Memorial Flame

More than 25,000 people weathered a driving rain early Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of the log bonfire collapse that killed 12 Texas A&M students.

Students and others huddled under umbrellas on the muddy and soaked campus polo fields for a memorial ceremony at 2:42 a.m. - the exact place and time A&M's log stack collapsed Nov. 18, 1999.

"I think the rain was appropriate because bonfires have usually been built in this kind of weather," said Ron Harrod, 62, who graduated from Texas A&M in 1960. "It was a very emotional ceremony."

The 59-foot stack of logs, weighing more than two jumbo jets, was being assembled for the school's annual pep rally on the eve of its football game against archrival Texas when it toppled. Besides those killed, 27 were injured.

Family members of each student who died in the accident sat together under umbrellas in rows of seats in a 150-foot circle. Behind each set of seats stood a 5- to 6-foot wood pillar bearing each victim's name and the year they were to graduate.

At the start of the 40-minute ceremony, lights on the fields were turned off and a memorial flame atop a platform in the circle's center was lit. The flame will be kept lit until 8 p.m. Sunday, to correspond with the time the last victim died.

A cannon was then fired 12 times.

"I think the ceremony was beautiful," said senior Justin Taliaferro, 21. "The first-year anniversary of any traumatic event is the hardest. I think it brought a lot of closure to a lot of people."

The mood on the A&M campus was somber Friday. At the Memorial Student Center on campus, teary-eyed students left handwritten messages on signs bearing the pictures of bonfire victims.

Before Friday's memorial ceremony, school officials arranged for movies and poetry readings at the student center to ease students' sadness.

In June, Texas A&M President Ray Bowen announced that the traditional bonfire would continue, but not until at least 2002, and only with greater school supervision and a professionally engineered design.

©2000 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed