I wasn’t going to be a reporter. I was going to law school with my college degree in English literature and minor in philosophy. But a Huntsville Times editor visited one of my last classes and invited us to visit his newsroom.

I did and people were yelling when I walked in. A gas line had exploded in the Five Points neighborhood. Police voices on the scanner were intense.

Photographers ran for the door, camera bodies slapping their sides. The city editor was sending reporters where he knew they needed to be: explosion scene, hospital, police field command center and wherever the witnesses were.