The Great Falling

Things I think about when I see kids with their eyes glued to a cell phone.

It was back on February 17, 1980 and John Woodruff and I had just started our last “long run” before we planned to attempt the Arkansas Marathon in Booneville on March 1. We had delayed starting because we wanted to watch TV’s live broadcast of the demolition of the Marion and Grady Manning hotels on the Arkansas River. At the last minute, someone thought they saw a figure in one of the buildings and the implosion was delayed while they made a search.

We decided that the affair might take all morning and we’d best not test the limits of spousal endurance any longer. We took off. The first topic of conversation was how neither of us would have volunteered to check a building chock full of dynamite waiting to go off.

John had this funny way of turning his head toward you, but not his body, when something troubled him. “I guess somebody had to do it,” was all he said.

We crossed the gash through Downtown Little Rock that was to become Interstate 630 and weeded our way over to Main Street, planning to swing back and cross the Broadway Bridge so as to miss the crowds gathered at the hotels. We hazily thought we might run by on the way back and view the wreckage. We hadn’t heard any noise, and figured the search was still in progress.

Somewhere along Third Street, we turned west. Just as we did, a gap appeared and provided us a clear view of the two hotels. We slowed to take one last look at the historic facades.

Then it happened. We heard the explosion, saw a cloud of dust fly from the earth, and saw each of the grand old ladies buckle as a person does whose knees have given way. We stood and stared like two country kids seeing a circus elephant for the first time. It last only a few seconds and dust filled the space where so many deals had been brokered, so many liaisons had been consummated, so many memories created, and so much history made. So quick and easy do the forces of destruction destroy.

Did I mention that John was a master of the understatement? He turned to me in that funny way of his and said, “Well we got to see it after all, didn’t we”? Then he took off toward Fort Roots Hill. I followed.

It was a moment I’ll never forget and I still bless the luck of our accidental timing that day. John and I would remain friends, with his even becoming my editor years later, until his premature death from cancer. His passing would create a hole in our lives, much like the hole in history that the demolition had created on that cold November morning. But we would always have Demolition Day. Of all the moments we shared, sometimes trying to make our feet take one more step, sometimes trying to untangle my turgid narrative, or sometimes just sitting and talking of shoes, and ships, and such, we never shared a more intimate moment than the day the Great Ladies fell.

Fallen but not forgotten.