I took a late lunch Wednesday, and just before 2 p.m. I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. It was a text message from a local TV station and it said the following:
"Shooting at Westroads Mall -- complete coverage . . ."
Considering the number of shootings that have taken place in Omaha during 2007 (somewhere in the neighborhood of 89,274, although I've lost count), this -- in my opinion -- was not news. I deleted the message and headed back up to the office to resume afternoon duties.
A few minutes later, I get a text message from my sister in Norfolk:
"Is everybody in Omaha all right?"
A couple of minutes after that, another message from the TV station:
"Two dead in mall shooting at Westroads . . ."
Soon after, there is a buzz going around the New Business division at Pacific Life -- there is a gunman on the loose inside the Von Maur store.
Oh my God, I thought to myself . . . it's not a shooting, it's a freaking massacre.
Different reports were buzzing on any number of cell phones throughout the office. Some said five were dead, others had it at two. Then it was 14 shot and nine dead.
And, all of a sudden, the phrase "That could never happen here" wasn't true anymore -- senseless, horrible mass violence had found its way into the Heartland of America.
Before the afternoon was over, I was communicating with my sister, ex-wife and daughter via text messaging. I was sneaking a peek on the Internet at the office to see if any information was available. Nobody really knew what to say at that point, because some people had connections with people working or shopping at Westroads Mall that day.
This morning, one co-worker arrived late with a look on his face that needed no explanation. Before coming to work, he had to pick up a friend at the airport who flew in due to a death in the family -- one of the victims at Von Maur. Another talked of her plans to interview the day of the shooting for a job a friend had lined up for her at a store not far away from Von Maur. That, obviously, is on hold for a while.
Wednesday night, I went to my Gretna Poker League game at Jackson's Pub and sat down to a table that had one empty seat. The seat was eventually filled by a young man who, not less than an hour earlier, was still locked down in a store near Von Maur. He had met his mother, sister and niece at Von Maur to help pick out some Christmas presents for his brother-in-law. When he heard the shots two floors above him, he grabbed his niece, turned to his mother and sister and said, "Get the hell out of here, somebody's shooting." How he was able to play cards after experiencing what he went through just hours earlier is beyond my comprehension.
In the end, a mentally whacked-out 19-year-old from Bellevue was found to be the one who created the mayhem and murder in the west Omaha mall. He had lost a job at McDonald's earlier that day, wrote three suicide notes saying he was "going to be famous," took an AK-47 that he had stolen from his stepfather, drove across town and unleashed the bloodiest mass killing in our state's history.
There is no explanation for something like this. All the local media have been tripping over themselves trying to make sense of the senseless, bringing logic to a place where it doesn't fit. Eight innocent civilians who were doing nothing more than living their day-to-day lives were gunned down in cold blood by a horrible individual who wanted to, in his own words, "go out in style."
Why, then, did he have to take so many innocent lives with him? Why did he drive all the way across town to a mall he would -- those who knew him claim -- otherwise never set foot in? Why did he do this? They're all questions we will probably never get answers to.
We've seen situations like this before, and until yesterday we had somehow been able to find a certain peace in knowing that something like that would never happen in Nebraska.
The shootings at the school in Columbine, Colo., hit close to home -- but not in Nebraska.
The horrible one-man rampage at Virginia Tech last year was big news -- but that would never happen here in Nebraska.
Mall shootings in Kansas City, Georgia and Utah were terrible and tragic -- but we'll never see that in Nebraska.
Right?
Yesterday -- it DID happen in Nebraska. And whatever lingering sense of utopia we had about our home and our state are no longer available for us to fall back on when senseless tragedy strikes elsewhere in our world.
The fact that it happened at all is something that will take some time for us to recover from. That it happened less than three weeks before Christmas is something that will be extremely hard for the families of those whose lives were forever touched by this horrible incident. The holidays will never be the same for them because of the outrageous, cold-blooded act of an extremely disturbed young man.
