Honoring the one-year anniversary of a significant death

by Erik Erlendsson | @Erik_Erlendsson | Like us on Facebook
May 3, 2017

Today is the anniversary of my death.

It’s not in the literal sense, of course, as my fingers are still on a keyboard frantically typing away on a daily basis.

But May 3 will forever be remembered around this area as the day a Tampa institution was executed. For more than 120 years, The Tampa Tribune was an honored member of the community. It was invited in to homes, offices and places of employment. It served as a breakfast ritual or a lunchtime companion. The news that lined the pages wasn’t always pleasant to read, wasn’t always something everybody agreed with. Often times it entertained or offered a heartfelt human interest piece that would strike a chord within a community that rallied around somebody who might have fallen on hard times.

Other times the paper was a source of entertainment, whether it was seeking the latest antics of The Family Circus or seeing how big Dagwood would build his sandwich this time. There were crossword puzzles, word jumbles and Sudoku.

The sports pages were often that balance between being informed and being entertained in the section of the paper often pulled first by many after a quick grazing over the front page, which generally meant looking at what was above the fold before flipping back to the “C’’ section.

Every day, it was there. In the driveway. At the convenience store. In the doctor’s office. Sitting in the rack, waiting to be consumed.

That was all put to an end on May 3, 2016, the day the community lost all that. It was the day a part of me died.

My career path started in 1994, when I began doing some writing for the student newspaper, The Hawkeye at Hillsborough Community College. I had lined up an internship that spring semester, but not where you would think. My adviser at the time, Nancy White, kept pushing me toward an internship opportunity at The Tampa Tribune. But I was adamant, no matter how many times she would tell me how well I wrote, that television broadcasting was my preferred route. So I landed an internship at Channel 13 here in Tampa. And it was eye-opening to me and set me on the path I was probably always meant to take, something Mrs. White noticed long before I did.

So as I switched to the University of South Florida to finish off my degree, my declared major zeroed in on print journalism. I worked for The Oracle on campus covering sports, which was before the football team was even awarded. (Yes, I’ve been around that long)

One day, sitting at the sports desk in the Oracle office, the phone rang. I picked it up and answered as I always did, “Oracle Sports, this is Erik’’. On the other end at the time was Ernest Hooper, at the time was the Prep Sports Editor at the St. Pete Times. He was in need of somebody to cover a high school football game and asked – without knowing who I was – if I would be interested in doing so for the paper.

I’m not sure Ernest was able to finish that question before “Yes’’ came out of my mouth.

Later that week, I’m sitting in a rickety press box on campus at Berkely Prep for a matchup against Admiral Farragut. If there was air conditioning in the press box, I don’t remember it being on. There were no chairs with only an empty 10-gallon paint container available and I sat next to the Tampa Tribune’s Bill Chastain.

I was hooked. I knew the path that Mrs. White tried to steer me toward a year prior was the path I wanted to head down.

The job I did must have been good enough because Hooper invited back the next week to cover another game. And then another game. And then another. Then I was asked to write a feature on a Brandon High School girls’ basketball player. Eventually, that freelance work led to a part-time role with the Times. My first true professional job.

I remained with the Times until the summer of 1997 when I was recruited over to the Tribune, not in the form of a full-time job, but full-time work on a freelance basis. I covered everything on the prep – football, soccer, cross country, baseball were my assigned “beats’’ – while getting the opportunity to pitch in on other events, such as Buccaneer games.

I was passed over on a couple of occasions when a full-time job with the Tribune opened up, but it never deterred me, remaining optimistic that my time was going to come. That moment came in February of 2000 when I was hired on a full-time basis. My main responsibilities remained in preps, but would serve as the back up to Ira Kaufman on the hockey beat and with Bill Ward covering the Olympics in Sydney, Australia, I would also handle the Tampa Bay Mutiny.

Then, the big break came when Kaufman was leaving the Lightning beat to help on football coverage as the NFL writer. And I’ll always remember the conversation that I had with Sports Editor, Duke Maas, before he offered me the job – he wasn’t completely convinced I was totally ready but was willing to give me the chance and I was promoted to the Lightning beat to start the 2001-02 season.

