…Aggieland changed forever.
I awoke bright and early to get ready to pick up my much-anticipated and hard-earned Aggie ring. As I got dressed, I turned on the t.v. and was hit like a ton of bricks by the reports that Bonfire had collapsed.
I remember staring at the t.v. as Carmen Izzo gave her live reports at the scene of the nightmare that began at 2:42 a.m. that morning as the huge stack of logs came tumbling down, popping and cracking in the eerie silence of the night. As it fell, it extinguished the lives of these 12 Aggies and injured many others.
I called my (then) boyfriend and gave him a wake-up call I’m sure he’ll never forget--I knew his roommate was a Red Pot and worked nights on the stack. Thankfully, he had just left stack an hour before the collapse and was safe and sound.
I had looked forward to that day (getting my ring) with so much anticipation and now I wasn’t even sure if I should go get it. I felt a strange sense of guilt for picking it up when there were people dying in the mass of collapsed logs just across campus….but I went, and along with hundreds of other Aggies, I retrieved my gleaming piece of Aggie spirit.
Instead of the joy and exuberance that normally fills the Former Student Association on Aggie ring day, we all walked around like zombies mourning for our fellow Aggies whose names we didn’t yet know. I left the association and walked across an eerily quiet campus to show off my ring to my mom in the Administration Building and then made my way to West Campus for my first class of the day. We didn’t do much learning or notetaking that morning—mainly we just sat together and expressed our awe and incredulity at what had happened in the dark of the early morning hours. We sat in groups and came together as Junior and Senior Aggies whose hearts were broken for those we never knew but whose deaths we felt at the core of our very being.
I worked at the hospital as an ICU tech along with my paramedic boyfriend and we went into work that night and cared for the barely-alive John Comstock (the 13th Aggie pulled from the rubble). For days on end, he was touch and go as his body fought the trauma and infections, as his doctors made the decisions to take one limb and then part of another, and as his mother cried by his bedside. He was “my” patient in the ICU for weeks on end. I remember us repeating over and over again that he couldn’t die because God had already taken 12—that special “Aggie” number—surely He wouldn’t take the 13th. He was cared for as an Aggie should be, by other Aggies who understood why he did what he did and who shared that special bond—we even had a fundraiser and sold tshirts that said “I took care of John Comstock.” We were so proud of him and his will to live!
In the days that followed, we walked to campus and joined the thousands at the candlelight vigil. Thousands of pinpoints of candlelight snaked their way through campus that night as we prayed for the victims and their families. We made our way to the flagpole at the Admin Building where other Aggies who had gotten their rings along with me left them in honor of the fallen. Wow—what a tribute. It was a tribute that only an Aggie could understand—noone else understands how that ring is an extension of each of us.
We went on to beat Texas in the rivalry Thanksgiving day game that year—even they honored our fallen Aggies and mourned our losses with us.
As I reflect back on that day, it seems like just yesterday. I’m sure the pain is so real and still very raw for those that lost their friends and family that day. They will never be forgotten—their lives are forever memorialized on our campus and their faces are forever etched into our memories and hearts.
“From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. And from the inside looking out, you can't explain it.”
I awoke bright and early to get ready to pick up my much-anticipated and hard-earned Aggie ring. As I got dressed, I turned on the t.v. and was hit like a ton of bricks by the reports that Bonfire had collapsed.
I remember staring at the t.v. as Carmen Izzo gave her live reports at the scene of the nightmare that began at 2:42 a.m. that morning as the huge stack of logs came tumbling down, popping and cracking in the eerie silence of the night. As it fell, it extinguished the lives of these 12 Aggies and injured many others.
I called my (then) boyfriend and gave him a wake-up call I’m sure he’ll never forget--I knew his roommate was a Red Pot and worked nights on the stack. Thankfully, he had just left stack an hour before the collapse and was safe and sound.
I had looked forward to that day (getting my ring) with so much anticipation and now I wasn’t even sure if I should go get it. I felt a strange sense of guilt for picking it up when there were people dying in the mass of collapsed logs just across campus….but I went, and along with hundreds of other Aggies, I retrieved my gleaming piece of Aggie spirit.
Instead of the joy and exuberance that normally fills the Former Student Association on Aggie ring day, we all walked around like zombies mourning for our fellow Aggies whose names we didn’t yet know. I left the association and walked across an eerily quiet campus to show off my ring to my mom in the Administration Building and then made my way to West Campus for my first class of the day. We didn’t do much learning or notetaking that morning—mainly we just sat together and expressed our awe and incredulity at what had happened in the dark of the early morning hours. We sat in groups and came together as Junior and Senior Aggies whose hearts were broken for those we never knew but whose deaths we felt at the core of our very being.
I worked at the hospital as an ICU tech along with my paramedic boyfriend and we went into work that night and cared for the barely-alive John Comstock (the 13th Aggie pulled from the rubble). For days on end, he was touch and go as his body fought the trauma and infections, as his doctors made the decisions to take one limb and then part of another, and as his mother cried by his bedside. He was “my” patient in the ICU for weeks on end. I remember us repeating over and over again that he couldn’t die because God had already taken 12—that special “Aggie” number—surely He wouldn’t take the 13th. He was cared for as an Aggie should be, by other Aggies who understood why he did what he did and who shared that special bond—we even had a fundraiser and sold tshirts that said “I took care of John Comstock.” We were so proud of him and his will to live!
In the days that followed, we walked to campus and joined the thousands at the candlelight vigil. Thousands of pinpoints of candlelight snaked their way through campus that night as we prayed for the victims and their families. We made our way to the flagpole at the Admin Building where other Aggies who had gotten their rings along with me left them in honor of the fallen. Wow—what a tribute. It was a tribute that only an Aggie could understand—noone else understands how that ring is an extension of each of us.
We went on to beat Texas in the rivalry Thanksgiving day game that year—even they honored our fallen Aggies and mourned our losses with us.
As I reflect back on that day, it seems like just yesterday. I’m sure the pain is so real and still very raw for those that lost their friends and family that day. They will never be forgotten—their lives are forever memorialized on our campus and their faces are forever etched into our memories and hearts.
“From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. And from the inside looking out, you can't explain it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment