AUBURN - If I have ever witnessed a more moving and emotional moment in 43 years in this business, I don't remember it.
Senior Editor Phillip Marshall
In front of Samford Hall, before a solemn crowd holding lit candles in memory of fallen Auburn students and teammates Ed Christian and Ladarious Phillips, Auburn football players and coaches sang the theme song of the last two Auburn teams.
Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow
Lean on me, when you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on
For it won't be long
'Til I'm gonna need
Somebody to lean on
Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you won't let show
You just call on me brother, when you need a hand (Chorus)
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'd understand
We all need somebody to lean on
-
- Bill Withers
Auburn people and Auburn students gathered not long after sundown to remember and to honor two young men who died so much too young.. Eric Mack, injured by a crazed gunman's bullet, and women's basketball player Blanche Alverson lit the first candles. Those in the crowd followed.
And then they sang.
"Lean on me when you're not strong."
In front of them, the families of Christian and Phillips listened. Some wept silently.
An hour before the ceremony, people were starting to gather on the lawn in front of the building that is the centerpiece of the Auburn campus. Football players and coaches arrived a little after 8 with the families of those were lost. Auburn head coach Gene Chizik, athletic director Jay Jacobs, executive associate athletic director Tim Jackson provided strong shoulders for them to lean on. Teammates and other athletes choked back tears as they stood one-by-one at the podium and remembered.
A letter from Phillips' mother, rife with pain and grief and hope, was read aloud.
As I stood by watching and listening, I was struck again by the senseless loss of life and the immense pain that went with it.
Phillips and Demario Pitts, an Auburn resident who also was senselessly killed, will be laid to rest today, Phillips in Roanoke and Pitts in Loachapoka. Christian will be laid to rest Saturday.
As Jacobs, who also lost a teammate as an Auburn football player in 1983, left, I shook his hand. He grasped my hand firmly. "It's just really hard," he said.
Life will go on. Auburn will play football again. God willing, I will write about it as I have done for all these years.
But I don't believe I'll ever forget a sultry Thursday night in front of Samford Hall when men sang through their pain and through their grief as candles glowed in the night.
- Phillip Marshall
- Auburn Insider - AuburnUndercover