This American Life - 193: Stories of Loss

Broadcast on: 14 Sep 2001

"This American Life, Amara Glass." This week we had planned, originally, on doing a show that would be kind of light and funny, but with the news on Tuesday, we all lost heart for that. And said about looking for material that would, in some way, reflect and illuminate what I think most of us are feeling in the wake of the destruction at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We're gonna have a show of news stories on these things for you next week, hopefully. Till then, we put together this hour of stories in which people reflect on loss and try to make sense of things that don't exactly make sense. For instance, this story. When Mark was 15, his father was shot and killed. And Mark reacted like a 15-year-old. He went up to each of his relatives, to anybody who listened, actually. And he declared that someday, when he grew up, he would become a pro-football player. And he would find the man who shot his father. - It's really, when I look back at that kid, that 15-year-old kid making that promise, it's pathetic in a way. - Well, it's such a particular vision of what a pro-football player is, which is to say, as a kid, you're trying to conjure the notion of somebody who's very powerful, but also pure somehow. - Yes. And I remember even then, some friends saying, now Mark, pro-football is kind of a lofty goal. Just, maybe, high school football. And I thought, years later, when I reflected back on it, I thought, you know, geez, the kid's dad just was killed. You know, I'd disabuse him of some vision he's got. - Mark's dad was a bar runner in Fresno, California. Two men came into the bar, played a game of pool, ordered two beers, then came into the back room and shot him. They didn't take any money. It was a gangland style hit. And there was talk that Mark's father must be caught up with organized crime. So at 15, Mark started calling around until his mother made him stop. 17 years later, he moved back to Fresno. By this time, he was a reporter for the LA Times. And he wanted to write a book investigating his dad's murder. He was so skittish that he and his wife got their home

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