Greater Love

Greater love has no one than this:

to lay down one's life for a friend.

John 15:13

Matthew McQuinn, Alex Teves, John Larrimer, and John Blunk had several things in common, even though they did not know each other.  All were young men in their mid-20's living in Colorado, and each was an exemplary young man with a fulfilling life that was going in the right direction.  Teves had just graduated with a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology from the University of Colorado and hoped to continue on to become a physical therapist.  McQuinn was a Target employee who had recently transferred to Colorado from Ohio.  Blunk was a Navy veteran and Larrimer was an active-duty Naval Petty Officer.  All four of these men decided to see a movie on Friday night, all four of them ended up in Theater 9, and all four of them died in the hail of bullets that claimed twelve lives and injured many others.

In the horror of that tragic moment, these four men were linked in yet another, almost unbelievable way.  Each one was at the theater with a date, and each made the instantaneous decision to place themselves in peril in order to shield their friend from harm.  When the shooting started, McQuinn, Teves, Larrimer and Blunk pushed their girlfriends to the floor and covered them with their own bodies.  Each man paid for his compassion and courage with his life; all four women walked away from the ordeal.  

For the rest of their lives, these women will owe an overwhelming debt of gratitude to the men who died in their place.  Living with that knowledge will be difficult at first, but I hope that eventually they will find a tangible way to express their thanks for the gift of life bestowed through the ultimate sacrifice.