Today was one of those mornings when it is especially fun to be a member of the media. It was 7:58 a.m. and I was just getting my morning show tape cued up when the phone rang in the production room. I’m glad I answered it because it was my boss, Dave Cole, who was letting us know that there had been some sort of accident in downtown Kenosha involving a city bus. (We have a woman who is paid a stipend to monitor the police scanner in Kenosha in order to notify us if anything newsworthy occurs that involves the police. Earlene is good at what she does and she helps us jump on breaking stories much more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. Had we not gotten a heads up from her, who knows how long it would have taken for us to find out about this.) According to the police, the accident occurred at the corner of 52nd Street and 6th Avenue, which Dave recognized as the intersection right in front of a wonderful coffee place called Common Grounds. ( a favorite hangout for Carthage professors ) so Dave suggested that I call there to get some sort of confirmation that some sort of accident in fact had occurred. So I called Common Grounds – a guy answered – I identified myself as Greg Berg from WGTD and asked if I could get confirmation that some sort of bus accident had happened – which it had. And even though the accident had just happened maybe ten minutes earlier, the man could already tell me that the driver had suffered some sort of seizure, the bus had plowed right through a stop sign, and no passengers were injured. He also said that there were already trucks on the scene to tow the bus away, so it didn’t sound like too big a deal. I thanked him – hung up – and then proceeded to go on the air with news director Dave McGrath to share with the listening audience what I had learned. (There wasn’t even time to write anything down.)
At that point, Dave decided to head right down there with tape recorder in hand to learn more and “record some sound” from witnesses and officials on the scene- but when he returned two hours later, it was with an amazing story indeed, one not even hinted at by the guy at Common Grounds. (and by the way, I applaud the guy for leaving the drama out of his account.) It turns out that the bus in question was heading east on 52nd Street – towards the harbor – when the driver collapsed, and had the bus been moving much faster, it could have crashed right into Lake Michigan. (Fortunately, there were only four passengers on board – and they were all seated towards the back – which helped the physics of the situation.) The bus in fact did not crash into the lake but was sort of dangling over it – and extricating the bus was no simple matter. But they did it. Happy ending for all concerned.
My involvement in our coverage of this was pretty minimal- one phone call and then a forty-five second summary of what I learned given over the air . . . but it was exciting and gratifying all the same. It is one of those situations where you feel your own experience and training taking over and sustaining you through the initial butterflies that such an event creates. I haven’t had too many such moments at WGTD but there have been a few of them. . . the January ’07 tornado for one – a hostage situation at a southside McDonald’s for another – and a very dramatic and volatile situation many years ago when Chrysler quite unexpectedly announced that it was going to close its Kenosha auto plant. (They eventually changed their plans.) In all three of those instances, I felt so privileged to be one tiny cog in the local media machine. And even though I most emphatically identify myself as a musician, there is this part of me that loves being a member of the media. . . and that especially loves it when we manage to get on the air with a story ahead of WLIP or WRJN – our local commercial competitors. Ah the pleasure of being First!