If I were an eagle I'd soar on the wings of the current into the brilliant sunlight like adamantine diamonds. I'd lord the heavens with my every graceful bank and turn and diving beauty like a shooting star come too close to earth. With the wind at my back and only the ethereal clouds before me I could be lightning and thunder and all the elements would tremble before my might. Alone, away from the sight of all living, my life and my soul freed from the trappings of tangible existence.

We will never be eagles. And yet some of us strive to soar, to soar free into the temple of air and spirits inhabited only by sun and wind and stars. For the dream is strong in all our hearts, but it is strongest in theirs, they that scale the mountain alone and make that blinded clutching leap of faith into the empty blue beyond. And they are the most noble of us all.

So then what happens if someone opens his eyes and finds himself tumbling plunging towards the solid earth below, hands empty of anything he can use to pull himself back up to the point from which he fell? What happens when the dream dies and leaves him clutching air as empty as the same blue wild horizon that he had almost conquered? What happens as he hangs suspended between nothingness and nothingness, shattered shards of what was once so beautiful falling away from him?

Still noble, still strong. But empty of that dream he held onto so dearly, the dream that was ripped up and flung away from him violently and without warning. What can you say to a man who was almost an eagle?

What do you say to an eagle who can no longer fly?

Matthew Adam Harriger was a sophomore and an AS 200 cadet in AFROTC Det 825 Cadet Corps. He had wanted to be a pilot his whole life and was attending the University of Texas at Austin on an ROTC scholarship. As a cadet he was dedicated and active in the corps and he was a wonderful peer and friend. Gifted and intelligent, he would have almost certainly become one of the leaders of Det 825 as an upperclassman.

At the beginning of the month of November 1999 he was admitted to the hospital and tests showed that he had diabetes. Diabetics, under AFROTC rules, are not eligible for a pilot slot, nor are they even eligible for an officer's commission in the United States Air Force. As a result he was required to drop out of ROTC and also lost his scholarship.

His absence is a great loss to the corps and to all of us that were his friends. AFROTC Det 825 will miss Matt Harriger very very much.
 

31 March 2000