MTV News today recounts how Matt Gallagher (’05) will remember 9/11. Gallagher was a first-year student who had stayed up playing video games in his Wake Forest dorm room the night before the attacks. The attacks meant that “in many ways, the world as we knew it was ending,” he told MTV News. In 2010 he said the terrorist attacks and the Wake Forest motto of Pro Humanitate led him to join the Army.

Author of "Kaboom"

Gallagher gained notoriety as a veteran and a popular Iraq War blogger whose battalion commander ordered him to shut down his blog. The controversy, which made national news, led to a book deal. “Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War” is Gallagher’s memoir of his time in Iraq and the subject of a Wake Forest Magazine story (see the Fall 2010 issue at www.magazine.wfu.edu).

Here’s an excerpt from the MTV News piece: “As a then 18-year-old whose life was profoundly changed by 9/11, Gallagher said the attacks served as a ‘maturity moment’ during a crossroads in his life. “On a macro level, all of a sudden I realized this world is a very serious place, terrible things can happen,” he said. “Evil people do exist, as much as I want to ironically laugh at the simplicity of that statement.

“Deciding to join the Army and deploy was part of his journey, one Gallagher suspects was a small tile in a much larger mosaic of life-changing choices. ‘On a bigger level, 9/11 was a crystallizing moment for my generation … the bubble popped. We were like, ‘Whoa, this is what the real world is like, it’s not all fun and games.’ ”

To mark the 9/11 anniversary, he said he would remember “my fallen friends, 1st Lt. Mark Daily and Capt. David Schultz, for their sacrifice, their humor and their service.”

An email that zipped around campus today shared a whimsical view of the University. An artist named Jennifer Indicott, based on Oak Island, N.C., developed what she calls collegiate alphabet art. She’s a photographer who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina with an obvious understanding of how North Carolina takes pride in its colleges and universities. Take a look:

Here it is the eve of the start of classes, and you cannot miss the excitement on campus. The first-year students can be seen chatting with new friends, settling into their new home. They’re making the rounds to receptions to meet professors and inquire about majors. I attended the English department reception earlier this afternoon and, to my amazement, met a first-year student from Goldsboro, N.C., ready to begin his journey tomorrow to become a college professor. His first step: becoming an English major. (He has a surer sense of destiny than I did at that stage of orientation.)

Those of you who love Wake Forest know what it’s like to come back after the summer break. You step lightly as you make that first circle around the Quad. The footballs and frisbees are flying.

You go to The Pit early not because you’re hungry but because you have much socializing to do.

"What's up, dude?" -- overheard on campus today

In the waning hours before the books are cracked, the campus feels like a carnival.  Just look at what’s been erected on Manchester Plaza for a party tonight hosted by the WFU Resident Student Association and the Student Union. It makes me wish I could start all over again with the Class of 2015.

Step right up

My friend Marybeth Sutton Wallace (’86) met me for lunch last week, wanting to tell me about a loss for North Carolina and her former community. “He was a Double Deac,” she said, lamenting the death of Fred Turnage (’58, JD ’61, P ’84 and ’87). He died of pancreatic cancer at age 75 on July 31, in his beloved Rocky Mount, where he became the city’s youngest mayor at age 37 and served for 34 years. Aside from his political skills noted for bringing out the best in people, he was known, my friend told me, for his ardent support of Wake Forest University. If you listened closely, you would catch him publicly asking God to bless the Deacons at the microphone before meals, even if the meals were being served at other fine colleges in eastern North Carolina.

The Rocky Mount Telegram announced his death by saying Turnage was “(w)idely regarded by residents and community leaders as a man who displayed benevolent and selfless leadership.” N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper called Turnage’s life of political service “a labor of love.”

And in Georgia, George Chidi, a former staff writer for the Rocky Mount Telegram and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote about how he wept when he heard the news. “Turnage was my very first exposure to Southern politics. I walked into his law offices expecting a reaction akin to something from a 1960s civil rights news reel, a drawling Bull Connor, Boss Hogg in a seersucker suit and a straw hat, on high alert for tricks from the liberal biracial Boston city slicker.

“Those of you who knew Mayor Turnage pretty much know what happened next, which is to say, nothing of the sort happened. He was friendly and funny and quickly put me at ease. He matter-of-factly described Rocky Mount to me, warts and all — its struggle to recover from the flood, its problems with poverty, the continuing racial divide. He was candid, humble and self-effacing. And, clearly in retrospect, he knew what I might be thinking about him and his beloved city because he’d had to do that dance before.”

That first meeting changed Chidi’s perspective:  “I entered his offices braced for conflict. I left a committed observer, and I think it made me a much better reporter — a much better person, actually.” Read Chidi’s remembrance here.

And consider that for one man in Rocky Mount, American political service, tended with selfless leadership, could be practiced and honored as a labor of love despite divisive times.