Aberdeen embraces Cruise: It will "put us on the map"

ABERDEEN — There's been much talk here about how Tom Cruise ranks on the scale of famous visitors to this not-so-famous city on the Washington coast.

But it is hard to imagine that any previous Big Visitors made little girls pass out, middle-aged women cry, punk rockers beg for autographs or the city fathers say better times will be coming soon.

When Cruise's motorcade of black SUVs and sedans zoomed into the back parking lot of the SouthShore Mall on Tuesday — even before the crowd knew he had come with his movie-star fiancée, Katie Holmes — some saw history for Grays Harbor County.

Mayor pro tem Bill Simpson told reporters, "It's a showpiece, and people will ... see the harbor isn't so bad after all."

Not bad at all on a sunny day, with more than 2,000 people waiting as long as eight hours to see Cruise make good on a movie-promotion contest won by local Wal-Mart worker Kevin McCoy. McCoy, 27, was able to fill the mall movie theater with friends to watch "Mission: Impossible III" with Cruise.

McCoy, by the way, is "not someone who would crave media attention," said his boss at the Wal-Mart photo department, Steven Puvogel. And when McCoy walked the red carpet to the mall's movie theater, he looked shy and awkward as the crowd called his name and his father kept him moving with a comforting hand on his back.

Cruise arrived soon after in a presidential-style motorcade with security to match. He drove by the crowd, hanging out the window of a black SUV and slapping high fives, before circling the mall and jumping out to meet fans.

Fans pressed against the steel fences that had been erected to keep order. Many held signs welcoming Cruise and enticing him to stop on his way down the red carpet. Not all signs were welcoming — one said, "Scientology is an Evil Cult," with a picture of Stan, a character from the irreverent cartoon "South Park."

Cruise and Holmes signed autographs, shook hands, posed for photos and chatted with fans. The long wait in the sun took its toll as children were pulled from the crowd, dehydrated, or separated from parents.

Cruise plucked some of the ailing from the scrum, and in one case handed a young girl to Holmes, who took her to safer ground.

"I'm kind of overwhelmed," Cruise told the crowd. "I'm amazed."

He was given a green plaque from Simpson, declaring it Tom Cruise Day.

Joe Ty and his band, Black Top Demon, drove in from Olympia and performed at a dead-end street that backed the mall. They came in a beat-up van labeled "Porn Star Official Training Vehicle."

They also brought the trunk lid from a 1968 Dodge Charger RT, in shiny metallic blue. It featured autographs from members of rock bands, including Nirvana, Motorhead, The Melvins and Mudhoney. They wanted Cruise to sign it, too, and they lugged it into the crowd.

Monique Abbott, 37, was among the first to line up and had prime spots with her toes nearly on the red carpet.

That meant getting to the mall six hours before Cruise did.

She carried a sign her husband made for her that pleaded, "Tom Cruise — Over Here." He did stop, for photos and autographs.

"I think when he was younger he was less affected by the media," Abbott said. "Now he knows he's cute."

Abbott was on hand 10 years ago when the rock band Metallica came here for another contest.

"That's like the only other thing that ever happened here."

Standing nearby, Ginny Thompson, 37, had taken the day off from the Sears store in the mall, hoping to get a Cruise autograph in her collector's edition of People Magazine's "100 Greatest Movie Stars of Our Time."

She said she knows the meaning of Cruise's visit. She said it will stop Aberdeen from being a dying town. That's been a worry here for a decade, at least, since the collapse of the timber industry and lingering unemployment problems.

"There's a lot of poverty here," she said.

How will Cruise fix that?

"Look, you're here from Seattle, right?" she said to a visitor. "This will put us on the map."

Mall manager Nina Morean said it would have been a big deal no matter where Cruise went.

"There was a premiere in Paris and it was a big deal. There was a premiere in New York. It's no different than if he showed up in Seattle."

Maybe.

But would an argument — though certainly good-natured — break out at a downtown store about the significance of a Hollywood visitor to Seattle?

It happened here Tuesday in the Salvation Army store in the threadbare downtown.

"I had to tell my niece to stop obsessing about Tom Cruise," said Laura Eaton, 25, a clerk at the store. "I'm trying to get into her head that Tom Cruise is not God."

Co-worker Barbara Jeter laughed and told Eaton, "Live a little. You're young. It's about creating a memory."

A third woman, who would only say her first name was Marilyn, put Cruise's visit in historical context.

"Lee Marvin used to come here," she said. "Johnny Cash was at the Elma Fair once."

Jeter said, "I think we should close down for Cruise Day."

"My brother saw Tina Turner at the armory once," Marilyn said. "You know what, Johnny Carson's yacht was built at the Westport boatyard. You'd be surprised who all comes through here."

David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com