Category: default || By jt3y

I was sick a lot as a kid --- mostly allergy-related stuff --- but if truth be known, I probably could have went to school on several of those occasions. (Has the statute of limitations run out, or is there a chance I might have detention? The mind reels.) Lord knows I've dragged myself to work in worse shape than the headache-stuffy head-fever stuff that often kept me out of class as a child.

I don't remember what kept me home from school on Jan. 22, 1987, nor do I remember what I was watching on TV that morning --- probably some garbage. What was on at 11 a.m. weekday mornings besides "The Price is Right"? Maybe I was watching "Price is Right," but I doubt it, because I had to be watching NBC.

Because I saw it.

R. Budd Dwyer's suicide.

And as far as I know, WPXI-TV (an NBC affiliate) was the only station in Pittsburgh to show the video, and they only showed it at noon.

Anyway, I didn't notice any news organizations marking the anniversary yesterday until I saw an item in last night's Daily News under "this date in history." In fact, Google News turns up only two stories in the entire state --- and one is a blog entry from the editor of the Delaware County Times, the other is a TV listing about a panel discussion on PCN featuring KDKA radio's Tony Romeo and Dennis Barbagello, former Harrisburg correspondent for the Tribune-Review.

I don't think I have to repeat the particulars, but just in case, Budd Dwyer was the state treasurer. In 1986, a federal jury in Williamsport convicted Dwyer and the head of the state Republican Party of 11 counts of bribery for accepting $300,000 kickbacks from a California computer company that was awarded a state contract. (I'm not reciting this from memory --- I looked it up in the New York Times archive.)

Dwyer was supposed to be sentenced on the morning of Jan. 22, 1987, and he called a press conference in his office at the state capital. Reporters arrived assuming that he intended to announce his resignation.

Instead, Dwyer, "red-faced and sweating" (again quoting the Times) got in front of the crowd and for a half hour, "protested that he was innocent and criticized some people who had been connected with his conviction, and included news organizations that had reported it."

And then he picked up a manila envelope and reached inside.

I can see it like it was yesterday, and although I know the clips are available on the Internet (go look 'em up for yourself --- I'm not linking to them) I don't need to see it again. I've never watched it again. Once was enough.

I don't even know why I watched. I can't remember who Channel 11 was using to anchor the noon news then --- maybe Ron Jaye? --- but I can clearly remember them warning viewers that the footage was graphic, and that we should consider sending children out of the room.

Well, I was home alone, and I was not about to send myself out of the room.

You actually didn't see much blood. You didn't see much of anything. He put the gun in his mouth (very awkwardly --- as we found out later, it was a .357 Magnum) with one hand, and waved several people away with the other hand. Some yelled, "No, Budd, don't do it." God, I remember how he had to stretch his mouth to open it around the pistol's barrel.

Then there was a loud noise, and Dwyer jerked up in the air and fell down. I seem to remember the camera panning down to him lying on the floor, but I can't be sure. I remember calling my mother at work, but I seem to remember being more surprised than horrified.

What was served by showing Dwyer's suicide on TV? I don't know. I couldn't answer that question then, and I can't now. By Williams, then the news operations manager of WPXI said it was "an historic event" about an "important man," but the station didn't show the video at 6 p.m. It didn't become less historic six hours later, and yet they didn't show it.

Personally, I can't see any journalistic value in it, but then again I was told by several editors that I have an "attitude problem" and that I was a poor journalist.

I know that when the jokes began circulating at school on Monday ("Have you seen the new Budd Dwyer commemorative coin?" someone would say, and hand you a metal washer) I didn't find them very funny.

I could imagine being Budd Dwyer's son; it wasn't bad enough that your dad had been convicted of a crime. Now, all he'd be remembered for was being "the guy who shot himself on TV." (Take a look at Dwyer's Wikipedia entry if you don't believe me. The first sentence? He was "a former Pennsylvania politician who, on the morning of January 22, 1987, committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a handgun during a televised press conference.")

So, maybe I learned a little something by watching after all. Maybe I learned something that day about other people's feelings, and trying to be sensitive to them --- especially the family members of people who have done horrible things. That didn't always serve me well as a reporter, either.

I wonder what would have happened to Budd Dwyer if he hadn't killed himself. Would someone have pardoned him? Would he have been paroled? He might have even rehabilitated himself. Former state Attorney General Ernie Preate has. He did 14 months in federal prison for mail fraud, but now he's remarried, has a young child, and is practicing law again and campaigning for sentencing reform.

Maybe that's another lesson --- that situations are rarely as dire as they seem, and that you can survive a public humiliation and move on.

It's a shame that I only learned those lessons after another man lost his life, in compatible color and "videotaped in front of a live audience," 20 years ago yesterday.