Olympic blast kills TCI rep. (Tele-Communications Inc.; Alice Hawthorne, customer service representative)
Multichannel News August 5, 1996 | Paikert, Charles On Friday, July 26, Alice Hawthorne, a customer service representative for the Tele-Communications Inc./TKR cable system in Albany, Ga., stopped by Dallis Evans’ desk at work.
She told Evans, also a CSR, how excited she was that the Olympic Games were in Atlanta. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing in my hometown,” she told her friend. “I just have to be there.” Hawthorne also knew how much her daughter, Fallon, who had just turned 14, wanted to see the Olympics, especially a Dream Team basketball game. She didn’t have tickets, but anyone who knew Alice Hawthorne knew that wasn’t going to stop her.
Alice Hawthorne got things done. She owned several retail businesses in Albany, including an ice cream and hot dog stand named after Fallon. She was managing Winfred Dukes’ campaign for the state House of Representatives. in our site customer service representative
A former Army lieutenant, she served as a junior vice commander at American Legion Post 512, and she visited veterans in the hospital. She was on the board of directors of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce, and she was active in the Literacy Volunteers of America. Hawthorne loved to go up to Atlanta, a three-hour drive from Albany, to visit friends and family, see college football games, go shopping in the malls and watch the Big Peach drop on Peachtree Street on New Year’s Eve.
She picked up her surprised daughter after work, and they drove 180 miles north to Atlanta, as the sun faded over the flat Georgia plains on a warm July night. They didn’t have tickets, but it didn’t really matter. They were going to the Olympics. Things would work out.
Things didn’t work out.
Alice Hawthorne was killed at 1:25 a.m. Saturday morning while she celebrated the Olympic spirit of sport and brotherhood with hundreds of other people who crowded into Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, listening to the rock group Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.
A crude, homemade pipe bomb, tightly packed with screws and nails, was placed in a knapsack and exploded in the crowd. Alice died instantly, killed by “multiple penetrations from metal fragments.” “She didn’t have a chance,” said Lt. James Westbrook, a paramedic with the Atlanta Fire Department.
Hawthorne was 44 years old, married and the mother of two daughters.
Fallon suffered deep lacerations in her arm and leg. She was taken to Georgia Baptist Medical Center for surgery, and she was released last week. Over 100 other people were also injured, and a Turkish television cameraman died of a heart attack while running to cover the explosion. see here customer service representative
On Sunday, while John Hawthorne was in Atlanta, claiming his wife’s body, his house in Albany was burglarized.
Last week, in Albany, Evans, Hawthorne’s friend and co-worker, remembered her as a “go-getter. She didn’t wait for things to come to her. She lived life with a gusto.” Hawthorne’s supervisor, Annie Dennard, customer service manager for the TCI/TKR cable system, described Hawthorne as “a model CSR. She was a very caring and loving woman. She cared about co-workers, and was good with customers. She knew the people who called up personally. She was a happy-go-lucky person, very friendly, very well-liked. She is dearly going to be missed.” Jim Walker, the system’s general manager, said Hawthorne, who had been with the system since last October, “quickly won the hearts and friendship of her co-workers. She was always smiling, and never seemed to get ruffled. She was pure natural high on life.” Evelyn Ellis, who was helping out at Hawthorne’s ice cream store last week, said even though she had only met Alice a few times, “the way she talked to me, I felt like I already knew her.” Walker said he planned to close the office Friday afternoon to allow employees to attend funeral services for Hawthorne at the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Albany.
A memorial fund has been established for the surviving family. Checks should be made payable to John Hawthorne and sent to The Hawthorne Memorial Fund, c/o Jim Walker, TCI/TKR of Georgia, P.O. Box 1707, Albany, Ga. 31703-7501.
Paikert, Charles
