Memories Find Their Place

TEXAS AGGIE SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2015

THE ASSOCIATION OF FORMER STUDENTS

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2015

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE AGGIE NETWORK

THE ASSOCIATION OF FORMER STUDENTS

MICHAEL K.

YOUNG

Texas A&M’s 25th President

AGGIENETWORK.COM

RETURN TO THE ROCK | SMALL TRADITIONS | YOUR IMPACT ON A&M

MYSTORY

Memories Find Their Place Time Always Brings Change, But The True Spirit Of Aggieland Lives Forever

“And we sang dirges in the dark / The day the music died” Our voices were shaky and out of sync with Don MacLean crooning through the iPhone. Standing around a gravestone at the Aggie Field of Honor, we were here to pay respects to our buddy, Daniel Joseph-Yi Evans, Class of ’02. In the year since his death in 2013, we had traveled, each in our own ways. But like trout returning to the stream of their birth, we were back again.

“Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye / Singin’ ‘This’ll be the day that I die’ “ We definitely weren’t the “good ol’ boys” of Aggieland; we were the outsiders— nerds, liberal arts majors and video gamers. I grin at the memories—in so many ways, Dan was the biggest misfit of them all.

Dan was head of the Agnostic and Atheist Group in 2000, and our larger social network straddled many of the out-of-place enclaves of College Station: philosophy clubs, Democratic Socialists, objectivists, DJs and ravers. Perhaps it was our coming-of-age in college, but to us A&M around 2000 was at a crossroads. We saw ourselves as part of a progressive movement, and since we stood out so starkly, we got organized like few other such groups did in Texas.

Chrose, Plunker, Ozzy—the old nicknames leapt to mind as we looked around the ragged semicircle facing the headstone. The naming traditions of A&M were a Bonfire custom—Dan had gotten his nickname at Cut—but it seemed to trickle down

to us 2-percenters as well. “Dirty” was the only one of us who had actually worked on the old behemoth.

But all of us felt the collapse in 1999 when Bonfire fell. For weeks the aura of sadness saturated campus, the sorrow of familial loss. I experienced it again when I saw Mr. Evans’ email on his son’s passing. I closed my computer instantly, not able or willing to process it. I didn’t understand in that moment, just as many of us didn’t understand when we saw the camera feed displaying Stack’s collapse at 2:42 a.m.

Thousands brought gifts of flowers and Aggie Rings to what would become the site of the memorial. We echoed them now in our own way for Dan, laying cigarettes and alcohol as though at a rural Buddhist shrine, wondering what the groundskeeper would think of our bizarre offerings.

“Biju, we’re starting a new tradition,” Dan had said imperiously through the phone the last time I drove to Aggieland to visit. He was a random man, but when we all arrived at his apartment he was prepared and insistent. The lyrics were printed and the rye was open.

“We’ll sing ‘American Pie’ and take a shot of whiskey,” he said, grinning maniacally. “We’ll do it every year.”

With his violently off-brand humor and devil-may-care attitude, Dan never cared what people thought. But

Military Walk 44 TEXAS AGGIE | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2015

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2011 PHOTOS BY PATRICK DANIELCZYK ’03

BY BIJU SUKUM A R AN ’01

he was also the fixture, the guy every dorm seemed to have, a compassionate listener, smoking late at night near his bench, talking to anyone nearby through a haze of Marlboro Reds. And years later, when the freshmen we knew as seniors had their own Bonfire “grandchildren,” they too somehow knew of Dan, as though he had passed on from campus, solidifying only as a genetic memory.

“Bye bye, Miss American Pie / Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry” Our voices all eventually joined at the chorus, surging stronger after fumbling the lyrics. Of course he would choose the longest song.

Aggieland for Dan and me was about belonging. We stayed during the breaks, wandering the streets like two lone survivors of a ghost town. And today, we Old Ags head back to campus to roam as ghosts ourselves. Crocker is gone, the MSC is renovated, and we join a group of similarly confused oldtimers attempting the new parking system on Northgate.

But the hallowed places are still there. The old philosophy building; a tree where one romance blossomed; and there where another sputtered.

Places stained with arguments and frustrations and stumblings towards belonging.

Awash in memories, we finally make our way to Dan’s bench, where I grew to know him best.

After his funeral service, I had found a Sharpie on the ground and written a memorial to him on it. “Blunt, brilliant, awkward....a truly kind soul.” The pen’s felt had given way to the rough cement in the moments before the new year.

But the bench was utterly nondescript now, repainted and smooth.

We gather around, asking a younglooking student to take our picture. I’m sure he has no idea, like we had no idea when we first arrived.

These benches hold a wealth of hidden tradition. Chase was our quirky man on the bench in the FHK quad my senior year, and Skippy had his own in front of Crocker. Dr. Scott Austin, a mentor to many of us misfits, recently passed, and a portion of his memorial 46 TEXAS AGGIE | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2015

Academic Building and Sully

was at a bench that he loved. The stoops of dorms, the special trees: These are places where no plaques are placed, imbued only with memories passed word-of-mouth from one Aggie to the next.

I would argue that Bonfire’s light isn’t one of fire and gasoline; it’s one of spirit and friendships forged.

That glow trickles down, gathering up in smaller ways, reforming in humble nooks and corners on campus and off, with groups who may not live up to an institution’s outward face, but who nevertheless finally belong.

We take a last look and head off to our new lives. When next we visit, the Academic Building might be renamed and Kyle Field will look completely different.

Dan’s bench might be gone.

But I’m convinced the fire will still remain.

View toward Albritton Tower

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