EMOTIONAL AGGIE ANNIVERSARY

Monday I finished writing the Administrative Council minutes and got them out for correction. I finished the Flame for November and sent it to be edited and finished my laundry and ironing. Tuesday I delivered a box of books that Mary Carleton had sent to Ike and Sue and tried to speed up Sue's computer by deleting extra files but had to leave it running. I bought copies of the Review that had the story on the Library dedication for the family and copies of the three issues that had stories on Al Pickett to send to him. I visited Carl Edington who was able to attend Noah Johnson's funeral. He was married to Noah's sister. I then presided at a small Kiwanis gathering. Seems like everyone had something else to do that day. Two visitors traveling from a place they had bought in Lake Brownwood back to their home in Nebraska came in to eat and we captured them to join three Key Clubbers. Matt McGowen was the speaker and told about his moving to work for an organization that is establishing orphanages in Sudan, Kenya (I think) and Romania to help children escape their lives of slavery, prostitution and rape. He will be taking volunteer groups from the US and working with churches to get support.

I finished Tuesday driving to San Antonio. Keith and I drove to Bryan this morning stopping to eat at Maxine's in downtown Bastrop. If you eat breakfast there and get a small plastic cup with something red in it, don't dump it on your potatoes thinking it is catsup, it is the jelly to go on your toast or biscuit.

This afternoon Sylvia Grider had tickets for us to attend the world premier showing of a new DVR entitled BURNING DESIRE that was produced by the A&M athletic department's TV studio called 12th Man Productions. It is part of a two DVR set with the other one being the 1999 A&M-TU football game that A&M won in the last quarter. Burning Desire is the story of the 12 students killed when the bonfire stack collapsed a week before the game. It was an emotional film that brought tears as they documented the events following the game. Dr. Sylvia Grider has two or three interviews in the film talking about the memorabilia that was left in remembrance at the site. After we came back the family were talking about their response. Valerie was a student at that time working part time in the engineering building that overlooked the stack site, and she was so distraught she couldn't look out the window. Dr. Grider told how they asked her and other faculty to go to St. Joseph's Hospital to help the police control all of the students who were overwhelming them trying to see their friends who had been injured and taken to ICU. Then the police asked them to try to help keep all of the TV people from disturbing the families of the injured students.

I hope everyone will buy the $35 two DVR set and look at the documentary.