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re: New video on Texas A&M bonfire tragedy
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:15 am to giveemhell
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:15 am to giveemhell
quote:
our dad, a former pilot in the Army Air Corps during WWII
Precursor to the Air Force, what theatre was he in?
quote:
furious with A&M for allowing such unsupervised stupidity (I don't think he realized the scale of this annual construction project at the time my brother was there)
"There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots." - E. Hamilton Lee, 1949
Engineers seem to follow a similar path. Size matters to the young, safety matters to the old.
1
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:22 am to theCAW
It fascinated me how dead that board was, you literally resurrected it all by yourself, it had gone I think 45 days without a post and months without a new topic and then you started eight topics with 25% of those being about Aggie
I analyze statistics and kickbox these are my only hobbies
I analyze statistics and kickbox these are my only hobbies
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:25 am to Old Sarge
quote:one of the mods, username hook em horns, absolutely hates me so part of the reason why I became so active there was just to irritate him
It fascinated me how dead that board was, you literally resurrected it all by yourself
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:39 am to theCAW
Yeah, ol’fuzzy bunny slippers is definitely upset you’re there
Posted on 3/31/26 at 10:27 am to theCAW
I saw the bonfire in person in the late eighties and early nineties. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen associated with Texas A&M. The tragedy broke my heart. I'm not gonna watch some video where a guy is using it for clicks.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 10:47 am to Victor R Franko
quote:
NO. Aggies need to find another way to bring students together. Not burning a huge stack of logs to the ground at night.
Just like you guys have your dildo parties, Aggie had a bonfire that ended in tragedy, yet was tradition for 100 years.
Why are you against it with precautions? And for the record, I wouldn't trust an Aggie engineer either.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 12:25 pm to Cheese Grits
quote:
Precursor to the Air Force, what theatre was he in?
The war ended before he could be sent overseas (thank God). He enlisted when he turned 17 in the fall of '42, but didn't start active duty until turning 18. By the time he finished training, the war was winding down. He later left the service to become a pilot for American Airlines.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 1:20 pm to ColoradoAg
It's a great tradition and was a horrible tragedy. Like many tragedies it's one that could have been avoided. I was dating an Aggie and she knew some of the guys ("red pots" I think they were called) who were essentially the Corp reps who helped manage the construction. Every year they were absolutely trying to make it higher than the last crew did. That's just a human nature thing.
There were also lots of other aspects to bonfire such as student crews actually getting together to chop the wood, load the wood, bring it on site, etc.
No offense intended here but to me it seems like one of the best tributes A&M could make to those who died building the bonfire is to bring back the bonfire tradition again, but just do it under a stricter set of specifications. Again it was a great tradition and, quite frankly, blows our "light-a-candle-to-hex-A&M" tradition away.
There were also lots of other aspects to bonfire such as student crews actually getting together to chop the wood, load the wood, bring it on site, etc.
No offense intended here but to me it seems like one of the best tributes A&M could make to those who died building the bonfire is to bring back the bonfire tradition again, but just do it under a stricter set of specifications. Again it was a great tradition and, quite frankly, blows our "light-a-candle-to-hex-A&M" tradition away.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 1:52 pm to HTX Horn
quote:
No offense intended here but to me it seems like one of the best tributes A&M could make to those who died building the bonfire is to bring back the bonfire tradition again, but just do it under a stricter set of specifications. Again it was a great tradition and, quite frankly, blows our "light-a-candle-to-hex-A&M" tradition away.
No offense taken and thanks for the kind words. I was lucky to see 2-3 Aggie Bonfires in person and the heat coming off that thing was insane. I think it was something like 2,004 degrees ;-).
My class was the first class never to participate in Bonfire. I wanted to be involved so I was on the Bonfire Steering Committee that was formed to basically figure out what happens next. LOTS of emotional meetings. Ultimately what we learned was that A&M, especially as a public entity would never be able to afford the optics or cost of insurance to cover such an event, assuming they could find a carrier that would give them a policy in the first place. I have serious doubts a University-sponsored Bonfire will ever burn again.
This post was edited on 3/31/26 at 1:53 pm
Posted on 3/31/26 at 2:46 pm to HTX Horn
quote:It's being done off campus, safely it would seem.
