A Silver Lining

When you are forced to cover a story like the Sandy Hook shooting, your only goal is to get the correct information out to the viewing public as quickly as possible.  You try to be accurate, dependable, credible and reliable.  I believe we did our absolute best that day and the weeks that followed as a TV station.  You never, ever have the chance to think, hey you know what, this is award-winning material we got going on here.

As it turns out, that’s just what it was.  Our station, NBC Connecticut has been awarded the very prestigious Peabody Award for Breaking News.

The Peabody is an award that is given out annually to honor the best of the best in television both traditional broadcasting and on cable.  The winners are picked by a panel of TV professionals, critics and certain academia.  It is an award given out by fellow broadcasting professionals to others in the same field.  It is very similar to the Pulitzer Prize for writing.

While I am immensely proud of everyone here at NBC Connecticut, I thinks it’s safe to say we would give this award back in a heartbeat if it meant we could get back just one, if not all of those 26 lives lost that horrible day.

That was the worst day of my professional career.  I hope I never have to go through something like that again.  I feel even worse for the reporters and the videographers who were on the scene seeing this tragedy unfold in front of them.  Of course none of this compares to the hurt and anger those families had to live through and continue to, to this day.

In light of all that, this is a major achievement and I am honored and humbled to be a part of it.  This is a testament to the kind of hard work and dedication that my co-workers show on a daily basis.  After that day I hated my job for a while.  Today, I am proud as a *ahem* peacock.  This helps validate what we all went through those early hours and days of this horrific and it is something I can look back on and feel proud of the work that we all did.

Finally, I just want to thank all my co-workers for all the hard work and literally the blood, sweat and tears in covering this tragedy. Two of the three in particular, morning reporter Liz Dahlam and her photog John Senecal, were absolutely awesome.  To put it simply they were the best of the best that day and it was such a comfort that I had two people out in the field that I could trust fully and thought along the same lines that I did.  Having John on the other end made our broadcast do much better.  The third was producer Chris Ayotte.  the two of us joke that we are each other’s “work spouse.”  We fight sometimes like a married couple but no matter what, we know what the other is thinking in the booth.  I don’t think there is anyone besides her that I would want in the booth during a story like this.

With all that said, today some more details will be released about the shootings.  I just hope that the people of Sandy Hook continue to be strong and the employees of NBC Connecticut share in your pain,  anger and continued recovery.

Related articles

• Newtown TV coverage, ‘Girls’ win Peabody Awards (newsday.com)
• Peabody winners include Newtown and Sandy coverage (salon.com)
• http://brainofjay.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/sandy-hook-elementary/

Sandy Hook Elementary

I’ve seen a lot during my thirteen years in the news business.  I’ve never had to remove myself from the booth for anything.  That all changed Friday afternoon.  I’ve never cried on the job.  Not once.  Not even during 9/11.  Not during the Cheshire home invasion.  That all changed Saturday.  I’ve never hated my job.  I’ve never dreaded coming into work.  that changed this past weekend.  I think it’s safe to say, all our lives changed this past weekend.  What we once thought as safe havens are no more.  Our definition of heroes has forever been defined.  No longer can we describe a sports play or player as heroic or a hero.  It’s safe to say they would never take a bullet for your kids.

I look at this tragedy through a different set of eyes.  Not only was I directing during all the chaos on Friday, helping deliver the unimaginable news to the state and sometimes the country, my mind kept wandering back to my wife, my daughter, my friends and my school.  My mind was just a bundle of “what if’s?”  What if this happened at a school my wife was working in that day.  What if this happened at my daughters preschool?  What if this happened at my high school where I coach or a number of the other schools I have close friends in.  For hours it became a fight in my head between what was happening and what could happen and eventually I just succumbed to the emotions.

I cried a lot on Friday.  I cried more that day then in any day since my father died twenty years ago.  I pride myself on being the rock both at work and at home.  I failed in both those aspects but I am fine with that.  At work I try to rise above the fray.  I try to stay stoic and focused on the job at hand.  That was an almost impossible task this past weekend.