It was a challenge that I accepted in taking over my first pro beat. It wasn’t too long after that – following the 2003 NHL All-Star Game, when Maas went out of his way to praise my work and how far I had come from that conversation 18 months prior.

So for 16 years, the hockey beat was mine. I owned it. It was a labor of love. Through all the deadline pressure – which became more demanding through the years as deadlines gradually became earlier and earlier – the late-night finishes and early-morning flights, I loved every minute of it.

But one year ago today, it all came crashing to a demoralizing end.

I was in New York on May 3, 2016, going through my normal game-day routine to prepare for Game 3 of the second round series against the New York Islanders. After breakfast and a shower, I headed over to Barclay’s Center – and since this was a playoff game and it was raining, I shared a ride with WFLA sportsman Dan Lucas and cameraman Bob Hansen – in preparation for the morning skate.

There was the press conference with New York head coach Jack Capuano, followed by Tampa Bay’s morning skate, open locker room session and a few minutes with Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper. I walked back to my hotel room, picked up a sandwich for lunch on the way, and sat in front of my computer ready to write the news and notes from the morning skate.

As I usually did, the television was on in the background with the Barclay’s Premier League game on, which could determine whether Leiceister City would cap off the underdog story to win the BPL.

Then, around 2 p.m., my email inbox popped up an internal message that all employees were to gather in the auditorium at 3 p.m. for an important message. Being a newspaper, rumors started to swirl of a potential sale possibly to Gannett News corporation or finally an announcement of where our new operations were going to be housed as our building had been sold and we had to move out, but nobody was able to figure out exactly what the meeting was about.

But it had a dark feel. I had no idea how dark it would be. I spoke to my editor, Joanne Korth, who said everybody was in the dark as to the meaning, but she would let me know as soon as the information was known.

So I sat on my hotel bed and for one of the few times in my life, the unknown was frightening. The butterflies in my stomach were constantly churning. I couldn’t finish my lunch as I sat and waited. And waited. And waited for 3 p.m. to come so I could move on with my day.

Then, as 3 p.m. came, all of a sudden my phone started to receive a couple of foreboding text messages along the lines of “WTF????” or “What’s happening????” I had no clue what they were referring to, I was still in the dark.

That’s because, as that 3 p.m. meeting took place at the Tribune auditorium, a statement was released on the Times website announcing the sale of the Tribune to Times and effective immediately, the Tribune were ceasing operations.

That’s it. That’s how I found out the Tribune was executed in a mafia-style hit. About 45 minutes later, I finally heard from Korth laying out what had happened and what it meant. By 4 p.m, I knew I no longer had a job as I was on the “dismiss’’ list put together by Times executives. My services were no longer needed.

It was a nightmare, sitting 1,500 miles from home being told you no longer have a job, one you loved for nearly two decades. It was one of the more somber phone calls I’ve ever had to make to my wife, who has been with me since we were married in 1994. The unknown that was ahead of us was, and still is, an unnerving situation.

I remained in my hotel room, trying to absorb everything that just unraveled around me, trying to internalize it all. Then the ultimate insult, I looked down at my phone as it was rebooting. I did not set off the reboot. It was done remotely and by the time it came back up, everything was wiped out. No phone numbers. No contacts. No photos. All gone.

No warning, no heads up, no nothing. Just all gone without even so much as “we’re sorry’’ from the other end. Now, already with my head spinning, I’m receiving text messages and phone calls and I don’t have an idea of where they are coming from. Already in a fog, I was also in the dark. (By the way, the first person to call me outside of Tampa was Elliotte Friedman from Sportsnet who offered words of encouragement. That’s something I will never forget.

With no outlet for me to write about anymore – I jokingly asked my editor if the Times wanted me to write a sidebar. It didn’t come across as very funny, even for gallows humor – I hung around my room later than normal, debating if I even wanted to head over to the rink. But I wanted to be at the rink, it’s a place I’ve always felt was a comfortable setting through all the years on the beat. So shortly before the opening faceoff, I packed up my computer, grabbed my credential and walked over to Barclay’s Center wanting to honor my commitment to do a hit with NHL Network on the Arena Cam.

