Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean

by Fassbender, Tere Duperrault; Logan PhD, Richard D.

  These investigations, plus the suspicious endings of both the Torbatross and the Valiant, meant that Harvey was coming under greater suspicion and scrutiny from law enforcement even before he met his sixth wife-to-be, Mary Dene Jordan, and before the Duperraults arrived in Fort Lauderdale.

  It is tempting to suggest a “diagnosis” of Julian Harvey. From what is known, he showed signs of both sociopathic-personality disorder and narcissistic-personality disorder. Both types show a lack of real empathy with others, as Harvey did. Since a sociopath does not care what others think of him and a narcissist does, and since a narcissist has exaggerated self-importance, the diagnosis would lean toward narcissistic-personality disorder. But rather than argue for one diagnosis over the other, it might be sufficient simply to point out that a similar debate took place over the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. He, too, was uncommonly handsome, disarmingly charming, and had an easy way with the ladies.

  Rather than attempting an after-the-fact diagnosis, let it be said that it seems clear from Harvey’s biography that he hid a great deal behind his handsome and charming persona – all his anxieties, insecurities, weaknesses, and darker impulses. Over time he learned how far he could get and how much he could get away with if he simply counted on still being able to win over people with his looks, his heroic reputation, and his charm. He kept getting away with more and more, until an innocent girl who happened to have one thing that Harvey lacked, namely integrity, simply told the truth.

  Harvey’s handsome mask was no longer enough to win the day. And he knew it. He left the Bluebelle hearing for that motel room because he also knew, far more painfully than anyone else, that while once there had been real promise behind a handsome face, now there was only hollow darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  All the Women Are Strong

  If the story of Julian Harvey up to the time of slaughter aboard the Bluebelle and his subsequent bloody suicide is a chronicle of how a man who once “had everything” began to fall apart as he slowly descended toward a rendezvous with his own darkness, the story of Terry Jo after the Bluebelle is the chronicle of how a girl who had lost everything to that same darkness struggled to slowly put her life together. One relied on a glamorous image rather than inner substance; the other would rely on what she had inside, to hell with glamour and image. Harvey learned after it was too late that relying on a glamorous shell did not work; Terry Jo learned right at the get-go that she was made of tough stuff.

  Terry Jo’s challenge wasn’t to put her life back together, because there weren’t even pieces to reassemble. Her old life was shattered, the pieces of it strewn across – and under – the seas. She really was a female Moses in the bulrushes, a waif cast adrift on the waters who would begin her life all over again, almost from scratch. If anyone thought that Terry Jo’s solitary ordeal was over when she left the hospital physically strong and fit, and headed back to Green Bay with her loving aunt and uncle, they were wrong. Rather, a long new chapter of lonely struggle was just beginning. The inner substance that helped see Terry Jo through a night of unspeakable horror and then days of peril on the sea would be tested over and over again.

  It is hard, maybe wrong, to use the word “miracle” when five out of six innocent people die horrible deaths and one person survives. And yet Terry Jo’s ordeal and survival were still extraordinary. Terry Jo drew strength – great strength – from the fact that she had survived. From the very first moment she was convinced that she must have survived for a reason. She had survived the worst there is. Even at the age of eleven, she wanted others to be inspired by that.

  The word “extraordinary” in describing her survival is not an exaggeration. Terry Jo probably never reflected on it directly, but from the moment she woke up that unspeakable night until the time she left the hospital about two weeks later, her life had been spared or saved no less than eight times:

  1) When the skipper Harvey was apparently too preoccupied with killing others and with preparing to abandon the Bluebelle;

  2) When Harvey looked at her from her doorway, rifle in hand, but for whatever reason chose not to shoot her;

  3) When Terry Jo let the line to the dinghy slip through her fingers, forcing Harvey to dive into the sea to chase after the dinghy, when he might have killed her;

  4) Perhaps the most extraordinary, when she just managed to escape from the sinking Bluebelle onto the float;

  5) When predators did not come after her because of the oil that coated both her and the float;

  6) When she managed to get back onto the raft after falling from it while asleep at night;

  7) When the Captain Theo picked her up; and

  8) When doctors saved her life in the hospital.

