- Jul 28, 2014
- 722
- 587
Charlie Skalaski's path back to football
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Charlie Skalaski sat down inside the University of Florida football staff room one morning in mid-July and considered a time two decades earlier when he would have been 1,000 miles away in a posh sixth-floor office overlooking Central Park. Life then was comfortable and busy, so busy he didn't stop and consider whether any of it -- he was working as a senior executive at a large corporation and doing quite well for himself -- was what he really wanted.
He never would have come back here -- back to his alma mater, back to football, back to what he said has always been his life's purpose -- if not for that tragic day 20 years ago when he was working in New York City and watched as the World Trade Center fell.
This second lease on life, he said, never would have happened.
"I don't think I had the guts to take myself out of it," he said. "I was a coward."
Now 64 years old and the director of player personnel at Florida, he can still hear the panic in his wife's voice when she called to check on him that day. He had plans to go downtown, which meant he'd take one of two subway lines -- one that would let out two blocks from Wall Street or one that emptied at the World Trade Center.
He never got on the subway.
How 9/11 continues to resonate throughout college football 20 years later (espn.com)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Charlie Skalaski sat down inside the University of Florida football staff room one morning in mid-July and considered a time two decades earlier when he would have been 1,000 miles away in a posh sixth-floor office overlooking Central Park. Life then was comfortable and busy, so busy he didn't stop and consider whether any of it -- he was working as a senior executive at a large corporation and doing quite well for himself -- was what he really wanted.
He never would have come back here -- back to his alma mater, back to football, back to what he said has always been his life's purpose -- if not for that tragic day 20 years ago when he was working in New York City and watched as the World Trade Center fell.
This second lease on life, he said, never would have happened.
"I don't think I had the guts to take myself out of it," he said. "I was a coward."
Now 64 years old and the director of player personnel at Florida, he can still hear the panic in his wife's voice when she called to check on him that day. He had plans to go downtown, which meant he'd take one of two subway lines -- one that would let out two blocks from Wall Street or one that emptied at the World Trade Center.
He never got on the subway.
How 9/11 continues to resonate throughout college football 20 years later (espn.com)
