In memory of Mark Andrews, Jack Repasy and Bob Harris.
Mark was my brother, and he was best friends with Jack and Bob. They played football together at Moeller High School in Cincinnati, and then went to Marshall together. They seemed to have it all. I was a freshman at Ohio State when they died, and on the radio James Taylor's song "Fire and Rain" played often. It always made me think of Mark, who died in fire and rain. A few weeks after the crash, we studied this poem in my English class (a strange coincidence). It was by A. E. Housman:
TO AN ATHLETE DYING YOUNG
THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
- Becky Andrews Reed
6 comments:
Becky Andrews Reed,
I read your comments and cried...rememebering what good friends Mark, Jack, Bob and Jay Brinkmueller were from Moeller days. Jack and Bob were especially good friends of mine. I also knew Mark and Jay Brinkmueller but not as well. I attended the memorial services and the burial for Mark, Jack and Bob and stayed in touch with the Repasys and the Harris families for many many years. I am so sorry for your loss - Mark was a good person. I think of the "boys" often. It is so depressing to think of what might have been. Please know that others think of you and your family often and always on November 14th. The guys were very very special.
Thank you for your thoughts. They were all such good people, and had such bright futures. It was nice to hear from one of their friends, whoever you are.
I would love to hear a few things about the 3 different personalities of Mark, Jack and Bobby. I have raised 3 boys of my own (now semi-retired speech path and graduate of Marshall) and somehow a family drive to the wreck area when I was almost 5 stuck in my mind and resonated with more understanding and empathy as I grew. What I witnessed when young was some shrapnel in the trees that caught the suns reflection in a sunny cold November but I somehow know it was a devastating event. My parents went with an aunt who was in from Michigan. A car load of silence.
Becky, I am working with Danny Decce's Daughter (Leslie Deece Garvis). He rather also perished on the ill fated flight carrying 75 souls. We are trying to get a memory book together with good memories and pictures of the highest resolution that we can find. I was taken to the wreck scene after the biggest pieces were removes as dad worked over the hill at Ashland Oil and knew the roads. I was almost 5 but it stuck and stayed after raising boys and graduating Marshall. If you are still blogging and would like to help with a pic or memory; we would be more than grateful. My e-mail is trish84_crb@yahoo.com. Patty Osborne. Thanks.
Sorry; I meant Danny Deece.
I knew Mark, Bob and Jack well. Jack and I were neighborhood friends growing up playing Capture the Flag and street baseball I first knew Mark through you in elementary school but in high school because of Bob who I dated for several years. Fifty years now and the memories return as if a short time has passed. I visit their gravesite in Cincinnati now with the markers of parents who have joined them in death. They were dear friends.
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