Whatever Kirk Jones' other motives for climbing into the upper Niagara River and sliding feet-first over the Horseshoe Falls, the lure of fame and fortune if he survived was certainly one of the biggest.
Good luck.
Daredevils wielding barrels and entrepreneurs brandishing grandiose plans have arrived in Niagara Falls with alarming regularity over the past century, each figuring a connection with a natural wonder of the world guaranteed unspeakable riches.
But water, not cash, flows over the falls.
If anyone should have gotten rich from making the trip, it was Annie Edson Taylor, the 63-year-old Michigan schoolteacher who first put the words "falls" and "barrel" in the same sentence. She wound up a one-woman flea circus on the streets of Niagara Falls, N.Y. She even had to sue her manager to retrieve her stolen barrel, and died flat broke.
If you want proof, just walk out of the Niagara State Park on the American side and see just how little location means to a spectacularly bad idea like bulldozing a business district to make room for malls and parking ramps.
Niagara did fuel many fortunes south and east of the river at the turn of the century, when industrialists turned the cheap power generated by the falls into thriving factories throughout Western New York. At least until the power plant fell into the river nearly half a century ago, ending the days of inexpensive electricity forever.
Then there are the feeble ideas of those hoping to cash in on even the most tenuous of connections to the falls, like the advocates of the long-promised "interpretive center" that Gov. George Pataki still hasn't found the money for, nearly two years after pledging $10 million in campaign-trail dollars.
It's probably just as well. How much "interpretation" does something as self-explanatory as Niagara Falls really need? River flows to brink, river drops 170-plus feet amidst awesome mist and roar, river continues flowing into lake.
That'll be $10 million, please.
But back to Kirk. The only economy he tried to revitalize was his own.
"Inside Edition," the syndicated television tabloid that gave the world Bill O'Reilly, bought some degree of exclusivity and swept Kirk and his brother, Keith, off to New York City as soon as the elder Jones boy bailed the younger out of an Ontario jail on Thursday.
Beyond whatever the show's producers shelled out for a longer version of a fairly simple story that Kirk had already told a couple of times -- he spoke to the press on Wednesday night at a provincial holding center and again outside the courthouse before getting in the show's rented Durango SUV -- there just doesn't seem to be a lot of money to be made. Even by the first known person to survive an intentional trip over the falls with no form of protective or flotation device.
Kirk's buddy, Bobby Krueger, couldn't get the video camera to work, so there's no recorded evidence of the journey. That would have been worth about $30,000, according to television producers.
All in all, he might make enough to pay off the $10,000 fine that awaits if he's convicted next month on a charge of unlawfully performing a stunt in a Niagara Region park. Maybe there will be enough left over to buy a few more of the vodka-and-Cokes he and Krueger fueled up on before venturing to Table Rock last Monday.
But we're not talking about a life-changing windfall here. Now that Jones' story has become part of the public record, it's highly questionable as to how many outlets will pay to hear it.
As remarkable as that story is, it can be broken down pretty easily into questions of why and how. The answers aren't nearly as simple.
Kirk Jones drove from Canton, Mich., to Niagara Falls, Ont., on Saturday, Oct. 18, without a whole lot to lose.
His parents had closed the family business that employed him. Then they moved as far away from him and Keith as they could possibly get and still be in the continental United States, leaving the brothers -- who, according to an acquaintance, can't stand each other -- in possession of the family house in Canton.
Kirk talked about surviving a drop over Niagara Falls before and after traveling to the area last month. But he apparently talked about a lot of things.
"Nobody believed him," Keith Jones said.
Even after moving to Oregon, Raymond and Doris Jones still supported their youngest son, wiring $300 to bankroll his journey back to Niagara Falls with Krueger.
The two occupied their Sunday spending Mr. and Mrs. Jones' money at the Sundowner, a strip joint on Lundy's Lane. They turned back from Table Rock once after realizing the battery in Krueger's video camera was dead. They returned after recharging it, but the sight of his friend in the Niagara River evidently distracted Krueger from aiming the camera or pressing the record button.
Though Kirk Jones' parents and brother repeatedly said he thought he could make money from surviving the plunge, he blamed depression for pushing him to the brink and over.
"It's an embarrassing thing to say now, but depression caused me to do what I think untold numbers have done in Niagara Falls," he said during an impromptu press conference after being released from a psychiatric ward Wednesday night.
But he refused to comment, following his release from custody, when asked why he would have wanted his friend of more than 20 years to videotape his suicide attempt.
Whether depression drove him to climb into the Niagara River or serves as an attempt to avoid that $10,000 fine, or both, the larger question remains how he wound up on that rock in the gorge.
The daredevils who rode the falls in containers made of wood, plastic, rubber and whatever else they thought might keep them alive spent months, even years, planning their stunts.
