Near Meltdown Occurs at Three Mile Island (March 28, 1979)

After I graduated from Penn State at the beginning of March 1979 I spent the rest of the month going on job interviews in New York City.  I stayed with my older brother, Darrell, who lived in Bayonne, NJ, conveniently located across from Manhattan.  In the months preceding my graduation I had set up meetings at ad agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample and Grey Advertising, and also arranged appointments with a number of personnel agencies.  If nothing turned up on the job front I planned to return home to Pittsburgh where I'd resume my job search.  (However, the personnel director - it wasn't called Human Resources back then - at the Kenyon & Eckhardt ad agency insisted that if I really wanted to work in advertising it had to be in New York, particularly after he interviewed for a job at Pittsburgh's major agency, Ketchum & MacLeod, and was told that if he wanted to be hired as its personnel director he'd first need to marry the woman he was living with.)

 

March 28 was a chilly Wednesday and after having meetings at three personnel agencies I walked across town to the Port Authority terminal to catch my bus back to Bayonne.  Walking along 42nd St. near the Public Library a NY Post headline caught my eye.  It screamed (as only a Post headline could) that an accident had occurred at a nuclear reactor in south central Pennsylvania and there was the possibility of a radiation leak. 

 

 

Residents of the New York metropolitan area were reassured that if a leak occurred we wouldn't be in danger, at least for the next few days, since the wind would be coming out of the north.  Still, the accident was of great concern since 30 million persons lived within a 200-mile radius of the reactor.  There was also skepticism about how forthright officials were being with the public as they tried to reassure residents in the vicinity of the reactor.  (My Aunt Lee and Uncle George lived in York, Pennsylvania, which wasn't far from where the reactor was located.)

 

 

A few days later Darrell and I saw the new movie China Syndrome (starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas) which, by eerie coincidence, had a plot about a meltdown cover up.  Looking back, I don't recall ever feeling panicked over the incident at Three Mile Island despite the fact that it was the most serious accident at a commercial nuclear power plant in US history.  Perhaps it was the cockeyed optimism that came with being a recent college graduate. 

 

 

A week later my future looked bright as I was hired by ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves to work in its media department.  And thousands of residents from south central Pennsylvania began returning to their homes. (Later in the year, however, my future seemed somewhat uncertain when talk of war, and a possible military draft, arose after Americans at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in Iran were taken hostage.)

 

Elizabeth Smart Escapes Her Captors (March 12, 2003)

From March 11-13, 2003 I was attending a Nielsen research conference at the Pointe Hilton Tapatio Cliff resort north of Phoenix.  After the second day's sessions had ended at 4:15 I went back to my suite to relax a bit before heading out to an evening rodeo when my friend Nina, who was also at the conference, called to tell me the shocking news that 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart had been rescued.  Elizabeth had been kidnapped nine months earlier from her home in a suburb of Salt Lake City and was rescued just eighteen miles away in Sandy, Utah.  After Nina's call I turned on CNN to watch its coverage of the news conference with police. 

 

 

 

This was an unexpectedly wonderful turn of events since kidnappings all too often end tragically, bringing to mind high-profile cases such as those of Adam Walsh, Polly Klaus and Etan Patz .  Nine years after her escape Elizabeth was married on February 18 in Hawaii. 

Karen Black Stars in "Trilogy of Terror" - A TV Movie for the Ages (March 4, 1975)

As a teenager I regularly watched ABC's Tuesday Movie of the Week.  It was on the network's schedule for seven seasons between 1969 and 1977 and showed great made-for-TV movies such as Brian's Song; The Girl Most Likely;and Crowhaven Farm.  And the movie that aired on March 4, 1975 may have been the most famous of them all.  It was talked about for days afterwards at school (I was in my senior year).  Titled Trilogy of Terror, it was three half-hour stories, each starring Karen Black.  But it was the third of these mini-movies, Amelia, that was the memorable one. 

 

The movie told the story of a voodoo doll that Black's character Amelia received in the mail that came to life and terrorized her.  She tried drowning it in the bathtub, trapping it inside a suitcase and finally throwing it in the oven but she couldn't vanquish it.  Ultimately, its spirit possessed her.  The chilling closing shot showed her crouched in the corner of the living room and wielding a butcher's knife while waiting for her nagging mother to arrive for dinner.  Viewing it now, the doll is cheesy and somewhat comical, but back then it freaked me out.  He was a scary little bugger.        

 

  

 

 

Unfortunately for Black, despite roles in well regarded movies such as Five Easy Pieces (with Jack Nicholson), Day of the Locusts and Nashville, she may be best known for this role (she died in 2013 at the age of 74).  This is similar to what happened to Faye Dunaway after her over-the-top performance in Mommie Dearest.  (They both do demented very well.)  

Remembering When Disco Madness Swept the Nation

I graduated from Penn State University on March 3, 1979 but the occasion wasn't tied to any momentous historical event.  Rather, my commencement took place at the height of the disco-dancing frenzy sweeping the nation.  At the time it seemed that Top-40 radio was playing nothing but wall-to-wall disco, e.g., hits such as YMCA; I Will Survive; Shake Your Groove Thing; Le Freak; and Do Ya Think I'm Sexy, to name just a few.  The Village People (whose first LP I bought in the spring of 1978) even appeared on the the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

 

After a celebratory lunch in State College with my parents, brother and sister, rather than return home to Pittsburgh I went east with my brother to his apartment in Bayonne, NJ.  (It would serve as my home base while I went on job interviews in Manhattan for a position in advertising.)  As we drove he played a cassette he had made from the wildly popular New York disco station WKTU.  As I caught a glimpse of the Manhattan skyline at sunset Sister Sledge's song He's the Greatest Dancer came on the air.

 

 

Four months later a backlash to disco music began, largely a reaction by listeners with more rock-oriented musical tastes (and who helped make My Sharona a big hit later that summer).  It was epitomized by "Disco Demolition Night" at Chicago's Comiskey Park on July 12 when a riot ensued after thousands of disco records were blown up as part of a radio station promotion (between games of a doubleheader).  However, gay, black and Latin audiences, who first embraced disco music in underground clubs in the early 1970s, would continue to do so for years to come as it evolved into hybrids such as Eurodisco, hi-NRG and electronica.

 

 

(If you'd like to relive the disco era, consider watching the movie 54, reading the book Hot Stuff: Disco & the Remaking of American Culture or listening to a great compilation of classic disco hits.)