99% Invisible - 395- This is Chance! Redux

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

It was the middle of the night on March 27, 1964. Earlier that evening, the second-biggest earthquake ever measured at the time had hit Anchorage, Alaska. Some houses had been turned completely upside down while others had skidded into the sea. But that brief and catastrophic quake was just the beginning of the story. This is the story of one woman who held a community together. This is Chance! Redux Buy Jon Mooallem’s This is Chance!

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's sometimes hard to know what stories we should tell when we're in the middle of a crisis. Some people need a story that helps them escape. Others need a story that directly confronts our anxiety. What I love about the episode we have for you today is that it's really both, and it also happens to be one of the most beautiful stories this show has ever produced.

A few years ago, we toured the West Coast with the rest of radiotopia, performing live stories on stage two sold out crowns. For our part of the show, 99% invisible collaborated with John Moellum and the Brink Players, which featured members of the Decembrists and black prairie. It was the story of Jeannie Chance, a woman whose voice held a shaken city together in a time of crisis. Even though the story of an earthquake in Alaska in 1964 has nothing directly to do with what many of us are going through now, it feels so urgent and important that we all listen to this together. After it was performed live a handful of times, John Mwellem continued researching and writing about feels so urgent and important that we all listen to this together.

After it was performed live a handful of times, John Muellum continued researching and writing about Genius Chants and it eventually became a book that is out today as I report this and it is brilliant and beautiful. So, this week we're going to play the original live story song that we performed on stage, plus a brand new interview that I did with John last week. I hope you love it as much as I do. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It was the middle of the night. On March 27th, 1964, earlier that evening, the second biggest earthquake ever measured

at the time, and insane 9.2 had mangled Anchorage, Alaska. 115 people died. Houses turned literally upside down or skitted into the sea. There was no light or power in the city, and for a long time, virtually no communication with the outside world. But there was radio. Are we on the air? Yes. We're ready to go again. It was a station in Anchorage running on backup generators and a cracked transmitter. The station in Fairbanks picked up that signal and repeated it. And a man in Juneau somehow picked up that Fairbanks station called a radio station in Seattle

and let the broadcast play over the phone. The Boy Scout troop that went overnight to McQ Creek, Bill Noble would like to get a message if they are all right. Like that, a voice from Anchorage touched the lower 48, as sign the city was still there. And soon the degraded signal broadcast in Seattle was relayed and relayed again until eventually people across America then around the world heard the same woman's voice. We have word here that Mary Sweet is asked to contact her mother. Mother is at home. The president of that Anchorage radio station happened to be on a goodwill tour of Japan,

and when he turned on a radio in Tokyo, he couldn't believe it. It was the voice of his own news girl back home. The woman's name was Jeanie Chance. and the brink of players have her story. 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc 1 tbc dc

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But it was mostly military build-up and oil speculation. The city felt like a bubble that could pop. Alaska had only been a state for five years and is one man, but it... You had the feeling that everything is temporary. We weren't all going to leave, but you know, we might. And that insecurity made every new construction feel monumental. It was a bit more proof to people that their city was real.

Like the brand new JC Penny Building Downtown, this was one of the first big chain retailers to build in Alaska, and it was huge. And nothing said sophisticated civilization rising out of the wilderness, like a five-story department store full of lingerie and blenders. There were the beginnings of genuine culture in Anchorage too, like the city's all-volunteer symphony conducted by a moonlighting bulldozer operator. In the Anchorage Little Theater, a community troupe run by a cosmopolitan guy in a turtle neck named Frank Brink.

Brink found roles for everyone in his place, housewives, judges, air force officers, and he worked his actors hard. He just staged his own three-hour epic of a laskin' history called Cry of the Wild Ram. I know it sounds a little bit like waiting for Guthman, but they were good. Meanwhile covering all this life in the city were two daily newspapers and five local radio stations. One of them, K-E-N-I, pride it itself on being. The biggest radio network in the biggest state in the union. And one of K-E-N-I's biggest on-air personalities was a woman woman named Jeannie Chance.

