In Memory of Jakki Young

I'm proud to be one of the many bloggers contributing to the 2,996 project, a vast tribute to those lost on 9/11. Please click here and read as many entries as you can.

Note: the original 2,996 site is down due to bandwidth issues. You can find all the tributes at this mirror site, and also this one.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, there was music in the air. Ninety-eight floors above street level, it’s easy to believe that 37-year-old Jacqueline Young went to work -- as an accountant for Marsh & McLennan -- with a song in her head. Probably a song by the Temptations.

There’s something about music that connects people. From my high school days forward, I’ve frittered away countless hours trying to transfer my musical passions to friends and strangers alike by making mix tapes, waxing poetic about some favorite artist online, or finding some other outlet for my obsessions.

Hence, I think I would have liked Jakki Young, who was known on various Temptations-related Internet message boards as Lyric. I would have liked the sheer enthusiasm she displayed in her web postings -- enthusiasm I am sure translated to her work, to her relationships, to her ideals, and to each challenge she stumbled across.

A group of fellow Temptations fans organized an online tribute for Jakki several years ago. On the front page is a description of their friend, and the very first word is “vibrant.” True to her online handle, she eagerly compiled the lyrics of her favorite band’s songs. She cherished meeting her favorite band member, Harry McGilberry, in Atlantic City in 2001, a few months before her untimely death.

I asked myself: what do we really know about those we meet through our computer screens? It depends. But consider this: those who launched the Lyric tribute site wrote, “She later became more than a fellow fan to some of us; she became a friend, a confidant, a sister. She held a very special place in our hearts. Our world will never be the same without her.” If her online circle held her in such high esteem, what must Jakki Young have meant to those she touched in person every day? And what does she still mean?

“I never met Jakki in person, but we talked a lot on the phone and e-mailed each other quite often,” one of Jakki’s friends wrote, back in 2001. “There was a sad time in my life, and when I was crying to her on the phone, she turned my tears into laughter. We shared an interest in Harry and shared pictures of the concerts. We had planned to meet in October of this year, and her last e-mail to me on 9/9/01, my son’s birthday, will be always in my heart. She said, “name the day and time, and like the J-5, I'll be there.”

I’ve never been into the Temptations -- in fact, I’m embarrassingly Motown-illiterate -- but I did look up quite a few lyrics today. I don’t know what song was the last that unspooled gracefully in Jakki’s mind before the music was interrupted by shearing metal and fire. But one lyric I found made me smile:

“America!
I ain’t ashamed to say that I love ya.
There ain’t another place on Earth I’d rather be.”

Of course, there are better places, richer horizons to touch. And I believe, as strongly as I believe the sun rises in the morning, that Jakki will meet her friends again, at a day and time no one can tell. As for the fierce emptiness she has left in the hearts of her loved ones, she knows, she knows. And she waits for you.

On this morning of Sept. 11, 2006, there is still music in the air, whenever anyone who knew Lyric remembers her enthusiasm, her vibrancy, and her life. I am sorry not to count myself among them. But I’m both happy and humbled to shine a simple light upon Jakki Young today. I will do so with the help of T. S. Eliot:

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.

We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.

We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep, controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.

And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it; forever must quench, forever relight the flame.

Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.

We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!