With at least two hours to kill, I continued to drive around the streets of Trenton, listening to Potter’s ramblings about the injustices of the prison system and its need for reform. A couple of times, he had me stop so he could have a drink at a local bar. At one, he boasted to the bartender that he was a convict who had escaped from Trenton State, then downed another drink as the bartender chuckled nervously. On several occasions Potter reminded me that he was armed, and would not be taken alive if confronted by police; he never showed me the weapon, but I wasn’t about to challenge him.
After another call to New York, I learned that the crew had arrived at the Holiday Inn, and was waiting for us. By the time Potter and I entered the room on the second floor, he was clearly inebriated, but remained coherent as he rattled off his grievances during a brief on-camera interview.
Minutes later came a knock at the door, and two burly State Police detectives, sent by the New Jersey Attorney General, entered. Standing face-to-face with the fugitive, they asked, “Are you Charlie Potter?”
When he responded in the affirmative, they asked if he was armed, and he declared, “No.” If only I had known that six hours earlier! He was then frisked, placed in handcuffs and led away to face escape charges. Only after he was gone did I learn that Potter wasn’t an escaped murderer from Trenton State, but someone serving time for vehicular homicide at the state’s minimum-security prison farm, where he had been out on furlough but failed to return at his prescribed time.
Nevertheless, it made for a good lead story for our 10 o’clock newscast. The next day I learned that News Director Kavanau had given the crew a bonus in hazard pay, for taking on an assignment with a fugitive believed to be armed. As for me, I got a gold star with a two-word note: “Good job.”
11
THE WRONG MAN
Isadore Zimmerman.
It’s been said that sometimes life just deals you a bad hand—that things happen in our lives that just aren’t fair. No one knew that better than Isadore Zimmerman, who came within two hours of dying in New York’s electric chair for a crime he didn’t commit.
His is just one of the multitude of stories I’ve covered that point to the flaws in our criminal justice system, a system so inherently problematic that it routinely allows evidence to slip through the cracks, and wrongfully sends innocent people to prison. Zimmerman was a 19-year-old aspiring lawyer, hoping for a football scholarship to Columbia University when he was implicated in the murder of a police detective during a botched robbery on April 10, 1937. Six men were arrested in connection with the crime, and one of them—in an apparent effort to conceal his own involvement—falsely accused Zimmerman of supplying the murder weapon. Despite Zimmerman’s protestations of innocence—he had merely picked up a coat for one of his friends, he said, and didn’t know the gun was in the coat pocket—he and the six others were all convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to death in New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison.
Five of them were executed in the electric chair, and the sixth died in prison. Zimmerman himself came within two hours of his own meeting with the grim reaper. After almost two years on death row, he was given his last meal, his head was shaved, and slits were cut in his trousers for the electrodes. Zimmerman was praying with a rabbi when they were interrupted by the deputy warden, who proclaimed, “Zimmerman, you’re not dying tonight!” After reviewing evidence of irregularities in the original testimony that led to Zimmerman’s conviction, Governor Herbert Lehman, at the last minute, commuted his sentence to life in prison. It took another 23 years of legal battles before a state court reviewed the case and overturned his conviction. His life spared, the 45-year-old Zimmerman finally walked free.
Following his release, however, Zimmerman was haunted by the trauma of the experience.
“I haven’t had a good night’s sleep, because of too many nightmares interfering with my mind,” he would later tell me in an interview. He claimed he had been brutalized in prison by anti-Semitic guards, who put him through mental torture and beatings. He also complained of long periods spent in solitary confinement, during which he was forced to live solely on bread and water. “This was the most degrading experience a man can endure,” he said, his voice cracking at the memory. “You’re at the whims and fancies of guards who abhor convicts.” He claimed they used the least excuse “to beat you senseless.”
What got Zimmerman through the ordeal of prison—made doubly torturous to him by the knowledge that he didn’t belong there—was helping others. He became a jailhouse lawyer during his time inside, and helped turn out 700 fellow inmates. “Helping them out with their problems,” he reflected, “helped me forget my own.” This work led him to become one of the founders of the Fortune Society, an organization devoted to the rights of prisoners.
After his release, Zimmerman felt he should be compensated by the State of New York for the life it had unjustly taken from him, and petitioned to have a bill passed in the state legislature that would allow him to sue the state. It took him 20 years to get the bill passed, after which he brought his lawsuit, seeking $10 million in compensation. The judge, however, settled on $1 million as “fair and reasonable.” After legal fees and other expenses, Zimmerman had a balance of about $660,000. “Once I paid off my debts, I was left with $300,000,” he remembered sadly. “I felt I should have been compensated to the point that I could live comfortably, and establish the dreams I have,” he added haltingly. “Now they have destroyed my dreams.” The paltry payout, he emphasized, was only the second miscarriage of justice he suffered. “People never think that this could ever happen to them,” he declared. “But it does. I’m living proof of that.” His attorney would later agree, telling me that Zimmerman “always said he had this black cloud over him.”
