View all 11 Reflections
Most Recent Reflection
Tony
My friend, I'm sorry it took me so long to post on this site. I miss you and I think of you often. I'm still in touch with your family, although I've moved around a bit in the last few years.
We, you and I, rode to the state police training academy every Sunday evening and rode home together every Friday night after training. Even in snow storms where the state police closed I-96 Fwy (our only route) but we were still expected to be there. Do you remember the night we got stuck in the snow in the driveway of the academy with classmates driving past us and not stopping to help? We were able to get unstuck and made it iside before 7pm. Those troopers n training had us all so afraid and scared.
We were roommates, classmates, and lined up together alphabetically next to each other in line. We're pictured together on the Mighty 97th Recruit School Class picture too. You still hold the record for the most chin-ups by a recruit school class at the MSP Academy after all these years.
We were only a year removed from the academy when you were taken suddenly from us. You were visiting your mother that very weekend, we were together at your mother's house earlier that evening, just kicking it. We were assigned different worksites out of the academy. But we still talked, about our training officers, our progress, our hopes and dreams.
We were talking about the future, about how things were for you at your post (Jackson) and how things were for me at my post (Erie). We both had other plans for later that evening. We said goodby, talk at you later, we said we'd work together at MSP #29 in a year or two. ...then it was good night, be safe.
I heard the horrible news early the next morning and was totally crushed as we were just together, just talking at your mother's house!
I retired from the Michigan State Police on March 30, 2007. At my retirement celebration in November 2007 you and I were together again, your mother and sister were there and several of your brothers. You and I came into the Michigan State Police together and we retired together that night.
I know you watched over me my entire MSP career and that includes the five months we spent in the Michigan State Police Training Academy, the Mighty 97th Recruit School.
Thank you Tony for everything you did and for all the lives you touched in the very short time that we had you. It seemed like a life time that I knew you when in reality it was only a year and a half. You had 'it' and everyone who met you knew you had 'it'. The young are always taken from us way too soon. I want to thank you for everythingyou did for me from the bottom of my heart!
Your friend always, in this life and the next...
D/F/Lt. Jerome Solomon (Retired)
Michigan Department of State Police
January 5, 2012
