Based off TV show "Cold Case" Season 6: Episode 22 "The Long Blue Line" and Season 6: Episode 23 "Into the Blue". Shortly before being attacked in his room and forcibly hanged by Major Moe Kitchener, Pennsylvania Military Institute senior Cadet Major Lawrence Gardner of the Class of 2009 sat down to write a poem about his soon-to-be alma mater, reflecting on his time at the school and what he thought of it. Like "Four Years in the Institute's Gates", this poem is written from the perspective of a first-year cadet. This time Gardner was retrospectively revisiting the spirit with which he had written the first poem, remembering why he had come to PMI in the first place now that graduation was close at hand. The poem was returned to Gardner's parents in 2010 after the investigation of his murder was finished.
The Halls of PMI
Oh, U-Penn is a very fine school, and I've heard so surely is Yale
But you'll find if you look a different book- in which honour is never for sale
It's not to be found at Columbia- where one can indeed tell a lie
It's in the Long Blue Line, in every man marching time, in the halls of PMI
XX
In days now past at old Pencey, I thought it so very true
That the racing of cars, partying under the stars, was all any teenager need do
But now the winds are bringing change, and it's not of Testarossas they cry
It's of that one special college, and old-fashioned knowledge, in the halls of PMI
XX
As a knob you cannot be right; you can only do what is wrong
This your cadre will tell you, as they seek to expel you
With pushups and Russian rap songs
For today we blue knobs know nothing, and it seems our rooms are a sty
But someday we'll prevail- let our courage not fail, in the halls of PMI
XX
When down comes the sun, my life's story now done, and it's time for last taps to be played
I'll stop in my tracks, my honour intact- never by gold was it swayed
And since I never could tell a lie
When my name He does call, He'll know I learned all, in the halls of PMI
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