Witness to recent tragedy

Glancing out of their windows on Jan. 6 at a beautiful Tampa, Fla. skyline, the Penn men's and women's rowers finally began to realize that the annual week of Florida training had finally come to an end.

In an instant, however, all thoughts about returning home shattered.

"People ran outside the hotel, and everyone was looking up," sophomore Mary Murphy said. "The tail of a plane was hanging out the window.

"It looked almost like a toy."

If only it were.

Staring blankly at a Cessna 172 airplane that lay imbedded in the side of the Bank of America building, team members stood with dropped jaws.

It could not have happened again, could it?

"That's what you immediately think of," Murphy said. "It's impossible not to."

And that is probably precisely what Charles J. Bishop wanted the world to think.

The fifteen year old wrote a suicide note stating that he had worked alone in his efforts to destroy the Tampa office building. He also mentioned a degree of sympathy he had been feeling towards Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Bishop was the only casualty from the event.

The Penn crew teams had been staying at the Radisson River Resorts directly across the street from the Bank of America building for the week preceding the drastic event.

The team had just finished dinner when the explosion scorched the early evening sky.

Racing out of the hotel, the rowers arrived at the scene just minutes after the one-passenger plane collided with the 42-story office building.

"It was shocking," College sophomore Greg Cobb said. "There isn't much more to say about it. It was just shocking."

Police crews quickly arrived on the scene and barricaded much of the area in the building's vicinity, worried about the possible reprecussions of the crash. Authorities worried that the crash would escalate, much like the events of September 11th.

"Everything was blocked off when I got there," College sophomore Ryan Broderick said.

While the event took everyone by surprise, after the initial shock settled, most of the team emerged remarkably unscathed.

Because the situation did not escalate, the Quakers were able to remain relatively calm in the face of yet another disasterous plane crash.

"In general it wasn't too traumatic," Cobb said. "Some of the girls were a bit shaken, though."

Every year, the Penn crew teams travel to Florida to undergo intense training that prepares the squad for the upcoming spring season.

Because of this year's shortened winter break, the crew teams arrived in Tampa one week earlier than in previous years. If the schedule had been the same, the squads would have arrived on Jan. 6, the day of the crash.

The Quakers did not feel that their safety was compromised in lieu of the crash and elected to return home as scheduled the next day.

Needless to say, this was quite an eventful training trip. But the odds are the team will most likely elect to skip the trauma next year.

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