Bearing Drift: “Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the death of my friend, Matthew Shepard.
Matt and I went to college together in North Carolina, but he transferred to the University of Wyoming. In the pre-Facebook world of the 1990s, we passed through each other’s lives with the transience of youth. A few months after I graduated, I saw Matt’s picture splashed across the news.
On the evening of October 6, 1998, two men lured Matt into their truck, drove him outside of Laramie, WY, viciously beat him, and left him tied to a fence in near-freezing temperatures. The next day a passing cyclist found him, but initially thought that his broken and seemingly lifeless body was a scarecrow. Only when he got closer could the biker see that it was actually the slight figure of a man splayed across a rail fence. The only parts of Matt’s face not covered in blood were the streaks that had been washed clean by his tears. Matt suffered multiple skull fractures and remained in a coma until he passed away six days later…
Matt would have been 47 this year; instead, his ashes rest in the crypt of the National Cathedral where they were interred last year. Every year, those of us who knew him pay tribute to the young man who smiles out at us from the pictures of his frozen youth while we watch our own children reach the age he was when he died.”