Everyone Has a Name

April 1, 1984. April Fool’s Day. Spring was nearly a couple weeks old but you’d never know that in Cleveland, Ohio. Snow banks were still piled on the ground. Snowflakes were falling. The sky was gray. And the temperature was a “balmy” 30-something degrees.

Inside the TV station on Cleveland’s lakefront we were doing what we do every day: putting together another early evening newscast. It was 1 p.m. Crews were starting to make their way back to the station with the stories they covered. Producers were formatting and writing the newscast. Thank God I was on the phone with my good friend, the police department Public Information Officer. Because just then my assistant ran into my office and said, “There’s a man at the side door security lobby holding 2 guns to his head.”

Within minutes the building was surrounded by SWAT, two of them with their weapons trained on the man through the glass lobby window.  The police negotiator, a reporter and I were about 30 feet and around a corner from gunman. The negotiator talked to him for about 2 ½ hours. He told him they’d help him. He asked him what he wanted. The man said he was having trouble with his wife. He said pimps were after him. At 3:30 it got very quiet. Then we heard one shot.

Twenty seven years, five cities and eight TV jobs later I thought of that story this past April 1st. After all that time I wondered who was the “man”?  “The gunman”?  “The tall black man in the tattered tan raincoat”? The man who was so troubled he ended his life in the lobby of a TV station? Everyone has a name. Thanks to modern technology and Facebook and someone who posted the stories on YouTube I found out. Rest in peace Raymond Burt.