Jeannie was 37. She'd grown up poor in Bonham, Texas, then come to Alaska with her husband a few years earlier looking for opportunity. They only sort of found it at first. He sold used cars and she watched their three kids at home. But Jeannie loved radio. So she started working construction every morning in exchange

for childcare, then go to work all afternoon at one of the local radio stations. Back then, women were usually made to cover cooking or fashion, but at KENI, Jeannie turned herself into a gutsy roving reporter driving all over Alaska with a mobile broadcasting unit in her car. She flew with smoke jumpers, covered Arctic warfare exercises, reported from inuit villages and crab boats. Her voice was part of the city, people trusted her, respected her in Anchorage, and in a way women journalists weren't always respected in 1964.

Later, a New York paper celebrated her as... An Alaskan housewife and mother of three children who does a man-sized job with a radio microphone. LAUGHTER A late in the afternoon of March 27th, Jeannie was driving her 13-year-old son to a bookstore downtown. It was good Friday, and lots of people had already gone home from work for the Easter weekend.

A banner across fourth avenue advertised that weekends opening it Frank brings theatre. They were doing the Thornton Wilder play, our town. Curtain was going to go up at 8 o'clock, but at 536. She's the first one to be able to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car.

She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car.

She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. She's the first one to get her car out of the car. of parked cars and the gas station slammed together and separated and slammed again. She watched them fold in and out and thought it's like a grotesque accordion. Later one man would say it felt like the earth was whipping the city around like a dog shaking an animal he's killed. Buildings listed off their foundations. The huge ground waves moved through the asphalt like the roads were liquid.

At the JC Penny Building of School Kids stuck in the elevator, watched a book, suddenly levitate off the elevator floor and hang weightless in mid-air in front of it. For split second, Miss Likky wasn't a orbit, and that's when he knew the elevator was falling. Quake went on like this for almost five full minutes. Then stopped. And the instant it did, Jeannie threw her car in gear. ["The

R&B"] She was a reporter after all, and still not realizing how severe the situation was she raised to the police station to get a quick story for the evening broadcast. Inside all the filing cabinets were thrown over. Sealing plaster heaped on the floor. Then a second-chilled hit. And Jeanie's son, who'd gone off, came running around the corner shouting,

Come quick, the pennies just fallin' down! An enormous concrete panel that shorn away from the JC pennies exterior in fallen. Now the entire building was sagging and running over, Ginny watched a second panel, lurch loose, and dropped with a roar. The scene was brutal. Ginny stepped around part of a body in the snow, a person split in two by the falling debris. A Chevy station wagon was flattened, but you could hear a woman still alive inside calling to the crowd trying to dig her out.

Then, Jeannie rounded a corner, saw the whole impossible panorama. One entire side, the fourth avenue, had just dropped. For two blocks, everything was 12 or 15 feet lower in a ravine that had opened under half the street. The crazy part was buildings were still intact down there. Cars were still perfectly parked next to their meters. Men looked up from outside a bar, a dozen feet underground like stunned miners,

and still hanging there over the street like a cruel caption over this surreal wreckage was the theater banner that read our town the Quake had knocked Genie's radio station off the air but now the static on the transistor radio she was carrying suddenly gave way to music. It meant Kei and I was back. An engineer started talking and Jeannie grabbed the radio unit in her car and cut in. Go ahead Jeannie. She was surprised later when people told her she sounded calm. It has become obvious that the earthquake that struck Anchorage less than an hour ago

is a major one. We urge each and every one of you to seek shelter, check your emergency supplies, and plan to keep your homes closed as much as possible so that you can retain the heat. Check your neighbors, see if they have transistor radios. If they don't, possibly they could move in with you

and share one for the night. It seems like it's going to be a long, cold night for Anchorage, so prepare to batten down the hatches and stay tuned to K-E-N-I. ["Pomp and Circumstance"] I think of what it means when we say a person feels shaken. In Anchorage, this wasn't a metaphor. The whole city had been thrown.

There'd only been about an hour between the quake and nightfall, and with the power out, and snow falling through a thick fog in the dark. There was no way for everyone to tell just how badly their world had been jumbled. The feeling of vulnerability of total dislocation was hard to describe. This one guy put it, You don't know if anyone else is alive. Maybe you were the last man. So it was comforting to hear another voice start talking to you. Especially Jeannie Chancen's voice.

