Skip to content
OtherSpace MUSH

OtherSpace MUSH

Home of Wes Platt and OtherSpace MUSH

  • JoinTheSaga Links
    • Join the JTS Discord Community
    • Roleplaying Logs
  • Interesting Sites
    • SFWA
    • Brandes Stoddard
    • GameCritics
    • Indie Hangover
    • Tribality
    • RPGfix
  • Log In
  • Toggle search form
  • [DEV INTERVIEW] No Truce With the Furies’ Robert Kurvitz Game Design
  • [OTHERVIEW Q&A] Jeffe Kennedy Journalism
  • Greeking out in Durham Journalism
  • [SLACK ROLEPLAYING LOG] #rp-demaria: Uprising MUSHes
  • Harshed Glow MUSHes
  • Five Days and Forever Sample News Articles
  • [NOTEWORTHY] Happy Birthday, Harry Turtledove! June 14 #amwriting #storytelling Noteworthy
  • Tired of people using RP as a political weapon Essays

Category: Sample News Articles

In an Instant

Posted on November 2, 2013 By Brody No Comments on In an Instant

This article appeared in The St. Petersburg Times on Nov. 20, 1995:

By Wes Platt

The night Nathan Phillips came home from college, about two dozen of his buddies from Land O’Lakes High School flocked to his family’s house in Foxwood.

His mother, Barbara, pulled him aside.

“Am I going to see you at all this weekend?” she asked.

It had been a month since the 18-year-old had left to become a freshman at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He had pledged Kappa Kappa Psi, joined the college marching band and found a new crop of friends.

His mother missed him. She didn’t mind washing the laundry he brought with him, but she wanted to spend time with him, too.

Nathan had plans for Saturday. The high school marching band had practice, and the former drum major planned to help out. Anything for his alma mater, which last year elected him homecoming king.

“I’ll go to practice tomorrow, but I’ll come home early,” Nathan promised. “I’ve got a test on Monday, and I really need to study for it.”

Nathan never made it home. He died in a wreck Sept. 30 while riding with a friend, Mike Knapp, 19, to a convenience store about a mile from the high school.

Mike spent nine days in St. Joseph’s Hospital recovering from a collapsed lung and broken ribs. In the two months since the accident, Mike’s injuries have nearly healed. But serious emotional scars remain.

Mike had made a choice, the sort people make every day: Can I make it? He took a chance and made a left turn into the path of an oncoming car on U.S. 41. He didn’t make it.

In an instant, one life ended and others changed irrevocably.

Mike takes support and comfort from his mother and adopted father, Alice and Richard. But he also takes solace from Richard and Barbara Phillips and their surviving sons, Sean and Keith, who might just as easily have turned their backs on him.

“You can’t help but wish both Nathan and Mike were well, but it’s not Mike’s fault,” Barbara Phillips told the Times. “We’ve got to get him well. What good is it going to do if he doesn’t come out of this? He’s like one of our own.”

Read More “In an Instant” »

Sample News Articles

Five Days and Forever

Posted on November 2, 2013 By Brody 1 Comment on Five Days and Forever

This article was published in The St. Petersburg Times on May 26, 1997:

By Wes Platt

Inchon, Korea, Sept. 15, 1950, 5:15 p.m.

Half of 1st Platoon foundered in a broken-down boat. The other half scrambled up the seawall at Inchon, then were pinned down by a North Korean army bunker.

Third Platoon, a reserve squad led by an untried Marine named Baldomero Lopez, scaled the wall and lobbed grenades into the zigzagging trench that led to the bunker.

Lopez, 25, a gung-ho soldier from Tampa, was not supposed to be here. He was assigned stateside, to a Marine Corps school. But he could not play it safe while his fellow Marines laid it on the line in Korea.

He begged. He cajoled.

The Corps granted his wish. Now, in his first firefight, Lopez closed on the bunker. He dropped to his knees, yanked the pin from a grenade and drew back his right arm for the pitch.

A staccato burst stitched the Marine’s right side. Lopez dropped the live grenade and fell on his stomach.

“Grenade!” he shouted.

With his right elbow, he pulled the grenade beneath himself, against his belly, and died so that his platoon might survive.

His sacrifice earned Lopez a Medal of Honor. In the half-century since, his selfless gesture has been commemorated several times.

A rifle range at the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion was named after him. The U.S. Naval Academy named the room he occupied as a midshipman after him. A pool at Tampa’s MacFarlane Park was dedicated in his honor. So was an elementary school in Seffner. The Marines named a pre-positioning ship after him.

At 10:30 a.m. Friday, ground is to be broken for the Baldomero Lopez State Veterans Nursing Home in Land O’Lakes, in central Pasco County.

More than 50 years ago he walked the halls of Hillsborough High School, an anonymous student. Today he is remembered as an overachiever, a soldier, a hero.

Read More “Five Days and Forever” »

Sample News Articles

Posts pagination

Previous 1 … 3 4

Join the Saga Today

Pick your favorite client software and point it toward jointhesaga.com port 1790.

  • [SLACK ROLEPLAYING LOG] #rp-space: Awakening the Goddess MUSHes
  • Holiday Player Rewards 2013 MUSHes
  • Welcome to the nerd club Journalism
  • [SLACK ROLEPLAYING LOG] #rp-ungstir – All the Best Lies MUSHes
  • [SLACK ROLEPLAYING LOG] #rp-exploration: Target Acquisition Online Storytelling
  • Grid sections available: OtherSpace, Chiaroscuro, Knee Deep Game Design
  • Ulm Station team close on FTL project MUSHes
  • Tales from Cypress Knee 2: Punching Shaun Tales from Cypress Knee

Copyright © 2025 OtherSpace MUSH.

Powered by PressBook News Dark theme