  There is a profound paradox at the heart of the story of how Terry Jo coped with the initial horror and terror on the boat, and then escaped from it and the wild-eyed captain; and then with the solitary ordeal of floating utterly alone for four days. The two ordeals, one coming on the heels of the other, somewhat canceled each other out emotionally. The fact that she was numb with the shock of what she had just gone through at the moment she climbed onto the float actually served to insulate her from realizing fully what she was now up against. She continued as she sat on that float to feel some detachment and unreality as if she was still somewhat outside of herself observing what was happening.

  Similarly – and the other side of the paradox as it were – the four days Terry Jo floated alone in her second ordeal gave her a new preoccupation that served, in turn, as a buffer against the full emotional impact of the initial horror and terror. The new ordeal occupied her enough that she didn’t have “room” to dwell on what had happened on that boat.

  She also had the following things going for her:

  • She was young and healthy;

  • She was lucky (not to be attacked by predators, and to be seen by the Captain Theo);

  • She was blessed with a low-key temperament and, therefore, did not overreact to her situation, more or less accepting that she was where she was – she did not exhaust herself with hysterics;

  • She never believed she was going to die and she never doubted that she would survive;

  • She was already a bit of loner, used to being by herself;

  • She showed what others have shown – she began over time to get used to even her extraordinary situation and accept it as a new norm;

  • In the games she played as a child alone in the woods she had actually rehearsed being in solitary survival situations, so she had some emotional inoculation against her plight.

  Terry Jo returned to Green Bay on November 30, 1961, to live with her aunt and uncle and their three sons, to see her friends again, and to go back to school. She returned to Green Bay quietly, just as she had left Miami secretly so that she wouldn’t encounter the press. It had been arranged for her to live with her Aunt Dot and Uncle Ralph Scheer and their three sons. Her grandmother, Jenny Mae Duperrault, lived in an apartment attached to the Scheers’ home, and Terry Jo took a bedroom in her grandmother’s apartment.

  She met first with relatives and later with her best friends. One of them gave her a kitten, and the local press was permitted a picture (but no questions) of a smiling Terry Jo with her girlfriends, and the kitten. Terry Jo had always loved and cared for animals.

  One of the first things Terry Jo did was to answer, with the help of her relatives, the hundreds of letters that came in from around the world. Many of these letters are offers to be pen pals, including one from a boy in France named Jean-Jacques. There also were hundreds of gifts (dolls, stuffed animals, Bibles), and hundreds of inspirational letters, or letters that simply extend best wishes – and a few crackpots that were screened out by Terry Jo’s aunt and uncle. Several letter writers would stay in touch for years.

  Terry Jo would be much loved and have a secure home with her aunt and uncle. They were her legal guardians. As part of her adjustment to her new life, Terry Jo acknowledged her clo
seness to her new adoptive parents by coming up with new, more intimate names for them. She called them “Mo” and “Unk” – loving, yet emotionally distinct from “Mom” and “Dad.” But in the months and years after the Bluebelle, her grandmother, Jenny Mae Doyle Duperrault, was especially close to her. She had been “Gammie” since Terry Jo’s brother Brian first called her that as a baby. It was she who would teach Terry Jo life skills like sewing and knitting, and also a deep love of reading, including authors such as Taylor Caldwell, R.F. Delderfield, Pearl Buck, and others. The two of them spent many quiet evenings sitting together quietly reading books.

  Even though Gammie had lost a son, two grandchildren, and a beloved daughter-in-law, she never brought it up in front of Terry Jo. Nor did she ever complain about the chronic poor health that limited her activities. A woman who was deeply religious and equally kind, she quietly and uncomplainingly shouldered the task of always being there for young Terry Jo. Her constant, loving, non-judgmental presence during the rest of Terry Jo’s younger years was one of the rocks of Terry Jo’s life. She was an example of endurance that Terry Jo would follow.

