Sports: Coaches, athletes worry about loved ones in attack

Coaches, athletes worry about loved ones in attack

By FRANK PASTOR

To appreciate the magnitude of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, assistant football coach Mike DePue only had to look to the skies above Robinson High, less than a mile from MacDill Air Force Base.

"It was eerily quiet around here," DePue said. "Usually, we get planes flying in and out of the base and more planes flying into Tampa International. But today, it was quiet. Eerily quiet."

Wednesday, high school athletes in the bay area were back on fields, in gyms and in pools.

But it will be much longer before the area's athletic landscape returns to normal.

Too many scars remain.

Gaither football coach Bob Gries, a businessman and former owner of the Tampa Bay Storm, has been in the World Trade Center "many, many times." He has friends and business associates who worked in the buildings.

"I'm just sitting here watching this and hoping and praying that those people I know weren't in the building or somehow got out of there," he said.

Gries' father was flying in from Hungary on Tuesday. He said he feared for his father's safety until the plane touched down.

"What happened, well, you just can't think of anything else," Gries said.

Jenna Turaniczo, a freshman swimmer at Palm Harbor U., has a cousin who worked in the World Trade Center. She chose not to attend a swim meet Tuesday because her family was having difficulty locating her cousin.

"We didn't end up hearing from her until later that afternoon," Turaniczo said. "It gave us a big scare, but she was okay."

The niece of Plant football coach Darlee Nelson, Rori Boston, works for the Air Force in a dentistry lab. She was inside the Pentagon when the jet crashed.

Nelson frantically called family members to get information.

"When you're looking at the news and the pictures of destruction, you're not thinking the best," Nelson said. "Then, when the phones were busy, busy, busy, well, it was a breathtaking situation there for a while."

Eventually, Nelson's wife called to say his niece was okay.

"She said my niece was helping to evacuate the Pentagon," Nelson said.

Nelson's brother, Edmund, lives in Pittsburgh, about an hour's drive from where another hijacked plane crashed. When the plane went down, Nelson's nephew, Edmund II, was at a nearby hospital checking out an injury he suffered in a football game.

"When his mother, Cynthia, heard about the planes going down, she said, "We can get this checked out later. We're leaving,"' Nelson said.

The sister-in-law of Osceola football coach George Palmer, Debbie, was scheduled to leave Boston on a flight to Los Angeles on Tuesday morning.

Palmer found out later in the day the flight, which was not scheduled to depart until 10 a.m., was unaffected.

Osceola assistant Mike Kloehn also had family members in the vicinity of the explosions.

Kloehn's uncle, John Clements, was supposed to be at a meeting at the World Trade Center at 10 a.m. but remained in Brooklyn after the news broke.

Another of Kloehn's uncles, Tom Clements, works at the Pentagon but was not at his office. "I was worried most of the day until my parents heard everyone was okay," Kloehn said.

Football players at Admiral Farragut also were touched. "It was hard for some because they have friends in New York or fathers in the military," junior quarterback Marshall Hampton said. "We have a lot of friends who have friends up there."

Though the games go on, many around the county, like Jesuit athletic director Sonny Hester, continue to struggle to make sense of Tuesday's events.

"I'm still waiting for the end to come on the TV," he said. "It's just so surreal. Everybody walking around here, and I'm sure everywhere, is in total disbelief and shock."

-- Staff writers Rodney Page, Scott Purks, Bob Putnam, Mike Readling and John Schwarb contributed to this report.