National Press Club in History: The day the space shuttle crashed into a presidential inaugural

For a new National Press Club president, no day is more stressful or more exciting than his or her presidential inaugural.

Some Club presidents spend months, if not years, thinking about this party. It may be a lifetime high. Relatives, friends, fellow employees and high-powered executives converge on the ballroom. The emcee, roasters and entertainers have been lined up. The menu chosen with care. And amid all of this, the new president has to give a speech.

From dawn to the wee hours of the next day, the new president has to be ready to go.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

Tammy Lytle, the Orlando Sentinel Washington bureau chief and incoming 2003 president, was about to find out.

With family coming in from out of town, a sister arrived in the middle of the night. Yet with so much on her mind, she arose early on the morning of Feb. 1 to get some work done. She figured she should get a quick nap to keep her energy up for the evening.

“My husband woke me up to say, ‘your boss is on the phone. The space shuttle just exploded,’” she recalled.

This wasn’t just a national tragedy. If you are the Orlando Sentinel, a space shuttle disaster is a BIG story. The Kennedy Space Center is within the newspaper’s circulation area and one of the big drivers of the regional economy. The Space Shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Texas during its descent to land at the Kennedy Space Center. All seven astronauts were killed instantly. The disaster came 17 years after the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up during lift off in 1986.

Her editor, Chuck Clark, was already in Washington. He told her that with all she had to do that day, she did not have to come to work. Fat chance of that. Tammy showed up at the office as quickly as she could get there.

“Of course, I went to work,” she said. “That’s what you do in this business. Even though he told me I didn’t have to come to work, he knew I would. As soon as I got to the office, he said, ‘Great.You have 45 minutes to deadline.’”

That was to meet the Extra edition -– something newspapers used to do –- that would come out in the afternoon. The paper was on the street by 2 p.m. with the complete story of the explosion, obituaries of the astronauts and Tammy’s story on congressional reaction. Then, Tammy turned around and wrote two more stories for the next day’s edition.

“In the middle of it all, I had to rewrite my speech and find a priest,” she said. “For the speech, I talked about this is what we do in journalism. All the best laid plans can be thrown in the air when actual news breaks out. News is always our priority.”

But she thought a priest needed to be added to the program. While most Club inaugurals are secular, this had to be different. The good thing about priests, she said, is they don’t need a tuxedo. They already have the outfit. He was able to talk about what happens when tragedy and celebration happen on the same day.

The Sentinel’s publisher, Kathy Waltz, arrived. But two of the top editors, Tim Franklin and Ann Hellmuth, turned around when they heard the news while driving to the Orlando airport. Hall felt badly about what was happening and wanted to make sure someone representing the Sentinel would be there. When she arrived at the dinner, Lytle presented her with a printed copy of the Extra. Hall said she was so proud of what the paper had done that day.

The keynote speaker, Jack Fuller, the head of Tribune publishing, showed up even though he was dealing with trying to get the release of a freelance photographer held hostage in South America while waiting in the Red Carpet Club in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on his way. Mel Martinez, a former senator from Florida and now HUD secretary, was scheduled to swear in Tammy. As she greeted Martinez backstage, she found him busily rewriting his own speech.

But the show went on. The theme was Chicago, both because it was Tammy’s home town and also because the movie “Chicago” had just come out. The satiric “Capitol Steps” performed to rounds of applause.

“It turned out to be an amazing evening,” Tammy said. “It was full of the kind of adrenaline and energy that makes our profession so inspiring. In the face of a tragedy, we know we have an important job to do. And we do it.”

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 110-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.