By Mark Wilson 1/6/14

Stop it. As Rob Parker would say, “C’mon Stahhhhp… stop with that!”

Oh, wait. That was Doug Collins’ famous line.

Whoever it was, don’t be telling me it’s been 20 years since that snowy winter day when Detroit became the focus of the women’s ice skating world.

But, I looked it up and yep, it’s true. Two full decades have come and gone. It was an innocent minor sports story on January 6, 1994 that blew up into one of the biggest spectacles EVER.

Let’s take you back there.

Hey! You’ve got nothing better to do. It’s like minus a million degrees outside after yet another “Snowmageddon” weather event in Michigan. Huddle up, grab the cocoa and here we go.

I was at FOX 2 as sports director and walked into the morning news meeting to find that WEATHER was dictating our entire newscasts that day. A BIG six inch snow was expected and damn it all… we were going to hit it hard and beat the competition.

(Insert eye roll here)

To be honest, I can now say I despised those 8 AM news meetings. Most of the time, one of our sports producers would show up but somehow, I got roped in at getting there early. I blame Bobby Ellis, Bryan Bender, Art Regner, Kelly Liberti and any other producer who was either there at the time or not. Ha!

You got FRANKED!

Melanie Gill, now married to Bobby Ellis, was our crack assignment editor and she was good. When she got around to me, I said we had a terrific story about a female skater at the United States Women’s Figure Skating Championships that was in town at Joe Louis Arena. We would need a camera and videographer to go with me to shoot it right around 11 AM.

“All weather today; can’t do it,” Melanie said.

At that point I wondered if I could just go home and get back under the warm and cozy covers.

“It’s a really good story,” I replied stupidly.

I think Melanie had some choice words for my “really good story” but I was fading by that time anyhow. All I knew was I was getting NO camera to shoot my “really good story” for the 5 PM newscast.

And THAT is how we missed the story of the decade.

I could stop there but I feel like writing a ton of words about what happened next.

It wasn’t Melanie’s fault. In most newsrooms around the country; er… uh, no… let’s make that ALL newsrooms around the country, when weather happens— everything else STOPS.

A good buddy of mine loves telling the deal about the news director at WXYZ Channel 7 who walked into the “pit area” in the middle of the summer with all the action rolling around him and brought the newsroom to a standstill with this gem.

“Heat!”

That was all he said.

It was inferred that no matter what else they were working on, they needed to stop and concentrate on doing heat stories since it was like 90 degrees or something. HEAT would be the lead.

(Insert another eye roll here)

So, while all of WJBK Channel 2 (I don’t think we were FOX yet) was scrambling to come up with the usual boring snow vignettes, I went back to my sports office to sit around and read the newspaper. Yeah, there was no internet yet either.

Seriously, HOW did we live without the web?

After about 15 minutes of that, I decided to drive up to the Silverdome. I would check in with the Lions because (and get ready for it) they had a PLAYOFF game coming up with the Packers AT HOME on that Saturday.

The Lions were fresh off winning the NFC Central, hard to believe I know, and had two more days of preparation.

I had already gotten all my interviews for that game so we were packed with “video and sound” and didn’t need any more. I didn’t have a camera anyhow so I would just go up there and shoot the bull with Coach Wayne Fontes and others as I would often do in those days.

For those who don’t remember the 90’s Lions, they were chronic under-achievers who made the playoffs SIX times in the decade.

Current Lions fans ages 30 and under are STARTLED by that fun fact.

The snow had already begun and driving to Pontiac wasn’t easy but I made it up there and caught the last bit of practice and then strolled around the locker room.

Seemingly, for no apparent reason.

As I was about to walk into Fontes’ office, I got a “911” alert on my pager.
Ah yes, no cell phones yet. We all had pagers. Those were a blast!

I had to go back downstairs to the pay phone and call the station.

Pagers, pay phones (we used typewriters to TYPE our stories)… it sounds like I’m discussing ancient Roman times.

This was 1994!

“Get downtown to Joe Louis. SOMETHING has happened there at the skating!”

That’s all I heard. I told the desk assistant that I was at the Silverdome and with the driving being bad, it would take a while.

The person mumbled some swear words and said, “Well, then get GOING!”

By now, the snow was really coming down and figured it would take me about an hour to make it to JLA. Then it started to hit me while I was plugging along at around 28 miles an hour down I-75.

