write a version of This Is Just To Say. My favorite one is by a poet named Kenneth Koch. Okay, let's hear him. I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning and I had nothing to do, and its wooden beams were so inviting. Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.

54:26Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor. That story has everything, that last one. It really does. It's an entire novel in three lines. So my favorite of all the variations on this is written by a student named Andrew. Maybe it's pronounced Vecchione. Vecchione, maybe. Vecchione, maybe. And could I ask you to read that? It's called Sorry, But It Was Beautiful. Yeah. Sorry, I took your money and burned it, but it looked like the world falling apart when it crackled and burned. So I think it was worth it. After all, you can't see the world fall apart every day.

55:05That's the work of sixth grader Andrew Vecchione from a book by Kenneth Koch about teaching poetry to kids in which he has them write their own versions of This Is Just to Say. The book is called Rose, Where Did You Get That Read? Sean Cole's most recent poetry anthology is called After These Messages. He also produces the podcast The Writer's Almond Brother. We asked some of our regular contributors to do their own variations on the poem. Here they are. This Is Just to Say by Sarah Vowell. I carved your name, not mine, into the arm of Dad's chair. Sorry you were punished, but the wood was so gummy, and my knife was so sharp.

55:43This is Just to Say by David Rakoff At our wedding, I disappeared briefly to have sex with your sister up against the back of the port-au-sands. What can I say? The Chardonnay was so fresh and cold And I, so full of love and a sense of family And I said, I'm sure one day we'll laugh about this Well, by one day, I meant that day And by we, I meant me And by laugh, I meant laugh

56:21This is Just a Say by Starly Kine One, I chose the other girl. I'm sorry. It's not just that I'm more attracted to her. It's also that she is more interesting.

56:37Two, I used your dog as an excuse to pick up girls at the dog park, which is especially tacky since I'm your boyfriend. Please forgive me. I'm really bad at being in a relationship, and I'm pretty sure I told you that when we first got together. This is Just to Say by Jonathan Goldstein. This is just to say I have eaten the fruit of knowledge, but nothing happened. Not a word, no lightning or volcanoes, not even a drop of rain. So I was just wondering, are you there? This is Just to Say by Shalom Auslander. One, I'm sorry you're overweight and drinking. and feeling like everything in your life is doomed to failure.

57:25But this is probably why mom said I was her favorite. Two. It sucks, little doe, that I hit you with my car. But at least you weren't alive to watch the hunters shoot your children. Three. He was a troublemaker, okay, and didn't know when to shut up. Still, we never would have killed him if we'd known he was the Lord

57:57This is Just a Say by Heather O 'Neill Dear Mom, this is just to say I forgive you for eating all the plums the apples, the pears, and even drinking the last of the orange juice I forgive you for emptying Dad's bank account and for painting stars on our station wagon right before you got in and drove away. I forgive you for leaving us without even saying goodbye. Your plans were always so sweet, so delicious, and so cold.

58:52So cold and downhearted I've been frozen since our love was parted Well, our program was produced today by Sarah Koenig and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Jane Burry, Lisa Pollack, Robin Semien, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Opdyke. Senior producer for today's show is Julie Snyder. Production help from Seth Lind. Music help today from Jessica Hopper. Additional help on today's rerun from Adrienne Lilly, Molly Marcello, and Stone Nelson. Thanks today to Dave Dickerson and Chris Gethardt. David Rakoff, one of our longtime contributors, who wrote a variation of This Is Just to Say in that last act. He died back in 2012.

59:31He is not frozen, but his books are still out there. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to a program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatia, who reminds you, don't mess with him. I'm loaded. I own my own house. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life. So cool.

1:00:05So cool.

1:00:11Next week on the podcast of This American Life, if you're stuck in an ICE detention facility right now with no reliable way to communicate with the outside world, no money, how do you tell your loved ones where you are?

1:00:26You can yell over the massive walls to the people outside. Or, and not many people can do this, you can throw a bottle with a note. I had chills, you know, I was like, that's insane. Hail Mary passes. Thanks for looking at the podcast on your local public radio station.

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