I was an eighteen-year-old high school senior when I first set foot in - and laid eyes on - Boulder, Colorado. Jill and Joe were sophomores at CU. I had applied to college there and gotten accepted. Having not yet settled on where I was going to go, at Jill's suggestion I flew out of Newark and into Stapleton Airport in Denver one Thursday night to spend a long weekend on campus with her and with Joe and to check out campus for myself. I still remember all these years later her telling me when I confirmed I was heading west that once I saw Boulder, I was not going to want to go to college anywhere else.
It was April 1985.
Jill and Joe picked me up in Denver and drove me up to Boulder that Thursday night. By the time my plane got in and we got up to campus, it was dark. I bunked with Joe in his room in Baker Hall. The next morning, I woke up and got ready to go with Joe to whatever was his first class of the day. We stepped out of the dorm and into a drop-dead gorgeous April morning. It was close to seventy degrees and the campus was bathed in sunshine...including Farrand Field on which a seemingly endless number of coeds were, themselves, bathing in the sunshine.
Joe and I went to his class, whatever it was, and then headed over to find the Admissions Office or the Registrar's Office. All these years later I cannot recall which. I do recall that just outside of the building, there was a pay phone. I used it to call Mom at W-H, where she worked as a secretary in the Development Office. I told her that I had decided that CU was my choice for college and that since I was on campus and had brought a copy of my acceptance letter with me, I was going to pop in and pay my tuition deposit. Being Mom, she acknowledged my decision and without trying to either second-guess me or talk me out of it, simply asked me if I was sure of what I was about to do. I told her I was and that was that. She told me to go do it, told me she loved me, and was off the phone and back to work.
I still recall the startled look on the very nice woman's face when I appeared on the other side of her desk, acceptance letter in one hand and wallet in the other, and announced my desire to pay my tuition deposit to hold my spot in the class for the semester beginning in Fall 1985. She actually disappeared for a moment down the hallway to find a receipt ledger or some such thing so that she could write me a receipt. She apologized for the delay, explaining to me that no one had ever shown up at her desk with cash in hand for the purpose of paying that initial "save my spot" deposit, which in April 1985 was either $25.00 or $50.00. I paid her. She handed me my receipt and when I stepped out of the building and back into the sunshine, I was secure in the knowledge that I had found my new home.
It was April 1985.
I started as a freshman at CU in the fall of 1985. I graduated with my degree in Political Science (it makes one heck of a coaster) in the spring of 1989. Five days after graduation, my great friend Jay Bauer drove one of our other great friends, Alex Schreiber, and me from Boulder down to Denver - to Stapleton Airport - where we said our goodbyes to one another. Jay headed back to his car and to home. Schneedz and I did likewise by boarding our respective flights to New Orleans and Newark. I have not lived in Boulder Colorado, either part-time or full-time, since.
It was May 17, 1989.
Fortune has favored me far more than I have deserved throughout my life. One of the two children I raised with Margaret, our son Rob, pursued a career that took him West almost immediately after graduation, which is where he has remained. Once he settled down out there, he met a girl (a Jersey girl of course) and he and Jess are now the proud parents of two of my five grandchildren. They do not live in Boulder but, rather, approximately seventy-five minutes northeast. Yet, they are close enough that when Margaret and I fly to Colorado to visit them, far more often than not a portion of our visit includes a trip to Boulder to appease the old man. We have gone to football games on Homecoming. Rob and I have run in the Bolder Boulder 10K together. Life has presented me the chance to share a place that I love with people who I love, none of whom I knew or even knew of when I first fell in love with Boulder.
Thirty-six years after I first set foot in Boulder and I neither can nor have any desire to shake the dust of its streets off of my shoes. I am enraged by the cowardice of this nation's latest mass shooter du jour, which manifested itself at the King Soopers in Table Mesa six days ago, and resulted in the murders of these ten people.
May their strength and the strength of those they loved and those who loved each of them most of all continue to provide strength to their community. May their community's strength continue to be a source of strength for the families of each of these ten men and women. May Police Officer Eric Talley's strength, sense of duty, and self-sacrifice not only continue to be a source of strength for his family, including his wife and their seven children but also a reminder to those who have endeavored for the past nine months to make this man the face of law enforcement officers in these nation that he is not now, and has never been.
Every community in this country, regardless of its size, is blessed to be served by men and women who live by the same code as Eric Talley lived his life. Those who put the lives of others ahead of their own life. Those who risk, and far too goddamn often, lay down their own life to save the lives of strangers.
-AK
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