Annie Le Memorial Service

President Richard C. Levin
October 12, 2009
Battell Chapel

We gather to remember Annie Le, whose life was tragically cut short at the moment her light shone most brightly. We gather to remember and to bring comfort through our expression of love and support to Annie’s family and friends, and to her fiance Jonathan and his family and friends. We gather to remember and celebrate Annie here at Yale, at a place where she studied and worked and had so many friends, coworkers, and teachers who admired and cared for her.

Yale is a big place. Nearly twenty-five thousand people study, teach and work here. Yet Yale remains a close community. When tragedy strikes we all feel it intensely. The fabric of the whole here is very tightly knit. When one thread is pulled the afghan unravels.

This is especially true when the tragedy strikes a person emblematic of the kind of student Yale wishes to educate and to send out into the world, a model student for the Yale of the 21st century: a child of immigrants, raised in America, bright and accomplished, ambitious and disciplined, and yet caring, loving, and spontaneous. For those of us who did not know Annie, the stories about her ring true, and the photos of her move us by capturing her integrity, sweetness and lightness of spirit.

In thinking of Annie, and those who loved her, and how this occasion draws the entire community together, I am reminded of the meditation of the poet John Donne:

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee.

We are, by nature, not isolated from one another, but interconnected. In this close community, we were a part of Annie, and she remains a part of us.

We who live and work here at Yale are united by special bonds of purpose, history, and tradition, and together we embrace Annie’s family and friends from far away. We are united in our memories, and in our hearts. And it is in our hearts that Annie’s spirit will live.