We will carry on as Nebraskans, one way or another. This is still a great place to live, work and love.
But Wednesday's events have shown us that, as great a place as our little corner of the world is, the unthinkable can happen -- HAS happened -- right here. And knowing that now makes the world a much different place for us to live in.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Huskers are back with Pelini on board
The long national nightmare is over.
OK, so it's not a NATIONAL nightmare, but the four-year abortion known as the Pederson-Callahan Carnage came to a conclusion Sunday when Tom Osborne brought a familiar face back to Nebraska to lead the Husker football team.
Granted, Bo Pelini wasn't around long -- he was the defensive coordinator during Frank Solich's final season as the head Husker back in 2003 -- but he made one hell of an impact on Husker fans in his short tenure in Lincoln, turning around a pathetic defense that became one of the nation's best and putting some fire and "badness" back in the Blackshirts.
During Sunday's news conference, Osborne -- the architect of three national titles and over 250 wins in 25 years in Pelini's position back in the day -- said defense was his biggest concern when he went looking for Bill Callahan's replacement last week. And after talking with Pelini in an Atlanta hotel, he pretty much knew he had the guy that best fit the bill.
But it isn't just defense that Pelini had to sell Osborne on. The big thing was whether or not Pelini "gets it" when it comes to Nebraska's history and tradition. We're a one-pony town in these parts -- no pro sports teams within miles of our borders -- so Nebraska football is something the entire state rallies around. Entire generations grew up watching the Huskers. Local kids walked on, got some playing time and some even developed into superstars and legends.
Bo knows -- he understands what the walk-on program means to the people who support this program. He knows what this team means to the people of this state, and he's ready to get to work to build a program that is, in his words, "where everybody in the state is proud of what we have going here."
It would certainly be a turnaround from what we've got going now.
This past season was, in a word, pathetic. The defense, once among the meanest and baddest in the land, couldn't stop a powder-puff girls football team. Opponents scored more often than the homecoming king and the prom king put together. Records were obliterated thanks to a defense that couldn't stop a soft summer breeze if their collective lives depended on it.
Think about it -- in 40 years under Devaney, Osborne and Solich, opposing teams scored 40 or more points against Nebraska FIVE TIMES. That's five times in over 400 games.
This year? The Nebraska defense gave up 40-plus . . . brace yourselves . . . SIX times. Teams put up 60-plus TWICE. Kansas set a record by scoring SEVENTY-SIX points, and had more than a full quarter left in the game before they actually called the dogs off.
Had KU coach Mark Mangino REALLY wanted to pay Nebraska back for all those decades worth of bitch-slappings, the Jayhawks could have hung 100 on the Huskers that day. Easily. And there is no way this year's BlackSKIRTS defense could have stopped them from doing it.
Those days, thankfully, are over now that the nation's best defensive mind is in charge.
Pelini turned Nebraska's defense into one of the best in the nation in one season. At LSU, the Tigers have had one of the nation's best defenses three years running, and will be playing for a national championship this January, thanks in no small part to that defensive scheme concocted by one Bo Pelini.
There had been talk all week that Pelini and former Husker quarterback Turner Gill were the leading candidates. Either way, I felt Nebraska was going to come out ahead on this, and I'm thrilled that Osborne went with Pelini for several reasons:
-- Foremost in mind is the defense, not only from the execution standpoint, but the fact that Pelini is a very passionate and fiery personality. I can't guarantee how many wins the Huskers will have next year or in the years ahead, but one thing I can guarantee is that there won't be a more fired up, passionate team than a Pelini-led Nebraska team. He will have these boys spitting nails and breathing fire, and those who don't simply won't be on the team. That's something that was missing in vast quantities during the Callahan era.
-- Pelini is putting together a very strong team of assistant coaches, many of whom have past ties to Nebraska. People like Ron Brown are going to not only bring the Husker Way back, but are going to also bring a tremendous reputation and sense of class to this program. Pelini is hiring not only some tremendous football talent, but some people of very strong character who will bring so much more than X's and O's to the program.
