In this business as journalists, we are trained to distance ourselves from the story. Remain impartial. Not get involved. Even when stories are emotional. We learn to compartmentalize things for lack of a better term. But sometimes that is impossible. It became impossible for me earlier this week when a plane carrying a young medical patient crashed in Northeast Philadelphia. It crashed on the very street corner where I grew up.
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My son Greg called me and said ‘Hey Dad – a plane just went down in NE Philly near some mall.' I asked him if he knew the name. He said the Roosevelt Mall. My heart sank and I ran to the TV. What I saw was jarring and shook me to my core.
With visions of the fiery plane crash coursing through my mind. I have flashbacks to my childhood. My safe haven. The streets where I lived, the place where my brothers and I grew up looked like a war zone erupted in a ball of flames.
Craters and debris littered the landscape. People were running amidst the chaos of police – fire and rescue crews trying to find those hurt and injured.
How could this happen here? How?
Some of the row homes like the home I lived in on Leonard Street, next to the ones where I played were hauntingly illuminated by flames.
The scenes that played in my mind of my parents and neighbors sitting on the stoop while Bob Pete And I played with our neighbors Michael, Tim, and Danny, vanished in sharp contrast to the stark horror of the reality of 2025.
The last time I visited the neighborhood I was there with my brother Pete, Greg, and my wife Christy. We sat on the steps to my house. It was bittersweet because it was Pete’s last visit before he passed.
Things change, neighborhoods change, and life changes.
We accept that.
The change that fiery crash brought the fact that a little girl traveled all the way from Mexico and survived medical care at the Shriners Children’s Hospital only to die in that horrific crash with her Mom and the crew that was trying to get her safely home died a horrific death as well That’s hard to accept.
The change that fiery crash brought to my old neighborhood. THAT is hard to accept. The images that flash in my mind almost a week later THAT is hard for me to reconcile. The fact that the image of my childhood home is now not one of comfort and the things that every child should enjoy in their adult years.
I have no choice but to deal with it. I know it’s worse for those who live there.
I also know my next visit won’t be the same. Like so many things these days, I have no choice but to deal with it. Because that’s our reality.
We make the best of things. That’s what we do. And there is one thing no one can take away from us – despite the cold hard facts that the news delivers --- warm memories live on in our hearts. The warm memories of my childhood. Given what’s going on in the world around us, I can’t let anything rob me of that.
News guys who are supposed to compartmentalize the news of the day or not.
I just won’t.
Thanks for indulging me.