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It is hard to say what ESPN would have looked like if Connal had never gone to work there, but it would have certainly been different. Connal established many of the production standards for the network, and he and Bill Fitts were probably the two greatest mentors of ESPN’s first decade. Although Chet Simmons considered Connal indispensable, once Simmons had left, Connal found himself on the losing side of a power struggle with Steve Bornstein. He nevertheless remained at ESPN for several more years before forming his own production and consulting company.

BOB PRONOVOST:

In 1983, I went into the bathroom at ESPN and Tom was in there putting on his makeup. Back in those days, that’s where anchors had to put it on, because there was no other place. Tom was complaining about his agent and how he was getting screwed on his deal at the time. Thirteen years later, I bumped into him at a Mobil gas station, and I said, “Tom!” He went, “Bobby!” And the very next thing out of his mouth was “My agent is screwing me over.” Thirteen years later, the exact same thing, the same conversation. He picked it right up like it never stopped. We talked for a bit and he said, “Bobby, my life now is all about my wife and my kids. Can you come over for dinner?” It was a day or two before I was supposed to go over that he died.

CHRIS MYERS:

Tom Mees was viewed as kind of a renegade to management. He’d been there a long time. He was old-school but very talented. He had a tough exterior but was a very warm soul. I had never lived in the Northeast, and my wife’s from the South, so he had us over for dinner and talked about the operation there. I remember him specifically saying, because he knew I was from Florida and swam a lot, that he didn’t swim and that he wanted to make sure his daughters had swimming lessons so he didn’t have to worry about that. And the tragic irony that he would drown was obviously very sad.

CHRIS BERMAN:

I had taken my family to the Sky Dome in Toronto. I’d made friends with the people up there when I’d covered the Blue Jays a few times. It takes an arm and a leg to get one of those rooms, but we went up for two games when they were playing the Red Sox. No one knew where we were, and I checked my voice mail. I hear about a dozen messages, not “Here’s what happened” but “Chris, you need to call me,” or a few old-timers from work saying, “I’m so sorry to hear about Tom,” or “I don’t know what to say about Tom.” So I kept hearing “Tom” or “Tommy,” but nobody ever said a last name. I have three great friends at ESPN: Tom Mees, Tom Jackson, Tom Riley. One of the three of them was dead. I didn’t know which one. I don’t know who I was rooting for. Which one of these three was I rooting to be dead?

ROBIN ROBERTS:

I remember that day vividly. Tom had stopped by the studio earlier that same day. It was so great to see him. It had been a while since I had seen him, because he was doing so much hockey on the road by then. When they told me the news, I kept saying, “You’re wrong. He can’t be dead! I just saw him. You must be mistaken!”

CHARLEY STEINER:

It was around three o’clock in the afternoon, and we were called into the newsroom for an emergency meeting. Vince Doria came out of his office and said, “I don’t know how to say this any better than what I’m about to say: Tom Mees just died.” That night, I was co-anchoring with Robin, and it was my task to write the story. I was in shock. We had lost a family member, and I was in mourning, but here I was having to talk to the Bristol police and hospital personnel for the story.

There was much internal debate about where to place the story, and we decided it would be the last story because, had it been the lead, we would never have been able to make it through the half hour. Robin with her elegance had some final words after the story, and that was the end of it. But it was brutal. The next day we got questioned by the New York Post for “burying the story.” We took turns saying, “Are you fucking kidding?”

BOB LEY: