Google News, Requiem, and A President of a Corporation

I look at Google News a lot to see what's up in the US. A few days ago there was a story about a helicopter crash that killed the occupants of a medical helicopter. I noticed it because it happened in Wisconsin--at my alma mater, in fact. I was actually surprised that a local story would make Google News. That night, Elena, out of the blue, said she wanted to go see Mozart's Requiem at Saint Pierre cathedral in Montpellier. I had never heard it performed, so I thought it would be good to check it out.

Flashback to 4th, 5th or 6th grade (I'm fuzzy on which it was). Jimmy Carter was President of the US. And we were in class voting on who should be the president of our class model "corporation". It was the year that we learn how the stock market works by making a little "company" and issuing stock for a quarter a share. Then electing officers. And then they would decide on a product to manufacture, and then we would sell the product at the West Elementary Open House. We decided on little keychains shaped like Wisconsin. After we sold our product, a stock buyback occurred and the shares presumably would increase in value (can't remember exactly what the results were--just that I had one share).

Being the class brain (nerd), naturally I ran for president. The results, announced just before recess, were a tie--because for some reason I felt it was wrong to vote for oneself. After recess, a runoff. I lost. Oh well. C'est la vie.

The winner of that election, and president of our model corporation, was Steve Lipperer. I just found out in an email from my parents that he was the pilot of that crashed helicopter. That's my most lasting memory of Steve--a worthy adversary who beat me fair and square mano-a-mano. I've always respected him for doing that. I wish I could say I was thinking about the occupants of the helicopter as I was marveling at the height of the ceilings of Saint Pierre during Mozart's Requiem. I wish I had known someone I knew was killed hours before. I didn't. But from now on, when I hear Mozart's Requiem, I will think of Steve. I can't do anything else for him, but I can at least associate him with a work of Mozart that I first heard in a church in Montpellier just hours after he parted.

Goodbye Steve.