It better not be anything surrounding Nancy Kerrigan.

The story that I had pitched in the morning meeting was a feature on Kerrigan, who was the U.S.A. best bet for a gold medal in Lillehammer, Norway. I had set it up with her coaches. I would meet up with Kerrigan in practice and do the obligatory “practice piece.” We’d get video of her skating around and then talk to her right after her ice session.

Blah, blah. No big deal but a nice healthy TV package for a Thursday.

Remember, Detroit really had no dog in that fight. JLA was just the venue for the championships. It had all the media interest of a tractor pull or a monster truck jam in town. The event wouldn’t even get a mention on the sports news if it had been anywhere else.

All of a sudden… SOMETHING happened. Now, it would be news.

When I finally got to Joe Louis, it was learned that indeed it did involve Kerrigan, a lovely Olympian medalist at the 1992 winter games in Albertville, France. She came to Detroit from the Boston area. I thought she was worth a story.

Supposedly, she had been attacked by someone AFTER PRACTICE.

The way I always had our videographers shoot things like that would be to have them follow her off the ice and let her walk past the camera so I could use it for “b-roll” in the editing process. B-roll is any support video to use during the interviews and during my narration.

There! You just graduated video editing 101.

Channel 2 would be sending a camera to meet me but they had not yet arrived. I went to the pay phone (ugh!) down the visitors’ hockey dressing room corridor. At this point, people were running around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off.

I wanted to tell our assignment people that Kerrigan WASN’T at Joe Louis Arena.

Her practice session was slated for next door at Cobo Hall.

I knew that because that was on my calendar which I have to this day. I wrote it down because they were using Cobo as an auxiliary facility for practice. Some of the girls practiced there, and some at JLA. Kerrigan had an 11 AM ice time at COBO.

Not Joe Louis.

Believe me when I say, NO ONE was paying attention to this thing in Detroit with the Lions in the playoffs an all. The figure skating championships could have been held inside Melanie Gill’s house… and she wouldn’t have noticed.

Most people simply didn’t care about the event.
I kept calling back on the (hanging my head) pay phone to again relay to our newsroom that Kerrigan had been at Cobo and not JLA. If they were sending Scott Lewis or Bill Gallagher or any other of our fine award-winning news reporters to join me in this venture, someone needed to be at Cobo.

Lewis finally was the one to go to Cobo.

As it turned out, the early story was that Kerrigan had skated off the ice around 12:30 PM or so and before she could reach the dressing room, some person had flashed out of nowhere to smash her on the leg with some kind of a weapon. She yelled out in pain and screamed, “WHY, WHY?”

“InterSport” was a freelance video unit that captured it on tape.

WE would have captured it on tape too IF we had been there.

Most of that was known after the fact because wild rumors were pouring out after Kerrigan was taken to the hospital. One rumor had it that she was in critical condition and that it was one of her “stalkers” from across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario Canada.

Another rumor was… a jealous boyfriend had flown into Detroit to kill her.

Yet another rumor was… she was mis-targeted and that it was supposed to happen to another skater, Michelle Kwan who was only 13 years old but already a world class figure skater.

The last one was stupid because nobody would mistake Kerrigan for Kwan.

Plain and simple, by mid-afternoon on January 6, 1994 not a sole really knew what was going on.

But… SOMETHING happened!

Kerrigan, as I mentioned, was already gone to a hospital and unavailable for any interviews. Her coaches were with her. That left NOTHING happening at EITHER JLA or Cobo. Just people and police and arena staff flailing their arms in anxiety.

It was strange.

Word started to spread on the “news wires” (another hanging of the ancient head) about the supposed attack. Because of the snow, it wasn’t easy to get downtown and as the networks learned of the incident they knew they couldn’t fly a reporter in until the earliest, Friday night.

Our Channel 2 newsroom let me know that I would not only have to front our story “live” but also do “live shots” for other CBS affiliates around the nation. They had received about 60 requests for a “live update.”
I kept thinking, update on what? Nancy Kerrigan was in the hospital, there were no suspects apprehended and NOTHING was going on at the two ice rinks.

The LEAST we could do, I thought, was to go get some ice skater reaction to the “incident” at Cobo.

