Late-night phone calls never bring good news
A late-night phone brings good news.
Every time the phone goes off at that hour, that softballsize knot that seems to have taken up permanent residence in my stomach gets a little bigger.
Actually, it reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies.
‘Moonstruck’ captured family life exactly as I remember it as a kid, only we were very Irish instead of Italian.
When Loretta Castorini, played perfectly by Cher, wants to tell her father, the spectacular Vincent Gardenia, some big news, the first thing he says is, “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
Of course. Isn’t that where all big family decisions are discussed? At least they were in my family. Loretta is going to remarry. The two of them then must inform the mother, Olympia Dukakis, already upstairs in bed, the news.
Her response is one movie lines.
“Who’s dead?” she inquires when the two of them enter the bedroom. That was my family exactly. I can still remember those occasions when the phone would ring late at night. Remember, this was before cellphones. (Yes, kids, there was a time when we actually existed before the iPhone.) It also meant someone likely had to get out of bed to answer the phone. I remember lying in bed and listening to the muffled voices.
Always bad news. death in the family.
So it was when I was awakened from my coma-like state last Thursday night. When I hit the bed, I am usually out cold for about two or three hours. Then I usually awake call never of my Perhaps favorite a very early and fidget the rest of the night as I glance at the clock.
This night I was awakened by my cellphone. Yes, I keep it on the table next to the bed. No, I don’t recommend it.
This wasn’t a text, or an email. This was a phone call. Bad news, no doubt. I wasn’t wrong. As soon as I heard photographer Pete Bannan’s voice, I knew something big was going on.
A breathless Bannan quickly informed me of the dire situation unfolding in West Chester, where a raging inferno was quickly consuming the Barclay Friends Senior Living Community.
I glanced about 11:15.
The next couple kind of a blur.
I spend a lot of time cursing technology, and the way it has fundamentally changed our lives. It has put everything on warp speed. Of course, it has also changed forever the way we deliver news.
I quickly scrambled downstairs, grabbed my laptop and went to work, but not before cursing the technology gods one more time while waiting impatiently for it to boot up. Remember what I said about the speed at which we now live our lives? There are times when it’s still not fast enough. This was one of them.
That started a combination of events that resulted in tearing up a perfectly good front page of the Daily Local News in West Chester to get in news of the fire.
First things first. I contacted our production people and asked them how much time we had to get something into print. Yes, ink on paper. I know it’s a quaint idea.
I quickly made the call to scrap the photo we had of Martha Stewart on Page One of the Daily Local and use that space at the clock. of It hours was are for the fire.
By now you’re probably wondering what the hell I was doing working on the Daily Local. It’s a long story. Let’s just say we’re stretched very thin these days and some of my duties now include overseeing some of the work in West Chester.
But first, of course, we also needed a presence on social media. I quickly Tweeted out a breaking news alert on the fire.
As much time as I spend whining about technology, I have to admit that when it comes to breaking news, I am glad we’re still not operating in the dinosaur days of the newspaper racket.
Of course, that does not mean we ignored print. We had just enough time to get a short story and photos in the print edition. Then we went to work updating the story online in the overnight hours.
The fire was devastating, sending elderly residents out into the cold, many of them still being wheeled out in their beds and wheelchairs.
More than 20 people were injured. More than 100 evacuated. Officials are still trying to account for all the residents. We likely won’t know for sure everyone’s fate until this week.
As often happens during the worst of circumstances, something amazing happened.
First and foremost, you have to consider it something of a miracle that the staff and first responders were able to get that many people – most are elderly or infirmed who have issues with mobility – out of that inferno.
At one point, officials estimated that more than 400 firefighters were on the scene.
But that is only one part this story.
The other is how the West Chester community rallied in the face of tragedy.
Usually in these kinds of instances, journalists share something in common with firefighters. While everyone else is doing their best to run away from the danger, we’re heading toward it.
On this night we
Neighbors who had live company. in of the area where the Barclay is located started showing up wondering how they could help. They brought blankets for residents, many of them still sitting in beds or wheelchairs, shivering in the 40-degree chill after midnight.
The Barclay is located in a residential neighborhood on North Franklin Street in West Chester. These weren’t just elderly nursing home residents. These people were their neighbors.
Local fire houses soon were being utilized as staging areas where residents could go to get out of the cold.
West Chester University got involved, opening up their gym. At one point there were 40 people there before the Red Cross took over operations early Friday morning. Something you don’t always see on a college campus? A row of wheelchairs neatly lined up outside the gym.
As awful as it looked, and anyone who has seen the photos or looked at any of the video can attest, in some ways what happened Thursday night is something of a miracle.
It’s a miracle called community, one that rallies together in the worst of circumstances.
As we enter the season of thanks, perhaps that should lead the conversation at our holiday dinner tables.
Yes, much divides us. would suggest avoiding talk.
But so much also unites us, even in the midst of tragedy.
And even in the midst of late-night phone calls. I political