Bell's departure clouds future for Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Byline: DIANE DIETZ The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - Phyllis Bell, the Oregon Coast Aquarium executive director who oversaw the conversion of a Yaquina Bay shoreline into an internationally known tourist attraction, has resigned her post with little explanation.

Members of the aquarium's nonprofit governing board had little to say about Bell's decision to quit late Tuesday after more than a decade at the aquarium's helm.

President Al Gleason would not say if Bell's departure was related to the financial problems the aquarium was facing earlier this year when it ran out of cash and had to restructure its debt.

"You need to ask her," Gleason said. "She told us she wanted to resign for personal reasons. We accepted that in good faith."

Bell submitted her resignation during a meeting with aquarium board members. She hadn't been at the aquarium since June 24, when the board put her on involuntary administrative leave.

Reached at home Wednesday night, Bell said her decision was not related to her health, but she declined to comment further. "I just resigned for personal reasons. That's all," she said.

Senior management at the aquarium are closely examining financial records, public relations officer Guy DiTorrice said. "Every line item of the budget, every vendor relationship, every account payable," he said.

The departure has spurred a stampede of rumors in Newport and the questions have spread to the people the aquarium most needs - the visitors, the members and the donors - who have kept the seaside attraction afloat.

"She was our president, executive director, chief financial officer and spokesperson for this organization the entire time," DiTorrice said. "It's definitely needing to be addressed."

Neither DiTorrice nor any of the board members reached Wednesday could say when a fuller explanation would be available.

Bell took the aquarium's top post in 1990 after nine months as business manager. She and her husband had come to Newport from Memphis, Tenn., where Bell had primarily handled finance work, including preparation of a long-range financial plan for an expansion of the Memphis Zoo.

The aquarium was a decade-in-coming, big-league dream of a group of Newport business people who trusted Bell to carry it to fruition, and she did. She proved herself a hard worker, a stickler for details and, at times, a micro-manager.

She presided over the initial $24 million construction and opening - and the influx of 850,000 visitors the first year, which was double what organizers had dared to hope.

She was at the helm in 1995 when the aquarium agreed to host the rehabilitation of Keiko, the 21-foot killer whale and star of the movie "Free Willy," after he was rescued from a cramped Mexico City pool. He needed a 2 million gallon tank and crews installed one at the Newport aquarium site.

Bell said at the time that, sure, the whale was bound to be a big draw, "But that's not the main reason we're doing this." Still, Bell saw attendance spike at 1.3 million the first year Keiko was on board.

"She took this organization from a staff of eight to five dozen," DiTorrice said.

Bell was at the center of the hoopla, too, in 1998 when Keiko's departure for Iceland was documented by 450 journalists from around the world.

And after Keiko was gone, Bell pushed for an $8.8 million conversion to his old tank to produce the "Passages of the Deep" display with a 200-foot walk through a re-creation of the ocean depths. When it opened, attendance rebounded.

"This organization has seen the coming and going of a major Hollywood whale and it has survived that transition because of the dedication of the staff and volunteers," DiTorrice said.

"We took our lumps in attendance drops when Keiko left. We generated support, expanded, grew a new feature exhibit - in his absence - and saw our attendance grow in the two years after he left."

Bell was so omnipresent at each of the decade's developments that she became the face and voice of the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

"It would be hard to separate her from the aquarium," then-Oregon State University President John Byrne, an aquarium board member, said in 1998.

But Bell had her troubles, too. She got into a public mudslinging match with the Free-Willy Keiko Foundation, which was trying to restore the whale to its natural habitat. Members accused Bell and her staff of "gross negligence" in their care of the whale and accused them of sabotaging Keiko's return to the wild to keep him for the aquarium's "cash cow."

Then, departing employees publicly complained about declining morale and Bell's alleged interference in their jobs.

Aquarium board member Don Davis, a retired Newport city manager, said any person running a major institution for that long is bound to make some enemies. "I liked her as a human being, yeah. She was a warm individual. She was never anything but kind to me," he said Wednesday.

Today, the aquarium's financial picture remains unclear.

As Bell's immediate replacement, the board promoted senior managers Patrick Helbling as temporary executive director and Rick Goulette as chief financial officer, DiTorrice said.

Board members will meet next week to go over the budget for the fiscal year that began Monday. DiTorrice said layoffs are possible.

Aquarium operations are continuing as usual, he said. "The concept or idea of any sort of closure has never been discussed or entertained, ever."

Davis, the board member, said the aquarium has a good management team in place now and it will survive Bell's dramatic departure.

"I don't think any one person is the aquarium," he said. "It's bigger than one person."