It's a great tradition and was a horrible tragedy. Like many tragedies it's one that could have been avoided. I was dating an Aggie and she knew some of the guys ("red pots" I think they were called) who were essentially the Corp reps who helped manage the construction. Every year they were absolutely trying to make it higher than the last crew did. That's just a human nature thing.
There were also lots of other aspects to bonfire such as student crews actually getting together to chop the wood, load the wood, bring it on site, etc.
No offense intended here but to me it seems like one of the best tributes A&M could make to those who died building the bonfire is to bring back the bonfire tradition again, but just do it under a stricter set of specifications. Again it was a great tradition and, quite frankly, blows our "light-a-candle-to-hex-A&M" tradition away.
The sad thing about it is that, in my opinion, one of the prime contributors to the tragedy was when the location was moved from behind Duncan Dining Hall to the location adjacent to the polo field. The former location was on a high point, while the last location was basically a mud flat. The unstable mud was part of the problem, but the administration wanted to move it away from the residential neighborhood across Jersey.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 3:12 pm to theCAW
While not a Texas or A&M fan, my girl friend at the time was born in Bryan Texas and so I was fascinated with the rivalry. I loved the passion both fanbases have hating the other.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 4:01 pm to giveemhell
quote:
The war ended before he could be sent overseas (thank God).
Thank your lucky stars. My Uncle served is the sh*th*le of that war and we were lucky he was smart enough they took him out of the plane and worked on them instead. Man carried a lot of sorrow till the day he died knowing they were poorly supplied in that part and he was just patching up coffins to send some of ours to their death. Japs may have been open about Kamikazes but we did our version of the same.
quote:
He later left the service to become a pilot for American Airlines.
Damn, your old man hit the sweet spot for that job! Bet your mom is pretty as a peach. After World War II, airline pilot was a panty dropper till Elvis and Rock n' Roll.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 4:06 pm to AggieArchitect2004
quote:
I was lucky to see 2-3 Aggie Bonfires in person and the heat coming off that thing was insane. I think it was something like 2,004 degrees ;-).
Just for the younger folks on here, the bonfire tradition was not limited to TAMU. Pretty sure you go back to most high school yearbooks before the 80's and it sure seemed common. TAMU + Engineer + Youth = bonfire x ??
Bigger is not always better, no matter how much you believe it when you are young.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 6:49 pm to Cheese Grits
I don’t think A&M has ever claimed to be the inventor of bonfires. Lol
Posted on 3/31/26 at 6:55 pm to theCAW
*in before NFLSU gets banned again for making fun of the bonfire victims*
Posted on 3/31/26 at 8:52 pm to giveemhell
I remember watching the progress on it each day several different years and talking with other people about how dangerous it was just building it. I never set foot near the stack. And yeah, it was supervised, but much of that supervision was from people who didn't have any experience with the things that could have gone wrong. Shoot the engineering department wasn't that far from there which is another sad part because they saw it everyday too. I left in 98 so I didn't see the tragedy.
Posted on 3/31/26 at 11:03 pm to tpatten
I left a few years before. Remember I was teaching at the Air Force Academy when I first heard about it
This post was edited on 3/31/26 at 11:13 pm
Posted on 4/1/26 at 3:36 am to AggieArchitect2004
quote:
I don’t think A&M has ever claimed to be the inventor of bonfires.
That was my point!
Such bonfires were going on all over the USA in my youth. Just pointed out that the young will push it harder and harder when the old, through life experiences, may tamp it down. The Greeks gave us Icarus as fair warning and the Bible tells us of pride before the fall. Youth + Human Nature is a volatile combination. We can reach great heights without fear but conversely, the falls are much greater as consequence.
Posted on 4/1/26 at 3:39 am to tpatten
quote:
And yeah, it was supervised, but much of that supervision was from people who didn't have any experience with the things that could have gone wrong.
This is the key point.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
- Mark Twain
Posted on 4/1/26 at 3:42 am to ColoradoAg
quote:
I was teaching at the Air Force Academy
Hope you taught those flyboys how to fly as good as the Navy pilots flew.
;)
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