  As Terry Jo tried to get into the swing of things, a problem emerged. As if Terry Jo didn’t have enough of a burden to bear already, in all of the reunions she had even with those closest to her, there was still just a little awkwardness, a discomfort. Yes, Terry Jo was reserved and subdued, but there was more to it than that. No matter where she was, or with whom, there was always an elephant in the room. The elephant was the horrible experiences Terry Jo had gone through that no one talked about.

  Since nobody had any idea how to deal with those experiences, there was an unspoken agreement among everyone never to discuss anything. Nobody knew what to say. Her well-meaning aunt and uncle decided that the best that could be done was for no one to mention what Terry Jo experienced. That was why no interviews were allowed, even though Terry Jo was the story of the year in Green Bay. Her aunt, uncle, and grandmother worked hard to spare her the stress, and try to give her as normal a life as possible. So everyone tried to live, almost literally, “as if nothing ever happened.” And “everyone” included virtually an entire community.

  Aunt Dot and Uncle Ralph told the parents of Terry Jo’s friends never to bring up the Bluebelle tragedy, and these parents carefully instructed their children. When Terry Jo returned to sixth grade in De Pere in the spring of 1962, her teacher, a close family friend, also participated in the deception. Yet, everyone knew Terry Jo’s story well; it had been covered in great detail by the local Green Bay Press-Gazette for weeks. What’s more, Terry Jo knew that everyone knew (and they knew that she knew). To sense what this was like, all the reader has to do is think about how uncomfortable it is to be in a room when every single person is intentionally not talking about some big, ugly story that everyone knows about, concerning somebody who is also there, and that person knows that they know.

  In Terry Jo’s case, however, this awkward and uncomfortable conspiracy of silence went on for years! In fact, nineteen years would go by before Terry Jo would open up to anyone about what happened and how it had affected her. That included relatives, her closest friends, boyfriends, husbands, and, astonishingly, even a psychotherapist.

  A full twenty-five years would go by before Terry Jo ever openly expressed anger at the loss of her family.

  Terry Jo went from the unspeakable horror and terror of that night on the Bluebelle, to the long solitary ordeal on a flimsy piece of cork and webbing, to a third solitary ordeal that was to last far, far longer. Because of the conspiracy of silence, everyone’s guard (including Terry Jo’s) was always up, putting up barriers to close relationships. She would carry that elephant around with her for many years.

  Terry Jo certainly had friends, and even close ones, but that sharing of one’s most personal fears and troubles so essential between best friends in the early adolescent years was missing. There was too much of Terry Jo that was beyond the boundaries that had been established. Consequently, there were limits to how close anyone got to Terry Jo, or her to them. It was certain that Terry Jo herself did not really care to relive the horrors of her past, so she, too, had reason to avoid talking about it.

  In order to spare her painful reminders of her previous life, Terry Jo’s relatives also arranged to close down, empty, and sell the Duperrault family home near the bay – the cozy secure home with its thousands of memories, all of her mother’s loving and artistic touches, her father’s travel souvenirs and trophies, her brother’s woodworking and art projects, her sister’s doll collection – without Terry Jo ever returning there. She really had to begin a new life.

  Terry Jo did insist, however, that she wanted to go back to get one thing: what she wanted to retrieve from her past life was not some comfortable reminder of innocence like a favorite Barbie doll (and she had many), not some familiar source of security like a favorite blanket or stuffed animal, not a special memento of the loving family that once was hers (and the house was full of them). She went back, instead, to get a reminder of the times when she felt strong – the Tarzan outfit that she wore when she bravely found her way alone through the pretend jungle.

