FLTCREW1
2 January 2001, 12:38
I heard this on my portable the night it happened but wanted to wait until it hit the papers: http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/01/01/01619373.shtml
They came when they were called,
They asked for little and received less.
They fought for honor and truth,
In a world in which there was precious little.
We have been made better for their sacrifice
And yet we are poorer by their passing.
Ultimately in spite of their lost lives,
We must recognize that the greatest loss lies with us;
For we have been stripped of their lives and their gifts.
Of all the children they will never father,
of the students they will never tutor,
of the truth they will never uncover,
of the dreams they had that no mortal will ever know,
of the best of humanity that they can never again be.
We cannot remember them as well as we should,
We will never remember them as well as we do now.
Alas, we barely knew them at all.
But they died in our stead,
And if there is one thing we should know,
one thing we must take from this desolate moment;
it is that they could have been us,
and they must be us.
We must live for them.
We must try to achieve the promise that was embodied their lives,
before they were so nobly cast aside for our sake.
This is the only way
we can shoulder this otherwise unbearable debt.
By their selfless sacrifice they have shown
that this is how they would have had it,
had they by some accident of fate
been left as the living
and not we.
------------------
NSDQ
[This message has been edited by FLTCREW1 (edited 01-02-2001).]
They came when they were called,
They asked for little and received less.
They fought for honor and truth,
In a world in which there was precious little.
We have been made better for their sacrifice
And yet we are poorer by their passing.
Ultimately in spite of their lost lives,
We must recognize that the greatest loss lies with us;
For we have been stripped of their lives and their gifts.
Of all the children they will never father,
of the students they will never tutor,
of the truth they will never uncover,
of the dreams they had that no mortal will ever know,
of the best of humanity that they can never again be.
We cannot remember them as well as we should,
We will never remember them as well as we do now.
Alas, we barely knew them at all.
But they died in our stead,
And if there is one thing we should know,
one thing we must take from this desolate moment;
it is that they could have been us,
and they must be us.
We must live for them.
We must try to achieve the promise that was embodied their lives,
before they were so nobly cast aside for our sake.
This is the only way
we can shoulder this otherwise unbearable debt.
By their selfless sacrifice they have shown
that this is how they would have had it,
had they by some accident of fate
been left as the living
and not we.
------------------
NSDQ
[This message has been edited by FLTCREW1 (edited 01-02-2001).]