Mapquest lists this as a 5hr 13min drive. If upping the offer to take a later flight didn't get enough volunteers, then the airline could have had a driver drive the employees to their destination - driving wouldn't have taken much longer than the delay. Or they could have offered to drive the displaced passengers, or pay for rental cars. A lot of ways this could have been handled that would have resulted in far less bad publicity.
Then again, it could have been worse. This guy was a doctor. Imagine for a moment that he was a transplant doctor, and was rushing home because a heart had just been found for some child. Organs are only viable for a certain amount of time, and if the doctor was pulled off the flight.....