Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501040003
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-5 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: RICK HAMPSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That one of the nation's two best female ice skaters would be kneecapped on behalf of the other one? That the daughter of one of the two biggest, strangest American pop idols would marry the other one?
That Thomas Foley and Mario Cuomo would be looking for a job? That Marion Barry would have his old one?
That a man with a rifle would fire 27 shots at the White House or that another one would try to fly a stolen plane into President Clinton's bedroom?
That by midsummer Michael Jordan would be playing professional baseball, and Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr. and Roger Clemens would not?
The year began with an earthquake in California, and the shaking never stopped.
As it ended, Americans could argue over whether things had gotten better, but few would deny they were getting stranger. Not after 1994, whose salient events sounded like they came from Ripley's.
In a generation, these stories may be footnotes or less, but in 1994 they were what we talked about, around the kitchen table and on the Internet.
As of Jan. 1, America's most celebrated Simpson was Bart. Twelve months later, O.J. - Heisman winner, NFL MVP, Hertz pitchman - was the most famous murder defendant in U.S. history.
First, Simpson's ex-wife and a visitor were found slashed to death; then, O.J. was charged; and then, in a moment like none since the Kennedy assassination, O.J. tried to run away on national television.
As in 1963, you could mark the moment you saw Simpson's white Bronco moving hypnotically along the fabled freeways of Southern California, police cruisers following behind in discrete formation, crowds gathering on the overpasses.
The Simpson case fit a yearlong pattern: Amazing stories kept getting more amazing.
Susan Smith of Union, S.C., explained tearfully and repeatedly how a black man had stolen her car and driven off with her two little boys. Nine days later, she admitted she had rolled the car into a lake, her children strapped in their car seats.
She said she was despondent because the man she loved didn't love her: ``I felt I couldn't be a good mom anymore, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom.''
There was Aldrich Ames, a 31-year CIA counterintelligence expert. First, we learned he'd been working for the Russians, whom he supposedly was watching; then, that he'd exposed about 100 secret operations; then, that the agency repeatedly ignored signs of his treachery, such as Ames' cash payment for a $540,000 house.
Michael Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley. They debuted on stage at the MTV Music Video Awards. They kissed long and hard. The audience cheered wildly. ``Just think,'' said Michael, ``nobody thought this would last.''
Well ... by year's end there were rumors of a split. Almost forgotten, at any rate, was Jackson's multimillion-dollar settlement of a boy's sexual molestation charge.
The headlines kept escalating: NANCY KERRIGAN ATTACKED DURING PRACTICE; TONYA HARDING QUESTIONED IN ATTACK; SKATERS FACE OFF AT OLYMPICS; HARDING ADMITS TO COVER UP.
Sports are supposed to be unpredictable, but in 1994 they muscled themselves to the top of the nightly news.
Because of a baseball strike, the World Series was canceled for the first time since 1904. Newspapers printed old box scores, simulated real games by computer and waited for other diversions, such as the pro hockey season. Which was delayed by a labor dispute.
Michael Jordan, who retired from basketball after the 1992-93 season, became a minor league outfielder, albeit one with a bodyguard stationed near the foul line. He hit an anemic .202 for the Birmingham Barons, made $10,000 and remained the nation's highest-paid athlete, thanks to $30 million in endorsements.
At 45, George Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer and became boxing's oldest (and fattest) heavyweight champ.
In politics, the art of the possible, nothing seemed impossible.
A Republican-controlled Congress was elected for the first time in 40 years, and the victors talked of filling orphanages and emptying one whole congressional office building.
Losers included Foley, the first speaker of the House since 1864 turned out by the voters back home; Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House's most powerful committee, who was charged with stealing nearly $700,000 from the government; and Cuomo, governor of New York for 12 years and presidential prospect for almost as long.
Given a Republican landslide in the congressional elections, what were the odds the Democratic survivors would include Ted Kennedy and Chuck Robb?
Immigration was a big issue. People sailed north from Cuba and Haiti, a small part of the biggest influx of immigrants in almost a century. Multiculturalists, coincidently, declared the melting pot obsolete.
In California, which voted to restrict illegal immigrants' access to public services, both Senate candidates were accused of improperly employing immigrants.
It was a year when a few knew a little about GATT, the new world trade agreement, and many knew much about the caning of a young American in Singapore for graffiti.
But those who looked carefully saw history being made.
A nation founded and settled by the gun edged toward domestic arms control: a ban on some assault weapons and a waiting period for purchasing a handgun. After a rash of shootings provoked by realistic-looking toy guns, many stores stopped selling them.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan, enemies for six decades, shook hands at the White House. ``Out of all the days of my life,'' the king said, ``I don't believe there is one such as this.''
There was the day Clinton lifted the 19-year-old trade embargo with Vietnam, and the one he gave an entry permit to Irish nationalist Gerry Adams, fostering a truce in northern Ireland.
Clinton deactivated the last U.S. troops in Berlin. Russian legislators studied at the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The space shuttle Discovery carried a Russian cosmonaut around the Earth. America and Russia agreed to reduce their nuclear stockpiles to fewer than 3,500 warheads apiece. The last nuclear missile was pulled out of South Dakota.
There were so many big surprises that small ones got lost in the shuffle.
Developers got final approval for 250 new houses at Love Canal, site of the notorious toxic dump. A woman who died on Sept. 28 won the Nov. 8 election for clerk of Cherokee Township, Kan. The Cartoon Network, a new cable TV channel, drew an audience bigger than ESPN, CNN or Arts & Entertainment.
Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madam, was convicted of pandering. Sydney Biddle Barrows, the erstwhile Mayflower Madam, wrote for The New York Times Book Review.
The pope had a best-seller. So did Howard Stern, who entered and dropped out of the New York governor's race and talked a listener down from the George Washington Bridge.
Gary Larson, cartoonist of ``The Far Side,'' announced his retirement, perhaps because it was increasingly difficult to outweird the rest of the newspaper.
Amid the surprises, there was the usual ballast. The United States and Japan bickered over imports and exports, but stopped short of a trade war. The Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl.
Richard Nixon, the 37th president, died at 81, reviving controversy over a public life that spanned half the century. A Democratic congressman said he'd oppose plans for a Nixon stamp.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, widow of the 35th president, died at 64. ``She was an image of beauty and romance,'' said Lady Bird Johnson, who needed a cane to hobble up the church steps for the funeral. ``She leaves an empty place in the world as I have known it.''
Kurt Cobain was 27 when he shot himself to death, another rocker dead too soon. ``He's gone and joined that stupid club,'' his mother said. ``I told him not to join that stupid club.''
John Wayne Gacy was executed for killing 33 men and boys, most of whom he buried beneath his house. Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer who ate some of his victims, was murdered by a fellow prison inmate.
Arkansas carried out the nation's first triple execution in 32 years and Congress passed a $30 billion crime bill.
But no one felt much safer.
Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat in the front of a bus in 1955 helped touch off the civil rights movement, was robbed and beaten in her Detroit apartment.
The FBI reported that, because of a pronounced increase in random killings by strangers, ``Every American now has a realistic chance of murder victimization.''
Violence leached across borders. A Jewish doctor from Brooklyn opened fire in a mosque on the West Bank, killing 29; an Arab Lebanese gunman fired at a busload of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one.
An anti-abortion activist shot a doctor and his bodyguard to death in an abortion clinic parking lot.
By year's end, some people were ready for anything.
In November, several weeks after Susan Smith's confession, a Baltimore woman was charged with killing her two daughters in a house fire.
A neighbor told a reporter she was appalled and saddened. But no, she said, she was not surprised.
Keywords:
YEAR 1994
by CNB