ABC News correspondent Will Reeve embarks on a deeply personal journey in "Will Reeve: Finding My Father," revisiting the last expedition his late father, "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve, filmed before the horseback riding accident that left him paralyzed in 1995.
In a heartfelt essay, Will Reeve reflects on his father's legacy beyond Hollywood, retracing his dad’s steps from a 1995 nature documentary, "In the Wild: Gray Whales with Christopher Reeve." The film followed Christopher Reeve as he tracked the Pacific gray whale migration from the Arctic to Mexico — piloting planes, scuba diving, and embracing adventure. Just months after filming, his accident changed everything.
Will Reeve describes moment he felt 'alone' after deaths of Christopher and Dana ReeveChristopher Reeve became an activist and advocate for spinal cord injury research, founding the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation before his death in 2004 at age 52.
I often get asked which of my dad's movies is my favorite. People usually expect me to say "Superman," because it's so iconic, and is what first made Christopher Reeve a household name, and because it is an excellent film. But while "Superman" was the biggest thing he was in, and is a major reason why my dad is still a hero to millions of people, my favorite movie he ever did was a little-known nature documentary called "In the Wild: Gray Whales."
It was made for TV, just an hour long, easily findable now on the internet. When I was a little kid, my dad and I watched it on VHS over and over. I loved it because it had all these almost mythical elements to it: rugged, exotic locations, 40-ton whales that would let humans touch them, and a version of my dad that I had been robbed of the chance to know.
In this old documentary, in which my dad follows the migration of the Pacific gray whale from the Arctic Circle down to Mexico, you see him in full flight - piloting planes, scuba diving, chasing whales, and so on. He is a man of action and adventure, an explorer engaging with the world. But just months after he finished filming, our lives changed forever.
My dad was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident in May of 1995, a few weeks before my third birthday. He then died from complications from that injury nine years later, when I was 12.
The world knows my dad as Superman, and as the face of spinal cord injury --- a heroic figure fighting for others and for himself. Many have also learned more about him and our family in a recent award-winning theatrical documentary, "Super/Man: the Christopher Reeve Story." But there's still more to the story, still more to the man.
For decades, I have dreamed of visiting those last locations he filmed before his accident. I've wanted to make a pilgrimage to the remote lagoon in Mexico and the tiny Alaskan island near Siberia, where my dad: made tortillas with a local fishing family, sailed in a traditional walrus skin boat, reached out and touched a gray whale, and documented all of it for a project that has become for me a totemic depiction of who my father truly was as a human being.
It has been my mission for years now to find a way to show the world the Christopher Reeve on display in that hourlong nature documentary and to use the 30-year-old film as an entry point into the void I've had in me since he was injured and since he's been gone.
I've wrestled with lots of questions. What parts of my dad I can carry forward into the world. What kind of man he would have wanted me to be? And did he leave clues for me to help piece that together for myself? I hoped by going to the last places he'd been before his accident, I'd be able to get closer to those answers and the active, daring, adventurous father I had heard stories about, and seen time and again in that gray whale documentary, but never fully gotten to experience for myself.
I thought I might learn something about him from the people still in Mexico and Alaska who remember Superman dropping in on them, or even from just occupying the same physical space he had 30 years ago.
My dad and I often talked about how we wanted to go to Baja and Alaska together, perhaps as part of the Denial stage of grief for a version of life we subconsciously knew had died when he got hurt. And then, when my dad died, I made many silent promises to him. Closing the circle on his gray whale journey was high on my list.
For years, I'd just wanted to do it alone, privately. But as I've grown older, I've realized that my experiences of love and loss and honor and legacy and the existential questions that arise from it all are universal.
I wanted the world to remember Christopher Reeve as a hero, sure, a super man, an advocate, activist, and author, all these things that he was. But I also wanted to bring the world with me on a literal and figurative quest to find my dad at his essence.
I was convinced the key to unlocking that version of Christopher Reeve for myself and the millions of people who loved and admired him existed in the places he last visited.
What I discovered by going to San Ignacio Lagoon and St. Lawrence Island and meeting the remarkable people there, and seeing the gray whales on their journey, and taking a camera and an open heart with me defies comprehension. I left with a better understanding of myself and of my dad; of the natural world and of humanity. Of how they all connect through space and time.
And I can't wait to share what - and who - I found with everyone in what is surely the story I am most proud and profoundly honored to tell in "Will Reeve: Finding My Father."
