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These
have been the quietest days of the year for
Virginia Tech: days between the summer semesters
and a new academic year, days when it is easiest
for faculty and staff to vacation, days when
expectations rise like the heat for the football
Hokies, days earned after riding a tragic
whirlwind four months ago.
A
Virginia Tech campus serene at dusk in early
August couldn’t be further away from Monday,
April 16, 2007, the morning when cold, calculated,
confused fury took 32 student lives and changed
tens of thousands, even millions of others
forever.
Caitlin
Millar Hammaren... Jeremy Michael Herbstritt...
Rachael Elizabeth Hill... Emily Jane Hilscher...
The
unthinkable. Then, jarred and juxtaposed within
its setting, a Hokiestone-wrapped celebration of
the rigorous inquiry, academic excellence, life
exploration, energy and sheer exuberance of youth,
ideas and possibilities.
Jarrett
Lee Lane... Matthew Joseph La Porte... Henry J.
Lee... Liviu Librescu...
Together
the victims had been a slice of America, even the
world, and an engaging representation of Virginia
Tech’s success in widening its eyes and
broadening its views beyond Blacksburg, Virginia
and engineering.
Waleed
Mohamed Shaalan... Leslie Geraldine Sherman...
Maxine Shelly Turner... Nicole Regina White...
The
world watched as stunned students, faculty,
administrators, police, emergency workers and
parents tried to absorb the scope of the
shootings, to grasp the depth of the tragedy, to
understand without knowing.
G.V.
Loganathan... Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan...
Lauren Ashley McCain... Daniel Patrick O'Neil...
The
parents, as varied in background and circumstance
as the sons and daughters they lost, face the
tragedy anew every day. Some have reconciled
themselves to the anguished and unanswerable,
“Why?” Others continue to sift for answers in
the details -- which picture to release, which
parent to represent the group, how memorial
donations should be used, which groups should
perform at the concert, whether there is another
legal detail to contest.
Juan
Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz... Minal Hiralal Panchal...
Daniel Alejandro Perez... Perez Erin Nicole
Peterson...
But
none can hope to fill the deep, still-burning hole
left by such a loss. A child so carefully
nurtured, so lovingly pushed and pulled, now
growing in every direction at once, rekindling the
excitement in life that adults often learn to push
into corners, suddenly gone. “How could I have
failed to protect my child?”
Austin
Michelle Cloyd... Jocelyne Couture-Nowak... Kevin
P. Granata... Matthew Gregory Gwaltney...
No
parent can be satisfied really, when there is such
a dark question, however unfair -- not with the
answers a commission will provide, not with words
from a Governor, not with the outpouring of
sympathy still growing, not with the scope of a
memorial fund, not even with the words ringing
still from VT poet Nikki Giovanni, “We will
continue to invent the future through our blood
and tears and through all our sadness .... We will
prevail ..."
Michael
Steven Pohle, Jr.... Julia Kathleen Pryde... Mary
Karen Read... Reema Joseph Samaha...
Neither
accomplishment nor time, itself, can provide the
answer to the question that hauntingly forms in a
parent’s mind, “Can you bring her back? When
can I have him back?” Parents appreciate
explanations, comfort, community and commitments
from others to live out in their own lives
promises of those lives lost. But parents, most of
all, want their children.
Ross
Abdallah Alameddine... Christopher James Bishop...
Brian Roy Bluhm... Ryan Christopher Clark...
The
check-in of students that accelerates after August
15 will elbow aside the quiet of the Virginia Tech
campus as orientation podcasts and furious text
messaging feed the noise about dining plans,
schedules, loft information, roommates, books and
where the party is tonight. The home football
opener September 1 will push the noise to levels a
nation can hear.
That
is why the question ahead is not whether the quiet
can continue or whether tragedies will disappear.
The question centers on whether peace, the kind
that comes from remembering and reflecting the
best of those lost, can prevail. We remember. We
are parents. We are Virginia Tech.
--
August 13, 2007
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