A family grappling with ALS finds comfort in a sea turtle nest

By Brian Tress | Outer Banks Voice on July 31, 2026

The Criss family at Nest 1 in Southern Shores:
(Left to Right) Kennedy Mulhern (niece), Chris (daughter), and Bill and Erin Criss.
(Courtesy: Bill and Erin Criss, NEST)

By Brian Tress | Outer Banks Voice

Erin Criss knew, before she wrote the email, that The Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (NEST) nest-sitting spots for the season were already full. She sent it anyway. In it, she laid out her husband Bill’s story — a lifelong love of sea turtles, a retirement plan built around finally getting to sit a nest, and a diagnosis of ALS, four months earlier, that had put all of it in question. She asked if there was any way to get him involved.

“It was a make-a-wish kind of thing,” said Susan Silbernagel, chair of NEST’s nest management committee.

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive disease with no known cause that gradually takes away a person’s ability to walk, speak, swallow, and eventually breathe. Most people live two to five years past diagnosis, according to the ALS Association.

NEST president Tony Parisi saw the email in the organization’s general inbox, brought it to the board, and by June 11, had written back to say they’d find a way to make it happen. Nest 1, in Southern Shores, fell within the family’s July timeframe on the Outer Banks and suited what Bill could still manage. The first visit to the nest came on July 22.

Bill, 52, and his wife, Erin, 49, live in Springfield, VA and have been vacationing on the Outer Banks since they got married 25 years ago. They bought a house in Kill Devil Hills in June of last year, with a retirement planned around it.  Erin, an elementary school teacher, would work eight more years toward her pension, and Bill — a former government consultant who’d spent his career working with federal agencies — would spend his days immersed in nature outdoors, including doing exactly what he’d watched NEST volunteers do on the beach for years.

The diagnosis has unsettled the timeline. “I don’t know what’s in my cards — whether I can make it the eight years,” Bill said. “I’m still hopeful I can retire with Erin down here.” The family has stopped renting out the Kill Devil Hills house. Both of their daughters — Michaela, 21, and Chris, 18 — changed their college plans to be closer to their home in Springfield.

Before the first visit, NEST asked the family to check out the beach access on their own — a set of stairs, then a steep dune down to the sand. Getting a beach wheelchair took more work. Local fire departments were out of loaners for the rest of the summer, so a NEST volunteer reached out to a personal contact at OBX Beach Mobility, which donated the chair.

Ellen Egerton, a physical therapist who was volunteering at Nest 1, helped Bill into the chair and pushed it across the sand to the nest each night. “I have been a NEST volunteer for a few years, but this opportunity to share with the Criss family is indescribable,” she said. “Bill and his family mirror the resilience and fight of these little hatchlings — despite the obstacles and challenges, they persevere and persist.”

Four nights in, on July 25, Nest 1 boiled — the term for a mass of hatchlings emerging from the sand together and scrambling to the ocean all at once. Bill and his daughter Chris shared a set of headphones hooked to the hydrophone, listening for movement underground. “Dorito crunching, waterfalls, furniture moving,” Bill said, referring to how NEST volunteers describe the sounds. He counted hatchlings alongside NEST volunteers as they emerged.

Bill and Erin at the 11th Avenue beach access in Southern Shores, the access point to Nest 1. (Courtesy: Bill and Erin Criss, NEST)

Clockwise from left, Kennedy Mulhern (niece), and Bill and Chris listening for hatchling movements. (Courtesy Bill and Erin Criss, NEST)

Bill listens intently for hatchlings, sporting his sea turtle tattoo. (Courtesy: Bill and Erin Criss, NEST)

 

“It was dark, and the three of us counting were all squinting,” he said. “There was enough moonlight to distinguish those Oreo cookies moving on the sand. You get the first two, then the others racing in a group, then some who get off track. I have witnessed two daughters being born, and this was similar — a miracle. Life, beautiful and magical birth. All those little lives pushing their way up that hole.”

There were 82 lives to be exact, according to Silbernagel, and 23 more at the excavation of Nest 1 three days later. Bill counted those too.

In the context of his diagnosis, the boil was a life-affirming experience for Bill. “One of the hardest things with ALS is you start to realize that you are living in your own coffin,” he said. “Your body is dying around you. A natural reaction is that you want to hide — you feel completely alone even with family around you. I am embarrassed that my wife has to push me around, that I have to buy elastic-waisted pants and eat like a toddler. Losing these skills makes a person want to hide. The nest opportunity gave me something to look forward to for two months — it makes me want to push my body so I can do another one.”

The Crisses plan to return over Labor Day weekend, to a house that is now the family’s anchor point for time together. In October, they’ll walk to raise money for ALS research in Washington, D.C., on a team Erin named Monkey Strong. Several friends from NEST have already signed up to join them.

Click HERE  to join the Crisses’ team or donate to the Walk to Defeat ALS on October 3, 2026