THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 22, 1995 TAG: 9503220002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 28 lines
His family, classmates and teachers will warmly remember Norfolk Academy junior D.A. Taylor as bright, personable and a stand-out athlete. His death this week from meningococcal disease, apparently contracted at a track meet more than a month ago, leaves them shocked and grief-stricken.
In much of the world death in chilhood is still common. But public-health progress, improved economic conditions and dazzling medical advances have extended Westerners' average life-span dramatically. Diseases that from time immemorial cut down great numbers of people have been checked, or banished, or nearly so in the West.
Children's deaths tend to surprise us. We know and deplore that some young lives will be claimed by highway and other accidents, criminal violence, illicit-drug use and foolishness. But that D.A. Taylor's promising life on Earth was ended by cruel attack from an unexpected quarter piles horror upon pain. by CNB