The thought that someone with no apparent knowledge of hydrology -- or much of anything else -- picked a spot, got in the water and emerged alive isn't an easy one to accept. Just as some conspiracy theorists refuse to accept that a career loser like Lee Harvey Oswald could have pulled off the assassination of John F. Kennedy alone, there are those unconvinced that Kirk Jones and his parka conquered Niagara Falls.
But if it was a hoax, it was a grand one involving numerous witnesses from around the world who never met each other before last Monday, all of whom gave Ontario police the same basic description of a man fitting Kirk Jones' description climbing over a wrought-iron barrier a few yards from the brink, climbing in the water and sliding over the edge feet-first.
And the Kirk Jones who emerged from police custody Thursday doesn't appear capable of pulling anything over on anyone, much less perpetrating a hoax of worldwide magnitude.
In the absence of precedent or plausible explanations for his survival, theories abounded through the week. Local Know-It-All Paul Gromosiak was more than willing to expound upon his "water cone" theory -- which credited a build-up of water pressure with cushioning Jones' fall -- to anyone who would listen.
Two members of the civil engineering faculty at the University at Buffalo politely demurred when asked about the existence of such "cones." Joseph Atkinson suggested that Jones may have been lucky enough to ride the falling water into the lower river, like a surfer riding a wave.
"It would be like falling onto a slope, instead of splattering on a flat surface," Atkinson said.
Another professor, Christina Tsai, said that getting into the water near the brink was key, since the high velocity of the upper rapids could have killed him before reaching the edge. But she was particularly stunned that he survived once in the gorge.
"He should have been sucked under by the whirlpools and eddies right away," she said. "With the rocks and dangerous circulation patterns below the falls, it really surprises me that he survived."
Wesley Hill, who estimates he's pulled close to 400 bodies out of the lower Niagara over the past half-century working for authorities on both sides of the river, said going over near the shoreline increased Jones' odds. Hill, who also served as a consultant for movies like "Superman II" and "Canadian Bacon," said he's successfully sent barrels with cameras inside over near the shoreline and had them come out intact.
"There's not as much water near the shore, and it doesn't flow as fast," Hill said.
Hill said he's pulled live deer and dogs out of the gorge that witnesses saw in the upper river moments earlier. His brother, William "Red" Hill Jr., attempted to conquer the Horseshoe Falls in 1951. Red Hill's vessel, which consisted of lashed-together inner tubes, reached the brink in the middle of the river. The force of the water ejected him from the contraption and he was killed.
Even Kirk Jones didn't seem quite sure how he lived through the experience.
"It was a bubbling cauldron of hell that I advise upon no human being on the face of the earth. ... It is hell on earth, I assure you," he said. "You fight for every inch of air."
After Kirk Jones' arraignment Thursday morning, he was put in the holding center at the Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines, while brother Keith went to fetch the $1,000 in bail money their parents were wiring from Oregon.
Before departing, he summed up his little brother's situation before making history.
"He didn't have a lot going for him," Keith Jones said, before leaving with the "Inside Edition" people.
That was at a little after 10 a.m. As morning became afternoon, the throng of media types -- many of whom had spent most of the week staking out Greater Niagara General Hospital, where Kirk Jones underwent psychiatric tests before being released into police custody Wednesday night -- grew restless.
Some passed the time by conjuring tongue-in-cheek questions to ask if and when Keith got back and bailed Kirk out.
"Kirk, where do you think Keith was all day?" came one suggestion.
"Are you going to use some of the money to get haircuts for you and Keith?" was another, inspired by the aging-Ozzy-Ozbourne-fan 'do sported by both.
Inside, Kirk himself was wondering if leaving his older brother to his own devices in a foreign country with $1,000 of their parents' money was such a good idea.
"He said he'll give an exclusive to whoever can come up with $1,000," said one police officer who had talked to Kirk Jones in his cell.
At 3:15 p.m. -- 45 minutes before the court closed for the day -- Keith appeared, the bail money unspent.
The "Inside Edition" crew -- apparently aware that they'd be torn limb from limb by the three dozen reporters and photographers who had been waiting all day, at least, to hear from Kirk Jones -- allowed a brief interview session.
Sounding like he'd watched a little too much of Dr. Phil and "The 700 Club," Kirk expounded on his experience.
"Desperation can make many men do many things, and I'm afraid I'm one of those desperate people," he said. "After Monday, I feel like I reached out and touched the face of God, and he smiled."
As his story fades from the headlines, you have to wonder what becomes of Kirk Jones now.
Surviving Niagara Falls gave him a taste of fame, and may yield a little spending money.
But it won't provide any of the missing elements -- children, friends, a satisfying career -- that his brother, parents and acquaintances said fueled his depression.
If the money he hoped would come if he survived doesn't arrive, his desperation could return stronger than ever.
Despite all that, though, Kirk Jones did something last Monday no one else ever had, something that most everyone considered impossible. And for one week, at least, he was the most famous man in the world.
Even if no one is quite sure why, or how.
Editors' note: David Staba covered this story for The New York Times. Read the Times story here.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 28 2003 |