We had a little time so I grabbed my videographer and headed for the old Westin Hotel at the Detroit Renaissance Center. I probably knew more than other reporters in town about where they were staying, etc. only because I had scheduled a preview story. I was paying attention.

Did I mention THAT story was actually WITH Nancy Kerrigan?

Good. Just wanted to make that clear.

The Ren Cen was a flurry with activity because of the attack but I was the only reporter there that I saw. The skaters had been taken back to the hotel immediately after Kerrigan went down. That’s why NOTHING was happening at the two rinks.

My first call from the hotel house phone was to a fellow skater, Tonya Harding.

Harding, Kwan and Kerrigan were the “big 3” in U.S. women’s figure skating for the championships. Nicole Bobek was another and I was going to call her room next.

Harding answered the phone when I called.

She said it was no problem and she would come downstairs and give me a comment on the incident even though she said she didn’t know what the situation was or how Kerrigan was doing.

At this point, we had absolutely NO idea that she had any involvement in the sports story of the decade up to that point.

I had only a casual notion of what she looked like when she came down the escalator. Dressed in a crop top, daisy duke shorts and flip flops… I greeted her in the lobby of the hotel. She smiled and couldn’t have been friendlier.

As I turned around to grab the microphone from my videographer or “photog” as we called them, I realized he was no where to be found.

“Can you hang for a second?” I asked Harding.

“Sure, no problem,” she responded.

At this point, she was holding the flip flops in her hand and was barefoot in the lobby of the Westin in the middle of winter with a blizzard going on outside.

But, I figured it didn’t matter. It was warm in the hotel lobby. She just looked a bit odd for January in Michigan.

I ran around the lobby looking for my “photog” and just couldn’t find him.

No where. Gone. Invisible.

Back to Tonya Harding I went.

Explaining that I couldn’t find the dude and kind of laughing about it even though my time was running out, she said it wasn’t a problem. She would go back upstairs and just call her if I found him.

Thinking that was nice of her, I let her go.

I let TONYA HARDING GO… because I didn’t have a videographer. Crap.

I’m pausing as I type to drink that in for the millionth time.

Oh well. I found my guy in the coffee shop having some pie. I asked, “What the hell,” and he responded with a half-hearted, “I was hungry.” He was hungry for PIE.

It’s true; my UNION videographer had not had his break which he was entitled too. Pie sounded good.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my former co-workers at Channel 2. The best people I ever worked with in the business. But, in retrospect, we had the story of the decade and the main culprit right in her bare feet waiting to be interviewed and I had to, LET HER GO.

Well, somewhere in a book written by her boyfriend/husband and co-conspirator Jeff Gillooly, Harding got back upstairs and this time Gillooly shut it down. He told Harding not to go back and do ANY interviews for fear she might say something she shouldn’t.

We didn’t know that yet.

I called once I found my pie-eating “photog” and of course, the phone rang and no one picked up.

Now it was getting late and we had to go back to JLA to do “live shots” with no information and no interviews and really nothing to offer on the story.

Bobek and Kwan were unavailable by house phone as well so luckily, I ran into one of Kerrigan’s coaches who was just back from the hospital. I quickly turned a camera on him and he gave a remedial update and I left the hotel in a hurry.

That’s all I got.

Outside was miserable. Snow was piling up, it was colder and there was slush and ice and gunk all over. Good thing I had on new Italian shoes and a nice suit. I was about to spend the next two hours doing “live shots” in all that muck.
We already knew our signal was not good INSIDE the arena. We had to go outside Joe Louis to get a good signal. I fed the interview tape of the coach back to the station, told them that’s all there is on this thing and they couldn’t have cared less.

There were LIVE SHOTS to do! Lot’s of them.

One of our “photogs,” Jim Vernier, was given the duty of holding a small microwave dish pointed at our “repeater” downtown so the signal could get back to our Southfield studios on 9 Mile.

I can’t accurately describe how he looked.

Snow was blasting, wind was howling and he was holding this dish while I was trying to avoid puddles of icy slush in Italian shoes grabbing onto a Channel 2 microphone for dear life.

Tell me once again about this glamorous life of a TV sports reporter?

To this day I laugh about that evening.

We had barely any facts about anything and there I am doing mega-reports “live” to not just OUR station but stations all around the nation from Miami to Seattle. Various time zones, various segments and numerous anchors to call by name.

