Hello, my name is Al Mason, and I was a student at Murray State University from 1995-1999. I recently saw your website where you asked for stories and memories of Michael Minger. I had several classes with him, including Audio Visual Production II which he and I had together the semester of the fire.

On several occasions, I had spent some time before and after class talking to Michael and also, he would frequently eat lunch with myself and the girl I was dating the spring semester before the fire. We would sit and talk smack back and forth about his beloved FSU Seminoles and the ACC, and my beloved UK Wildcats and the SEC, and other times we just shot the breeze about people in our classes, our professors, and life in general. Looking back on it, I wish I would have had a lot of deeper conversations with him, but then again... how could I have known?

The things I remember most about him was not so much what he said as just the feeling that he was one of the very few people I've ever known that was so genuinely good and so genuinely authentic; Michael had no mask he wore, and at times his enthusiam and innocence could be annoying, but then again, none of us are perfect. I know when I first met him I was coming off a horrific break-up the previous semester that left me very cynical, angry, and bitter... and Michael was the first person that opened me back by sheer osmosis of his positive energy; whenever Michael was around, it was hard to be too cynical. And then there were the memories... I still treasure the videotape I have that has all of our class projects from A/V Production I; it's hard to watch it now and see Michael on there, but that tape may be my most prized possession. I remember the last couple of times I spoke to him, and of all things we talked about how boring Dr. Prater's lectures were, and how we both wished Dr. Lochte would teach our A/V II class instead. And eerily, I remember hearing him tell everybody before class the Monday before the fire about the incident in Hester where someone set a small fire, and how we all laughed with him about he moved to Hester to feel safer, and within hours of him moving in, he had to evacuate for a fire. 5 days later, all that laughter dissolved into tears, as the firebug hit again and took Michael from us... it may have the same person that set both fires, or it may have been two totally unrelated incidents a week apart... I don't know.

I remember how all the sirens that night woke me up, and how not realizing what was happening and not being able to get back to sleep, I drove to Hardee's and as I set in the drive thru line, with all my windows down, all of the sudden Rowan Bash came and jumped in my passenger seat. He apologized, and started saying he was just happy to have a place to sit and somebody he knew there with him, and then I got whiff of him... he reeked of smoke. He told me there was a fire going at Hester (Being half asleep, I had driven within a block of it and not noticed anything amiss) and that it didn't seem too bad, but smoke was everywhere, a lot thicker smoke than he'd ever seen before. He had just said that when I saw two ambulances driving really fast with their lights on, but no siren, make the turn from Chestnut onto 12th... and he and I turned and looked at each other, and we didn't really say anything, but from the look he had, I could tell he was thinking what I was... after I got my food, he got out, declining my offer of a ride, and I drove back by Hester... it seemed like every cop, fire truck, and emergency vehicle in Calloway County was there.

The reality of how bad the fire was started to sit in when my parents paged me at around 4:30 am (I didn't have a home or cell phone at the time). I drove to a payphone, and there was 8 people waiting to use it in front of me... some of them were ones who had escaped Hester and only had the clothes they had been sleeping in, others were like me, calling to reassure our folks we were ok. Then two of the girls who had been in Hester said what would only become progressively worse news... they didn't know who, but they knew somebody had passed away in the fire. I talked to my parents, and then returned back to my apartment... and then, the news came on the 5 A.M. Channel 6 news... Michael, who I'd been in class with just that past Wednesday, a mere 48 hours earlier, was gone. I jumped up from bed, punched my wall 3 times, and began to hyperventilate... Shaking, I began walking around campus, in shock... you could smell the smoke from the fire everywhere that morning, it seemed... and slowly I saw other students starting to emerge, and everybody had a look in their eye that I had never seen before and wouldn't see again until a Sept. morning two years later... but for Murray State, that Sept. morning and Sept. 11th 2001 had an eerily similar vibe.

I went to a memorial service for Michael that night at the Episcopal Church... that was a really tough night for a lot of us...

But the worst part came the following Monday, when our class met again for the first time without Michael... Walking into class, I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. I got pretty tore up just being there, and everybody lost it when Dr. Prater was calling the roll and he got to the M's. Dr. Prater tried to move on with class after we had a moment of silence for Michael, but he kept getting choked up when he tried to lecture, and everybody in our class was either zoned out or crying, so we just called it a day... I know Michael would be disappointed with me about this, but I never went back to that class after that...it just got to me too much.

Your pal, B.I.G. Al