Recently I found a letter I wrote to a penfriend in North Carolina to whom I had been writing between 1986 and 1993. I wrote about my trip to England at the time. It was about the experience I had in England when two soccer teams started playing against each other before the audience was fully settled in the arena.
The back of the crowd outside the gates pushed forward at the sound of the starting bell and the front of the crowd had nowhere to go, due to "safety barriers". As a result, over 90 people perished, which made it the worst soccer disaster in British history. This happened on April 15, 1989 and I was just about 100 miles away from it at the time.
I was at a wedding reception in Northampton, England, and while sitting at a table, I suddenly felt ill. I went outside and I had a depressing feeling which got worse as I looked toward the horizon. I had a feeling of suffocation in my chest which was strong enough for me to say to myself, “There must be something going on somewhere.” I looked at my watch. It was 3:20 p.m.
When I finally went to the train station to take the trip back to the Driscoll House Hotel in Southwark, London, a fellow passenger engaged me in conversation, “It’s a dreadful shame what happened at the soccer match today.”
I asked him, “What happened?”
“About 90 people perished at Hillsborough.”
The next day I bought a few newspapers, all which had published the disturbing details, pictures and all, as a protest against the British government which was allegedly not paying attention to the safety issues at soccer matches. The pictures showed people being pushed against fences and in the throes of suffocating. I went to find a seat alone, started reading, and cried.
It was a memorable trip for me in different ways but that incident made the trip a personal memoriam to over 90 people I never knew, who died in a needless tragedy, and I literally felt a part of it.
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