Saddest story of the year

What a story. I really, honestly, do not know what I would do with myself without Jake.

 

Holy Shit

 

I'm not 40, but I'm a man and this story almost put me to tears.

 

Just read the first "page." Will try to read the rest. So well done, and really the most impressive thing is simply being willing to immerse yourself in a story that could literally make you sick. To dive into a topic that tragic takes real mettle and an iron stomach.

Which makes me wonder, we've all covered stories that were horribly sad. When you're working, especially if it's breaking news, you tend to keep your emotions in check because you have a job to do. "I don't have time to cry, I have to file." Your intellect wins out over your emotions.

I wonder if Gene was able to insulate himself from the excruciating pain of his subjects with whatever mechanism kicks in when you're responsible for getting a job done.

And I wonder if, when he was done, he had himself a good long cry.

 

I simply cannot even imagine that horror. Reliving that moment, every day, for the rest of your life. Unreal.
The antecdote about the guy's car motion sensor that kept beeping nearly made me stop reading.

A great, awful, vital story.

 

I couldn't read past the first page.

I've always taken my dogs wih me pretty much everywhere, and I remember a handful of times I've gotten into the car and been a little startled because I'd forgotten the dog was in the car. As a new father, I'd like to think I could never make such a mistake, but the idea that I could ... I'd kill myself. There's no way I could live with what is described in this story. No way.

 

also make me curious to know more about gene. anyone know him? how old is he? does he have children of his own?

my point: as a dad, i don't know if i'd be able to have done this story. if he is a father, even more "wows" to him.

if he's not a father, was this helpful in his reporting? thoughts?

 

According to Wiki, he has two kids (28-ish and 25-ish).

 

hmmmm. can't figure if his own life experience helped him or made his job that much more amazing. i know the panic i've experienced a couple of time when one of the little shockeys were "lost" for a minute or two at disneyworld/adventureland type places.

this kind of loss? it would be unbearable. an accident? absolutely. but an unforgivable one -- for yourself and your spouse, i'd imagine.

nothing but tears and sympathy for all parties.

 

Shockey, on your questions: Weingarten did a reader chat about the story. This is how he began it.

Gene Weingarten: Good afternoon.

Hundreds of questions await, and I will try to answer as many as I can. Many of you say you found the article evenhanded and without emotional manipulation. I find this particularly heartening under the circumstances: This was the most difficult story I've ever worked on. Partly that is because of the emotional nature of the subject matter and because of the vulnerability of the people who trusted me with their lives. But mostly, it was difficult because of haw hard it was form me to remain open-minded and emotionally uninvolved.

Any writer who claims to be completely unbiased is lying either to you or to himself; we are humans, we have opinions and prejudices, we hold certain assumptions about life. The absolute best we can do -- and it is usually enough -- is to make an honest effort to prevent those opinions, prejudices and assumptions from hijacking our words. As it happens, I went into this story with an overwhelming empathy for the parents whose inattention led to the deaths of their children. I believed it could happen to anyone, and I believe that because it almost happened to me. Twenty-five years ago, I almost killed my daughter.

In the early 1980s I was living in Miami, working as an editor for the Miami Herald. I got to work by car, driving down Biscayne Boulevard, then hanging a left at the Herald building. This routine seldom varied; when it did, it was when I had morning daughter duty, meaning that instead of turning left, I turned right, got on a highway, and drove a few more miles to the daycare center.

One day I turned left, made another left, as customary, and pulled into the Miami Herald parking lot. As I searched for a space, from the back seat, Molly said something. She was almost three. Until that moment, I'd had no memory at all that she was in that car.

I can't recall if, like many of the parents in my article, I was particularly stressed that morning, or mentally lost in some problem from work. I know there was no distracting cellphone conversation, because cellphones hadn't been invented. What I retain of that moment is the indelible memory of staring slack-jawed at the little girl in the backseat, and feeling a powerful rush of physical nausea. This was Miami in the summer. Molly would not have survived fifteen minutes in that car.
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I sat there breathing heavily, fighting for self-control. I probably forced a smile and said something cheerful and dad-like. And then, as though nothing at all had happened, I left the parking lot and headed for the highway. No harm done! Just the start of an ordinary day!

You may have a question. I'll answer it simply. No, something like this does not go away. It haunts. Six years after that day, I wrote a play. It was about a man who had who had accidentally caused grievous injury to someone else; there was a backstory, about a baby left to die in a car.

When the news broke last summer about the death of Chase Harrison, I knew I had to write this story, whether I really wanted to or not. Like actors, writers know that genuine emotion is a valuable asset to draw on, not one that you lightly discard. If this article seemed to be presented with more restraint than some of my other magazine cover stories, it is probably because this was the end result of a writer fighting for a sense of control.

One more thing, before we get to some of your questions. I did not tell my wife about that moment in the parking lot, not for years, not until half a year ago when I began working on this story and needed to explain why it was keeping me awake nights. And I didn't tell Molly about it until just a couple of months ago; oddly, I found that 25 years after the day no harm was done, I couldn't look her in the eye.

 

Just amazing. Weingarten is the best writer most of the country hasn't heard of.

 

Amazing story. I don't have kids, but I can honestly see how this could happen. And it horrifies me.