  Terry Jo knew full well that she faced a long, hard row, no matter how much the well-meaning people around her tried to shelter and protect her. She was wiser than her elders in many ways. Despite the love and protection of her aunt and uncle, and despite the especially authentic presence of Gammie’s love, she knew that she would have to find her own way, alone. Where she was once grounded in innocence and security and had to pretend there was peril, she now inhabited an upside-down world born in peril and terror, and grounded in the loss of innocence and security.

  Terry Jo was buoyed in facing her new life by believing that she must have survived for a reason. And that she had told the truth. The very first test she faced after the Bluebelle, her interview, she passed by telling the truth. Although she didn’t know it at the time, the ordeal on the Bluebelle and on the sea had given her one thing that many adults do not have: she had integrity. Her simple, direct honesty would become a cornerstone of the rest of her life. Ask anyone who knew either the Terry Jo of that time or knows the Tere of today and they will emphatically agree. For the rest of her life she would hold onto the fact that she knew she had told the truth about what she saw on the Bluebelle that night, and that would give her strength.

  But, how do you heal from the multiple traumas Terry Jo survived? In 1961 no one had yet heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But even not knowing about PTSD, Terry Jo would have at least have had to have met with a therapist to be assessed, and that was not yet part of the plan for her. If she had been evaluated, any psychologist would have picked up on the fact that she had paid a terrible emotional price. She did experience what later would be labeled one of the classic PTSD symptoms: survivor’s guilt. She exhibited it by feeling guilty about not looking at her mother and brother after seeing them the first time, lying dead on the cabin floor. Although she has never been troubled by nightmares and flashbacks, which are two other classic PTSD symptoms, she developed two phobias since that night: blood and dark water. She cannot stand the sight of blood. The one situation where she toughs it out over blood is when she cares for injured animals, something she has done since she was a child. Love trumps many fears. She also loves the water and being on it and near it, but feels deeply anxious if the water is dark.

  Many years later, she did show signs of two other classic PTSD symptoms: in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, she went through a few years of low self-esteem and depression. But she blamed it on the bad marriage she was in at the time. She almost never exhibited the other classic symptoms of anger or flashes of temper; however, there was one night at her aunt’s house some months after the Bluebelle when she was awakened by a scream. It took her a second to realize that her cousins were rough-housing in the next bedroom. She went in and let them have it. There was another time, twenty-five years after the Bluebelle, where she overheard a
young colleague complaining about his parents getting divorced and how awful it was. Tere felt a rising fury. She nearly walked up to him and said, “I don’t even have my parents!” But she controlled herself.

  Terry Jo had experienced the instant horror of seeing two family members dead, the terror of the threatening captain, the fear of drowning in the sinking boat, and then the solitary ordeal of four days adrift alone and vulnerable where she began to ponder what had happened to her sister and her father, and to worry about being all alone in the world. She learned a week or so after being picked up about her sister’s death. The fate of her father was uncertain for many days as far as officials were concerned; but for months and years, Terry Jo held out hope that he might somehow still be alive.

  No one had ever seen anything close to what Terry Jo had gone through, and psychotherapy – even with children with more run-of-the-mill problems – was not highly developed at that time. Terry Jo needed to talk, but there was no one there to talk with. In 1961, there was only one therapist who worked with children in Green Bay. Even today, it would be hard to find a therapist trained in dealing with the kinds of multiple traumas that Terry Jo experienced. One would have to be adept in working with children from war zones who lost their families and who then had to hole up in terror for days with no food or water in a place where they could be killed at any minute.

  We all know, of course, that children who are victims of war very often do not get much psychological care, though for different reasons than Terry Jo. We also know that the ravages can destroy these children for life. In Terry Jo’s case, our current understanding that people need to talk to properly trained experts about horrors they have experienced was not widely accepted back then. The attempt to “protect” children who had been traumatized from any thing unsettling was far more pervasive. This was even more the case with Terry Jo. There was simply no precedent for how to treat Terry Jo and help her deal with the trauma she had endured.