32

Twelve hours from this posting exactly a year ago, the world was shocked by a tragic and horrific mass murder at my university. While I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1982, in a larger sense, I never left. There's something about that place that becomes a part of the people who pass through. My son goes to VT now, and he was on campus within a few hundred yards of Norris Hall when the shots rang out. I chronicled his story last year in a piece called Unimaginable Horror.

I've been back to Virginia Tech many times since that day last April. Most of the time it was to drop off or pick up my son. Each time, I go my heart breaks when I look over to Norris Hall, West AJ or the Hokie Stone Memorial on the Drillfield.

The piece I've attached below was written as an anonymous post on a message board (Techsideline.com). The writer captures what many of us feel. As she said, please feel free to pass it along.

Subject: Off football topic: 4/16/07 my thoughts as a student

Posted by: hokiegal84

I graduated from VT last May, and I had some time today to just write down my experience those couple days after. It was meant to be just for my family but the overwhelming response made me want to post it on here in hopes that it could touch even just one of you. (it's long so read if you want) It's more of a reminder on just how blessed we all are and how important it is to always live for the 32. Feel free to pass along if you want... and I hope you enjoy...

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On April 12th 2007, I walked out of what I didn't know was my last test at Virginia Tech. For whatever reason, it was one of those moments that I took in every minute. The weather was a typical Blacksburg day, windy yet gorgeous, the bluest sky you can imagine. My mind was racing about how I did on that test, the upcoming projects I had to finish, and how I was going to find a way to concentrate on school work instead of partying away the last month of my senior year … savoring the time before I had to leave this place I called home for four years. I took everything in that one moment … for reasons unknown to me at the time, something just felt different. It felt final. I shrugged it off at the time thinking it was one of those senior year moments where you knew the best four years of your life were coming to an end.

Almost a year later, that moment still sticks with me. It symbolizes everything I had before April 16th, 2007. Innocence… that feeling that you have growing up that your parents can protect you from the whole world. That what you got on that test really mattered. That what I was wearing out that night or what bar we were going to were big decisions. That actually getting out of bed to go to class was the hardest thing I would have to do all day. Waking up that Monday morning, April 16th 2007, to my roommate knocking on my door, I had no idea all of that would be gone. I had no idea that I would be forced to grow up so fast.

I remember those first two days like they were yesterday... every detail will be forever etched in my mind. I remember every phone call, every text message, and every bit of the outpouring support I was receiving from everyone in my life and many that I did not even know. I remember sitting in my apartment with twenty of my friends just staring at the television for hours on end. I remember praying he was not a Virginia Tech student and later finding out he was. I remember trying to cry, but it not feeling real. I remember my mom calling me at 7:00 Tuesday morning, the day after, to get me to watch the news. I remember turning it on and seeing the White House flag at half-staff and some famous newscaster saying, "You will always remember where you were the day President Kennedy was shot… and you will always remember where you were when you heard of the massacre at Virginia Tech." Even then, it did not hit me. The magnitude of this day did not hit me.

On Tuesday afternoon, I numbly walked to the convocation. The lines were miles down both sides of the rode with people wearing maroon and orange. Once we were finally in the coliseum, speaker upon speaker talked to us… President Bush even spoke to us in person yet I still felt nothing. I kept praying that something big would happen… something that would put life back into all 10,000 of us in that room, and the thousands outside at our football stadium that could not fit inside. I wanted the world to know the school that I loved… to see why it is the greatest place on earth. I remember praying right before each speech that something could ignite us… I even remember thinking it would just be amazing to do our familiar "Let's Go Hokies" cheer. And then Nikki Giovani walked up to that stage. "We are Virginia Tech," she said. I was still praying that this could be it. "We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while… We are Virginia Tech." This was it… I could feel it. You could see it in the eyes of everyone around me. We all needed this. "We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it… No one deserves a tragedy." Tears were finally coming out. Everyone around me was crying, arms wrapped in each others arms, knowing it felt good just to feel something... to just feel anything. With each, "We are Virginia Tech," I felt alive again. The pain was there, the heartbreak, finally, the magnitude of it all. Then she did it again… she gave us hope: "We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness." And most importantly, she made us believe in Virginia Tech again… "We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech." The crowd went crazy… through the tears running down my face, all I wanted to do was yell and cheer. Cheer for those around me in maroon and orange…. And more importantly, cheer for those 32 that were only there in spirits… yet I knew they were cheering too. And within that applause and cheering, that familiar sound began to overcome the entire coliseum… "Let's Go Hokies" followed by claps "Let's Go Hokies" again and again… I have never felt more alive in that one moment. More proud to be a part of this school, more love for my
university and for all of Hokie Nation… that one moment, we showed the entire world just what being a Hokie is all about.

When I first stepped foot on the campus of Virginia Tech, I felt this sense that this was the right place for me. Being from North Carolina, I never had a good reason for picking to go there… at the time, their colors did not seem too appealing and they were not in the ACC, yet I felt this overwhelming sense that this is where I belonged. Through my four years there, I knew how great of a place it was… what it meant to be a Hokie and how much each student loved this school. Yet I could never explain it. But on April 17th, 2007, at the convocation ceremony the day after, we showed the world just why it is so special. We, the students that lost their innocence the day before, began the healing process – for our university, our state, and our world; through a football game chant, we showed the rest of the world that we would be okay, that we would overcome, that we would prevail: Together, as one.

At my freshman orientation, the first person on stage taught us that whenever someone asks you what a Hokie is, you respond "I am." I do not think I fully understood that until that day… until I understood that being a Hokie was so much more than being a college student… it was a way of life. So a year later, I ask each of you to take the time to be a Hokie this week. Appreciate life a little more, take in every moment around you, count your blessings, tell the people around you that you love them, slow down, remember what's truly important in life … And live for those 32 that do not have that chance anymore.

April 16th, 2007 will always be the day of remembrance for those 32 lives that were lost, but I'm asking each of you to take this week leading up to that day, to pause and remember… the preciousness of life and how fragile it can be… and just how blessed each of us are to still get that chance to live each day. Live for the 32.