The Forgotten DeathBy Eric Vought

Originally written and posted in March 1993 regarding the shooting at Simon's Rock College of Bard on 14 December 1992. Retyped in April of 2014 with minor typo correction.

This Semester is going to be difficult for some people at Simon's Rock. Some people will never return to this place. Perhaps there are those others who can go on as if nothing had ever happened, but there are a few, I must believe, who will be completely unchanged or unaffected by the violence on the night of December 14, 1992. There will be a few who will not find themselves looking at this school in a subtly different way.

This semester, we mourn the deaths of friends. Galen Gibson, a bright, kind (and slightly odd) soul was torn from us, as well as a rare and gifted teacher, Ňacuñán Sáez. They were torn from us by the hands of a madman. Our home will never be the same without them.

Galen's room still remains empty in Kendrick. His cartoons are still taped to the door. The notes people wrote to him are still there, scratched into the wood with the point of a pen. Plans are being discussed to make his room some sort of memorial to him, a physical hole in the structure of Kendrick, like the not so plainly visible hole in our lives.

Ňacuñán's grades have not yet been finished. He never had a chance to read his student's final efforts, to gauge how much they had really learned. Perhaps the most important lessons of Ňacuñán Sáez cannot be graded, nor can they be taught. Who will replace him? Who will replace the wit and whimsy of friend and mentor?

There are others among us who are wounded. There are the obvious wounds that require canes and crutches, as well as the more hidden wounds that require tears and friends' shoulders. Some wounds will heal. Some may not. The scars left over when healing is done will serve to remind us of our pain for years to come.

What many people fail to realize , as our classes continue and grades and work--- and escaping from grades and work--- fills our minds, is that we our not mourning two deaths this semester, but three: The deaths of Galen Gibson, of Ňacuñán Sáez, and of the person that some of us once knew as Wayne Lo.

I know that many people will fault me for mentioning those three names in the context of the same sentence without even an accusation to separate them, but I know that I am not alone. O have heard many others express their pain and disbelief, their bewilderment of the sudden change from friend and fellow student to enemy and assailant. The student that I knew as Wayne Lo, the person I roomed with, spoke with, laughed with, and even the shoulder I once cried on, is dead, as surely as Galen and Ňacuñán are dead. That too has left a permanent mark on my life.

Before being the bearer of death and a self-appointed executioner, Wayne was a creator beauty. Anyone who had ever heard him play the violin can attest to that. The music he played in Dolliver 26 I will always hear playing alongside the sound of remembered gunfire. I remember him saying that his music was his chance to make something of himself, to be what he wanted to be. I remember believing it. I remember the letters he wrote, the letters he received, to and from schools of music across the country.

I will always wonder what killed Wayne Lo. Was it the fact that his performance, his grades, his

successes always seemed to be just less than he wanted them to be? Was it something his mother said or did when she visited him the week before? Was it, in some way, my fault? Was it loneliness, or the prejudice he said he always felt from others? Was it something buried deep within himself? Maybe it was all of these, or none of these. Perhaps we'll never know why Wayne Lo died, any more than we'll ever know why he killed.

He ended his own life too that night, and I will always wonder what made him discard his own instrument in favor of the one that he played on the night that Galen and Ňacuñán's music died.