In the spring of 2002, S.C. Sen. Clementa Pinckney addressed Aiken Technical College's Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society - suggesting that people must work to find ways to better live together.
Father Greg Rogers recalled that event on Thursday - the day after Pinckney and eight other people were murdered in a Charleston church.
Rogers, currently Aiken Technical College's dean of general education, had invited Pinckney to speak at the ceremony more than a decade ago.
Pinckney's wife, Jennifer, at the time an ATC staff member, had suggested it.
Rogers is the pastor of Aiken's St. Catherine Orthodox Church and knew Pinckney as a pastor - unaware that Pinckney was also a member of the Senate - at the time the youngest serving in that body of government.
On Wednesday, Pinckney, 41, left a special session of the General Assembly and traveled to Charleston to lead a Bible study at the historic, 200-year-old Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston.
Dylann Roof, 21, was arrested Thursday morning - charged with slaying Pinckney and eight others in what Rogers describes as a tragic and baffling event.
In a real way, Pinckney had found balance in his work as a pastor and a politician.
"To be shot down while you're doing your ministry; when what you're doing and praying and looking at life-changing issues," Rogers said of Pinckney's last moments. "Then this happens and makes you wonder what the world has been coming to. Still, as Christians, we have to have hope that something good can come out of this horrendous event."
In 2002, Rogers was certain that Pinckney could inspire the honor society students.
Pinckney had once told The Post and Courier that he had received his first appointment as pastor at age 18. Just five years later, the Lowcountry resident found another calling when he ran for a S.C. House seat; and, to the surprise of many, he won.
When Rogers learned of Pinckney's political work, he recognized his sense of community activism in a positive way.
Rogers said: "His life was an expression of something important about our relationship with God and our values and applying that kind of thing to our community."
The values that Pinckney advocated informed his service, Rogers said. He was not talking about ideology.
Pinckney did not focus on the desires of what people want today, but those values that will be everlasting and just and service-oriented, Rogers said.
At the 2002 ATC event, Pinckney was speaking with high-achieving students. His remarks focused on education, offering them a challenge. He cited a torch run during the Winter Olympic Games that year, its route passing through South Carolina at one stage.
"Every so often," Pinckney said, "a runner or walker who had a torch would pass it on the next person and pass it on and keep passing it until the torch finally reached Salt Lake City. Then they would light the Olympic flame."
In much the same way, Pinckney said, academic excellence and achievement is about passing the torch to new honor society inductees, Rogers recalled.
Rogers said Pinckney described South Carolina as a wonderful state and wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
If the state is going to continue to improve, its people must further the cause of learning - securing a better life for the next generation, Pinckney said at the time.
"We have to invest in public education," he told the honor society students. "When you do that, we can help change some of the old bad ideas and hold on to the old traditions that help make this state the best state it is."
Rogers vividly recalls that powerful speech from Pinckney, who in his late 20s was perhaps younger than many of the non-traditional students he addressed at ATC.
That strong voice has now been silenced, and Rogers won't forget where that occurred.
"A church is a sanctuary," he said. "It's supposed to be a place where you step away from the turmoil and stresses of the world, to touch heaven through those sanctuaries. This gives us a pause, but we still have to have faith in God."
Senior writer Rob Novit is the Aiken Standard's education reporter and has been with the newspaper since September 2001. He is a native of Walterboro and majored in journalism at the University of Georgia.