ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Our Eyes in Atlanta
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
note: below
It was as if an unforgettable explosion had never happened.
Centennial Olympic Park reopened at precisely 8:07 a.m. Tuesday, less than 79 hours after the Atlanta Games were shocked by a bombing that brought two fatalities.
While visitors couldn't stream through the gates at the pace they had before, crowds again filled the streets and brick walks of the 21-acre downtown location of Olympic respite.
At 10 a.m., Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador and now an executive with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, conducted a service that served as a memorial and remembrance to those killed and injured in the blast.
The service was attended by International Olympic Committee and ACOG officials, many athletes, but mostly Olympic visitors who had wandered the park before these Games became the first to be visited by terror since the 1972 Olympic Village killings of Israeli athletes at Munich, Germany.
Security at the park was noticeably tighter, although not intrusive to those walking the park. New signs posted at all four entrances to Centennial Olympic Park - officially a Georgia State Park but now operated by ACOG - told visitors their bags would be subject to random searches.
Security checked purses, camera bags, briefcases by hand. Visitors filed through the gates in orderly fashion and walked quietly through the park.
The exception came when the spectacular Olympic rings fountain was turned on after the service. Children ran through its spray almost immediately.
The concerts resumed at the AT&T Global Village, near the bomb site, before noon. Many visitors walked to where what the FBI calls a ``homemade pipe bomb'' went off, a light tower for the entertainment stage.
There wasn't much sign that the park, which will be the Atlanta Games' most prominent physical legacy, had been the site of tragedy.
The blood from the dead and injured that had flowed onto the commemorative brick walkways had been cleaned. The shelves of stores inside the park were filled during the three-day closing.
In the days and nights the park was closed, Olympic visitors seemed almost lost. Some walked the downtown streets at night, looking for just the right place to congregate. There was none.
There is again.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB