Too Many Roses

Pavers at USAFA - Photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Scott Sturman

Every five years the class of 1972 meets at the Air Force Academy to spend an extended weekend with long time friends.  It is a festive occasion with numerous social events, but there does not seem to be enough time to greet, much less talk with everyone.

There is a solemn side to the reunion as well, when members of the class meet to pay their respects to classmates who are no longer with us.  The ceremony is conducted outdoors near the Association of Graduates Building, where one is able to view the Rocky Mountains to the west and the Black Forest to the east.  In the courtyard 750 odd bricks or pavers are laid in a rectangular grid each having the name of an individual class member etched deeply into the surface.

Members of the class preside over the ceremony, and after an opening prayer, the name of each deceased classmate is called.  At this point close friends and family members approach that person’s paver and lay a rose upon it.  This year thirty-nine names were honored by tearful widows and grieving classmates.

Printed in the event program are pictures of each deceased classmate when they were First Class Cadets and short personal history, including the cause of death.  Those who passed in their twenties and thirties often died in aircraft accidents or at the hand of aggressive cancers for which there was no cure.  Now in our early 60s a more insidious cause is beginning to take its toll: cardiovascular disease.

Some of us picked our parents right and are blessed with the genes of long life.  No unhealthy habit seems to speed up the time clock.  Others are not so fortunate.  Yet there are ways to hedge one’s bets to enjoy a prolonged retirement: weight control, no smoking, moderate drinking, some exercise now and then, and having a high index of suspicion if something seems amiss.  These are the best life insurance policies.

It is extraordinarily difficult to lose a spouse or friend of over forty years.  Remembering their impact on one’s life, why did they have to depart so soon and leave us without their company?  When we return in 2017 and again in 2022 to celebrate our friendships and honor the dead, hopefully, like Jack Benny, we will be stuck on the number thirty-nine when the time comes to lay roses on the pavers.