The first time you laid eyes on it, the sheer size tended to rip your vocabulary away from you. It was so damn big -- 2.4 acres! -- and the bulk of it just sagged into the middle, right on top of the space that you knew was designed for thousands of people to sit in.
On Tuesday's show, we'll hear stories and lessons of the Hartford Civic Center roof collapse.
Not long after the collapse, legendary ABC sportscaster Jim McKay was in town, and Hartford Courant writer and editor Henry McNulty took him to the top floor of the Sheraton, which is where you went to look at the disaster. McNulty said that McKay's eyes popped and he blurted, "Holy [bleep]!" -- which was pretty much everybody's first reaction to the eloquence-disabling vista.
"Many people will associate Jim with the quote 'the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat,'" McNulty said. "But as far as I'm concerned, I will forever associate him with 'Holy [bleep]!' "
Courtesy of CPTV, here's some archival footage:
