Melissa Ross
Honestly, the main thing I can remember was the color of the news car. It was burgundy, inside and out. Merlot. When we heard the shots, we jumped inside and sped off. I threw my purse onto the floor and it stood out against the winy carpet. Then it pressed onto the simple two-way radios news cars used to have. That meant other crews in the field probably heard our conversation.
“Did you hear that?”
“Jesus, what was that?”
“Are you OK?”
It was 1988 (I think). WHIO-TV, Dayton, Ohio. Saturday night, maybe 10 o’clock. Some live shot we were setting up to cover a fire or shooting. Just another local news story.
It was my first job out of college. I was part time, green as hell, thought I knew everything. I’m sure every shooter in the place (that’s what news photographers are called most of the time) hated having to go on stories with me.
We weren’t ever in any real danger, just shook up. Freaked out. Just a weekend news shift for the B team.
I was 22.
After that, it was WKYT in Lexington, WLWT in Cincinnati, CLTV in Chicago, WOFL in Orlando, First Coast News in Jacksonville. Twenty years of TV news. Thousands of live shots, packages, newscasts anchored. There was the time I pulled up to a shooting on Chicago’s West Side and saw brains on the sidewalk. They were gray, like you’d expect. Gooey.
Each station I worked at must have had about two dozen shooters. Eventually, you stay somewhere long enough, you work with them all. They are the best people you will ever know. Cynical, funny, workhorses, to a man (and a few women). I have, conservatively, shot stories of all kinds with, it’s got to be, about 200 news photographers. They taught me how to edit, how to write, how to voice a track, how to make a live shot watchable. They saved my ass countless times, and never got the face time.
I remember so many of their names. Nicknames, usually. Like Dream Weaver (Kent Weaver, shooter in Cincy) and a portly, jolly, laughing kid in Kentucky whose real name I can’t recall. Everyone called him the Dancing Bear.
So many of them.
But the night we got shot at, the guy I was with — I can’t, for the life of me, remember his name. Why is that? I remember the time of night. The color of the car. The sound of the shots. I remember he was blond, with a mustache, married I think, with little kids. Every cop and firefighter in Dayton knew his name. But I can’t remember it. Too many stories. Too many shooters.
Too many shooters.
This is a political website, but I won’t write here about the politics of gun control. Does the Virginia shooting affect me because I once did that job? Yes. Because the victims were white, like me? Social scientists would say, sure. The activists behind #BlackLivesMatter implore people of other colors and backgrounds to see how gun violence affects all bodies. That in itself has become a point of contention, like most American debates.
The politics of it, the stalemate of the issues — mental health, gun laws, the lobbies, the on and on of the grinding senselessness of it — everyone will have their say.
They should. They’re doing it right now, on my Facebook page. Have at it.
Cops, firefighters, our military, they endanger themselves every day. A local TV news crew out covering some minor story is a different level of risk. Of course.
But it was live on TV. A live shot ending in death.
I wish I could recall his name. He was about 10 years older than me, a sweetheart, steady and cool. He calmed me down that night.
I wonder if he’s still out there shooting (stories). Those cameras are hard on the guys’ backs. Probably not.
God bless him, wherever he is.
