Lots of folks often ask what I think was
the most memorable news story that I covered? That would be hard to
say.
I have flown with a state governor in a chopper over a
scene of tornado damage. I attended a news conference and got
to ask a question of the President of the United States.
My family and I spent the night at a radio station as Hurricane
Hugo wrought destruction all around us and sent trees crashing
against the roof of the building.
I did a series of live reports for a series of radio
stations and national news networks from a United Mine
Workers Union rally in Harlan, Kentucky at the height of one
of their many strikes. There are vivid memories of funerals for
slain police officers, numerous murder trials, police manhunts.
I have covered numerous all-night
filibusters of the state General Assembly, heard scores of
speeches, and covered hundreds of fires and accidents
over these 35 years in this career.
But I think my most memorable story will always be the one
I stumbled over on my way home up Interstate 20 in Columbia,
South Carolina one evening close to 28 years ago.
As I headed east from the city
towards home, there suddenly appeared a multitude of people
crowded along this freeway...a crowd of Biblical proportions
considering what a rare thing to see on the way home.
A long walk to the center attraction brought me to a late
model car that had crashed head-on into the concrete pillar
holding the just-completed Interstate 77 overpass. The front
of the car had been crushed inward in a concave fashion --
exactly as it had met that pillar -- crushing the bumper, hood,
fender and front like an accordian -- all the way to the firewall
in front of the windshield. The speedometer was frozen
at 120 miles per hour!
The driver's side door was open and there on the pavement,
his body virtually intact and little bleeding, lay the body of
a young man who was later pronounced dead at the scene. I
later learned this man had hours earlier had some kind of a
scrap with his girlfriend, who apparently resisted his efforts
to hang around. So, disgusted with that situation, he had
apparently come to meet his maker in the milli-seconds of a
horrendous crash at the junction of I-77 and I-20 outside the
capital city of South Carolina.
What I will never forget, as the crowd on that evening
rubbernecked their way all around this horrendous scene on
the highway, is the little scrap of paper I saw fall from
the lips of this departed soul on the pavement. I was the
first to spot it, and a few folks joined me as I unrolled it
and spread it out on the trunk of the car. The authorities
seized it for evidence before I could digest all that it said,
but the first line was chilling:
"If there is a God, I hope he can forgive me for what I
am about to do."
The HartKeeper 
