50 years ago, one of the world's richest men had plans to turn New Hampshire's seacoast into the site of a giant oil refinery.

Some local citizens had other plans.

Stick around.

You'll hear their story.

♪ Welcome to windows to the wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

This summer, a group of ocean water swimmers jumped into the ocean at the Isles of Shoals and swam all the way across to Rye, New Hampshire.

It's about about seven miles from shore to shore.

They raised money for beach cleanup and commemorated an event that grabbed the world's attention 50 years ago.

♪ The easy part of the day comes early.

Swimmers from around New England make their way to the Isles of Shoals, courtesy of volunteer boat owners.

Hey, girl.

Ready to roll?

They grab the only dock that awaits them.

♪ I'm so excited.

The reception looks a lot like a family reunion.

This group of open water swimmers are about to head back to where they just came from.

How are you feeling?

I'm feeling great.

I'm excited to do this.

It's about seven miles from the Isles, back to the mainland at Rye, New Hampshire.

More depending on how rough the ocean gets between here and there.

All the swimmers have their reasons for taking the plunge.

Two of them share a story.

In honor of my mother.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She was one of the the women who led the charge against Onassis.

So that's, that's my inspiration.

Meredith Bennett and Betsy Sandberg will spend most of the morning in the water.

The swim is much more than a test of strength and endurance.

They're here because of something their mothers did 50 years ago.

Event command to Captain Joel, Over.

Betsy and fellow swimmer Bob Fernald organized the event.

The wheels started churning.

I think for both of us that it could be something bigger in order to be a commemorative event, and honor the people who protected the seacoast for the enjoyment of of the people who live here now.

Meredith and Betsy were kids when their mothers, Nancy Sandberg and Phyllis Bennett, along with Dudley Dudley, went toe to toe with one of the world's richest men.

She was sort of appointed the leader of a citizen's group that just sort of blossomed practically overnight from people who were getting together to talk about, what what might be going on, what was going on would have changed the face of New Hampshire's coastline.

Aristotle Onassis had plans to build a massive oil refinery on the coast of great Bay in Durham, New Hampshire.

The Isles of Shoals would be the storage site for supertankers.

If they had been able to do it, they would have produced 400,000 barrels of oil every single day.

As swimmers push through ocean waves on their way to the beach in Rye, Nancy Sandberg waits patiently.

The open water swim is a way to commemorate what she, Phyllis and Dudley, believed they could do to save the coastline.

Phyllis was dedicated to covering this huge local story.

Dudley was, working with her people in the legislature to figure out, well, this doesn't fit with New Hampshire, values.

So what can we do with legislation to stop it?

And then I was working with lots of people to inform people of what it would mean to have the world's largest oil refinery sited in Durham, and we brought people together on this.

And here comes Dudley.

Good.

Dudley.

Come over now and pull up a chair for Dudley.

This is so exciting.

I know I've just been talking about 50 years later, here we are, years.

Hi, sweetie.

Yeah.

I believe so strongly in the, you know, the courage my mother, Dudley Dudley, Nancy Sandberg, and hundreds, if not thousands of others who who really stood up then and stood up for the truth, first of all, because Aristotle Onassis was misrepresenting what he was building here.

So it wasn't a truthful approach.

And then to stand up to all that money, because Onassis was the richest man in the entire world at that time and was, you know, had the blessing of the governor, Governor Thompson, at, as well.

And so these were people that just said, we are we are not going to be intimidated by all this power and money, and we're going to do what we think is right, which is to save the seacoast for ourselves.

And and you know, generations afterwards.

♪ To me, it was it's sort of a recognition and an appreciation of, of the hard work that was done by the people of that time who, instead of being driven by fear and anxiety about what might be happening.

What they did is create, Save Our Shores.

It was a grassroots organization that challenged the efforts of Onassis, who came to New Hampshire in 1974 with a plan.

The Onassis team, of realtors descended on Durham Point in a very unscrupulous way, deceptive way of getting land option options on land.

And so and they approached my husband and I too wanting to buy land from us.

We live on an old farm, but they gave various people different reasons that they wanted to buy land.

Well, I was very suspicious of what was going on and found out that other neighbors had been contacted too.

You guys are doing great.

What I'd like people to to remember and understand is how difficult it was back then to, to go up against the political power structure in New Hampshire.

And the other important thing to remember is that we were in the country’s in the middle of a oil crisis and gas crisis.

