15 Minutes of Fame

American artist Andy Warhol once said, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." In an era of reality TV and YouTube, it looks like his prediction came true. For me, my 15 minutes happened on September 17, 1992. I had parked my car and was walking up the sidewalk to enter the school when I looked over at the access hole in the base of the radio station tower. I saw something metallic in the hole. I walked over to take a look…I thought they were pop cans at first. No, they were pipe bombs, four of them 3 inches wide and 12 inches long, capped at both ends, sealed with duct tape, with holes drilled in the center for fuses…fortunately, none of them had fuses. But we found out later that they were packed with gunpowder…potentially deadly. I didn’t freak out, yet. I dropped my stuff off in the radio station and went to the main office…quickly. Coincidentally, a Bloomfield Township police officer was in the hallway talking to a hall monitor. I told him what I saw and asked him to see for himself. He did and immediately notified administration and police that the objects looked like genuine bombs. The 900 students and faculty were evacuated from the school and sent to the parking lot. The administration decided to send the students home as police searched the school complex for additional bombs. In fact, Michigan State Police bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in from Lansing to see if there were any more bombs. The bombs were removed at 10:15 a.m. and detonated at an Orion Township quarry. The motive? We haven’t a clue. I did not receive any bomb threats. The school did not receive any bomb threats. I don’t know how long the bombs had been in the tower. Then the media showed up. I was interviewed on camera by Channel 4 and Channel 7. The story was also covered by Channel 2, Channel 50 and Channel 62. I have VCR tapes of the TV reports that aired at 6 and 11 p.m. that day. Some day I will get those transferred and put on this website. I was interviewed by the Oakland Press, The Birmingham Eccentric and the Detroit News who all ran articles and photos. One reporter said I was “visibly shakened”. Another quoted me as saying “to put it mildly, I was in shock” when I discovered the bombs. Students loved it, they got the day off from school sort of like a snow day. We sealed up that hole immediately and school resumed as normal the next day. The week after it happened, I did meet at the school with a gentleman from the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives). He asked me if I had received any bomb threats from anyone…I had not. People thought it was a prank…maybe done by rival Lahser students. Trust me, it was no prank and I still wonder what would have happened if one or all four bombs had exploded…my office was only about 8 feet away from the base of the tower. I got my “15 minutes of fame” but I didn’t ask for it, it just happened!