When A&M's annual bonfire collapsed and killed 12 students ahead of the game against Texas in 1999, football was the last thing on the minds of both communities.
On Nov. 26, 1999, the Texas band performed a tribute to the 12 people who died in a bonfire tragedy a week prior. Dave Wilson is a college football reporter. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.is the epitome of an Aggie. His dad played for Texas A&M's 1939 national championship team. He arrived in College Station in August 1977, joined the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band and never left.
During a game the Aggies won in dramatic fashion, the Longhorn Band paid tribute to its rival university with a remarkable halftime performance. And 25 years later, the unprecedented show of unity between the two universities and their fans remains an indelible memory for many Texans."It's one of the most memorable days in my 40-year career," Brewer said this week.
UT students wore white ribbons in memory of the Aggies who died, and the Longhorns' Hex Rally -- a tradition dating to the 1940s when fans burn red candles before the A&M game -- was transformed into a unity gathering with a candlelight vigil in front of the UT Tower, which is traditionally illuminated but was darkened for the occasion. Brown fixed a white ribbon on his car's antenna.
The Longhorn Band played"Amazing Grace" at halftime in honor of the victims of the bonfire collapse while the A&M crowd looked on. the Longhorns have played 118 times. They have often been cultural opposites: A&M was founded as an agricultural school in a rural college town and Texas occupies prime real estate in the state capital. Texas A&M was an all-male military school until 1963, when women were first admitted, while Texas kept Austin"weird.
"It was very weird going into the stadium because people were being so nice," said Sedatole, now the director of bands at Michigan State."The band has to come in through the gauntlet of the Aggie tailgating." "All of us here have always had a great deal of respect for the Longhorn Band," Dr. Tim Rhea, the current director of the Aggie Band said."They do what they do extremely well. And I think we do what we do extremely well. They've always been wonderful colleagues for us."
Then, the Longhorn Band played"Amazing Grace." They held Texas and Texas A&M flags side-by-side as they played, and then lowered the Texas flags and kept the A&M flags aloft. The LHB then added a Marine band rendition of"Taps" to the end as a tribute to the students who had died. Our two institutions are great rivals, but more importantly great friends who have the highest amount of respect for each other. May the Longhorn spirit and the Spirit of Aggieland never die.
"It was so silent that you could hear the spurs clinking on the cadets' boots, even up in the third level," Gray said."There have only been a few times in my life where the hair on the back of my neck stood up; this was one of them." "I would want the bonfire to not have happened at A&M," he said."Playing A&M on Thanksgiving, I thought about the families. ... When you lose your children, there is nothing worse than that in the world. I think about that every Thanksgiving because there are 12 families that don't have a good Thanksgiving. That'll never go away."
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