Takin' the Blog for a Walk
Join Waukesha resident Brien Lee and his blog, Sir Fido, as they explore the city and report on the interesting things they find.
Email Brien at howlinblog@yahoo.com.
15 years ago this week
The alarm rang around 1:00 early Sunday morning August 31st, 1997. There was a news report broadcasting from the TV set in our son's bedroom when I went to shut it off on my way to work. Listening to the BBC on the radio on my way to the Journal Sentinel's Dolphin Drive Distribution Center I learned what they'd been discussing on television: Princess Diana had been in a very serious car accident.
By '97 I'd already been delivering weekend papers in Waukesha for eight or nine years. I always felt a certain amout of pride knowing the headlines of the Saturday and Sunday papers before everyone else. I experienced a different emotion Aug. 31st as I waited an extra hour or two along with the other carriers for a very late truck from Milwaukee. Though there wasn't a lot of talking I felt most carriers knew the situation. She would've died just a couple hours earlier and reports weren't yet confirmed...
The front page confirmed what we already knew: Princess Diana was dead at age 36, same age as I at the time.
Just five days later we lost another world famous woman of compassion and charity: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, at age 87.
Less than three months earlier the two great women had met one another, and now they were both dead.
We were able to watch both funerals on live TV. Diana's was on Saturday the 6th, the day after Mother Teresa died. It was very beautiful and sad, historic and surreal.
The world lost two advocates for the poor and helpless in one tragic week in 1997. They won't be forgotten and their legacy surely lives on.
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