All the anguish and despair took its toll on Zimmerman’s life. Now balding, wearing glasses and walking with a cane, he looked older than his 66 years. I asked him about his future plans, and how he planned to spend the settlement money he had just received. He had already bought a new car and taken a trip to an upstate New York resort for a few days.
“I want to rest and relax, and I don’t want to worry about tomorrow. The only way to defeat the recurring nightmare is to rest and relax.” He bubbled with excitement as he described his marriage. “I have a beautiful woman who waited 25 years for me. She’s like my second warden—I must admit that.” With a twinkle in his eye, he declared, “I adore her.”
Isadore Zimmerman never got to live his dream. Two weeks after our interview—a mere four months after he received his disappointing settlement from the state—he suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 66. He was the opposite side to the grand, dramatic story of redemption with which our culture is familiar: an ordinary man, to whom life had simply dealt a bad hand.
the times
12
THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY OF SPACE
Space Shuttle Challenger explodes minutes after launch. January 28, 1986.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
—PRESI D ENT JOHN F. K ENNEDY, MAY 1961
The national commitment made by President Kennedy, one month after the Russians made history by placing the first human in earth orbit, captured the imagination of people everywhere, setting in motion one of the greatest challenges ever to face mankind. After all, placing a man on the moon was the stuff science fiction was made of.
The Space Center at Cape Canaveral on the east coast of Florida became the focal point of America’s space operations. It was here that seven intrepid astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, blazed the trail for the country’s future missions to the moon. John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Scott Carpenter, Donald “Deke” Slayton and Gordon Cooper were the first Americans to ride into orbit, aboard cramped space capsules the size of a telephone booth.
The Mercury program had advanced to another phase when I arrived
in the space-frenzied town of Cocoa Beach on my first assignment in 1966. Once a quiet vacation town, Cocoa Beach had become a boomtown in the sixties when the John F. Kennedy Space Center, 15 miles to the north, became a mecca for jobs. As a result, the town quickly grew to a population of 250,000. Now it was Moonport, USA, with thousands of its residents employed by the space program. Pristine white beaches were lined with hotels bearing names like Sea Missile, Polaris and Apollo; there was even a Celestial Trailer Court. Restaurants like the Moon Hut offered “moon burgers” and “three stage martinis.” Restrooms accommodated “Astronauts” and “Astronettes.”
This was an enclave for the media covering the space missions, and there was always somewhat of a party atmosphere before each launch. Tom Wolfe’s men with the “right stuff” would hang out with reporters around the pool at the Holiday Inn, and hundreds of contractors would host cocktail receptions and hand out token presents on which their companies’ names were emblazoned. Almost every day before a launch was a day to celebrate. Walter Cronkite, Jules Bergman and other network anchors would host breakfasts at their hotels before venturing off to the Space Center on the morning of a launch. As pool producer for network radio, I would host a breakfast for my colleagues as well.
Hours before the launch, a long caravan of vehicles meandered 15 miles down the highway to Merritt Island and the main gate. It wasn’t quite dawn as we approached the press site about three miles from Launch Complex 19, which was bathed in lights and surrounded by the lifting morning fog. There, visible atop a Titan II rocket, was the cone-shaped Gemini 9, a space capsule that would carry astronauts Eugene Cernan and Tom Stafford on a three-day mission, including a docking maneuver and a spacewalk. A huge countdown clock ticked down the minutes before launch.
Soon the voice from mission control was narrating the final countdown sequence. Then a huge flame gushed from the launch complex, and slowly the rocket lifted off. As Gemini slipped into the sky, the sound waves from the launch rumbled through the ground at the press site. It was quite an exhilarating experience to view a launch firsthand, from so close.
* * *
Aside from a few glitches and setbacks, the space program moved along quite well in the beginning. Launches were soon being scheduled every few months, and development of the Apollo program—which would ultimately carry Americans to the moon—was well underway. Things were running smoothly—until January 27th, 1967.
As radio pool producer for the upcoming mission of Apollo 1, I was working out of the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on that rain-swept Friday. I was making arrangements for my trip to Cape Canaveral the following Monday, just three weeks before the mission’s scheduled liftoff. It was early evening when I heard a CBS producer running through the building, screaming out for Walter Cronkite. There was something urgent and ominous in his voice. Moments later, Cronkite was on the air with the bulletin that three astronauts were dead in a launch-pad fire at the Space Center.
I gasped in disbelieving horror as I raced to the UPI teletype for more details. It was an awful disaster. Astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Edward White were undergoing a routine test inside a pressurized space capsule when one of them was heard to exclaim, “Fire in the cockpit.” Rescue workers rushed to try to save the astronauts, but the fire spread too quickly; the atmosphere in the cabin was pure, 100 percent oxygen, and under extreme pressure. The three men never had a chance. I felt overwhelming sadness for the astronauts, whom I had met the previous year. They were three of the most valued, courageous men in the space program, and their loss was devastating.
