For Steve Blesi, an excruciating wait
turned into an unimaginable loss.
His son Steven was in the area of the crushing crowd
surge in
Seoul, South Korea, on Saturday night. After the father, who lives in
suburban Atlanta, heard the news about the tragedy, he called and texted
frantically. He reached out to friends and government officials. And he went on
Twitter, imploring anyone with news to come forward.
اضافة اعلان
Over the next three agonizing hours, some people
provided what little information they had. Others pledged prayers. All offered
hope.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” one asked.
“Please, God, return this man’s son to him
unharmed,” another said.
At 11:30pm, Blesi and his wife received a phone call
from the US Embassy in South Korea.
“When they said, ‘Are you two sitting down?’ I knew
what the answer was,” he said. His son, 20, a student at Kennesaw State
University in Georgia, who was about two months into a study-abroad program,
was one of the Americans among the more than 150 people who died in the
Halloween celebration in the Itaewon nightlife district in Seoul.
“It was like it stabbed like a hundred million times
simultaneously,” said Blesi, speaking by phone on Sunday.
Steven Blesi had been waiting for years for an
opportunity to study abroad, his father said. He had a passion for
international business, specifically in East Asia, but the
coronavirus pandemic
had kept him from traveling there until this fall.
Blesi was eventually able to piece together what
happened to his son after getting in touch with some of his friends in Seoul.
He had just finished taking midterm exams, and he and a group of friends were
going out on Saturday for a night of fun. They eventually found themselves at
the Halloween celebration. “I texted him maybe a half-hour before all this
happened, and I said: ‘I know you’re out and about. Be safe,’” Blesi said. “I
never got a reply to that.”
Blesi and others who knew his son agreed that his
defining feature was the compassion he had for others, especially people who
were struggling. He was never afraid to stand up for someone in need, Blesi
said. He loved traveling and basketball, and he and his older brother were both
Eagle Scouts.
“He was an adventurous spirit and a loving spirit,”
Blesi said.
After he posted the confirmation of his son’s death
on Twitter, the responses kept coming.
“May he rest in fun-filled, painless places,” one
person said.
“Heartbroken,” said another.
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