![\"Responding](\"http:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/weborr-with-winter.jpg\" "\\"weborr-with-winter\\"")
<\/a>Responding to Tom Orr\u2019s training command, Winter arched her body to display her prosthetic tail at Clearwater Marine Aquarium.<\/p><\/div>You\u2019ve heard the story: a spunky little dolphin who swims with a prosthetic tail. Now made into a Hollywood movie opening Friday, Sept. 23, \u201cDolphin Tale\u201d was real life for one UT alumnus. <\/p>\n
As a kid visiting his grandparents in Tampa, Fla., Tom Orr, a 1988 College of Arts and Sciences graduate, first caught dolphin fever. \u201cThere\u2019s a popular tourist area called John\u2019s Pass,\u201d said Orr, national account rep with marketing firm Valpak. \u201cI remember sitting there watching dolphins and thinking, \u2018Someday when I grow up, I want to be out there with them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Years later and following a 1996 career relocation from Toledo to the Sunshine State, that promise led to Clearwater Marine Aquarium on the Gulf of Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d heard how they rescue, rehabilitate and release dolphins,\u201d he said. Orr joined the volunteers who took tickets at the front door, acted as tour guides, and assisted the employees working with rescued dolphins and otters.<\/p>\n
He upped the ante by joining the aquarium\u2019s stranding team, the rescue group on call 24\/7: \u201cIt could be at 3 a.m. or on Christmas Day, whenever a dolphin comes ashore.\u201d <\/p>\n
He mustered when Clearwater Marine Aquarium took an urgent call from Florida\u2019s Atlantic Coast in December 2005. A local fisherman had found something out in the shallow mangrove waters. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin calf, maybe three or four months old,\u201d Orr remembered. \u201cShe\u2019d been entangled in a crab trap line, in terrible condition. A couple different rescue crews on the East Coast of Florida got involved, including Sea World and Harbor Branch Marine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even after she was freed, the calf was unable to swim away. As the rescuers examined the writhing animal, it became obvious that cuts and abrasions were the least of her injuries. Like a rough but effective tourniquet, the trap lines had so tightly wrapped the end of her body that the blood flow to her flukes had been cut off for hours. <\/p>\n
<\/a>Tom Orr is seen here with a female dolphin calf named Hope, which Clearwater Marine Aquarium has been raising since the night the movie filming wrapped up. As a Florida newspaper put it, \u201cOne \u2018Dolphin Tale\u2019 ends and a new one begins.\u201d <\/p><\/div>Tail flukes and the powerful muscles leading to them propel a dolphin through the water; an animal deprived of their use cannot swim. Faced with the extent of the calf\u2019s trauma, the teams debated whether to euthanize her on the scene.<\/p>\n
When apprized of the situation, Clearwater Marine Aquarium had other ideas. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe told the rescuers that we were willing to take her under our care, so they transported her by truck across the state,\u201d Orr said. \u201cShe arrived late at night and we unloaded her into a small, above-ground swimming pool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Little did they know, he added, that they were taking in an animal \u2014 christened Winter by her handlers at the aquarium \u2014 that would leave a mark on the world. \u201cShe would help war veterans who were learning to walk again, she would inspire amputees, adults and children all over the world, and she would become an internationally known symbol of hope and inspiration,\u201d Orr said.<\/p>\n
Winter\u2019s story \u2014 how she ultimately lost her damaged tail, how scientists from a national prosthetics company (Hanger) became part of a growing army of fans and helpers \u2014 now seems a big-screen natural, but it was a boutique studio with a taste for inspirational stories that ended up making the call. <\/p>\n