Fallen Colonels

Because, I guess, I am a morbid fuck, I spent some time yesterday looking at this web site (from which the weirdly pro-Confederate picture above comes from*): Fallen Colonels.  There's also a Facebook page with photos, though it's hard to get through, as there are no names attached to the photos until you click on them.

How I found about the site, of course, was when my sister Pat died last year, & she & I - actually, all of my siblings - went to South Garland High School.  (Only four of us graduated from the school, though.  Three of my siblings dropped out, which was apparently the cool thing to do in the 1970s.)  My brother Steve informed whoever's in charge & her name's there, & her picture is on the Facebook page.  For some reason, a year & a half later, I found myself back at the site.

What fascinated me yesterday was the people in my high school class (we graduated in 1986) who have since left this mortal coil.  The site lists 21, out of a class of 430, although one of them, Marla Jones, died when she was a freshman (she committed suicide**), & another, Christy Ann Holland, apparently also attended only as a freshman, so that adds two to the number.  However, if we do the math, that's a little under 5% of the class - which means a little less than 1 in 20 people I graduated high school with are no longer with us.

& look at how they went!  Five died in car accidents, five by heart attack.  Four have causes that are unknown, while two were taken by cancer.  There was one murder, one suicide, & two congenital diseases.  Finally, Miss Holland, mentioned above, died of "unspecified health issues."

Interestingly, it more or less jibes with the stats by the CDC.  Heart disease is the number one cause of death in this country, followed by cancer.  Accidents are fourth.  More than half of my classmates died of these three causes.

Here's the thing: except for Marla Jones, whom I never really knew, & two others I'll discuss below, I have no idea who any these people are.  I don't have any memory of them whatsoever.  That may seem callous, & I certainly feel uncomfortable about it, but it's pretty obvious that I couldn't have known all 430 members of my graduating class.  But what of the two I think I knew?

While scrolling through the Facebook page, I came across Mark Taylor.  I don't recall the name, but the face - from the yearbook - definitely was familiar.  I may have sat next to him in one class or two, & remember him being friendly with me.  Perhaps he sat in front of me in English class in the 10th grade.  I was a pretty chatty fellow, & if that were Mark, he was easy to talk to, & easy to crack up, something I required.  If it wasn't him - well I have no idea either way.

The other was a girl named Jackie Bodiford.  I remember the name - it's actually quite fun to say - & I recall her face, even without seeing her yearbook picture.  We must have had some interactions, as I have a fleeting memory of making her laugh.  But that's all.  She makes me saddest of the group - she died very young, at the age of 22, when I was finishing college, & the site doesn't tell us how she died.

Mostly I confess I feel strangely fortunate to still be around thirty years after graduation.  I wasn't popular, I didn't have a lot of friends, & I'm not in contact with anyone I knew from school in 1986.  But sometimes we need to stand face-to-face with our mortality, & let it fuck up our minds a bit.  So I took some time to do that today.

* As I've talked about before, like here, my high school's mascot was "the Colonel," which was a diminutive military type dressed in Confederate garb.  My school's motto was "The South Shall Rise Again."

** I have very strong memories of first-period algebra the Monday after Marla Jones committed suicide.  She locked herself in a garage on a weekend night & turned the car on.  I was fascinated by seeing all of these girls - Marla's friends - just crying in the class, & my feelings about her death were mixed - she & those other girls had enjoyed making fun of me most of the semester.  I'm not sure we were ever told why she took her own life.