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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's Friday and time for StoryCorps. Today, we remember the bombing at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta 30 years ago. It killed one person and wounded more than a hundred. Those numbers might've been higher if security guard Richard Jewell had not spotted a suspicious backpack, alerted authorities and started clearing the area before the bomb exploded. First, he was praised as a hero. Then Jewell was erroneously singled out as the FBI's prime suspect. His friend, attorney Watson Bryant, helped represent him. At StoryCorps, Watson told his wife how they met.
WATSON BRYANT: Richard was hired as the mail supply room clerk. His nickname became Radar because he would sort of anticipate what people needed. I'd find a Snickers bar on my desk, and then there would be a can of cold Diet Coke behind my chair. He just liked helping people. And about eight years later, he got his dream job at the Olympics.
NADYA BRYANT: When was the first you learned that FBI might have him as a primary suspect?
W BRYANT: I remember newsboys hocking newspapers with the headline "FBI Suspects Hero Guard May Have Planted Bomb (ph)." They all believed he was the one that did it because, you know, he lives with his mother, so that makes him weird.
N BRYANT: I was sure that he was innocent, but it was every newspaper, every news...
W BRYANT: News show.
N BRYANT: ...On the TV.
W BRYANT: Cameras trained on all their windows. It was a mob for a couple of months until he was no longer a target of their investigation. And then Richard gave his statement.
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RICHARD JEWELL: While the government can tell you that I am an innocent man, the government's letter cannot give me back my good name or my reputation.
W BRYANT: The most devastating thing for him was its effect on his mother.
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JEWELL: For 88 days, my mother lived a nightmare too. Mom, thanks for standing by me and (crying) believing in me. I love you.
W BRYANT: I don't know that you can ever overcome the stress associated with being the No. 1 villain on Earth. I think the immense pressure had a direct effect on his health. He died of a heart attack. He was 44 years old, and he lived his whole life with some people thinking he got away with something, even though he was the hero.
N BRYANT: Except he never thought of himself as that.
W BRYANT: And the thing that haunted him always...
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JEWELL: Could I have stopped it earlier?
W BRYANT: I think Richard would like to be remembered the way that I remember him, a good man that always tried his best to do the right thing. That's what I think.
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MARTIN: Watson and Nadya Bryant remembering Richard Jewell. Their interview is archived at the Library of Congress. In 2005, Eric Robert Rudolph was convicted of the 1996 bombing in Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park.
(SOUNDBITE OF LASSE AAGAARD'S "LIGHT FROM ABOVE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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