It has taken a few days, but I feel like life is starting to get back to normal but in no means will it ever be the same.  If this isn’t a wake up call to the country, then I don’t know what is.  We need to improve our mental healthcare.  We need to refine and improve our gun laws and our obsession with guns in this country.  We need to change the way we look at our educators.  I will stand toe-to-toe with anyone that says teachers are over paid.  We need to treat the people who need it most and we need to pay the great men and women who cultivate learning and growing in our children more.  More guns will not make us a better country but I am confident that those first two points will.

Finally, I hope that all those families affected by this unforgivable tragedy find the strength to move on together.  Find the strength to live your lives that would make your son or daughter, brother or sister, wife or mom so proud of you.  I hope to never go through what these folks in Newtown are but I now realize how easily it could have been my town and it could be me.  I hug my daughter and wife a little tighter and a little longer now.

I hope that this finds all my readers well this holiday season and you all take the time to truly appreciate what this time of year is all about: Family.

For our fellow Nutmeggers in Newtown, your kids and teachers will always be in my heart.

Stay strong and Merry Christmas.

One At Bat

OK, first off you can count me as one of the few people who isn’t at all impressed with Adam Greenberg and his at bat last night as a Marlin vs. the Mets.  He had his lifelong dream fulfilled seven years ago.  I’ll admit, it’s a crappy way to have your at bat end, but that’s baseball.  There are risks in the sport and that’s one of them.  I understand all the difficulties that he had to overcome and no doubt will have to battle for the rest of his life.  Just because he has overcome those obstacles does not mean he earned a chance to get one more at bat.  He worked hard to get back on the field, great.  But there are plenty of career minor leaguers that work just as hard if not harder that will never get one at bat, let alone a 2nd.  You don’t see them starting an online petition begging teams to give them a chance.  Last night, Sportscenter actually tweeted out that his at bat was inspirational.  That was hardly inspirational.

Now this is:

We had a chance to interview Anthony Robles this morning.  What an amazing kid.  Born with one leg and overcame that to become NCAA wrestling champ.  Try to do anything with one leg.  Anything at all.  Now try to go wrestle.  He’s one hell of a nice guy and a very eloquent speaker.  He is on a book tour to promote his book .  This is a kid that was raised by a single parent to believe that he could and can do anything.   He never really thought of himself as disabled.  I had a chance to talk to him very briefly and you could feel the positivity coming from him.  A great kid with a great attitude that did it the right way through hard work and perseverance.  No one ever gave him a second chance.  He was able to make the most of his one and only chance.

Now that’s a remarkable story.

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• Adam Greenberg strikes out against R.A. Dickey in second-chance at-bat (newsday.com)

20 Years

Yesterday is always one of my least favorite days of the year, and this year it was especially difficult.  You see, September 14th 1992 my father died in a plane crash and yesterday marked 20 yrs since that dreadful day.

I would like to think that after so many years, the day just flows by like any other day.  While it has gotten easier in some respects, it is still very difficult in others.  The adage “time heals all wounds” may be true in certain aspects of life, but try telling that to a person who tragically lost a loved one unexpectedly.  I know that thousands lose love ones every day and in no way am I writing this to invoke any sympathy.  I write this as a form of therapy.  This is my release and if you’ve lost a loved one like I and my family has then you understand whole-heartedly where I am coming from.

Yesterday, I just had an odd sense of self.  The weather was eerily similar to that fateful day 20 yrs ago.  It was strange though, I woke up at 2am not realizing what day it was.  With the hours I work, many days just blend together and at that time of day I’m more robotic than human.  The wave of emotion finally hit me when I finally saw the date 9-14 in bold red numbers.  The rest of the day was spent trying to stay busy and pushing back my thoughts but they just kept pushing through.  I felt a good way to honor my father was to post pictures of some of his favorite things my Facebook timeline.  A shot of a ’69 maroon Jag XKE (his fave car), a Lear 35 (the plane he flew as his “job”), a Citabria (his private plane, his passion and ultimately what killed him) and a margarita (his favorite drink).  This was who he was: he loved his family, he loved his job, he was passionate about flying and the man knew who to relax.