After making that first announcement on the air, Jeannie drove back to the police station. Authorities realized that with the radio unit in her car, she was the only voice they're able to address the entire city. So they told her to keep talking. Soon they got her broadcasting from inside the building and rounded phone calls to her as the lions reopened. It was up to Jeannie to decide what information to relay to the public.

At first, it was mostly just her. One K-Yin and I employee remembers that the newscaster had been on the air when the Quake struck. A hot shot, they just tired away from a big station in Los Angeles. Had been so weaked out that the second that shaking stopped, he'd walked out of the building without a word.

He resurfaced a couple weeks later, calling from back in California to officially quit. And Jeannie was shaken too. A week later, she'd break down out of nowhere and weep all night, but now. I kept trying to forget the unforgettable scenes I had witnessed. Thousands of terrified people were huddled in their unheated shelters, waiting for words of reassurance and instruction. So she started doing her job, talking to people on the radio. Before long, the rest of her colleagues and other stations in town were back working the airwaves too, but still often felt like Jeannie was the one at the center of things, directing things.

The turbine site needs diesel fuel, she'd say, or here's where electricians should report. And then she started reading the personal messages, pouring in too. Mr and Mrs Dick Fisher are still here at Police Headquarters waiting for any word of their children. We have a message from Northwest Airlines saying that the crew cannot locate Sturdis Beverly Johns. So many people were desperate to locate or reassure each other. Howard Forbes would like it to be known that he will be at Mike Whitmore's. And Jeannie was helping those people shout across the fractured city.

A message to Kenneth Sadler. Mrs. Sadler is fine. A message to Walter Hart. Lee Hart is fine. And meanwhile, Ham Radio operators were relaying those messages to families in the lower 48. And when reporters around the country finally got through to Anchorage, it was often Jeannie still sitting in front of her radio microphone who took their calls.

No, she assured that the city wasn't swallowed in flames. And no, it wasn't under martial law. She talked to Omaha, New York, London. One interview she did was rebroadcast in more than a hundred other places the same day. broadcast in more than a hundred other places the same day. Friday night it becomes Saturday morning right then. Then Saturday afternoon, Saturday night. For the first 30 hours I talked constantly. And after two hours sleep she was right back on the air. It's probably worth stopping for a second to say this out loud. Earthquakes are f***ed up. But I mean, in an existential way too. Imagine how dreamlike it must have been, watching reality suddenly buckle around you,

watching your city of infallible right angles, and it was enough to change a person's worldview. More than 50 years later, a former mayor of Anchorage told me, even now I can look at this solid ground out the window and know that it's not permanent. It can change any time. It just moves. Everything moves. moves. I understand that in 1964, plate tectonics was still just a theory. Kind of a radical one. It was hard for people to accept that the continents we stand on are actually in motion.

They were just sliding around randomly, on violently colliding plates of rock, and that nothing is stable, that everything runs on pure chance. That's what this story is about really, chance. Maybe that's obvious, it's even the woman's last name. But the question is, how are are we supposed to live on the surface of such unbearable randomness. And what can we grab hold of? It's fixed. Well, when I hear the old recordings of Genie on the radio that weekend and all the other voices working to,

a picture of them is solid objects, like wires crossing the city of Anchorage and the state of Alaska further out, crossing each other to like a net kind of alternate further out, crossing each other too, like a net, kind of alternate human infrastructure, snapping into place where the built environment gave way. The a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a The new has accommodations for two people at Pile 9 on the shore to highway. The YMCA is in battery and neither for the athletes. And the battery life boy shots sharp. If anybody has a sharp sword, they're a bit rough.

You can go to the Japanese Airlines before you see final days. I'm very interesting person. I think you can tell it's about some of the damage out at your name. This is one of this time right now to evaluate what is happening here. Three, two, one. Last stop. Red Cross, last stop. The cross that you're developing.

You're not in the railroad. You would like more as to contact Elton, Georgia. You're naming a second to the Long Island. Three, four, three, four, three. The English, the French, the French, the French, the French, the French. The area is a small area of the country. The

area is a small area of the area. At the Milti, your relatives and angry are all right.

