Will Reeve Reveals How Stays ‘Connected’ to His Late Parents (Exclusive)

Will Reeve is thrilled that he’s finally followed in his dad’s footsteps — quite literally.

In the new special Will Reeve: Finding My Father (airing 10 p.m., Feb. 26 on ABC, and streaming on Hulu), the Good Morning America correspondent retraces his dad’s final project — a nature documentary about gray whales in Alaska and Mexico that Christopher Reeve filmed just months before the horse riding accident that left him paralyzed in 1995.

“I’ve wanted to do this for most of my life,” Will tells PEOPLE of the passion project, which he produced with his ABC News colleague Robin Roberts.

“I grew up obsessed with this one-hour-long documentary that my dad made just before he got injured,” he says of the 1995 In the Wild episode “Gray Whales with Christopher Reeve.“

“For as long as I can remember, I wanted to go to this same lagoon in Mexico and this island off the coast of Alaska to see the gray whales and meet the people who live in harmony with them, just because my dad did it and because it seemed like this great big adventure,” he says.

The idea took on more meaning after his father died in 2004 at age 52; Will was 12.

“I had always dreamed that he and I would go there together, or that I would go and come back and be able to tell him all about it,” he says. “Of course, that ended up not being possible. So I made it my mission as a journalist to make a documentary that picked up where my dad left off.”

In the special, he meets the son of the man who guided Christopher in Mexico 30 years ago. He says it was impossible for them not to sense the presence of their fathers.

“We all felt multiple layers of connection to our fathers, and to my father, and to the whales that connected us all,” Will explains. While the special shows that things have changed over the past three decades in the places he visits, Will notes that one thing stayed the same.

“The spirit of the people has not changed a bit,” he says. “Their traditions are as strong as ever. Their connection to their past has not changed and has only grown stronger. And that made it all very fertile ground for me to come and explore and try to find my own connection to my past, using these people and places as my guide.”

As meaningful as it was to make the documentary, Will admits that although he felt a connection to his father, he didn’t talk out loud to him during the expedition.

“That’s not my approach to my connection with either of my parents who have passed,” he says. (His mother, Dana Reeve, died from lung cancer at age 44 a year after his father’s death.)

“I connect with my parents, and I try to feel their presence in the way that I move through the world, the way that I interact with people, and the way that I might channel my parents in my values and my lived experience in the present moment,” he says.

He adds, “This documentary journey was key in helping me get closer to an understanding of who my parents were, and who I am and how we’re the same, and how we’re different and how I’m carrying on their legacy and how I’m creating my own at the same time.”

Will Reeve: Finding My Father is streaming on Hulu.