THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040680
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
The verdict that freed O.J. Simpson was still echoing through the bar when Jay McCormack called for a shot of Jagermeister and drank a toast to Simpson - the man he's spent virtually every afternoon with since the trial began last winter.
From his perch at the bar in Tripps Restaurant in Virginia Beach, just a few feet from the color TV on the wall, McCormack has faithfully watched the trial since the gavel first slammed down in that Los Angeles courtroom last winter.
Call it an obsession.
``I just got hooked,'' he said, lighting a cigarette and keeping one eye on the screen. ``I learned a lot about the justice system from the trial. The system really works.''
McCormack was in high spirits Tuesday afternoon as he chatted about the characters in the Simpson case like old friends: there's Johnny and Robert and Marcia and Darden. People he's come to know intimately from watching them so closely.
``Johnny never lost his cool,'' said McCormack, who owns several local Po Folks restaurant franchises. ``Marcia lost hers a few times, Darden lost his, but never Johnny.''
Fifteen months after the slow chase of a white Ford Bronco stopped Americans in their collective tracks, a national obsession came full circle when a Los Angeles jury pronounced O.J. Simpson not guilty.
Once again, people stopped what they were doing. Once again, they turned to television or radio. And once again, what they saw and heard absorbed them completely.
Few events have so held the nation in thrall as the Simpson trial, and few events have brought the country to such a standstill - if only for a few minutes - as the reading of the verdict.
The normally tumultuous trading floors of Chicago's giant commodity exchanges grew still as traders turned to TV and newswire screens. At Hill & Barlow, a prestigious law firm in Boston's financial district, more than 120 people - nearly half the firm's employees - filled a lunch room to watch.
Offices in New York's Rockefeller Center emptied as hundreds of people gathered in the street outside NBC's ``Today'' show studio to watch the news on 10 large outdoor monitors.
Around Hampton Roads, appliance stores filled with viewers - not shoppers - as 1 p.m. approached. In some gyms, sweaty athletes crowded around television sets mounted near the stair climbers. In bars, the normally anemic lunchtime crowds had swollen to Friday evening happy-hour proportions.
And even the highbrow Barnes & Noble Booksellers, with its piped-in chamber music and cafe serving lattes and biscotti, bowed to public pressure and plugged in a portable television tuned to the trial.
The store's gourmet cafe was jammed with book lovers as the verdict was read.
It was too soon for television ratings to give an accurate picture of how many Americans were tuned in to the live network broadcasts from Los Angeles Superior Court.
There was this evidence, however: Between 1:05 and 1:10 p.m. EDT, the minutes leading up to the announcement of the verdict, AT&T, the nation's largest long-distance telephone carrier, reported a 58 percent drop in long-distance calls.
At a senior citizens center in Concord, at a shopping mall in Toledo - the response was mostly limited to gasps of shock. In Omaha, Neb., the verdict was met with silence from a racially mixed crowd of about 60 at a Sears department store.
``I was stunned. I was sure he would be found guilty,'' said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Sherwyn Kilkenny, who is black and is based at nearby Offutt Air Force Base.
``I'm going to move to Australia,'' one white man said in disgust as he strode angrily toward the exit.
Whether they approved or not, most people embraced the verdict as the long-overdue conclusion to an exhausting case that has drawn comparisons to both soap opera and Greek tragedy.
``I think one of the reasons people are so happy is that with a not guilty verdict they know it's finally over,'' said Thomas Carter, washing his black Porsche 944 at the American Pride car wash near Rosemont Road in Virginia Beach. ``People loved watching the trial, no doubt about it. But a guilty verdict might have been too much. Years of appeals. ''
Carter said he followed the Simpson trial and ranks it as the ``1A'' trial of the century.
``Nuremberg was bigger, much bigger,'' he said, rubbing some wax from the bumper. ``If Nuremberg was No. 1, the OJ trial was 1A. And then would come the Lindbergh trial.''
A few feet away, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops and polishing his new green Saturn, John Marotta was exuberant.
``I took today off from work so I could see the verdict,'' he said. ``I'm very happy for O.J. I think the prosecutors did a very poor job; they couldn't prove he did it.''
Marotta said he'd watched the trial on and off during the past nine months and had believed Simpson to be innocent from the start.
``During closing arguments, I'll tell you, I was glued to the set,'' he said. ``Johnnie Cochran was magnificent.''
Outside Barnes & Noble, Morgan Bird sat crosslegged on the sidewalk.
``I'm glad they found him not guilty,'' she said, squinting into the sun. ``I grew up watching O.J. on Saturday mornings, you know, when he used to come on and tell you to drink your orange juice. He's always been a role model for me.''
Bird, an employee of the store's cafe, shrugged when asked whether she believed Simpson really was innocent.
``I don't have much faith in the justice system to begin with,'' she said. ``But I do believe in God.
``If O.J. really was guilty, when his time is up he'll be dealt with.''
In Raleigh, about 40 customers and employees of Circuit City gathered around a bank of television sets to watch the verdict. At ``not guilty,'' they let out a loud, collective gasp.
With some people shaking their heads, the silent crowd broke up and slowly left the store. One, 30-year-old Ray Mason, said he had followed the case since the beginning and could not miss seeing the verdict read.
``I left work to see this,'' he said. ``This is the biggest thing in my lifetime. This is the biggest thing since man walked on the moon.''
The roots of the Simpson obsession go much deeper than the trial.
In high school, Peyton Via of Virginia Beach clipped photographs of O.J. Simpson out of Sports Illustrated and taped them to his walls.
The year Simpson ran for 2,000 yards in a single season, Via took carefully recorded the statistics in a scrapbook he kept in his college dorm.
Quite simply, Via loved sports and football.
And, he loved Simpson most of all.
Via, 41, was working out in Wareings Gym at the Oceanfront the day he learned of the double slaying in L.A.
Perhaps it was fitting that Via was back at Wareings on Tuesday afternoon, minutes before the jury verdict was announced.
CNN blared across a pair of color television sets in the upstairs exercise room. The lunchtime crowd was smaller than usual. Most stared at the equipment and listened to headphones as they pounded across treadmills or jogged on stair climbers.
Only Via seemed drawn to the news.
Awaiting the verdict, leaning against a cabinet, he said, ``Looks like they're going to send O.J. up the river.''
Via, who has worked in retail, said he watched the trial almost every day, coming home at 4 p.m. to catch the summary of the testimony.
He recited details of the crime scene and the prosecution's timeline of the murders. He dropped names of TV correspondents who covered the trial and offered critiques of their performance.
He was not obsessed by the trial, he says. He was mesmerized by Simpson.
The testimony had shattered a childhood idol.
``I'm glad it's finally over,'' he said.
Back at Tripps Restaurant, a friend of Jay McCormack's tried to reassure the O.J. fan that there would be life after the verdict.
``We can't just cut these people off,'' Dennis Waskey said with a laugh. ``They're going to need to start an O.J. Network or start replaying the highlights of the trial.'' MEMO: Staff writer Kerry DeRochi and The Associated Press contributed to this
report.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos
ASSOCIATED PRESS
At Corine's Hair Cuts in Colorado Springs, Colo., Corine Pittman and
her client, Betty Williams, and Corine's son, Michael, celebrate the
verdict on Wednesday. Pittman and Williams have been following the
trial together for the past several months.
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
Jay McCormack, left, and Dennis Waskey discuss the O.J. verdict at
Tripps restaurant in Virginia Beach.
Peyton Via, 41, at Wareings Gym
KEYWORDS: O.J. SIMPSON VERDICT REACTION by CNB