Letter from the Editor

To the reader,

In a college with over 13,000 students, I’m sure that 5,000 of you, if not more, had a Valentine last Thursday. That’s what Valentine’s Day is all about, being with your significant other. Guys get their girls some flowers and chocolates and take them out to dinner, right?

Well, what if you were out at a movie on Valentine’s Day and you got a phone call from an old friend and just ignored it because you didn’t want to be rude? But that phone call could change your whole life.

That’s what happened to me two years ago. My girlfriend and I were seeing a movie as part of our Valentine’s Day date and I got a phone call that changed the meaning of Valentine’s Day for me, forever.

An old friend, named Johnny Putnam, had committed suicide. I am an emotional guy and I immediately started to have tears flowing down my face. Johnny was one of best kids I had ever met, and definitely the sweetest.

My initial thought, and still my thought to this day, was just…why? I think myself and everyone else that knew him would like to know that. Johnny never left a note, never hinted that he was thinking about it, and he had finally cleaned up his life.

Now, I’m not going to get in to his whole life because I would take up the whole paper, but I will say that Johnny was a kid with his struggles, maybe a little bit more than some other people.

As college students, we are all too familiar with struggles. Some handle them better than others.

Johnny had great friends that were always there for him, and he was the type of person to get an idea in his head and just go with it. Something happened to him, and no one was there to stop him.

I can’t tell you what I would do to go back to that day and just be there and try and talk him out of it. But from now on, Valentine’s Day will always be the day that I celebrate the life of Johnny Fitzgerald Putnam Jr.

This, along with some other things really put life into perspective for me.

You have to appreciate the life that you have, regardless of how much you struggle and fight to live through it. I learned that if you think that something could never happen to you, then you are naïve and in denial.

One of the greatest obstacles of life is life itself, and we build character as human beings when we can overcome the challenges that life presents.

Everything that I have learned in life has been through failure. If you’ve never failed or done something wrong, then you’ve never really learned how to adjust to something.

Struggle and appreciation go hand and hand because of that. I appreciate everything in life because of how hard I’ve had to fight to overcome the struggles I’ve went through.

If I could go back and just try and talk Johnny out of it, then that is what I would tell him, to appreciate life, because you never know when it will be gone. I can’t do that, but what I can do is appreciate the great person that he was and understand how fortunate I was to know him.

My point is, I know taking a lot of credits in a semester is hard. I know just finding the motivation just to get up in the morning to go to class is hard. But after everything is said and done, you will be happy with the way you took advantage of the opportunities life gave you.

Next Valentine’s Day I commend you to celebrate the day with the people that you love, but I ask you join me in celebrating the life of a loved one whose life was lost.

Thank you, and, as always,

Go Vikings!