Side building. Okay, the road is too dark to open. The

work is going hard. The road is too dark to walk through my bed. I work as a woman, I'm so silly, silly. It's going to be fine. In Cardovan, at the northern hotel, the message says your family has been contacted and everything is okay. I've been so involved trying to assist down here in the coordination of the message service at the Chivaldi-Saint-Float Headquarters

that I really hadn't stopped the thing. I'm worried and concerned my parents must be. I understand that KFAR and Fairbank is monitoring us and is relaying messages to the South 48. I wonder if the person in KFAR would take down a message from me and get the word to my family in Bonham, Texas that the chance family is all right. The chance family is all right. All five of us are safe.

None of us received a scratch. We have another message for you. ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ ʻ‿ʻ‿ʻ Late on Saturday, the day after the quake, Jeannie read a list of the missing and dead on the air. No one told her to do it, but there didn't seem to be anyone to ask for permission either. The next day was Easter Sunday. Ministers talked about death and resurrection, a staff of the Anchorage Daily Times picked up all the pieces of movable type, thrown all over their printing room, managed to put out a newspaper. To JC Penny executives declared, We will build again, bigger, and better than before. And eventually the little theater resumed its production of our town, too. One of the actors told me that after the quake, whenever a restaurant and anchorage reopened

or a church held a mass, there was never an empty seat, he said. Everyone wanted to be with someone else. And there was something especially poetic about the sold-out crowd at the theater that first night. Because that kind of togetherness is basically what Thornton Wilders plays about. It's a play about daily life in a small town, the deaths and marriages, tragedies, births, and how, under all that flux, there's stability to every community over time. In Anchorage, a city that worried it was temporary, realized it was temporary, at least all its buildings and houses and roads. But it was discovering there was something permanent about itself too.

All night at the theater, the character of the stage manager talked to the audience directly, narrating the story of the play, kind of like I've been doing tonight. Now, when the curtain rose on the final act, he came out for his monologue and told them. Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take them out and look at them very often. We all know that something is eternal, and it ate houses, and it ate names, and it ate earth, and eight names, and eight earth, and eight even stars.

Everybody knows that their bones are something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived in Antonia's that for 5,000 years, and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. In the end, Jeanne Chant stayed on duty with K and I for 59 hours that weekend. When things finally calmed down, she sat down to write a letter to her parents in Texas. They'd written to her right after the quake, pleading with Jeanne to send her three kids to live with them, while that battered city up in Alaska figured out what's next. Think of the kid's safety, they said.

And part of Jeanie thought it was a good idea, but then she had another more convincing thought. We must be together. As long as we're together, we are confident of the future. She explained to her parents. That good Friday night, I knew we had survived miraculously. And for this reason, there must be a purpose to our lives. Apparently the children must sense this too, for they have remained calm.

They have been fully aware of the emergency, but have not feared. We are proud that they are such dependable, responsible youngsters. I would not undermine their confidence in the future. In themselves, We are proud that they are such dependable, responsible youngsters. I would not undermine their confidence in the future, in themselves, by sending them away for their safety. What is safety anyway? How can you predict where or when tragedy will occur? You can only learn to live with it and make the best of it when it happens. These children are not afraid.

Their father and I are not afraid. Please, don't you fear for us. What is safety anyway? A genie seemed to be conceding that there is only randomness, only chance. And if everything beyond us is chance, maybe the only force we have to survive a world like that is connection. By then, it must have seemed so obvious to her.

To good idea, it'll hold on to each other. Thank you. John Moelleum, the break players, Jenny Conley Dries-Oce, on accordion of piano, Nate Creary on bass, John Moelleum on drums, Chris Fonda on guitar, and John Newfield also on guitar. And that is Miss Avery Troubleman, as Chini Channets. Thank you. This story was recorded live at the More Theatre in Seattle in 2017. More about Jeannie Chance and John's new book, This Is Chants. After this. John Mwellem expanded the story you just heard into a beautiful and important new book called

