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Thursday, October 11, 2001

You knew him by his voice, his smirk, his acerbic wit. That changed one month ago today. That changed so radically, you might not recognize him. He even says you might not see him in the sports realm again.

This is Keith Olbermann.

He is a news reporter nowadays. He files two essays daily for a Los Angeles radio station. He has worked the past month also providing reports to ABC Radio, to an L.A. television station. He has worked covering a tragedy that struck the World Trade Center where he had his first TV job, with CNN, and a tragedy that claimed the lives of four people he knew.

He has worked for charity, preparing to donate any pay he receives to the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund founded by former Mets' star Rusty Staub.

"There are moments when it still feels like it's late in the afternoon of Sept. 11," Olbermann said this week from his midtown Manhattan apartment. "There are moments when it feels like it happened a thousand years ago. The things that day that didn't change, you can count on both hands. At least in New York."

One month ago today, he awoke to find his hometown in terror, then the rest of America. He looked outside his 44th floor window at the Red Cross headquarters across the street, where hundreds already waited to help.

He telephoned Roger Nadel, an old West Coast friend and the general manager of talk-station KFWB-AM in Los Angeles. "He saw and needed an outlet to communicate," Nadel recalled. "He was clearly quite moved by it. And, in turn, the work he's done for us has been very moving."

Olbermann's Sept. 20 report started like this:

Just as I walked out of this building the other night, two hook-and-ladders roared around the corner of 66th Street and West End Avenue, and headed toward downtown Manhattan. They were from Engine Company No. 40, housed a block east of here, on Amsterdam Avenue.

Until 10 days ago, I wouldn't have been worried about them. I wouldn't have needed to know that the guys on those trucks were OK. And I'm the grandson of a New York City firefighter.

I don't think I was callous. I think I just accepted what I'd heard from my grandfather about the job, about the risks, about the fireman's sense of calling: "We went in to make sure you got out"... he'd say.

That acerbic wit, the same one that often got him into trouble off-camera with his bosses, turned out the prose of a sharp mind and keen observer. He reported on his city's evacuation, Wall Street's reopening, the prayer service at Yankee Stadium.

Oh, the smirk and the voice still endure, such as when he says, "I see a therapist once a week for maintenance, anyway," or "With Fox still paying the bills here, I don't need this money." Sports remains a possible career path, even four months after he parted from Fox and four years since he bitterly left ESPN. In fact, he says, folks from ESPN-parent ABC were negotiating with him about doing an afternoon sports-talk show on a New York station, but discussions sputtered just before Labor Day.

He plans to donate a minimum of $10,000 -- no matter what the outlets choose to pay him -- to Staub's widows' and children's fund. "And that's a drop in the bucket. Rusty's raised $20 million since Sept. 11. That's wonderful, but you divide it by 400 families ... almost as many as the fund dealt with its previous 16 years."

Engine Company 40, as he reported Sept. 20, lost as many firefighters that horrific morning one month ago today as the entire New York City Fire Department's hitherto worst single day -- one dozen.

Company 40's captain, James J. Gormley, sent a note to the families and to the company's neighborhood. It is among the most beautiful things I've ever read in the English language, amazing for its faith, amazing for its acknowledgment of reality, yet its determination to exhaust every possibility before its acceptance of that reality.

"No member from this house is listed as deceased," Capt. Gormley writes. "I consider the members listed missing, as still operating at the scene. We have not been able to relieve them from duty."

In the 10 seconds it took Capt. Gormley's two hook-and-ladders to roar past me the other night, I thought of his extraordinary message. ... We now have to know that the men of Company 40 and all the other fire companies and all the police details and all the EMS vehicles -- the men who rocket past us ... the men going in (to quote my grandfather) to make sure we get out ... are OK.

It was a car fire. A few blocks south. Not much work. And ... no injuries.

This is Keith Olbermann.

The address for NYP&F Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund is P.O. Box 3713, Grand Central Station, N.Y., N.Y., 10163, or online at www.nypfwc.org

You can reach Chuck Finder at cfinder@post-gazette.com