So there were lines to get your gas filled.

There were people out of work.

And so you add that to the other pressures.

And it was extraordinary.

Onassis had the support of then Governor Meldrum Thompson to develop New Hampshire's coastline.

Nancy, Phyllis and Dudley knew what was at stake for the local environment.

They also realized they had a real challenge on their hands.

There were plenty of times that I was really frightened, literally trembling, because it these were big, big forces mounted against us.

And but I felt that the truth was going to make our points.

So the more we could make people aware of what the impacts of an oil refinery and a supertanker unloading facility would be on New Hampshire's fishing and tourism industry, the more people would reject it.

And that's exactly what happened.

That makes the story, you know, even better that, you know, here was this male chauvinist Aristotle Onassis, who then was stopped by these small towns that he thought he could just run over.

And these three women who, you know, each in their own right, was was really strong and were they were not friends at the time but became, you know, best friends afterwards.

So that's that's another wonderful legacy of the, the whole movement.

In the white boat, white boat.

With the swimmers still out of sight an eager crowd begins to gather at the landing site, I think it's very exciting, and I'm just amazed that they're able to swim this far.

To do it for such a great organization.

As people prepare to welcome the approaching swimmers, Others play in the surf.

Right behind them are folks from the Blue Ocean Society.

Every group is going to get a data card and a pencil.

The nonprofit promotes research to protect marine life.

That’s a straw, yeah.

Today, they brought in a group of volunteers to help clean the beach.

Ribbon.

I'm not done, Ribbon.

What do you find most of?

Depends on the beach.

I'd say Hampton Beach.

It's, cigaret butts.

Definitely a lot of that.

Here.

So far, we're finding a lot, string and some fishing materials.

I volunteer and help enter this data into the, computer system.

So here we've got another lobster band and some lobster rope.

So we've got spots for all of these on the card.

Proceeds raised from today's swim will support future Blue Ocean projects.

The legacy, it seems, continues.

Just thinking about the whole thing is just kind of mind boggling.

The whole legacy.

And I mean, everything that those three women, Nancy Sandberg and Dudley Dudley and Phyllis Bennett what they do did for us because this coast would look entirely different if that oil refinery had actually happened.

The other thing is we thought, well, it could be, something that would raise environmental awareness.

And we chose partnering with Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation to help fundraise for them and their efforts at marine education and, environmental stewardship.

Oh, you want a data card?

Here you go.

And the programs they do, they do a lot of programs also for young people.

So in order to sort of bring bring people into, into this love and interest that we have.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute monitors the surface temperature in the Gulf.

The rate of change since the early 1980s, it found, is more than triple that of other oceans.

Jen Kennedy sees hope in every event like this.

We have an increase, in our cleanup, volunteers, people interested in cleaning the beaches and just volunteering for our organization as a whole.

It's increased every year since we started doing this work in 2001.

So that gives me hope.

There's more people that are involved when we go into schools to do programs, like, almost every kid has a reusable water bottle now where they didn't 20 years ago, and they all know a lot about the environment and they're all like, engaged and upset and know that they can make a difference.

We can see them.

Yeah.

About four hours after the swimmers left the dock at the Isles of Shoals, Susan Knight is the first to feel the coastal sand beneath her feet.

And there's some donuts.

But then, like the last hour, it's settled down.

But the first, like, two hours, 2 to 3 hours were bad.

Like, just chop sideways chop.

So it was the wind.

The wind against the tide because the wind was going like across and the tide was coming in.

So yeah.

It's great.

Yeah.

We raised a lot of money for Blue Ocean, and a lot of awareness.

I would say, though, I thought the water was like really clean.

I didn't see, I saw jellyfish but I didn't see, like, any debris.

So that was nice.

So the ocean’s doing a good job.

♪ Other swimmers begin to arrive.

Betsy and Meredith aren’t far behind.

♪ What's it like seeing the people come in?

Oh, it's just huge anticipation.

And then the thrill of seeing their sense of accomplishment when they get up and they're just all smiles.

♪ Oh my gosh.

That’s amazing.

♪ Yay!

Amazing.

Yeah.

It's trying to focus on being able to stand up, which isn't all that easy.

After you get bounced around for a while.

I bet.

I'm so proud of you.

You know, you are amazing.

I was nervous.

I've done a lot of, you know, I've run many marathons and done many triathlons, and at various points I've had various amount of time to train.

So, you know, I'm also aware that so much of it is is mental.

And I was locked in, no matter what, to finish and celebrate.

You know, my mother and and the, the 50 year anniversary.

I know it's like, don't slow me down.

How long was my swim?

Yeah, it was five hours and 39 minutes.

It was interesting.

People.

A few people said they got teary when I got to the beach.

I think by that point I was just tired.

But during the swim, I did think about it a little bit.

And, I actually got a little choked up, so I had to kind of move beyond it.

But it really it was an incredibly special thing to, to do and to have my parents at the beach was was really neat.

And Dudley, was there as well.

And to be doing it with Meredith, of course, I never saw Meredith, except when we jumped off the dock.

I was thinking the whole time, well, I was channeling my mother and having conversations with her, and having fun, but we when we left the dock at Appledore Island, you know, we we were we all were reminded as we were standing there that the Isle of Shoals would have had a giant substation on it.

Would have been dwarfed the islands, you know, changed the islands in terms of their ability to allow people to see their beauty and for research and for all the things that the Isles Shoals provide today would have all been destroyed.

So, you know, it was it was a really important reminder when we left the dock.

And then throughout the swim, you know, thinking about what those waters that they would have had oil spills and just would have been a very, very different, different place.

♪ It was a gift to be able to do the swim.

And it's a gift that we have this, you know, beautiful seacoast that we might not have had.

♪ Save Our Shores for a good fight in 1974.

It was well orchestrated.

Nancy mobilized the community.

I was on the phone 14 hours a day, and my ear was so red and swollen.

Dudley was at the statehouse.

People come up to me all the time and say, how fearless and brave you were to do this, and I'm just wondering if you see it that way.

No, it was it was instinct.

It wasn't brave.

It was just what I needed to do.

I just have a confession, which is that at 13, this was quite embarrassing.

I think, you know, I felt, seeing you on the front page of the paper and all the activity in our house and coming home from school every day and having people sitting on the floor stuffing envelopes.

And, and I remember saying to a friend joking that I wish I had just had a mother who baked cookies like everybody else's mother.

And Phyllis kept the presses running.

It was a wonderful story of a partnership, which is very unusual for newspapers.

There were active readers in the community who contributed information, did not just read information.

Everybody put their minds to it and their hearts to it.

And with the help of public occurrences, were able in October to have that startling headline refinery for Durham Point question mark.

Very proud of my my parents on a newspaper public occurrences.

And they leaned into doing the investigative journalism that that small newspapers are really often, you know, credited for.

For me, it's, you know, it's very personal because I was about I was six years old and I saw my parents, you know, working 12, 14 hours a day at their small newspaper.

And, you know, they ultimately were, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for their, you know, journalism.

Phyllis Bennett died in 2015.

The story of how she, Nancy and Dudley, led the charge to protect the seacoast lives on.

These swimmers will make sure of that.

I feel like it whatever we can do to to carry that story on and on.

So in 50 years, people still will remember and talk about it that live in this area and will still appreciate the the hard work and the dedication that that everyone had to preserve this incredible estuary.

Incredible seacoast.

It's important for us to make sure that we imagine ourselves 50 years from now.

Imagine in the next generations, 50 years from now, and take what we've learned from looking at the, you know, that time and now, this 50 year span and what's here and what do we enjoy about this moment, and then project forward 50 years and ask ourselves what what is important to us as individuals, to our families and friends?

And really think hard about that.

Individuals really can have an impact on how things look 50 years from now.

So it's it's up to us to sort of think about how, how do we lean in to make things the way we want them to be.

I do think it's it's a it's a lesson that you, you would hope can be passed on to people to not give up and to not feel that because of the power structure and often the inequities of business and, and, poor communities that that you have and you still have rights and that they're it's worth, it's worth fighting for to protect your, land and, and your way of life and that to just remember that it can be done and, you know, so I do hope that's that's a big part of the the story that gets carried on.

♪ Well, we've come once again to that part of the program that I like the least, the time we have to say goodbye.

But we do.

Meanwhile keep in mind what a group of dedicated citizens can accomplish if they work together.

I'm Willem Lange, and I hope to see you again on windows to the wild.

Support for the production of windows to the wild is provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust, Bailey Charitable Foundation, the Fuller Foundation road Scholar and viewers like you.

Thank you.

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♪ We made it!

♪