After that I walked in to the pressroom and was immediately surrounded by colleagues including Pat Leonard, Brian Compton, Arthur Staple and Joe McDonald (who himself was just cut loose during the ESPN purge last week) offering their condolences. I was handed a few phone numbers and contacts to reach out for possible job opportunities.

That’s the hockey community, always there for anybody who is a part of it.

For the first period of the game and most of the second, I sat responding to the plethora of tweets that I had received, trying to respond in some way to all of them. I was answering texts – usually with “who is this as my contacts were wiped out’’ – from the many that came in to my phone.

By the start of the third, I wanted to go up to the press area and at least watch some of the game. If this indeed was going to be my last time around a hockey rink, I wanted to soak it all up as much as I could. When I arrived up to that area, Ken Campbell of The Hockey News came right up to me and gave me a hug. Another moment I’ll never forget.

I was still in the pressbox when Nikita Kucherov tied the game late in regulation, but headed downstairs for overtime.

When the game ended, I stood in line to enter the locker room having left my recorder and notebook behind, just wanting to go in and soak it all in. Cooper opened the door to the coach’s room and invited me in, asking what was going on. I won’t share how things transpired in the room, but many saw the photo he shared via Twitter, another gesture I will never forget.

Then, in the locker room, I was pull aside by Steven Stamkos and Ben Bishop, who had caught word of what was going on and wanted to know how I was doing. Another snapshot that will stay with me forever.

The whole night was just surreal as my entire professional – and somewhat personal – world crumbled around me. It’s a day that will never be forgotten and memories from that afternoon and night will never fade. Even as I stumbled back to my hotel, still in a fog, knowing that an early morning flight back home waited for me and the uncertain future hanging over my head.

The bizarreness continued when I landed back in Tampa and a newsroom camera man from WFTS-Channel 28 was waiting for me to get my reaction to the news of the previous day. I’m not supposed to be part of the news, I’m supposed to report the news.

But that’s how things can change in the blink of an eye.

Now, as I sit here a year later, I still don’t know what the future holds for me. Yes, I have this website and it’s off to an encouraging start, but it’s not enough to support me and my family. And with my wife, who is a teacher, about to close up shop for the summer months, that same trepidation experienced on this date one year ago remains.

Many of my colleagues have landed on their feet in some capacity. Martin Fennelly and Roger Mooney were hired on after the ownership change. Roy Cummings is an integral part of the Fan Rag Sports Network, Ira Kaufman at Joe Bucs Fan and Joey Johnston has his hands in a few ventures, including a prep-centric business for high school athletes. Korth is now a financial writer for Raymond James (not the stadium). Others landed at the Bradenton Herald (Mike Garbett and Alan Belliteri) while many have left the field all together (Andy Smith, Tom Hardesty, Jim Holliman).

Life does move on. Sometimes it takes you in directions you never thought you would have to travel. For so many that called the Tribune home, called the people we worked with family, May 3, 2016, shattered that world. For many of us, those pieces still lie tattered around us like the rubble that surrounds the former Tribune building, which is still in the process of being torn apart to make way for luxury apartments.

Those shards of broken elements will never be put back together. Things will never be the same as they were in the 123-year run of the Tribune. The community will never be the same now that this is a one-paper town. I will never be the same having endured what I did on that dark day in my professional life.

But many times, after the dust starts to settle, new foundations arise and new paths open up. So as I’m still trying to carve out something new and enduring the pitfalls that have been put in the way, it’s important on a day like this to look back and reflect on how I got here and how it relates to where I want to go.

It has all helped me realize how much it means to me to remain involved and active in what I did for so long in covering the Lightning and the NHL and how that translated to so many readers and supporters who have been there for me in the past 12 months, whether that was passing along an encouraging word, donating to help me start this website and to those who have subscribed to the web site.

I know this has gone on much longer than expected and for those who have made it this far, thank you for reading as I share with you – many for the first time – my path over the past 21-plus years on this path, how it all came crumbling down around me and how I’m trying to put some of that back together.

So that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.