With the aborting of the Apollo mission, the pool operation was immediately disbanded. I reached out to my colleagues in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, who were there checking out the recovery ship for the mission. They too were overwhelmed with shock and sadness when I informed them of what had happened. My news director at Mutual Broadcasting directed me to get on the next plane to Florida. Eastern Airlines added a special flight there, stopping first in New York for members of the media, then in Washington to pick up officials of the space program. I arrived at the Space Center shortly after 5 a.m., in time to file a report for our 6 a.m. national newscast. Flags were flying at half-staff and the lights were shining brightly at Launch Complex 34—but NASA officials were still in the dark over what caused the flash fire.
A space agency official escorted a group of reporters to the 250-foot-high steel gantry, around which the space capsule was wrapped. The spacecraft itself was not visible, but we were told the heat had been so intense that its steel exterior was blackened. Inside, we learned, the astronauts’ bodies were charred; the heat had melted their nylon space suits. Investigators would later trace the flash fire to a damaged wire under Grissom’s seat. It was theorized that the wire had contacted metal, creating sparks that ignited the nylon netting that lined the cabin; the cabin’s pure oxygen atmosphere fueled the resulting inferno.
The city of Houston, where the astronauts had lived and worked, was numbed by the tragedy. The entire country, and people the world over, mourned the loss of the three men of courage who had lived on the edge of the future.
Grissom and Chaffee were laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Ed White had an austere military burial at West Point. I attended the astronauts’ memorial services. Martha Chaffee, dressed in a black suit with fur collar, clutched her small children’s hands as she entered the Presbyterian church where the family had worshipped. Her swollen eyes hidden behind sunglasses, she listened as Roger Chaffee was eulogized as “a man who dreamed dreams and had gone out to fulfill the high calling of God.” Virgil Grissom, America’s second man in space, was remembered for his greatness and devotion to duty. Edward White, the first man to walk in space, was praised as a man who gave deeply of himself. The Reverend Conrad Winborn told a capacity-filled chapel, “We have all been the recipients of a priceless and eternal treasure.”
The melodious tones of the church choir were overridden by the sound of three NASA T-38 jets, which flew low over the church in formation with one space left empty—a pilot’s salute to a fallen comrade.
* * *
The accident was a major setback in President Kennedy’s mission to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade; the Apollo program was put on hold for two years. Then Apollo 8 made a historic Christmas journey around the moon in 1968, followed by Apollo 10 six months later. Finally, on July 16, 1969, a new day dawned. Man was ready to journey to the moon.
It was a beautiful morning at Launch Complex 39—bright sunshine, a few fleecy clouds and temperatures nearing 90. A light breeze off the nearby Atlantic ruffled flags fluttering behind the wooden bleachers at the viewing site. 5,000 invited guests were there, including Vice President Spiro Agnew, former President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. I was among 3,500 members of the press corps from 56 nations. And miles away, jamming the riverfronts, beaches and highway approaches to the Space Center, were an estimated one million people who had come to witness the most daring voyage of exploration ever attempted.
And it couldn’t have come at a better time. America needed a morale boost. The war was raging in Vietnam, anti-war protests were tearing our cities apart, and the nation was still mourning the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. We needed a diversion.
At Launch Complex 39, Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins were sitting atop the 36-story Saturn V rocket, making last-minute checks. The huge countdown clock, was ticking down. Nine seconds before liftoff, the five first-stage engines of the Saturn rocket erupted like inverted volcanoes.
Jack King in mission control bellowed the final count: “five… four…three…two…one…liftoff, we have liftoff!” Building to seven-and-a-half million pounds of thrust—the equivalent of 180 million horsepower—the Saturn V slowly lifted off the pad in a brilliant fireball. I’ll never forget the roar of the rocket and the rumble of the ground, or the ch
ill that consumed my body in the 90-degree heat as I watched the rocket climb deeper into the almost cloudless sky. I was awestruck. As I shouted my excitement into a microphone, I found myself joining in the chant of the crowd: “Go, baby, go…go, baby, go!” Everyone was in a state of euphoria. Many cried tears of joy and pride. America was on the way to the moon.
Four days later, on July 20th, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” were his words that echoed around the world. It was a historic moment, forever frozen in time.
There would be five more manned landings on the moon before the Apollo program disbanded in 1973. It would be eight years before the U.S. would resume manned flights aboard a new reusable spacecraft, known as the Shuttle.
* * *
Space flight was quite routine by the time I returned to the Space Center on April 21, 1981. Blight had overcome the once booming towns that once made up America’s thriving moon port. Gone were the moon burgers and motels with heavenly names. Businesses were closed, and buildings boarded. One thing hadn’t changed, however: the long line of cars crawling toward the Space Center. At 4:30 in the morning, it took more than two hours to clear security checkpoints to finally arrive at the press site. Off in the distance, under the bright lights of the launch pad, we could see the gleaming-white space shuttle Columbia, poised for a mission that would lead her into the pages of space-exploration history.
As I Saw It Page 7