-- Pelini has a great shoulder to lean on in Osborne, and he's made no secret to the fact that he will bounce things off the legendary coach. Osborne will be a tremendous asset in helping Pelini develop as a head coach -- we all know Pelini is a little rough around the edges in the diplomacy department after seeing him light up Kansas State coach Bill Snyder for running up the score -- and drawing on that knowledge is going to be huge for Pelini.
As far as Turner Gill is concerned, I know there are a lot of people who wonder why he wasn't selected. After all, he's a Nebraska boy, a very close friend of Osborne and -- unlike Pelini -- has head coaching experience.
It's a question that the media -- in its zeal to trip over each other to get "breaking news" -- dropped the ball on. They failed miserably in asking some hard questions of Osborne in this regard, but my guess is one of two things happened in relation to Gill:
1. Osborne was very impressed with Pelini and felt he was just a better fit considering the current situation.
2. Gill is either happy at Buffalo and feels he has unfinished business, or has an opportunity on the horizon (he has been mentioned as a candidate at Washington State) that might be an even better fit for him.
Anybody who says race had anything to do with Gill not getting the job (and, yes, there are those morons out there chirping those very words) are 110 percent delusional. If you know anything about Osborne, you know that he's a man of impeccable character in that regard. Gill is one of his closest friends in the UNL football family and was the best man at Gill's wedding. I think the bottom line with Gill is that Osborne feels Pelini is the better fit considering the current situation, and that Gill is going to come out of this with a bigger and better opportunity for him down the road.
There are still nine months until Pelini debuts as the full-time head coach at Nebraska, and as a lifelong Husker fan I am beyond excited to see what this team does in the years ahead. One thing is for certain -- the legendary Blackshirts are back, and they're going to be "badder" than ever with Pelini in charge.
And when I mean "badder" -- I'm not talking about somebody hanging half-a-hundred on us. Kansas, Colorado and everybody else standing in our way had better realize that they've had their shot -- those days are ohhhhhh-vahhhh.
OK, so it's not a NATIONAL nightmare, but the four-year abortion known as the Pederson-Callahan Carnage came to a conclusion Sunday when Tom Osborne brought a familiar face back to Nebraska to lead the Husker football team.
Granted, Bo Pelini wasn't around long -- he was the defensive coordinator during Frank Solich's final season as the head Husker back in 2003 -- but he made one hell of an impact on Husker fans in his short tenure in Lincoln, turning around a pathetic defense that became one of the nation's best and putting some fire and "badness" back in the Blackshirts.
During Sunday's news conference, Osborne -- the architect of three national titles and over 250 wins in 25 years in Pelini's position back in the day -- said defense was his biggest concern when he went looking for Bill Callahan's replacement last week. And after talking with Pelini in an Atlanta hotel, he pretty much knew he had the guy that best fit the bill.
But it isn't just defense that Pelini had to sell Osborne on. The big thing was whether or not Pelini "gets it" when it comes to Nebraska's history and tradition. We're a one-pony town in these parts -- no pro sports teams within miles of our borders -- so Nebraska football is something the entire state rallies around. Entire generations grew up watching the Huskers. Local kids walked on, got some playing time and some even developed into superstars and legends.
Bo knows -- he understands what the walk-on program means to the people who support this program. He knows what this team means to the people of this state, and he's ready to get to work to build a program that is, in his words, "where everybody in the state is proud of what we have going here."
It would certainly be a turnaround from what we've got going now.
This past season was, in a word, pathetic. The defense, once among the meanest and baddest in the land, couldn't stop a powder-puff girls football team. Opponents scored more often than the homecoming king and the prom king put together. Records were obliterated thanks to a defense that couldn't stop a soft summer breeze if their collective lives depended on it.
