n As many of you know, our son and Boston University student Michael Graeme Robertson died at school on Jan. 21, 2007 (“Robertson remembered as ‘one-of-a-kind,'” Jan. 22, p. 1).
Several of you attended Michael’s wake and his beautiful funeral service here in New Jersey. We are in the process of writing thank-you notes to all of the wonderful people who helped us through this terrible time. Before we started sending individual notes, we wanted first to write to you.
First, we would like to thank Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore. Most of you probably do not personally know him. He is one of the finest people we have ever met. His kind and caring manner made this process so much easier. You should take it upon yourselves to meet this fine man. He is a treasure.
We have already thanked the Boston Police Department. They treated us like family members in a compassionate manner and made themselves available to us 24 hours a day. We especially thank Sgt. Detective Daniel Keeler.
The Department did everything in its power to ease our family’s pain during this overwhelmingly sad time.
We would also like to thank The Daily Free Press. We read all of the articles about Michael and of the kind words spoken. We greatly appreciated the sensitivity that was shown by your paper toward Michael’s memory and toward his surviving family and friends. Should you ever experience a situation like this, you can only pray to have such a wonderful group of people treat your loved one with such kindness, consideration and respect.
Finally, we must thank Michael’s beautiful friends who made his life so enjoyable while he was here. It was so great to meet you. It was easy to see why Michael liked each and every one of you. What a special group of people you are. Should any of you want to contact us in the future, please do not hesitate.
As stated in the handout that was distributed at Michael’s funeral service, there is a Tiffany-stained glass window in a church in Petersburg, Virginia commemorating the war dead of Tennessee. It is inscribed, “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
Please let Michael continue to live in your hearts, as he will always live in ours. We thank each and every one of you.
The Robertsons
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
