May 18, 1980

Some readers may not have been born; others might be suffering senior moments or worse trying to remember where they were the day Mount St. Helens erupted.

It was a Sunday morning and I was in the cabin on Lopez Island with wife and child. We’d moved to Seattle a few months earlier and I was publishing The Seattle Sun. We had returned for the weekend with friends Sarah and Charlie.

I heard the boom in bed early in the morning and thought it was the Whidbey Island Naval Air Base doing early morning sounds of freedom airborne exercises.

No TV, no internet at the cabin. Sure, there was NPR on KUOW but that was before Morning Edition and Will Shortz puzzles— so it wasn’t until we were driving back to Seattle and I turned on the radio did we learn about the eruption that morning.

Then, I was glued to the radio and the newspaper and the TV for the rest of the week.

That was 32 years ago. Where were you on May 18, 1980?

--Mike Sato