I was at home in the city still watching the news when one of my friends (who was the CEO of a company Mark was advising) called and said to turn to CNN. They were showing a picture of Mark. I said ‘shit’ and dropped the phone.
Mark was a friend of mine at Alexander Communications. When I left Alexander to start the PR group for a marketing firm, he was my mentor. He had started his firm a year before and one of his clients was down the hall from our office. We talked quite often and after he moved to New York we caught up for drinks while I was there for Internet World in the spring of 2001. I was at his memorial service at Berkeley and went out with several other of his friends afterwards. We had all been together that summer with Mark at a wedding at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, where my (now) wife and I sat with him at our table.
I got quoted in Odwyer saying Mark was ‘one of the good guys in PR,’ and he was. I watched parts of the Flight 93 movie after I caught it as I was flipping channels. They only got one thing wrong. Mark would have been the first one through the door.
Filed under: mark bingham