This Is Chants. And I had a conversation with them several days ago, right about the time the reality of the pandemic was just hitting a lot of people. And I started off by asking him how he first learned about genie chance. Basically I had first learned about a tsunami in Crescent City, California. This was like 20 years ago I had learned about this tsunami in 1964 that wiped out this town of Crescent City, California. And I just started to learn about that in a roundabout way at a diner in Crescent City one day when I saw these historical photos about it. And there's

just some really interesting things about this story, about sort of like the resilience of a community that stuck with me. And it wasn't until like many, many years later, until about 2013 or 2014 that I thought to like Google it basically and it was like oh yeah like what caused the tsunami you know and what caused the tsunami was this massive quake in Alaska and it was a pretty short amount of time between starting to get curious about the earthquake and stumbling on you you know, Jeannie. Basically because Jeannie had produced a lot of material about the Quake afterwards, and you know, just interviewed a lot of people and compiled these almost like oral history documents, and even co-authored a scientific paper with the USGS about it.

So her name was out there, but even then it was still just like a few more years. Even though I had reached out to her daughter, which became just the most important connection that made this book possible, it still took me a few years even to get up to Jan, his daughter's house, and look at all the material that Jeannie had left behind, which was just, you know, like 30 something boxes of of everything from her life. And at that point it was just like, oh my god, like

there's there was just such an opportunity to reconstruct these three days in Anchorage. I mean the book really just tells the story of these three days. And yeah, I just, I couldn't, I didn't feel like I could see that opportunity and not, and not do it because it was really like almost like an hour and everything. Like who else is going to be in this basement ever again, right? So the first incarnation was the live story song that you made for 99% visible. And so, did you always have a book in mind? How did it expand? How did that work in your mind? Yeah, well, the great thing about doing that project with you guys was that it gave me the time and sort of the motivation

to just see if it was a book. I definitely had that in mind. I was hoping that that's what it could become. But it's such a weird process of just coupling together of these material, you know, documents and our from archives, various places. So, you know, but pretty, you know, definitely by the time we were done with that project and we were starting to do the performances. It was very clear to me that this was like kind of just the beginning. And yeah, it was just this process of discovering like all these other characters and all these nuances to the story and just learning more about Anchorage at the time and just this fuller, you know, sense, almost like a more

empathetic sense too of what was happening there, both after the Quake, but also just what it was like to be living in Alaska in 1964. And then also just finding more and more material, both Genie's documents and then this huge trove of documents from these sociologists that came to Anchorage to interview everyone about the Quake and sort of study the community's response. You know, they interviewed almost 500 people and I had access to all of their transcripts. Were these meticulous, like, blow-by-blow accounts of, you know, tell me everything that happened. So, yeah, they're just, as I gathered more of that, I saw all of these other threads just spooling out of, you know, what I had already known.

And so specifically that group from Ohio that went to study it, the story of the Anchorage earthquake, it's really interesting to be talking about it right now when people are figuring out ways to deal with a crisis as it unfolds and after it happens. How did the research and writing of this story change the way you view of how people act in a crisis? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very bizarre experience that I've spent almost six or seven years with all of this in my head to various degrees. And then now, at the same time, the book is being materializing as a real object in the world to just have the world be kind of collapsing around it.

But yeah, I don't, I wish I had some very pithy moral that I could draw from all this and just dispensed everyone. And in some sense, I think it's there, but I'm still struggling to articulate. But basically, these social scientists, they came to Anchorage thinking that they were funded by the military. They were thinking that they were just here to watch a community fall apart and tell, you know, as a sort of simulation of nuclear war, so we could figure out how to control that kind of chaos. And what they found was just like really what we were talking about in that, in the piece is just this cooperation and this altruism that just surged up from the community,

this impulse that everyone had to just solve problems and cooperate and just get stuff done. And I think we're definitely, we're feeling that same thing now. You know, I think it's just way more opaque as to, you know, what we're supposed to do with that energy. And it's, you know, it's something I've been turning it just over and over in my mind. And I think it's just the problem is just that the danger is just not right in front of us the way that it is with an earthquake. And I think it sort of scrambles your brain in that way. But I do think that, you know, I have this piece

in the near times that's sort of an excerpt of the book, where I'm just making the point that I do think we need to kind of understand, you know, these things were being told to do, like wash our hands and keep our distance and all of these things that seem like sacrifices or retreats and just try to understand them as as a way to channel that same energy that these are things we're doing together. This is a project that we're doing together. Even if we're, you know, I'm I'm saying would be new or revelatory to any of the sociologists that study this because that, that field of sociology has, you know, gone on in the, in all the years since the quake and it's, you know, really on firm ground

that this is just a phenomenon. This is just the way humanity deals with disasters and this collaborative, you know, improvise productive way. But yeah, it's strange to just think about the similarities but also the differences. Yeah. I mean, that essential truth is really contradictory to what we tend to tell stories about in fiction. You know, we tend to tell stories about the pressure cooker of disaster leading to society breaking down.

You have you thought about why there's that impulse to tell those stories when the reality is not that way and maybe more interesting because of it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's not just in fiction. I think we tell that story about real life, too, right? Sometimes to our detriment, like it's dangerous because if you are in the aftermath of a disaster and you're looking at everyone around you as Barberic or potentially their whole drive is to harm you and steal what you have, you're going to address the world very differently than if you walk in with an assumption that people can be trusted

and that were allies. But yeah, I think in some ways, there might just be something on a gut level that we're afraid of, and so we assume it to be true. But it's really hard to let go of those myths. I mean, even one thing that I just found so entertaining was when you read enough of these case studies or even just press accounts of disasters. And it was true in Alaska too, is that, you know, well, we pulled together because we were Alaskans, right? You had so many Alaskans saying that. And you had the sociologists who just had to kind of

push back and say, you know, everyone did, like even the fact that they found themselves exceptional turned out to be unexceptional because, you know, after Katrina was New Orleans, you know, we're just being New Orleans or you know New Yorkers after New Orleans, well we're New Yorkers and just no one can get their head around the fact that you know what's true for everyone else, everyone else is gonna collapse and you know turn into heatens but we're the one place that has our f*** together you know. So I found that very amusing.

I don't know, I guess it's just really hard to register. And even me, I'm not trying to, I mean, even now, I know these things. I've written about them. I'm out here saying them in public, but I have to kind of reassure myself that they're true. And I also think that, frankly, I'm talking to you from Washington State, right? Where everything feels just

probably a little bit more intense. Yeah. But I think I've also just made the decision for myself that I'm just gonna act like they're true and I'll be proven wrong. And I would prefer to live in a world where I see, where I see that the possibility of that cooperation and the possibility of that goodness, rather than just always being unguarded for the opposite. Yeah. One of the things that we get

the privilege of in the audio piece that we performed on stage versus the book is you get to hear some of these voices at the end. And I remember doing it on stage and nearly crying every time that moment happens. And what was it like hearing those for the first time when you were going through archives? I was unreal. I mean, especially certain moments. There's a... I mean, especially in certain moments, you know, there's a... I mean, I had so many written documents, right? I had so many interviews and letters and you get this sense of real life, but it's almost kept at a distance from you. You know, there's that buffer.

And then when you hear the voices, it shatters that, right? I mean, not completely, right? They're still, you know, the tapes are fuzzy and they've kind of, some of the men, especially, seem to have that kind of old-timey cadence, you know? But yeah, there's something about it, there's just something about hearing people speak and hearing the confusion in their voices, but also hearing the energy they're putting into fighting back that confusion, that I just find so moving and so noble. And on top of that, I had all these recordings of just ordinary radio broadcasts and anchorage

or genie kind of making audio diaries of things. And yeah, you can just sort of feel yourself being sucked through time in a way. In this story, we are witness to like a little sliver of genie's life. She went on to do lots of interesting things afterward. Can you tell a little bit about what her life was like after the quake? Yeah, she, I mean, it was a real kind of catapult for her. You know, the first thing that happened was she got super depressed and stressed out, I think, just covering the months and months of like, you know, boring recovery work and infighting and all the stuff that followed this sort of

period of great cooperation. As soon as the government agencies got involved in figuring out all the technical stuff. But yeah, she actually left her job at the station shortly after because she, they wouldn't give her a raise because she was a woman, essentially, and she felt kind of indignant about that, right fully. And she went off on her own. She became kind of a woman about town, like a publicity consultant, just kind of hustling and doing all kinds of freelance work.

