By DON PLUMMER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Seven years ago in Centennial Olympic Park, a bomb killed a woman whom Gordon Spears never met but still remembers. "I looked at her and we made eye contact," Spears said Sunday. "I remember she was standing next to the statue, just enjoying the reggae music." Spears, a member of a National Guard unit assigned to the Atlanta Olympics, never spoke with Alice Hawthorne. The bomb, weighing more than 40 pounds, exploded at 1:20 a.m. on July 27, 1996. It was hidden in a military-style backpack and left next to a park bench. Today, the statue near where Alice Hawthorne died still bears scars from the nails propelled into it by the powerful pipe bomb.

Staff Sgt. Gordon Spears prays for Alice Hawthorne at Centennial Olympic Park.

On every July 27 since, except for one when he was serving in Bosnia, Spears has come back to the park. The senior correctional officer at Lee Arrandale prison in Alto, who has never met Hawthorne's family, said he comes to remember her and others injured in the blast. He places a single red rose and plants a small American flag near where Hawthorne died. He says a silent prayer and ponders the consequences of chance.

"I guess me being a country boy may have saved me," Spears said Sunday, flushing as he smiled. "If they had been playing country music I might have stayed and not gone to get something to eat." His eyes watering, the veteran of wars and prison riots gives voice to an ongoing nightmare. "I guess I could have been one of those I was able to help that night."

The bomb that killed Hawthorne injured 111 people. A Turkish TV cameraman died from a heart attack while rushing to cover the bombing.

Spears remembers racing into the crowd. Noting injuries as he ran, Spears was able to direct ambulance crews to the most badly injured.

He and other law enforcement officers then formed a human chain to protect evidence at the bomb site. He remembers looking toward the statute. An investigator was standing over Hawthorne's body, writing on a notepad.

Eric Robert Rudolph has been charged in the park bombing and in two bombings in the Atlanta area in 1997. No one was killed in the other Atlanta bombings, but 11 people were hurt.

Rudolph, 36, was captured on May 31 in Murphy, N.C. He pleaded not guilty to another bombing in 1998 at a Birmingham abortion clinic, which killed an off-duty police officer and severely wounded a clinic nurse. His trial in Birmingham is expected to begin early next year.

Rudolph will later face trial in the Atlanta bombings, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said. But Spears said the trials won't end his pilgrimages to the park.

"I don't think I'll ever forget that night," he said after kneeling at his makeshift memorial.

"This is my way of honoring Mrs. Hawthorne and all those other people."