I'VE NEVER TOLD THIS STORY and I wonder why. I'm coming off a week of thinking about what I wrote about dad on Memorial Day, and it made me wonder why men don't tell stories about the things that matter. I've spoken to so many guys over the last few days, sons of vets from any war, who repeat my story over and over. Dad never. I never. And that's OK. But since you brought up the subject, I never knew. . . .

A guy named Spider told me he finally asked his dad a question. He knew his father was in World War II, but he had no clue, no base stories, no interest in something dad didn't talk about. Spider is a young man when he asks his father, and asks only because they were watching TV, a documentary about the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. "Dad, where were you on D-Day?" And Ed answered, "Omaha Beach, Day Two."

Can you imagine arriving on Omaha Beach the day after the slaughter of D-Day? You can't hide that many floating bodies and smoking LSTs. I have no idea what Ed saw that day, and neither does his son. Because that's all dad ever said about that. And that's OK, except for the part that sons want to know. It's not about heroics, cowardice or judgement. It's more like, "So what did you do next?" Which requires a story which a lot of dads don't like to tell. Because sometimes there's a lot of running around in fear that gets you nowhere when people get killed for no reason. And even years later, you can't make sense of it. And the whole time you felt helpless.

It was mid-afternoon on a fall Sunday. I was with my children , Dan and Emily, playing softball at at Starr Garden park at 7th and Lombard. Cattycorner was a new townhouse under construction, curiously, with men working on a Sunday. There was a heavy hum of motors. I could see men walking on the exposed wood floors on the second story as I lobbed a softball to toward the plate where my seven-year-old daughter took a big. . .. There was a sound and movement behind her. Like nothing I've ever heard before, which I guess is why people keep saying that. Later that night on the news, a fellow eyewtitness was asked by KYW-TV reporter Robin MacIntosh, what it sounded like. And he replied, "It sounded like hell."

Which was not only inadequate but perfectly true. Especially compared to the awe-numbed detail I tried to provide when Robin interviewed me on camera at the scene. It's not that I objected to KYW's decision to use the quote, "It sounded like hell." spoken by a black man my age as much as it was that they showed my name -- Clark DeLeon -- on the screen under his image as he said it.

That alone would be a good enough reason never to have told you this story. But that's not it. More than 25 years later, I don't know what to tell you about this that could possibly match my state of mind. I was aware of everything instantly from the moment I heard the folding start. That's the word I'm using. It came down like a bad shuffle, folding awkwardly. A construction site fell in upon itself. I could see it happen as I pitched to Emily. She heard it too. There was this hushed groan, a rush of dust, and then silence. Not a single human cry.

I saw the look on Emily's face as she looked at mine. It seemed to take forever for me to say something, but when I did, I remember exactly what I said: "THERE ARE MEN IN THERE." I said it just like that, over and over again, as if to explain why I was rushing this way and that with no apparent purpose. There are men in that building. A single cell phone could have changed everything, but that, like sufficient body armor, would come years later.

The notion that there were men in the building caused me to do things I would never do. My first instinct -- it was happening 20 yards away -- I attacked the fence and climbed way higher than I was ready to go, even higher than that, and I looked down on my children, frozen in that moment like a Bizarro Spiderman,who couldn't make it over the fence, who couldn't run to get help. I came down from the fence and started running toward the firehouse at 6th and South, realized I'm a dumbass with crying children left behind, as I turned back I heard the sirens.

Two men died. There was nothing I could have done. They folded into the cellar, which was filled with four feet of water from heavy rains that week, and drowned. At 7th and Lombard. I can't tell you how little that story has meant in my life. I rarely think of it. I don't want to visit that place again. I don't want to imagine the look on my children's faces as they saw their father become a panicked chimpanzee on the wire shouting "THERE ARE MEN IN THERE!" And feeling helpless. Helpless, helpless, helpless.