Before dawn was hardest. That’s when she was all alone with no one else to take care of. So she would pray to God. “‘Why am I asking you?’” she remembers saying. “‘You know I’m something of a heathen.’ I have my beliefs but I don’t go to church regularly and when you see all the pain and misery that any ER nurse witnesses, it wears on your faith.” But Andrea was still a believer and now she needed God more than at any other time in her life. And she let Him know that.
A couple of days later, Father Privé, the former pastor of St. Thomas Church near our house, now living in nearby Morrisville, was sitting at our dining room table holding Andrea’s hand. We both had a special relationship with him. Father Privé had brought us back to attending church regularly after we’d fallen away from going to mass. Andrea turned to him and said, “Father, you know we’re not the best Catholics. But I’m frightened, I really am. I just don’t want to lose Rich. You have a lot of pull….” He smiled. Andrea was serious, though. “Please pray that if there is anyone out there who can help my husband, for God to give them the strength to do it.” He promised to do that. “I just couldn’t imagine not having you by my side for the rest of my life,” she told me.
At the same time Andrea was holding Father Privé’s hand back in Underhill, I was thinking about him in that dark lifeboat. I’d always liked the guy. He had this way of telling a story about getting up early in the morning to make doughnuts and watching the cardinals arguing with each other at the bird feeder in the parish yard. “And that reminded me of Saint Thomas,” he would say, and he’d be off into a Biblical parable. Plus, he had balls. When the Vatican announced that altar girls would no longer be allowed, he climbed up into his pulpit that Sunday and told our congregation that he would be ignoring the order and would be keeping the altar girls in the church’s masses. He was a rebel, in his own way. Thinking about him and his homilies helped me through some bad moments as the hours dragged by.
Back in Vermont, my friends and family, even the agnostics, held a prayer circle for me with Father Danielson, our current pastor. They said a prayer to give me some strength. That’s what drove Andrea—providing strength to me. She’s always been attuned to other people’s needs, not her own. It’s the Italian mother in her.
But Andrea had her doubts. She would think, Why do I think I’m so special? Other friends have gone through divorces, or watched loved ones die, or lost their homes. I’ve always been lucky. Those were the questions she had for Father Privé, and for God. Because the alternative was too dreadful to contemplate: “I thought to myself, ‘What would I do if Rich died?’” she said. “‘How would I go on? How would my kids pull through losing their father?’” But deep in her heart, she still believed I was going to make it.
She didn’t have answers for those questions. All she could think was We were planning to grow old together. And she tried to avoid thinking about being alone for the rest of her life.
Andrea was desperate for news. At one point, she checked her e-mail and there was a message from Shane Murphy, my chief mate:
Andrea—
This is Shane Murphy, the chief mate of the Maersk Alabama. The last update I had on your husband was that he was still in good spirits but still detained. He will beat these guys. I know how strong he is. His will is stronger than any captain I have ever sailed with. I mean that. And the 19 men on this ship owe him our lives, and are thankful for him for every free breath we take. His attention to training and preparation is the very reason we had time to react the way we did. Additionally I was able to stay in contact with him over the radio and pass information secretly that led to us turning the tables. All I can say is to try and stay positive and have faith that we will get through this. The four men that have him are weak, and scared. There is no telling how long they will hold out, but I’m sure that Captain Phillips will outlast them.
I hope you are holding up well under these trying circumstances…. There were several more armed pirate ships converging on the area, and the navy felt it best to get our crew out of there. I know that’s what your husband would have wanted, because that’s what he told me before we left. He would not let me come help him, he was adamant that he be the only one to go, and we are forever grateful to him for his sacrifice. Good luck and be strong.
Andrea really appreciated his thinking of me when he’d just escaped being captured himself. And later, Shane even called her from the ship. He told her that the navy was asking them to leave the scene and sail for Kenya. “I want you to know that none of us want to leave Richard,” he said. Andrea told me she could hear in Shane’s voice how pained he was about that.
“I’m glad you guys are okay,” she told him. “Just do what you need to do. If you have to go, just go.” It’s what I would have wanted, and Andrea knew that.
Meanwhile, reporters and journalists were standing around in our driveway, freezing and stomping their feet to keep warm. Finally, Andrea, being the caregiver that she is, went out there and said, “Do any girls need to use the bathroom? If so, come on in. The boys will have to go up into the woods.” But the minute she stepped outside, people started rushing over, yelling, “I have a deadline. I have to get something in the paper.” And Andrea told them, “I’m just here to see if anyone needs to use the facilities. When I have something good to say, I’ll be more than happy to come out and tell everyone.”
It was also happening at her mother’s end. When the press realized Andrea wouldn’t say anything, they looked for someone who would. Her good-natured mother, who lives in Richmond, Vermont, was inviting the TV journalists in out of the cold and telling them our whole life story over a cup of coffee, never imagining the details would appear in the newspaper. Andrea would see all these articles and reports that said, “After their first date, Andrea called her mother and said, ‘Mom, I’ve just met the man I’m going to marry.’” She couldn’t believe it—the night we met, Andrea didn’t call anybody. She knew who the stories were coming from. She called her mother up and was like, “Mom!” And her mom said, “Well, they were cold, so I just invited them in. And they started asking questions!”
Matt Lauer called the house, his third try at an interview. Andrea took the phone. “Matt, this is totally off the record,” Andrea told him, “but I’ve always liked your show, so I’ll say hi.” And he asked her what I would think about all the attention the story was getting. Andrea said I’d probably laugh and say, “Andrea’s got it harder. I’m only dealing with four pirates. She’s got the whole media.” (True.) And Matt laughed and said, “We’re that bad?” And she told him, “Yeah, you are!”
Andrea paced from room to room, completely numb. She told me later that, for moments at a time, she would feel like she was having an out-of-body experience. You never expect to be the person on the cover of People magazine. You think, This can’t be happening. This only happens to other people. Not just the tragedy, but the media saturation, the disembodied voice from the TV talking about the most intimate details of your life. Andrea would see a picture on TV and say, “Oh my God, it’s Richard.” What was happening was intensely personal, but now everyone was watching it unfold like it was a made-for-TV movie.
She began to notice odd things: that in times of crisis, people sent enormous amounts or food: lasagna, bars of chocolate, tins of cookies, brownies. Friends she hadn’t heard from in twenty years called, but people she spoke to just last week never did. Some people around her resented not being at the center of the story, even if that story was a tragedy. And Andrea realized that when you’re under so much pressure, you tend to lash out at people close to you. “When I got frustrated, I would snap at a family member,” she said. “You had to be stoic with everyone else, so my family took the brunt of my anger.”