What drives Cooper to the ‘danger zone’?

Can you imagine the strength it takes to be living in a shack? To be living, sleeping in the streets next to the bodies of your dead children? Can you imagine that strength? I can’t. And I’ve seen that strength day in and day out here in the Philippines. And we honor them with every broadcast that we do.

That was CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s statement as if to sum up his (and CNN colleagues’) extensive coverage of the havoc wrought by Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in the Eastern Visayas, with Tacloban City among the worst hit. Cooper sent his dispatches mostly from Tacloban.

Many CNN watchers must be wondering what drives Cooper, 46, to the “danger zone.” Aside from the Yolanda tragedy, Cooper has covered the famine-stricken Africa (particularly Somalia where he came face-to-face with dozens of dying and the dead), the unending bloodshed (which he called “inkblots of blood”) in war-torn Iraq, the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, the killer 2005 tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (multiply the hurricane’s strength by three and that’s how strong and destructive Yolanda was).

If that paragraph sounded familiar, it’s because I reprinted it from my exclusive phone interview with Cooper in 2007 for my Sunday Conversations feature. To understand Cooper better, I read his biography Dispatches From The Edge and I learned that he weaves the tragedies in his own life with those of other people in other places, thereby finding whatever consolation he could in the process. I also understood why he’s so passionate about his being a (multi-awarded) “advocacy journalist.”

His mother was the designer-heiress Gloria Vanderbilt (described as the “poor little rich girl”) but, confessed Cooper, “I didn’t know my mother was famous until I was about 12.” His great-great grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, was the founder of the New York Central Railroad.

The Vanderbilt surname could have opened doors for Cooper but he chose to make it the hard way, making it on his own merits, saying with a laugh, “Hmmm, you know, I think none of us can help how we were born. All we have to do is choose how we want to live. And I have chosen to live the kind of life that, you know, I think best suits me. I think it’s important for everybody to find his own destiny, what will make him happy and contented. It’s not easy for me to get into journalism. I have to come up with good stories even if it means going to wars by myself as a young man. You know, I feel very lucky.”

To cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Cooper (with other CNN guys) stayed in New Orleans for more than a month.

“I find a great privilege to be able to tell people the whole story,” he told me in that phone interview whether it’s the story of Hurricane Katrina, the Planet Peril and a war anywhere in the world. Wherever I am, I think it’s a great privilege to be invited to somebody’s home and to be trusted with their story.”

In one of his dispatches from Tacloban, Cooper was shown lending his satellite phone to a man to call his mother in Manila, telling Cooper that he lost his wife and child and wanted to kill himself but did not because he had another child to take care of.

That reminded me of Cooper’s recollection in his book about how his mother saw his brother Carter commit suicide:

He ran from her room, “as if he knew where he was going, knew the destination,” she would tell me later. My mother followed him as he ran up the curving staircase, into my room, through the sliding glass door, and onto the balcony.

By the time she got there, he was perched on the low stone wall that surrounded the terrace outside my room. His right foot was on the top of the wall, his left foot was touching the terrace floor.

“What are you doing?” she cried out, and started moving toward him.

“No, no. Don’t come near me,” he said.

“Don’t do this to me, don’t do this to Anderson. Don’t do this to Daddy,” my mother pleaded.

“Will I ever feel again?” he asked.

My mother is not sure how long they were out there on the terrace. It all happened very fast. He looked down at the ground, fourteen stories below. A helicopter passed overhead, a glint of the silver in the late-summer sky. Then he moved.

“He was a gymnast,” my mother remembers. “He went over the ledge and hung on the edge like it was a practice bar in a gym.”

“I shouted, ’Carter, come back’!”, she told me later, “just for a moment I thought he was going to. But he didn’t. He just let go.”

I asked Cooper then if his brother’s suicide influenced and defined his point of view as a journalist.

He replied, “Well, I think in my case, what happened to my brother helped me get the courage to go to different places and got interested to figure out how other people survive tragedies in their own lives. I wanted to go to places to learn about survival and what better places to learn it than those caught in wars.”

And, if I may add, to places like Tacloban where scores perished in the wink of an eye.

From his book: When I heard my brother was dead, I drove deeper into myself. I retreated, hoping to block the shock, the reeling fear, the wave of nausea that made me clutch my stomach. I was sad, of course, but I was angry as well. How could he have done this to our mother, killed himself in front of her? How could he have left me behind to deal with the mess?

He might as well have asked the same question as he went back home yesterday, maybe looking forward to more coverage risking life and limb?

Why, Yolanda, why did you have to do this to us, why did you leave us behind to deal with the mess?

Megan to help in relief efforts

The Miss World Charity, Beauty With A Purpose, officially announced that it will channel all forthcoming fundraising efforts to the victims of Typhoon Yolanda.  

Newly crowned Miss World 2013 Megan Young will raise as much money as possible to help her fellow Filipinos. On Tuesday, Nov. 19, Consul General of the Philippine Consulate General in New York, the Hon. Mario de Leon Lopez, Jr., will host a special evening with Megan for prominent members of the Filipino community in the state of New York.

The next day, Nov. 20, the public has been invited to the fundraising event, the Double Tree by Hilton I Newark in New Jersey. On Nov. 21, LA Consul General Maria Hellen Barber De La Vega will host the third fundraising event at the Beverly Hills Country Club.

Megan said, â€œI am devastated by the images I’ve seen of my homeland over the last week. My fellow Filipinos are so wonderful and strong but they desperately need help to get through this disaster. The amount of support we have had 0so far has been incredible but we need a lot more. I hope that I can help out as much as I can through my role as Miss World and through with Beauty With A Purpose where 100% of the money raised goes straight to those who need it. I am praying for my country and for my people.”

On her part, Megan will auction off some of the iconic wardrobe she wore on her journey as Miss World 2013 including her Muslim-inspired national costume, coral serpentine evening gown during the finals and her homecoming red terno.

— Reported by CELSO DE GUZMAN CAPARAS

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