Remembering a life cut short

April 10, 2009 10:47 pm

— By Brian Livingston
blivingston@themeridianstar.com

It seems the news is full of tragedy these days.
Psycho gunmen walk into businesses killing anyone they see. Earthquakes decimate entire regions killing or injuring thousands, leaving those who survive homeless and desolate. Wars and other armed conflicts take the lives of young soldiers trying to serve their countries.
With all that happens the general public becomes just a little more apathetic. The victim's faces blur into one and those people affected seem a world away. But it is when tragedy hits home that the realization a life has been lost tends to make people stand up and take notice. And when that life is that of a young, popular man such as Adam Simpson of Stonewall, the ripple effect that encompasses so many is that much more complete.
Tuesday, 22-year-old Simpson died near Westdale, La., when he apparently fell from a bridge he and a crew from Trinidad Oil Company were working on. His drowning in a bayou where his body was recovered the next day garnered only a few short paragraphs in an Associated Press bulletin. The script note, which was probably seen by thousands of people and reported locally is all but forgotten as other bad news, such as five U.S. soldiers dying in Mosul, Iraq from a suicide bomber, grab the latest headlines. To the Simpson family and friends, though, his passing leaves a jagged scar that runs deep.
"He was trying to work hard and get his life prepared so he could give his future wife and his one-year-old daughter a good head start," said Susan Simpson, Adam Simpson's step-mother. "He was the baby in the family and I just never realized how many lives he had touched in such a short time."
Jerry Don Simpson was raising his three sons that included Adam when Susan met him. She described the family as a solid family unit, very close, noting her future husband had done an excellent job of raising the boys on his own. Adam, being the baby, was looked after by his two older brothers and it was the young boy that everyone called "Bo" who would grow up to show extraordinary honesty and compassion.
"Full of energy," said Susan Simpson. "He was all about sports, hunting and fishing and being with his friends. I never really realized just how many people knew him well until this happened."
And when you get nothing but accolades from the county sheriff then you begin to believe what everyone already knows.
"Just a great kid growing up," said Clarke County Sheriff Todd Kemp. "He had a love for life and seemed to enjoy everything he did."
This afternoon Adam Simpson will be laid to rest. He will be surrounded by so many people that if he were alive he might become somewhat embarrassed by the showing. His humble nature would allow him to say he wasn't worth all this attention. But a single young life, that has barely been allowed to flourish, should be mourned. Tragedies don't discriminate between the young and old, the rich and the poor. Sometimes we must remember what might have been.