April 23, 1985 was a Tuesday and I had taken the day off from work (ad agency Young & Rubicam) because I was having a chest of drawers, platform bed and bookcase delivered from The Door Store to my new apartment in the West Village. That morning, as I waited for the delivery truck, I heard on the radio about Coke introducing a new formulation for its flagship brand.
I grew up drinking Pepsi - there was a Pepsi bottling plant in my hometown with a huge illuminated bottle cap on its roof and as a child I thought it was Pepsi's headquarters. However, I was still curious and bought a can of New Coke the next day. I didn't detect much of a difference in the taste. (The idea behind the change was to make it closer in taste to Pepsi). However, the reaction by Coke drinkers was swift and furious. Because of this backlash "Classic" Coke was brought back during the summer.
Despite my longstanding preference for Pepsi I found my affinity weakening as we entered the 21st century. I was a longtime diet soda drinker (ever since reading Sugar Blues in 1982) but rarely drank diet Coke because I thought it tasted more artificial compared to other brands. However, Coke began dabbling in line extensions that piqued my interest.
An array of flavors were introduced, e.g. lime and cherry,that to my taste buds masked the artificial taste, so I found myself drinking diet Coke more frequently. (By the way, whatever happened to Vanilla Coke or Coke Blak?) Then the introduction of Coke Zero in 2005 reeled me in further as I found it tasted very similar to regular Coke. While I still occasionally drink diet Pepsi I think Coke Zero is by far the best tasting diet soda on the market.
What I remember most about the shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999 is that I went the entire day without hearing anything about it. This was highly unusual because I always had the radio on in my office, but I spent this day mostly in meetings in a conference room (at ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding).
It wasn't until I got home and turned on the TV after 7:00 that I heard about it. It was reported that as many as 25 were dead, but since the school had been locked down until the next morning the true numbers weren't known. The following morning the death toll was revised downward to 15 (including the two student shooters).
Before Columbine there had been four even deadlier shootings. They occurred in a post office, two restaurants, and on a college campus. Columbine, however was the first to have such young targets - and the first to be communicated immediately to the outside world by victims on their cell phones.
Unfortunately, as with all previous shooting rampages in this country, after an initial outpouring of grief and recriminations, life returned to normal, i.e. a feckless Congress unwilling to buck the NRA and draw up legislation to protect its citizens. And eight years later, 32 students and faculty were mowed down at Virginia Tech (pictured). Even that much carnage couldn't change a thing. And the beat goes on ...
U.S. Gun Carnage: A Tragic Roll Call
60murdered at Las Vegas country music festival/Oct. 1, 2017
49 murdered at Pulse Nightclub, Orlando, FL/June 12, 2016
32 murdered at Virginia Tech/April 16, 2007
26 murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown, CT/Dec. 14, 2012
24 murdered at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, TX/Oct. 16, 1991
23 murdered at Walmart in El Paso, TX/Aug. 3, 2019
21 murdered at McDonald's in San Ysidro, CA/July 18, 1984
16murdered in Austin, TX/Univ. of TX campus/Aug. 1, 1966
14 murdered at office party in San Bernardino, CA/Dec. 2, 2015
14 murdered at Edmonds, OK post office/Aug. 20, 1986
13 murdered at Columbine HS/Littleton, CO/April 20, 1999
13murdered at Ft. Hood, TX military base/Nov. 5, 2009
12 murdered at movie theater in Aurora, CO/July 20, 2012
11murdered at synagogue in Pittsburgh/Oct. 27, 2018
10 murdered at supermarket in Boulder, CO/March 22, 2021
10 murdered in rural Alabama/March 10, 2009
10 murdered in Jacksonville, FL/June 18, 1990
9murdered in Dayton, OH/Aug. 5, 2019
9 murdered at church in Charleston, SC/June 17, 2015
9 murdered in Red Lake, MN by teen boy/March 21, 2005
When a bomb tore apart the Alfred P. Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 I had been at my new job as media research director at New York ad agency Foote Cone & Belding for just a month. It was a sunny Wednesday afternoon and I was at my desk in my office in the GM Building. In the background I had the "oldies" radio station WCBS playing (the radio was in the style of one from the 1930s, a send-off gift from my old staff). It was from that radio that I first heard the shocking news about the explosion that occurred earlier in the morning.
The front of the building had been completely blown off and the death toll slowly mounted as the days went by (the final toll was 168 with nearly 700 injured). I found it curious when initial reports mentioned children being among the many casualties. I thought that perhaps a group of students had been on a field trip there. Later when I got home is when I heard that a daycare center for workers' children was in the building.
