Aggieland

A friend sent me this song, and to disagree with David Allen Coe, I think THIS is the perfect Country & Western song...



I was at A&M when Bonfire fell. I was a sophomore and Dustin and I were just starting to date. My roommate and I were taking Dustin and the guy she was dating (Rusty) back to the dorm. It was around midnight, and Rusty said does Bonfire look like it is leaning to you? I was driving, so I didn't look over, but those words still haunt me. Was Bonfire leaning, 2 1/2 hours before it fell?!? We got a call at 4 am from Rusty that Bonfire had fallen. We turned on the radio and listened in horror as the death toll continued to rise. We then got a call from our other roommate who was in Houston trying on her wedding dress, that her sister was MIA and was at Bonfire. I worked at home for a company in Austin that I used a phone line all day to connect to the internet. The lines were full of parents trying to call their kids to make sure they were ok, many couldn't get through. So I called into the office to tell them I would not be working and tying up a line all day. Another Aggie answered the phone, and I as I said the words outloud that Bonfire had fallen, I broke down. My roommate and I decided to try to do something so we went and stood in line for 7 hours at the Red Cross to give blood. Yes, 7 HOURS!!! The line wrapped around the building. Businesses were bringing food and drink donations and dropping them off for the people in line. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to stay in College Station and make my life here. The community rose to that awful day, and to watch this communtiy as a family was amazing. We went to an impromptu prayer vigil/memorial service that night at Reed Arena. We walked over there with literally thousands of other people. I read the Battalion in disgust as they had a picture on the front of Tim Kerlee still stuck in the bonfire with his body twisted, he would later die at the hospital from internal injuries bringing the death total to 12. Dustin and I went to the memorial service Central Baptist church held, with George W Bush in attendance. It was at that service that Dustin leaned over and grabbed my hand, and we went from casually dating to a new couple. We drove to Austin and attended the UT prayer vigil that was held, and in that moment I realized that it was not only the A&M campus that was hurting. For as much rivarly there is between the schools, there was also a lot of pain and shock on that campus as well. We went to a prayer vigil on campus several weeks later and prayed earnestly for the last victim still in the hospital, he was in very critical condition. He would make it and we would later see him out at a store, he lost a leg and a lot of function and would remain in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but he was alive! I saw a highschool friend who had been on top of Bonfire when it fell, and I listened to him tell about how he rode it down and walked away with only a severely injured hand. All of these events deepened my love for A&M, and it was only fitting that when Dustin & I got engaged the next year, he proposed under the Century Tree. It has now been 6 1/2 years and I remember the events like yesterday.