re: Aggies, today we think of you

Thanks for this, one more reason I love the SEC. We were some school from afar to most of you then and we appreciate your understanding.

For me it is still an open wound that will never heal. Bonfire was THE event on the A&M campus, it is hard to overstate it. Thousands of students worked for months building it. Every part of the school from Corps to Frats to GDI's picked up an axe and helped move logs. It was 10,000 trees cut down by hand with axes and moved to the site where they were cleaned up and put in to place. The size and scope of the project was incredible and it was the true unifying event for all Aggies. Watching it burn after building it for months was always very emotional. My Senior Year my outfit in the Corps got the gameball from coach Slocum just as Bonfire was lit and ran 3 laps around Bonfire before starting a relay run for the 93 mile relay run to deliver it to Austin.

I remember hearing the news that morning on the radio as I was several years out of school at the time. I just couldn't believe it. Bonfire had fallen before but it was always something they could see coming and fell gradually, the concept of such a catastrophic failure with no real warning was incomprehensible. Seeing the images of the bodies and the injured students were haunting and gut wrenching. This probably will sound wrong to many but it hit me harder and certainly more personally than 9/11.

At the same time the way the campus rallied was also incredibly inspiring. The outpouring of support was amazing. I remember going to the memorial the night Bonfire was scheduled to burn and walking in with my old outfit from the Corps which had lost one of its members in the collapse. I remember going to the blood bank in Austin to donate and having to wait over an hour because of the huge line of primarily UT students who were lined up waiting to give and do whatever they could.

Then the game. The campus was still reeling and lost but we had the big game with Texas where they were #5 coming in to Kyle. They released doves before the game. The Texas band played "Amazing Grace" followed by "Taps" at halftime and lowered their own flags and replaced them with Texas flags. Still makes me tear up Then of course the game came down to the last drive where the Aggies strip sacked the Texas QB and Brian Gamble recovered with one of the most iconic pictures in Aggie football history.

The open wound is that it will never be the same. Bonfire eventually came back as an off campus shadow of what it was, still a nice event but nothing like before. A generation of Aggies have grown to never even know Bonfire except in what they have heard or seen in old videos. I was only able to even go to the Bonfire Memorial a couple of years ago as it was just too painful and it is an amazing monument.