At first many jumped to the conclusion that this was the act of Muslim terrorists, so it was surprising when the FBI showed sketches the next day of two suspects who were Caucasian. Indications were that the attack was carried out by US citizens who were part of a burgeoning anti-government "militia" movement. It annoyed me that reporters regularly remarked how awful it was that such an attack happened in "the heartland" as if it would have been less of a tragedy if it occurred in a big city on the East or West Coast.
Six years later the driver of the bomb-laden truck, Timothy McVeigh, was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, three months before the attacks on 9-11 - which would surpass the Oklahoma City bombing as the worst terrorist attack on the US mainland.
The U.S. bombing of Muammar Gaddafi's headquarters in the Libyan capital of Tripoli in the spring of 1986 triggers memories of my first visit to Los Angeles. The day of the airstrike, April 14, was a Monday and my first full day playing tourist there. I was staying with a former colleague from ad agency Young & Rubicam who now worked for McCann Erickson on Wilshire Boulevard. Elsa lived in Sherman Oaks, which was over the Hollywood Hills in the San Fernando Valley.
I rented a white Dodge Colt from Rent-A-Wreck and drove to Venice Beach in the morning. Later I walked around West Hollywood, visited a few stores on Melrose Ave. and stopped by the International Male store on Sunset Boulevard before heading over to the Beverly Center a few blocks away. It was there during the early evening that I came upon a group of shoppers milling about in front of an electronics store watching President Reagan's address to the nation. He explained that our surprise attack was in retaliation for a bombing at a German disco a week earlier linked to Libya that killed one American soldier and injured hundreds of others.
(Unfortunately, Libyan sponsored terrorism would continue and culminate in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotand two-and-a-half-years later.)
Because of the military action I had some concerns about the security of my return trip to New York at the end of the week. It turned out my worries were justified as my red-eye flight was delayed by five hours due to a bomb threat. This included an hour delay after boarding as our luggage was taken off the plane and searched again. We didn't take off until 4AM.
My mother was 19 years old in the spring of 1945 and had a war-related job in downtown Pittsburgh working for the American Bureau of Shipping. The Bureau was located on the 32nd floor of the Grant Building, the second tallest building in Pittsburgh (it had been the tallest until the 44-story Gulf Building opened in 1933). Mom's job, her first out of high school, was as a typist who prepared shipping certificates that were attached to crates of munitions being shipped to various European destinations (she was under strict orders not to discuss her work). In smoky Pittsburgh of the 1940s this was a great place to be working, and the Grant Building was one of the city's premiere business addresses.
April 12 of that year was a Thursday and she and her friend/co-worker, Willa, left work and walked down to Joseph Horne department store where they got on the streetcar for the 20-30 minute trip to their neighborhood of Chartiers City. Shortly after arriving at their stop they bumped into a neighbor, Mrs. Frankel, who told them the news that President Roosevelt had died a short time ago. FDR died of a stroke in the middle of the afternoon while having his portrait painted in Warms Springs, Georgia. The president was only 63 and just three months into his unprecedented fourth term.
Shortly after the news was reported on the radio paperboys were out on the streets selling an "extra" edition of the paper with the breaking news. Mom said it was difficult to imagine life without him; after all, her formative years had been lived entirely under FDR's presidency. And Harry Truman's countrified persona couldn't have been more different from that of the more worldly FDR with his trademark monocle, cigarette holder and patrician accent.
One month later the war ended in Europe and Mom was without a job. However, she said it was all done in a very nice way and everyone who was let go was given a bonus. With part of hers Mom bought a pair of earrings she had been admiring for some time at a jewelry store in the lobby of the Grant Building. They had three small clusters, each with a different colored gemstone surrounded by rhinestones. They cost $5 (about $65 in today's dollars). And she still has them.
(To further immerse yourself in FDR's legacy you may want to consider the book FDR or the PBS video American Experience: FDR).
Spring had arrived two weeks earlier, the 1982 baseball season had begun the day before and Easter was less than a week away. Yet here it was April 6 and we were under a blizzard warning, the first ever issued for New York in April. Rain began overnight, changed over to wet snow by the morning rush hour and then the blizzard's full fury set in from 10 AM until 4 PM. Most offices closed at noon, and the Mets and Yankees postponed their home openers. I stayed at the office (ad agency Young & Rubicam) until the usual time because I lived in Manhattan and getting home wasn't an issue.
That evening when I emerged from the PATH station in my Greenwich Village neighborhood I turned the corner onto my street and was amazed by the drifts I had to trudge through to get home. However, despite the snow the bowling league I participated in at Bowlmor Lanes still met.
