Our True Colors
Every now and then, sibling rivals are shocked into the realization that, at day’s end, they are siblings first, rivals second
by Cora Bullock
It’s been reported that dogs trained in search-and-rescue missions become depressed if they only find bodies. They mope and try to avoid the work.
Austin, a two-and-a-half year old golden retriever, attended UT’s memorial service on November 22 for the 12 Aggies killed during Bonfire’s collapse this year. It was Austin’s job to hunt for survivors amid the fallen logs, but he was fated to find only the last two bodies in the wood. Lying at Austin Police Officer Jim Minton’s feet during the speeches, he seemed sad and tired — helpless to do anything more than comiserate. He was the perfect metaphor for his namesake.
The news spread like wildfire after the 2 a.m. collapse on November 18 of the nearly complete Bonfire, a stack of logs 55 feet high and 45 feet wide, slated to burn before the UT-A&M football game, a tradition dating back 90 years. The 40-foot stack of logs did exactly what it was designed to do when it collapsed inward; however, it sent around 70 Aggies toppling with it. By Saturday, 11 students and one former student, the son of UT engineering professor John Breen, lay dead.
A&M’s tight-knit nature is legend in Texas. But the international media coverage showed that the Aggies would not have to stand alone in their grief.
The first person on the Ex-Students’ Association’s staff to hear the news was its student relations assistant. Taryn Deaton’s reaction, while eating her cereal at 6:15 that Thursday, was shock. Kimberly Gundersen, who heads the Association’s student relations program and advises its Student Chapter, found out around 7. “My feeling was total disbelief that something so steeped in tradition would be the center of such a horrible tragedy,” Gundersen says. They immediately began questioning the wisdom of holding the Hex Rally, UT’s traditional ceremony hosted by the Student Chapter the Monday before every A&M game.
Alumni were among the first to react. Jim Boon, executive director of The Ex-Students’ Association, says, “I received more phone calls that day than I had in the previous six weeks.” Phone calls also flooded the student relations office, first UT alumni and students, then Aggies, begging the Student Chapter not to hold the Hex Rally.
The Association and its Student Chapter had beaten them to the punch. As the news grew worse and rescuers pulled more victims from the Bonfire wreckage, Gundersen, Deaton, Boon, and associate executive director Susan Kessler discussed canceling the rally. Someone suggested holding a memorial service instead, which Milam Newby, the Texas Exes Student Chapter rallies director, coined a “Unity Gathering.”
Gundersen, Deaton, and Newby worked feverishly, with great help from UT’s University Relations Office, to plan the event. They pulled Hex Rally ads (which lampooned Bonfire) from The Daily Texan and nixed the spirit banner that was to hang on the MainBuilding. Only service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega’s giant Texas flag, another unifying symbol between the schools, would be draped across the building. Student Chapter members scurried around campus that morning, ripping down Hex Rally fliers. The Student Chapter sold 600 Hex Rally T-shirts, raising $4,000 in two days for a memorial fund at A&M.
That afternoon, a busload of UT students, administrators, and alumni rode to College Station to attend A&M’s memorial service that evening.
The red candles Longhorns use to hex A&M would have to remain in their boxes until next year, as the University Relations office placed a rush order for white candles, the common color of the age-old rivals. Student Government supplied the white ribbons seen on campus, and people wrote messages to the Aggies on the Texas Blazers spirit group’s giant wooden sympathy card, traditionally bearing good luck messages for the UT football team. The “Unity Gathering” to mourn the dead drew 10,000 people, including busloads of Aggies.
At the gathering, a succession of dignitaries consoled the crowd: President Larry Faulkner, Chairman Don Evans of the UT Board of Regents, Lt. Governor Rick Perry, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Coach Mack Brown, A&M Student Government president Will Hurd, and Milam Newby. The unsettlingly silent crowd neither clapped after any speaker nor uttered a word. The only sound was the wind whipping the flags at half-mast.
After the speeches, carilloneur Tom Anderson played “The Spirit of Aggieland,” chimed the Tower’s bells 12 times, and then finished with “The Eyes of Texas.” A bugler played “Taps” while Aggie and Longhorn students and alumni spread the glow of the candles across the plaza and down the South Mall.
No one read concluding remarks, signifying that people could stay as long as they needed to. People gently sang the school songs and “Amazing Grace” again and again. A&M corps members helped alongside APO members to lower the massive flag, which threatened to rip out of their fingers in the fierce wind.
The crowd slowly dissipated, but many lingered around small, impromptu shrines. Two Aggie corps members stood over two Bonfire work helmets set on the ground, around which people had placed candles. One member, overwhelmed by grief, walked away from the crowd to compose himself.
In the end, Aggies gathered in a large circle and softly chanted a spirit yell. Then came a loud, friendly voice from the crowd: “Gig ’em, Horns!” He broke the tension, brought some laughter, and a brief reprieve from the numbing sorrow. It gave voice to what the Longhorns and Aggies were feeling toward one another, the rivalry a distant thought as UT did what it could to help A&M through its pain.
The ceremony was the culmination of a remarkable week in the history of both schools, a week in which archrivals discovered a bond that they themselves may not have believed existed. Something had changed. “We can’t ever go back to where we were five days ago,” Newby said.
Traditions continued to be revamped through presstime, including the annual Aggie/Longhorn breakfast, the good-natured ribbing again supplanted by gestures of solidarity.
The football game went on as scheduled in College Station. Texas Ex Life Member Adam Jones, BA ’90, who writes a weekly college football review, summarized his feelings towards A&M and of the impending game:
“Our lives will go on. Someone will win in a stadium full of ghosts. The war dead for whom Kyle Field stands as a memorial will have to make some room. For 12 more.
“A fitting number for the Texas A&M faithful.”
