A short trip down Memory Lane
Iwas talking with a friend last week about my 45 years in the news business and he asked me what the top stories I had covered were. I could think of a couple right off the top of my head and then my thoughts turned to a potential Top 10 list. I don’t know if I’ll get to 10, but let’s give it a try.
The No. 1 story was pretty easy, the Blizzard of ’93. You’ll recall it was a Friday when the snow started during the evening drive period. I was at Shenanigans on John Davenport Drive, at the Friday Night After Work Oldies Party. (Some of us still miss that.) We knew it was going to snow and we knew it was going to be significant. I don’t think anyone knew how significant it was going to be.
I left the party early and headed to the WRGA studios on Sixth Avenue. Turns out I was there until sometime the following Wednesday afternoon.
Radio will NEVER be better than it was those six days. Radio stations are licensed to serve the public interest. WRGA and WQTU definitely served the public interest during that storm. I think, and I still get a little emotional at the thought, the public served the public interest. People helped their neighbors like never before, or since for that matter. Folks in town for Marine Reserve duty that weekend became weekend warriors like never before.
The individual stories of how this community came together are far too numerous to try to recall here but suffice it to say that virtually every one of you has a story to go with that storm.
I think that No. 2 on my list, though I had almost nothing to do with it except for the fact that I was there, was the arrest of Carlton Gary, the so-called Columbus Stocking Strangler. I only worked in Columbus for 6 months but I got a call tipping me off that police had made an arrest in the case and that I should be at their headquarters at such and such a time when they would bring him in.
I’m guessing that whoever tipped me tipped every other reporter in the southeastern United States because the hallway leading into the police building was jampacked that night. Ironically, it was the last story I covered in Columbus before moving to Rome about a week later, in May of 1984.
Next on the list would be another 1984 incident, here in Rome. A man upset about a pending divorce went into the East Rome Domino’s to try to speak with his wife. She left the building and at some point shots were fired, though no one was hurt at the time. I was eating dinner at Schroeder’s with Tony McIntosh. (I’m pretty sure it was a full order of potato skins with bacon and mushrooms.) The boss called and said we needed to get to Domino’s.
We parked the old station wagon near what is now Petland. That’s as close as police would let us get. We were broadcasting with those old two-way radios when a gunshot rang out, the man dropped and police rushed the building. I’m sure my voice went up about six octaves; we were live when it happened. We didn’t know whether police had fired the shot, but as it turned out, the man shot himself.
Another really fascinating story I participated in was a cave rescue up in Walker County. Frank Early with the DNR got me early one morning to say that a massive cave rescue was underway at Ellison’s Cave, one of the most dangerous caves in the Eastern U.S.
It was January of 1987 when a fellow who was mapping a side passage had a rock pin him down, resulting in an openfracture broken leg. I knew it was going to be a difficult task radio wise, so I called Mike Searcy and Dean Marks to go up there with me. We used those old two-way radios to relay a signal from the top of the mountain down to the incident control center at the Crockford-Pigeon Mountain Check Station — where I literally alligator-clipped my radio into the landline to get the signal out. We were live during morning drive and I think it was a really compelling broadcast.
Gruesome as it was, I think my witness to the execution of James Messer in 1988 has to be included on the list. Messer was executed for the murder of his 8-year-old niece Rhonda Tanner in 1979. He took her out of school in Cedartown and when he attempted to molest her, the child fought back, prompting Messer to stab her to death.
I was asked if I wanted to be one of the media witnesses to the execution and, after thinking about it for a while, I agreed, just to see how it would impact my feeling about the death penalty. Back then it was done by the electric chair. My thoughts then, and now, are that there better not be any question, any doubt, about the person’s guilt. There’s no reversing the switch, or nowadays, the injection.
Next week remind me to tell you about the alligator at the roller skating rink.