Although Central Park had 9.6" of snow many suburbs reported a foot or more (Albany had 17.3"). It was New York's biggest snowfall in four years. By midnight the temperature had fallen to a record 21°. Not much in the way of snow melt occurred the next day as the temperature stayed below freezing - as opposed to a typical high in early April approaching 60°. (By contrast, on the same date 28 years later New York would report its earliest 90-degree reading.) Three days later I flew home to visit my parents in Pittsburgh for Easter and it was snowing there (two inches fell). Thankfully, this wasn't a precursor to an unusually cold April as a string of mild days occurred mid-month and then on April 25 the mercury hit 82°.
If you love reading about snow, I've written five other posts about New York snowstorms:
And if you'd like to read about other New York City snowstorms, I've written a post on my weather blog, New York City Weather Archive, that recaps the snowstorms we've experienced since 1950. To go to it please double click here.
Ours was one of the first families in the neighborhood to own a color TV. It was a Magnavox, delivered at the beginning of April 1968. On Thursday, April 4, I had just come in from playing in the backyard, where I'd been having fun rolling around inside the TV's shipping box. (I was 10 years old at the time.) When evening came, I went inside and lay on the living room floor eager to watch The Flying Nun in living color for the first time. However, shortly after it came on a news bulletin interrupted to report that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis. He was just 39 years old.
The next day, looking from our side porch, we could see smoke rising in the distance (about 10 miles away). It was from fires set during rioting in a predominantly black neighborhood in Pittsburgh known as the Hill District. The biggest fire came from a supermarket there that had been torched. (Riots had broken out across the country as a result of MLK's assassination.) Since we lived in a predominantly white community I didn't realize Pittsburgh had many black residents, at least not enough to have their own neighborhood.
Tuesday, April 9, was King's funeral in Atlanta and schools were closed because of concerns that there might be trouble. I didn't watch the funeral but occasionally would catch a glimpse of the funeral procession on TV when I'd walk through the living room. For the most part I spent the day outside playing because the weather was nice and warm. This was my first exposure to the tumult of 1968 that was just getting underway.
(There are countless books and videos about the accomplishments of and controversies surrounding King, including an autobiography, the 1978 NBC mini-series King and the acclaimed PBS documentary from 2004 Citizen King.)
Hale-Bopp was one of the brightest comets to streak across the skies in the 20th century. And unlike Kohoutek, a much hyped comet that turned out to be a big dud in the winter of 1974, H-B lived up to its hype. A survey conducted by Sky & Telescope Magazine reported that 69% of Americans saw it during the winter and spring months of 1997. (The photo to the right was taken in the lower Hudson River Valley).
I was thrilled to catch a glimpse of Hale-Bopp, especially since star gazing in Manhattan can be a frustrating experience due to the glare from the city's lights. It was Wednesday evening on April 2 at around 7:30 and I was doing my thrice-weekly 5-mile jog along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. In the Battery Park City neighborhood I noticed a man pointing his telescope across the river in the direction of Jersey City. I glanced over my shoulder and was stunned to see a slash of light not far above the horizon. It seemed to be holding still in the sky and had the classic comet's tail. I stopped running to gaze at it further and then detected a slight, jerky horizontal motion. It was a very Zen moment. (My sighting occurred one day after the comet's closest approach to the sun, aka "perihelion".)
A week before my sighting the comet figured prominently in a mass suicide carried out by members of a religious cult known as Heaven's Gate. 39 members, mostly young adults, and the cult's elderly leader Do (pronounced "doe") committed the act in a rented mansion in an affluent suburb of San Diego. A videotape made shortly before the suicides indicated that a spaceship following behind H-B would pick up their souls. It was done in a very orderly manner and the victims were dressed in a similar fashion, which included wearing the identical Nike sneakers.
This was also an interesting time in my life (perhaps the comet had something to do with it). With my 40th birthday looming in May an ex-boyfriend from 10 years earlier reappeared. "David the Israeli", as I referred to him, was now living in Chicago (not far from Wrigley Field) and suggested I consider moving there as well. (I attached "the Israeli" to his name because there was a multitude of Davids in my life at the time, i.e. my roommate, boss and a number of co-workers, so to avoid confusion they each had their own descriptor.) At the last minute he joined me and my friend Tom when we went to San Francisco on vacation in March. (That's me with David on Lombard St. I'm the tall one.) Then at the end of April I visited him in Chicago (my first time there).
It was a whirlwind six weeks but, alas, it didn't work out this time either as the same dispiriting patterns re-emerged (his, of course). And no appearance from a comet was going to magically change him. Speaking of comets, if you'd like to learn even more about them the book The Greatest Comets talks about famous ones through history.