Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for February 26, 2007 KANIDRYANA MOSS

From the WSIL Channel 3 website...

Cairo Community Mourns the Loss of a Cheerleader

By: Emily Eddington

CAIRO, Ill. -- It's been a difficult weekend in Cairo as the town mourns the sudden loss of a 16-year-old girl.

Kanidryana Moss died Friday night of an asthma attack while being taken to a Cape Girardeau hospital. It happened just hours before the Cairo basketball team played its regional final game.

But today it's back to class at Cairo high school, where just days ago Kanidryana Moss was a straight-A student, a cheerleader, and a friend. Now friends and family come to grips with the tragedy that's just starting to sink in.

"She was my daughter, my best friend, my traveling buddy. She was everything to me, she sure was," says Kanidryana's father, George Moss.

She had the outgoing and friendly personality of a cheerleader-- with big dreams to one day go to school at Purdue. George Moss says his daughter died of the same disease that took his wife 15 years ago. "It's just reliving it all over again so this pretty much was the same thing. It's really a hurting thing, it really is."

As he thinks back on that day, he says Kanidryana was doing a friends hair when she felt ill and collapsed. It was a tragic occurrence, but something her father says she's battled in the past. "We had some real near fatal scares, I guess this one time she just couldn't make it."

And instead of feeling Kanidryana's usually outgoing and friendly presence before their big game, the team she cheered for began to feel a void.

"I heard right before I got on the bus and I tried to hold it in but I didn't have a reason to so I just kind of broke down," says close friend Joshua Baldwin, a junior basketball player at Cairo.

Senoir basketball player Russel Mackins says school just isn't the same. "Today I came to school and I walked into class and I felt that cold chill go right down my shirt knowing that she's not there."

Her father George continues to feel the void in his life. Losing his sports buddy, his household helper, and the last child still under his roof. For Kanidryana's father it was the loss of his own cheerleader.

A candle-light vigil will be held in Kanidryana's memory this Wednesday at seven in front of Cairo High School. The visitation will be this Saturday at 11:00 and the funeral will be at 1:00-- also at Cairo High School.