Think about it -- in 40 years under Devaney, Osborne and Solich, opposing teams scored 40 or more points against Nebraska FIVE TIMES. That's five times in over 400 games.
This year? The Nebraska defense gave up 40-plus . . . brace yourselves . . . SIX times. Teams put up 60-plus TWICE. Kansas set a record by scoring SEVENTY-SIX points, and had more than a full quarter left in the game before they actually called the dogs off.
Had KU coach Mark Mangino REALLY wanted to pay Nebraska back for all those decades worth of bitch-slappings, the Jayhawks could have hung 100 on the Huskers that day. Easily. And there is no way this year's BlackSKIRTS defense could have stopped them from doing it.
Those days, thankfully, are over now that the nation's best defensive mind is in charge.
Pelini turned Nebraska's defense into one of the best in the nation in one season. At LSU, the Tigers have had one of the nation's best defenses three years running, and will be playing for a national championship this January, thanks in no small part to that defensive scheme concocted by one Bo Pelini.
There had been talk all week that Pelini and former Husker quarterback Turner Gill were the leading candidates. Either way, I felt Nebraska was going to come out ahead on this, and I'm thrilled that Osborne went with Pelini for several reasons:
-- Foremost in mind is the defense, not only from the execution standpoint, but the fact that Pelini is a very passionate and fiery personality. I can't guarantee how many wins the Huskers will have next year or in the years ahead, but one thing I can guarantee is that there won't be a more fired up, passionate team than a Pelini-led Nebraska team. He will have these boys spitting nails and breathing fire, and those who don't simply won't be on the team. That's something that was missing in vast quantities during the Callahan era.
-- Pelini is putting together a very strong team of assistant coaches, many of whom have past ties to Nebraska. People like Ron Brown are going to not only bring the Husker Way back, but are going to also bring a tremendous reputation and sense of class to this program. Pelini is hiring not only some tremendous football talent, but some people of very strong character who will bring so much more than X's and O's to the program.
-- Pelini has a great shoulder to lean on in Osborne, and he's made no secret to the fact that he will bounce things off the legendary coach. Osborne will be a tremendous asset in helping Pelini develop as a head coach -- we all know Pelini is a little rough around the edges in the diplomacy department after seeing him light up Kansas State coach Bill Snyder for running up the score -- and drawing on that knowledge is going to be huge for Pelini.
As far as Turner Gill is concerned, I know there are a lot of people who wonder why he wasn't selected. After all, he's a Nebraska boy, a very close friend of Osborne and -- unlike Pelini -- has head coaching experience.
It's a question that the media -- in its zeal to trip over each other to get "breaking news" -- dropped the ball on. They failed miserably in asking some hard questions of Osborne in this regard, but my guess is one of two things happened in relation to Gill:
1. Osborne was very impressed with Pelini and felt he was just a better fit considering the current situation.
2. Gill is either happy at Buffalo and feels he has unfinished business, or has an opportunity on the horizon (he has been mentioned as a candidate at Washington State) that might be an even better fit for him.
Anybody who says race had anything to do with Gill not getting the job (and, yes, there are those morons out there chirping those very words) are 110 percent delusional. If you know anything about Osborne, you know that he's a man of impeccable character in that regard. Gill is one of his closest friends in the UNL football family and was the best man at Gill's wedding. I think the bottom line with Gill is that Osborne feels Pelini is the better fit considering the current situation, and that Gill is going to come out of this with a bigger and better opportunity for him down the road.
There are still nine months until Pelini debuts as the full-time head coach at Nebraska, and as a lifelong Husker fan I am beyond excited to see what this team does in the years ahead. One thing is for certain -- the legendary Blackshirts are back, and they're going to be "badder" than ever with Pelini in charge.
And when I mean "badder" -- I'm not talking about somebody hanging half-a-hundred on us. Kansas, Colorado and everybody else standing in our way had better realize that they've had their shot -- those days are ohhhhhh-vahhhh.
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