COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Saddled by grief at a time of year usually brimming with school spirit, the Texas A&M community came together to mourn the young lives lost in the preparation of a cherished university tradition.
As rescuers removed log after log from the collapsed 40-foot-high bonfire tower, former President George Bush joined an estimated crowd of 16,000 mourners at the school's Reed Arena for memorial service.Eleven students were killed and more than two dozen injured when the structure collapsed early Thursday. The last two bodies were recovered from the rubble early Friday.
"All of us cried as we watched our loved ones being removed from the stacks of logs," said Texas A&M President Ray M. Bowen. "These students were involved in a tradition that has become a part of being a Texas Aggie."
Malon Southerland, the university's vice president for student affairs, said the day's events -- which included a student prayer at a school fountain and spontaneous prayers at the bonfire site -- were part of "the Aggie spirit."
"All of this is to offer our deep sense of loss and grief for all of the families," he said.
This year's bonfire has been canceled -- only the second time in the event's 90-year history, the other cancellation came after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Bowen said a decision would be made later whether to continue the tradition or abolish it permanently.
"It's a very important tradition to us," he said, "but those decisions must be made at a calmer time."
At a tradition-rich school where even the dog mascots have their own cemetery, others already were struggling with whether the bonfire should ever burn again.
"It seems like this is the last straw," said 23-year-old Karyn Bayha, a 1999 graduate who left work Thursday to watch the rescue. "It would be hard for me to see the bonfire carried on after this."
But others invoked the students who died in hoping the tradition would continue.
"You know they died to build it," said senior Kay Barrington, 21. "They wouldn't want it to just get put away. They'd want it to burn."
When tragedy struck, Caleb Hill was perched atop the 40-foot pyramid of wired-together logs.
"I heard a cracking sound. It was like thunder," said the sophomore, who suffered a broken nose and broken wrist. "It shoved me into the wood, but the stack fell away from me, and I was lucky. Just very, very lucky."
Witnesses and some survivors said they heard the center pole -- the structure's key component -- crack, perhaps under the crush of timber. But university officials cautioned that it could be weeks before a final determination is made on what caused the collapse.
"There is a lot of speculation about that, but we have no information to confirm something happened with the pole," university spokeswoman Cynthia Lawson said.