I spent the rest of the day thinking where the past 20 yrs have led me. I go from being pissed off at him for not being here to see the man I’ve become. Pissed that he never met Nikki or his granddaughter. Never saw me graduate or seen me find success in a job i love. Then I start to think would I be a different person if he never died? what would I be? Where would I be?  Did his death ultimately lead me to become who I am now?  Then I remember the struggles that my mom, brother and I went through in order to survive and I feel the anger come back.  That’s hat yesterday was like.  That’s what I go through every year on that day and I suspect my mom and brother felt the same way along with the countless people who have lost loved ones.

You see, you never forget and it does get easier but it’s never easy.  I don’t think I ever want it to be easy.  I believe once the day becomes easy to get through, the memory is gone and I don’t want to forget him.  I want my daughter to understand who he was and what he was.  I think she needs to understand what her lineage is and he’s an important part of it.

On my way home from work, I stopped by the airport where he had his accident and just sat there, reflecting.  I’m not a spiritual person, but I felt him there.  I sat there and remembered all the good times we had.  I looked back on these past 20 yrs and I know he’d be proud of me and what I’ve done.  He’d love my wife and he’d adore Avery.  He’d be proud of Cam and he’d be happy my Mom found happiness.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of my father.  I hope that continues for as long as I live because as long as someone still exists in your thoughts, they never leave you.  I’m sure in a year from know these same thoughts will come flooding back but that’s a good thing I’ve realized.  It makes me appreciate where I have been and excited about where I may go.  It reminds me to look at my daughter and see the pure joy of life that she has and that my father still lives on in our mind.

I miss you everyday Pop.  I am who I am in part because of what happened and in part because of the woman you married.  She is a strong woman and continues to raise to outstanding sons.  You did good Pop and I promise that we’ll continue to make you proud.

Jim Calhoun

Today is the last day of Jim Calhoun’s remarkable career as UConn’s head basketball coach.  While the day will be spent looking back on the almost unfathomable job he did building UConn into a national power, let us not forget the about the black marks that will forever tarnish his legacy.

Now, I don’t want this to come off as a negative.  The NCAA championship in 1999 was one of my top sports moment.  The win in 2004 was as great as it could get, combined with Geno and his Husky Womens’ title, it made CT the center of the hoops world.  The 3rd and final championship was so surprising and so special in hindsight, Calhoun probably should have hung it up as soon as he cut down the net.

After the 2004 season, UConn seemed to go away from what made them great: finding hidden gems and hardworking kids who bought into what Coach was selling.  Instead, the program started to go after high risk/high reward talent.  I think Calhoun had such a run of taking any recruit and turning them into “UConn Players” he started to believe that any kid could be saved.  As it turns out, Nate Miles, a kid who never but on the husky blues, was where his legacy began to unravel.

Enough of that though.  While almost every long-lasting coach (Paterno, Bowden, etc) has some sorta skeletons in the closet, I think it’s only fair to focus on what he accomplished here.  Something that a majority of pundits thought was impossible.  He single handedly turned a mediocre regional basketball program into a top-ten program in as little as 10 yrs.  UConn went from recruiting 2nd level New England talent to some of the best in the country like Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton, Donyell Marshall and Kemba Walker.  He was able to go over seas and grab players like Doron Sheffer and Nadav Henefeld that helped shape his legacy.  No one can ever take away his numerous Big East titles and his three championships.  No one can ever deny the fact that He and his wife have spent countless hours giving back to the people of CT through his various charities.

Unfortunately, as much good as the man did, there are plenty of detractors and readers of my blog know I am one of them.  While he did prove me wrong last year, the previous few I thought he was done.  Between his health issues and his poor recruiting choices, I thought he had passed his prime.  Lets be real too, if it wasn’t for the miraculous play of Kemba, that 3rd ring would not be on his finger.  Here is what I wrote about 18 months ago.

While I was only four months off, it still holds true.  To use a sports term, his legacy is what it is.  With the good comes the bad.  No matter what you think of him you can’t argue with the unfounded success he leaves behind at UConn.

In my heart, we’ll always have 1999!

 

Blowing the Dust Off

It’s been 3 months and 12 days since I last wrote a blog post.

I’m not quite sure why I took such a long sabbatical.  It wasn’t a lack of topics to right about I think I just needed a respite.  I seemed to be getting bored with the writing process.  I was always able to find something else to do other than sit down and write.  I guess it just wasn’t the time to put anything down.

I missed it at times yet I still couldn’t get my mind motivated enough to put thoughts to keyboard.  Maybe I was looking for reasons not to write.  Maybe I was burned out a bit.  I had written almost 900 entries in just about four years.  A lot may have been mindless drivel but after reading through a few dozen entries this morning, I realized how much fun I had writing.  I know I’m not the best but I do enjoy it and in a way, it is therapeutic.

So why today?  I can tell you it’s not because of the remembrance of 9/11 that’s been all over the news this morning.  I actually think it’s because of what’s happening tonight.

As many of my loyal readers know (well, those that are left) I am a high school coach.  This time of year, I am the JV girls/varsity assistant soccer coach at Hale-Ray and tonight is our first game.  There are very few things that get me fired up all day, but the opening of any season is always a special day.  As the years have gone by, I think I have enjoyed writing about the kids I coach more than anything else.

Every team I’ve coached each seem to have their own unique personality.  This one is no different.  I’ve been around teams that truly hate one another or at least a specific few.  This team has none of that.  Each girl fits in with every other girl.  They have fun together, laugh together and work hard together.

I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t tell what lies in store for us this season.  One thing I do know is this team has been a pleasure to coach during the preseason and have worked really hard to get better.  What they lack in talent they make up for in want.

I don’t know why I have a special feeling about these girls.  I’m not predicting anything.  I just got a hunch that they could do something special and that journey begins tonight.

Good Luck girls and Go Noises!

Least Favorite Day of the Year

I always dread this day and it never gets any easier.  I’m not sure if it’s because I know the coaching is done or the seniors are done but either way, this day sucks.

Yesterday, we lost to the #1 team in our class 3-0.  It proved many things.  One:  we can compete with anyone in our class.  Two: not much separates us from the best-of-the-best and three: these were a great group of seniors.

We battled up until the last out yesterday and just got beat on a good pitch.  I am in no way disappointed with my guys.  We were only really bad in one game this year.  All the rest of them seemed to hinge on one or two plays.  We lost a bunch of one run games.  The big hit just seemed to always elude us.  But hey, that’s baseball.

I feel comfortable in the fact that we gave these kids all the opportunities that our school can offer.  We gave them all tools necessary to win  and I think we did a great job preparing them for whatever awaits them.

Doubt always creeps into your head wondering if you’ve done all you can as a coach.  You always wonder if you prepared them well enough.  I feel that we did after watching what Northwest Catholic does with their players.  The #1 team ran many of the same drills, talked to them the same way and worked them just like us.  It just goes to show, that even at little ol’ Hale-Ray, our kids are preparing the same way as one of the premier high schools in the state.  But hey, we just give them the chance to learn the skills, the kids gotta execute and for the most part we did.

We out hit them 6-3 and I believe that 90 out of 100 times, we beat them with how we played.  Yesterday just wasn’t in the cards for us.

These past two years have been particularly tough.  Both senior classes were filled with great kids and great players and gave me as a coach so many good memories.  They should be proud knowing that the program is left in great hands.  Their successes will always be a standard for us and I hope we can be better because of their failings.  Whatever way it happens, these kids will have impacted our program for a long time coming and honestly, what more could you ask of them.

Once again, thanks guys!  I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did!  Good Luck and Go Noises!

 

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• Senior Day (brainofjay.wordpress.com)