Trivia Question: Where were you at 1:40 a.m. on July 27, 1996? You are forgiven if you don’t remember, but I can tell you where I was. Asleep. Very asleep.
It was the midpoint of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. I was managing director – communications and public affairs, dealing with politicians and the press. I hadn’t been getting much sleep.
The Games had gotten off to a rocky start, primarily due to a much-heralded, state-of-the-art technical system designed to give the media the latest information on upcoming competitions and immediate results. It didn’t work correctly for most of the first week. There were transportation issues as well.
Things seemed to be settling down and running smoothly and I was looking forward to the second and last week of the Games and some much-needed sleep. Spectators were having a great time and athletes were breaking Olympic records and world records at an astonishing pace. (By the time the Games were done, 32 world records and 111 Olympic records had been set.)
Beyond the competitions, there was the nightly entertainment offered up at Centennial Olympic Park. The park was the idea of Billy Payne, the CEO of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games who, along with a small group of believers, had secured the Games for Atlanta in one of the great upsets.
Since 1996 was the 100th year of the modern Olympic Games, it was assumed the International Olympic Committee would award the Centennial Games to Athens, Greece, where the 1896 Games had been held. They underestimated Payne and his hard-working team and the rest, as they say, is history.
Billy Payne decided Atlanta needed a gathering place for spectators and locals after having attended the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, and seeing people enjoying themselves in the evenings at a downtown area known as Storgata.
He selected an area of vacant houses and ramshackle buildings in the heart of downtown Atlanta for the park’s location. Now, he had to convinced Gov. Zell Miller and the powerful Speaker of the House Tom Murphy who weren’t exactly crazy about each other and Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell. Campbell was the one thing Miller and Murphy could agree on. Neither one of them liked the mayor. And Campbell didn’t like them.
His wise and all-knowing political consultant (me) advised him it couldn’t be done. He could never get the major players and their major egos to work together. One of Billy Payne’s better decisions was to ignore his wise and all-knowing political consultant. He did get them to work together. Thus was born Centennial Olympic Park, a magnet for bringing together people from around the world as well as from around town. It is estimated that more than 5.5 million people visited the park during the Games.
The FBI had assured us our enemies abroad weren’t planning to disrupt the Games but reminded us there could always be random acts of terror. However, they had “rooms full of people” that would quickly apprehend the perpetrators.
Such a random act occurred at 1:25 a.m. on July 27. I was awakened at 1:40 a.m. with this bit of news: “There has been a bombing in the park and we don’t know how many people have been killed.” That will wake you up in a hurry. Mercifully, the death toll was 2. One person was killed in the bombing and a cameraman died of a heart attack. Tragic as that was, it could have been much worse.
Around 4 a.m., as I recall, we gathered with officials from the IOC and representatives from the White House, the governor’s office, the mayor’s office, the FBI and the GBI.
It was decided the Games would go on. And they did. Spectators and volunteers seemed undeterred by the bombing. In the meantime, a despicable feeding frenzy by the media – some 10,000 total – focused on security guard Richard Jewell who was later found innocent and who sued and won some monetary judgements and apologies but whose life was basically destroyed.
As for the FBI’s “rooms full of people,” they didn’t catch the actual bomber, Eric Rudolph. After being on the run for 5 years, a rookie deputy sheriff caught Rudolph climbing out of a dumpster in North Carolina.
Sadly, horrific terrorist attacks – foreign and domestic – seem to have become a way of life these days. But the bombing in Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, 1996, is the one that I will never forget. In fact, I can’t.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139
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