In Albany, New York… Joanne Purtan was the anchor and I personalized her “live shot” since I knew her father was longtime Detroit radio legend, Dick Purtan. Joanne is now a longtime Detroit media person herself at Channel 7. I also went to Michigan State with her sister, Jennifer.

“Being from Detroit, Joanne, you know this arena,” I added during the talkback.

Hell, I had NOTHING to offer so I had to do something.

She was thrilled that I knew she was from here.

At some point during the slew of appearances, the desk called our truck and said that I would have to go on nationally with Dan Rather during the CBS Evening News.

Really? They had no other stories going on around the globe?

Yikes!

I had to converse with Dan Rather about an incident that had no concrete details.

THAT… would make Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite proud.

At least he got my name right.

Throwing it to me in his “Rather-ese” he said, “Mark, what’s the latest on the attack of figure skater, Nancy Kerrigan.”

For a split second I wanted to fire back to the millions watching around the country including my grandparents in Milwaukee;

“I have no friggin’ clue, Dan! But, I am colder than shit and my Italian shoes are ruined!”

By the way, NO. I didn’t call my grandparents in Wisconsin or any other family or friends because we didn’t have cell phones!

My nephews are teenagers. They don’t believe we lived in a world without androids or an I-phone. And there is NO WAY a guy in a white outfit showed up at our doors leaving milk, cheese and other dairy on our doorsteps.

Old people!

And no, I didn’t say what I fantasized about to Dan Rather.

I droned on about someone carrying out an attack on Kerrigan, she was in the hospital but, by this time, not with life threatening injuries. The FBI in Detroit was already on the case with Wayne County Sheriffs and Metro Detroit police all working together to get the perpetrators in this heinous act.

Or, something like that.

Rather asked me if the skating championships would go on as planned.

Without cracking a smile, grin or guffaw, I said, “Yes Dan, there are no plans to cancel or postpone the event.”

Good thing they didn’t because I wasn’t sure that was true.

“Thanks Mark. Mark Wilson reporting from Detroit,” said Rather finishing our time together.

I told Jim that it was cool to be on with the CBS cash cow and that we should go back inside because I couldn’t feel my feet anymore.

The pie-eating “photog” said we had a few more “live shots” to do for the west coast. To me it sounded like a few HUNDRED more to do.

At least the national “hit” was done and it sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

Most of the “hits” for the west coast were taped for use later. They still do some of those to this day because Eastern Time Zone reporters would literally be doing “live shots” until past 10 PM for the “early” west coast local newscasts. Some of those stations had 7 PM shows.

We were finally done and able to go inside.
The story is part of legend now. Go ahead and Wikipedia it and you’ll get all you can stand.

Harding and Gillooly were involved with taking out Kerrigan. Shane Stant is the guy who clubbed her in the knee with a police baton thinking with Kerrigan out, Harding had an easy road to gold. Our Channel 2 reporter Scott Lewis is the one who found the baton in a slushy gutter off Atwater Street behind Cobo. Shawn Eckardt was named along with Gillooly and Stant.

Nancy Kerrigan ended up getting a spot in Lillehammer anyhow, over Kwan, and went to Norway with Harding. A recovered Kerrigan skated her ass off and won a silver medal while Harding imploded, finished 8th and then pleaded guilty to conspiracy on March 16th. Gillooly turned on Harding and spent time in prison with Stant, Eckardt and getaway driver Derrick Smith.

Oh, and the Lions LOST that playoff game.

What a hot mess.

The national media ended up making it to Detroit late Friday night. They remained on the story all the way through the Olympics and into the courtroom proceedings. CBS gave Connie Chung the assignment of following Harding everywhere she went.

Kerrigan and Harding are indelibly linked forever.

To us at Channel 2, it was a very long day.

What began with a “NO” at the morning meeting turned into one of the biggest stories we’ve ever had to cover for a sporting event in Detroit. Figure skating became a monolith in Olympic annals and continues to be as the athletes head to Sochi, Russia next month.

Every so often I wonder what might have happened if we HAD been able to do the Kerrigan practice feature. Additionally, what might have happened if we HAD interviewed Tonya Harding in her bare feet and daisy dukes at the Westin; if PIE wasn’t on the menu at the lobby coffee shop.

I just can’t believe that was already 20 years ago to the day and my expensive Italian shoes are a distant memory.