Andrew "Andy" Keith Anderson
                               Born June 17th 1980
                      Died November 5th 2004
                              24 Years Old

Picture
"Gentle Boy"
by Mary Withers
This one's for the gentle boy
Who wrestles with his pain,
His easy-bruising tender heart,
And ever-active brain.

He feels much more than others do,
But then he tries to hide,
With laughter or bravado,
The gentle boy inside.

With wit and style and artifice
His secret's kept so well.
Who dreams the brave facade you see
Conceals some private Hell?

Meanwhile, the brutes live on and on
Their unexamined lives.
The low, the stupid, and the cruel,
The sluggish idiot thrives.

To fill the world with empty talk
And greed and hate and noise,
To breed, carouse, and make life Hell
For all the gentle boys.

Some gentle boys grow heartsick
And tired of this charade.
They blow themselves right off the Earth,
Or fight, then fail, then fade.

If you should love a gentle boy
There's little you can do.
If he decides his time has come,
He'll leave the Earth and you.

He cannot see that if he goes
You'll never fill that space.
You'll spend your whole life searching
For that laugh, that kiss, that face.


How can the gentle boy not know
You love him beyond death,
You'd help him any way you could,
Unto your dying breath?

Someday when justice reigns on Earth
We all may greet with joy
A world where it won't hurt so much
To be a gentle boy.
 

                       The Beautiful Boy

Birth: Jun. 17, 1980
Cincinnati
Hamilton County
Ohio, USA
Death: Nov. 5, 2004
Beaufort
Beaufort County
South Carolina, USA

He was a past member of the Beaufort Chamber Orchestra, the South Carolina All-State Orchestra, the Governor's School of the Performing Arts, the Hilton Head Youth Orchestra, the Stravinsky String, the National Honor Society, the National Art Honor Society, and the 48th New York Volunteer Infantry Civil War re-enactors. He was a 1998 Honors Graduate of Beaufort High School and attended Furman University and the University of South Carolina - Hilton Head. He was published in Poetic Voices of America in 1994 and was a recipient of the South Carolina Heroes Award presented by the Governor's Office and the South Carolina United Way in 1997 and was the recipient of the South Carolina House of Representatives Achievements Award.

(information gathered from The Beaufort Gazette)