And that eventually led to a people started asking her to run for office. And so she became a state legislator in Alaska in, I believe, 1971, and was there for many years. And just did a whole bunch of stuff there with the kind of same, you know, even a greater spirit of just, you know, who gives a damn? I'm going to do the right thing, kind of attitude, which, you know, didn't necessarily make her a favorite among some of her, especially the kind of older male colleagues who looked at their positions and legislators as a sort of like a treat that they were entitled to after long careers in business.

But the other thing that happened to was that she was in very bad marriage. Her husband at the same time that he could be very loving and you know, they were very happy family He was also an alcoholic and he was abusive toward her very very violently and you know She never really addressed it, but it seems clear both reading the stuff that you're out and talking to people that around her Was that the from the earthquake on there was really this process of her just kind of trusting in her own strength I guess would be a way to put it or just kind of feeling more confident about making decisions in her life and that led to her leaving her husband and eventually remarrying to. So yeah, I really had no idea about any of that until much later in the process.

But yeah, it turned out she was, I guess it makes sense that if you find a sort of remarkable person doing extraordinary things on one weekend that you'll probably find the rest of their life pretty fascinating too. Yeah. Some of her relatives came down to see it when we performed in Seattle. What was that like? Oh, that was amazing. I couldn't completely, yes, so her daughter Jan and her husband were there and then two of Jan's children. And I believe like a niece or cousin or somebody. And they came from both from Alaska and then there's some folks that were living in

Texas. And yeah, there's a whole kind of half-row of them at the performance which was just so wonderful because I really never had this experience, you know, working on anything before where so many people that I called Just told me outright like I've been waiting for someone to call me because they're writing about this, you know, either, you know, often just about the quake, but, but several people about Jeannie herself, you know, like, oh yeah, I've been waiting all my life for someone to call me and ask me about Jeannie Chance. And I think that her, her family, you know,

her daughter definitely felt that too, you know, her, her, I think her daughter just knew what an extraordinary person her mom was. And that's why she was holding on to all our things, all these years, and it didn't just toss them. And the other cool thing too was, I'd be in their basement just looking through all this stuff. Like, I would stay with them and go up for a few days at a time. And I remember one night being just up really late, just like going through box after box. And Jan's daughter, so Jeannie's granddaughter, who was living in an apartment next to their house at the time, came home, you know, from being out with her husband at a bar or something. And we got to chatting and I was like, you

know, at one point I said, so, you know, how, what did you really know about your grandma like? Because she was pretty young when Jeannie died. She said, you know, to be honest, I didn't really know much about her until you started, you know, poking around, you know, and we started talking about it again. So yeah, it's, I don't know, to be honest, I didn't really know much about her. And so you started poking around. You know, we started talking about it again. So, yeah, I don't know. There's just something, maybe it's like a middle-aged thing, like a middle-aged on 40s, but there's just like something really potent and moving about just kind of seeing the way people's memories can kind of catapult through time.

And the impacts that they have. And yeah, I don't, and to also just recognize that it's, you know, yes, genius like fascinating and did amazing stuff, but like how many other lives out there? Could you just, if you found this way into, you know, would deliver that, just that same kind of rush, you know, that recognition of just like another human. This is Chance, the shaking of an all-American city, a voice that held it together by John Muallem is out today.

Get it, seriously, get it, for yourself, for a friend, for the sake of the world, get it today. 99% Invisible was recorded at the More Theater in Seattle on the Radio Topia Live West Coast tour. We were directed by Lynn Finkle, post-production mix by Sean Riel and Sheree Fusef. Words by John Moellum and Music by the Brink Players, Jenny Conley Dresos, John Newfeld, Nate Query,

John Moenn, and Chris Funk. Jeannie Chance was played by Avery Troubleman. The rest of the group is Katie Mingle, Kurt Colesette, Delaney Hall, Emmett Fitzgerald, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Leigh, Chris Baroubae, Sophia Klatsker, and me Rowan Morris. We are a project of 91.7 KALW and San Francisco and produced on Radio Row, which is now distributed in multiple locations

in beautiful East Bay, California. We are a proud member of Radio Topia from PRXF, the fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Reddit too. But we have a link to purchase the book.

This is Chance. You must get it. You must, must get it. That link is at 99PI dot org. Radio Tapio from PRX.