1996 Olympics: The Centennial Scar

Lyrics

[Intro]
July nineteenth, nineteen ninety-six.
The whole world watching.
Muhammad Ali’s trembling hand, steadying the torch.
A flame rising over the city.
Our global moment, come at last.

[Verse 1]
And the heart of it all was Centennial Park.
Twenty-one acres of common ground.
A place for strangers to share a patch of grass.
By the Fountain of Rings, children played in the mist.
July twenty-seventh.
One twenty in the morning.
Jack Mack and the Heart Attack on the stage.
The music was loud, the air was warm.

[Chorus]
And then the music stopped.
A flash of light under a sound tower.
A green backpack under a bench.
A shower of nails and shrapnel.
Alice Hawthorne, visiting from Albany, gone.
Melih Uzunyol, a journalist from Turkey, his heart gave out in the chaos.
A scar carved right into the center of the celebration.

[Verse 2]
In the smoke and the screaming, one man did his job.
Richard Jewell.
He saw the bag, he called it in, he moved people away.
For a day, he was a hero.
Then, for eighty-eight days, he was the suspect.
A second wound, this one inflicted by whispers and headlines.
A life undone by the very cameras that came to praise us.

[Bridge]
The official word came down from on high.
President Clinton said we would not be deterred.
Mayor Campbell spoke of courage.
And the Games went on.
The flame still burned.
But the laughter in the park was never quite as loud again.
The city's greatest party became a memorial.

[Outro]
Today, the fountain still dances.
Children still run through the water.
But the ground remembers.
The scar is part of the map now.
A story told in stone and silence.
For Alice.
For Melih.
For Richard.