My particular friend

Whoomph! and a half second later, another Whoomph!

Our motor home wobbled as the blast hit us and then hit again. We went outside on Saturday afternoon and saw the contrail in the sky over our heads. Oh, that was the Discovery Shuttle going through the sound barrier - twice - as she returned to Cape Canaveral on the east coast of Florida after doing more than five million miles chasing around the earth at 17,500 miles an hour over the past 10 days.

It was a satisfactory conclusion to a visit we were enjoying with Richard Curtis, above right, the just-retired managing editor for graphics and design with USA Today. Richard and I worked together back in the mid-seventies at the St. Petersburg Times here in Florida. Actually, we both were fired from that newspaper on the same day back in 1975.

And, coincidentally, on Thursday evening of this week the guy who fired me was the honored guest of a Public Television business journal. So here we were, Richard and I, visiting together in the balmy Florida air.

Richard had just completed a week-long workshop to train journalism trainers at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

Both of us went on to bigger and better things after St. Pete. So neither of us harbor any resentment or angst about that awful day 34 years ago when he was called into the managing editor's office while I was summoned to the executive editor's office.

Without any warning, each of us was told it was over for us. We had been running the newsfeatures department at the St. Pete Times, doing some pretty amazing journalism for the time, particularly in writing about consumer affairs. The paper's coverage had recently been lauded by Time Magazine, being held up as an example of community journalism that looked out for the reader's interests.

But our reporting was so aggressive that we had exposed some local advertisers for their shady bait and switch selling techniques. As a result, the newspaper could point to lost revenue as a result of the stories.

Neither Richard nor I had received any warning that we were perhaps too aggressive. So each of us was rocked when we were told it was time for us to empty our desks and leave that very afternoon.

I returned to my desk, shaken, and saw Richard coming out of the managing editor's office. I assumed that he had been called in to be promoted to be the newsfeatures editor, as my replacement. I congratulated him on his promotion. He looked as me as if I were insane. "I was just fired as well," he said.

We had a party that night, with all the staff. And then we set about redesigning our lives.

Richard told me he had had dinner last Sunday with the then-managing editor of the newspaper, Robert Haiman. He actually had the good grace to apologize to Richard for the firing. He said it was one the great mistakes of his professional life. I'm still awaiting the apology to me.

As Richard said, though, it was the best thing that happened to him for it eventually took him to USA Today before it was even born. He was in at the founding of the paper and has left a substantial mark on American journalism.