Exactly 8 years ago..
61 Students of The LJC left their School in a School bus waiting for their Flight..

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EXACTLY eight years ago today, 61 students of the Loyola Jesuit College (LJC) were headed home for the Christmas holidays when the Sosoliso aircraft conveying them crashed in Port Harcourt. These students, who had left their school and friends less than two hours earlier, were barely minutes away from re-uniting with their families when the tragedy struck. The crash claimed all the lives on board, except two (one LJC student and another passenger). It was an overwhelming catastrophe that cast a shadow in the lives of everyone involved and the nation as a whole.
The scope of that tragedy and the sharp poignancy of its hurt are sufficient triggers to provoke a crisis of faith in those less toughened by the imperatives of love and deep belief in the omniscience of God. But even when we cannot understand why those 60 children were taken away from us, we have taken solace in God’s words in the Bible that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways.
Today, eight years may have passed and the scars are gradually healing but we will never forget our children who left us in the most heart-breaking manner. Yet while they live forever in our hearts, we want their memories to enrich the lives of others as we demonstrate that abiding bond between parents and children that is aptly captured in the motto of the LJC PTA: “For the sake of our precious jewels”!
However deep our pain as parents, the tragedy of December 10, 2005 was not only for the PTA but also for the Loyola Jesuit College. Having 60 promising lives, 10 per cent of its entire student population, cut short in one fell swoop, was too much for any school to bear. Yet out of that tragedy, a new Jesuit Memorial College has emerged, on the same ground that our children perished in Port Harcourt. Also, there is now an annual memorial drama by students of LJC Abuja in honour and memory of their departed senior colleagues.
At a moment like this, we cannot but draw strength from the courage and resilience of Kechi Okwuchi, the only Loyola Jesuit College survivor of that tragic incident, who continues to remind us of the obligations that the living still owe the dead. Kechi experienced the tragedy and lives it every day but she has refused to allow it to define her and the future that is still within her reach.
However, as we mark the 8th anniversary of this tragedy today, our unceasing prayers go out to the parents and guardians of our departed 60 children as well as the Port Harcourt branch of the LJC Parents Teachers Association, the management and staff of Loyola Jesuit College, and indeed all Nigerians.
For reasons beyond our knowledge those beautiful children came to us; and for reasons also beyond our comprehension, they left us. And today in their memory, we have decided to express gratitude instead of grief at the privilege of experiencing their warm companionship. However fleeting their friendship and love, gratitude is a preferable healing force and the path of positive faith. Certainly, those young spirits would wish this path for us because to live forever in the hearts of those who bore and nurtured them is really not to die.
It is from this backdrop of love that the Abuja branch of the Loyola Jesuit College PTA has decided to take a practical step of faith and build other monuments in the memory of our departed students. These monuments are to externalize the depth of our timeless ties to these 60 innocent souls. Our purpose is to erect structures that will be an enduring legacy and simultaneously serve a practical purpose for the host school in loving memory of the LJC-60.


http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php/opinion/columnist/140601-momoh-sosoliso-crash-and-the-memory-of-ljc-60

I'd like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days.
I'd like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun;
Of happy memories that I leave when life is done.




RIP beloved 60 Angels..

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die....

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Epitaph on a child
Here, freed from pain, secure from misery, lies
A child, the darling of his parents' eyes:
A gentler lamb n'er sported on the plain,
A fairer flower will never bloom again:
Few were the days allotted to his breath;
Now let him sleep in peace his night of death..

Beautiful children
Gone but not forgotten
Your memories leave us with pain
But also Hope
One day, we'll meet to part no more

twogood: Beautiful children
Gone but not forgotten
Your memories leave us with pain
But also Hope
One day, we'll meet to part no more

Godbless U..
E gadi..