Officer Jones

Chapter 9

Frankfort, Germany

July 3

Carter and I flew from JFK to Frankfurt, Germany, where we would pick up the Yugoslavian airline JAT. I was checking my phone messages, when I noticed Byron Jasper heading in our direction.

He was draped in heavy video equipment. But it was no match for the man who was five-feet-nine-inches of pure muscle. Of the three of us, it was fairly easy to figure out who didn’t have a gym membership.

“Thanks for the help, Big Ugly,” Byron addressed Carter in his usual high-pitched squeal. Byron was the only one who got to call him that without repercussions.

Carter barely turned his weary head in his direction. “I’ve been carrying you for years, so it’s about time you carried your own weight. And besides, you’re late-where were you?”

“Tonya had plans that couldn’t be broken. I can’t just drop everything whenever you wanna jet off to Serbia for a romantic weekend.”

“In other words, you weren’t allowed to leave until Tonya returned your balls.”

Byron laughed at another in a long line of good-natured barbs between the two, before turning his attention to me. When I barely responded to his greeting, he asked, “What’s wrong, J-News-upset that your girl stole your Lamar Thompson interview?”

When I took the comment in stride, he turned back Carter. “What did the aliens do with J-News? Those were fighting words I just threw his way.”

“You’ll have to excuse him-he’s having a midlife crisis. Claims he’s leaving the business. Maybe you can talk some sense into him … I’ve given up.”

But one look in my eyes told Byron that I was serious, and his tone changed, “Lamar Thompson was a god when I was growing up in South Carolina. Just shows how life can turn in an instant. You gotta do what makes you happy, JP.”

Carter shook his head in disgust. That wasn’t the ‘sense’ he had in mind.

But Byron understood where I was coming from. He was an all-American running back at the University of South Carolina, where he came in third in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. He went on to star for the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, until his promising career was put in jeopardy by a gruesome knee injury. The so-called experts said he would never come back from it, but they underestimated him. He was a man who lived for challenges, and as usual, he proved the critics wrong by making All-Pro his first year back.

But at the height of his football career, with a multimillion-dollar contract on the table, Byron walked away. It was his job, not his dream. People were shocked by such a move in an age where greed was king, but those folks obviously didn’t know Byron Jasper.

His real passion was to tell the stories of those who couldn’t tell them for themselves. He’d caught the bug one off-season when he made a rudimentary documentary, with a hand-held camera, of hurricane survivors in his home state of South Carolina. And then when a teammate named Leonard Harris was killed in a freak accident, he came to realize that life was too short to be putting off his dreams. So he signed up to become a field cameraman for GNZ. The man who once had every eye on him as he streaked to another touchdown, found his real calling behind the camera.

He got off to a rocky start when he was assigned to work for a prickly correspondent named JP Warner. He was the overeager rookie, while I was the perfectionist with no tolerance for mistakes. But Byron took on the challenge, and before long he was considered one of the best in the business. We’ve now worked together for ten years, and I refuse to work with anyone else.

Byron was also a technology junkie, which helped GNZ remain on the cutting edge of the industry. Due to his contributions, GNZ was one of the first TV news reporters to use the videophone. Since we were usually stationed in remote locations, the videophone was a revolutionary tool. The pictures were often grainy with long delays in communication, but they could take you right to the action, which gave the viewing audience a whole new perspective.

As I boarded the plane for my last assignment, I knew it was time for me to follow Byron’s lead, and chase the dream at any cost. I had to be willing to give up J-News. He was right-life really is too short. And in this business, if you lose your passion, life can become even shorter.