I am not getting much writing done right now. Let me describe my week so far. (I didn’t really proof this.)
Monday morning
I’m doing my usual routine. I’ve read the paper, fed the animals, rode my exercise bike, showered, and just sat down to write when I hear on the radio—the national top of the hour newscast on NPR—that there’s been a shooting in Blacksburg on the Virginia Tech campus. Now I live in Roanoke, which 40 miles east of Blacksburg, but I am from Blacksburg. I graduated from Virginia Tech. My father taught there for 30 some years. I even worked at Tech for 5 years, before moving to Florida.
And though I don’t have any family left in Blacksburg, I still know people there, including my very best friend, Susan, who is currently getting her degree in French. So I contact her (email, then phone) to see if she and her husband are okay. They were. Susan had gotten the email(s) from the administration about something going on and had opted to stay home. Her class was in McBryde Hall, next to where we later found out the majority of the shootings happened. If you see a photo of students standing in a glass doorway, that’s McBryde Hall, and that’s the entrance she uses. (And to make it worse, many times, including that morning, another friend of ours and her kids, 2 & 4, usually drop Susan off there.) By this time, the campus was on lock down. Susan had already talked to her classmate, who lives in an apartment near campus. She said the police had already gone through her neighborhood with a bullhorn and told everyone to stay on the floor.
While talking to Susan, I turn on the bedroom TV. At this time, the news is reporting only one dead. I talk to my aunt, who lives nearby, and my sister, which is a whole story unto itself. I email my brother, who is in Pristina, Kosovo, of all places, on assignment for the Justice Department for a year or so. By the time I get downstairs to turn on that TV, the death count has gone up to 20. A real punch in the gut, holy shit moment.
My brother calls and we share this holy shit moment over a meal, my lunch, his dinner, while watching CNN. He calls back later, too. This is exceptionally weird for him, living in a former war zone that is beginning see more and more unrest over its independence. Hand grenades and car bombs are becoming a little more commonplace there. However, no one has been hurt yet. He’d told me he was actually getting used to it. Now, he’s sitting there watching our sleepy, almost idyllic little hometown erupt in violence. Very surreal.
Needless to say, I watch a lot of news that evening. The local channels are all doing wall-to-wall coverage. And the national news, NBC and CBS at least, broadcast from the Tech campus. Brian Williams did his whole show standing outside some hokie-stoned building that I couldn’t quite place but you could see some of the beauty of the campus from where he was standing. (Katie Couric did her show from inside the Inn at Virginia Tech, I think.) By now, the death count is up to 33, and Virginia Tech / Blacksburg is officially the site of the worst shooting ever in the US.
A little about my hometown and alma mater
Blacksburg is a pretty little college town in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, with the sprawling campus of Virginia Tech at its heart (and all around its edges, too.) There’s 26,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and probably another 10,000 or so other folks in the immediate community. Everyone is connected somehow. Blacksburg is a college town much like Athens, Chapel Hill, Madison, Ann Arbor, or even Berkeley. Blacksburg may not be as culturally hip as some of those places, but it certainly has that same laid back, tolerant, open-minded atmosphere. (Frankly, if this tragedy hadn’t happened, Bush would never set foot in the place.)
Nowadays, people probably know Virginia Tech for its football program. However, Tech is one of the top engineering schools in the country, if not world. (I worked in a research center that was part of the industrial engineering department.) Tech’s science and research facilities aren’t too shabby either. (My dad was an expert in the field of anaerobic microbiology.) Neither are its other departments. Nikki Giovanni, for instance, who gave the closing remarks at the convocation, is an internationally renowned poet.
All this draws a student body (and faculty) from around the world. And many don’t want to leave Blacksburg. They get jobs at the university or open businesses. Or just hang out and mountain bike, ski, or hike. Or become perpetual students. Or all of the above.
And this is the kind of place parents send students not only to get a good education but because it’s normally a very safe place. Certainly things happen, as they do in any place, no matter how small, but it’s the kind of place people escape to—not from—when they’re concerned about their family’s safety. My father, who was from New Haven, scoffed at the idea of locking his car door in Blacksburg. People have started to retire to Blacksburg because of its beauty and amenities, which of course has driven up the real estate prices.
And it’s the kind of place that certainly has its churches but it also has thriving Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and probably Hindu communities.
Enough about Blacksburg for right now. Onto yesterday.
Tuesday morning
I met Susan (and her husband) at our friend Sherry’s house on the north side of Blacksburg. Sherry is also an alumni, and the three of us used to work together at Tech. Kevin left, and then we piled into Sherry’s SUV (which she definitely needs to get up the windy road to her house in the winter) with her kids, Cameron and Carson, 4 and 2, respectively, and headed toward campus. We really didn’t have a plan in mind but just wanted to walk around the drillfield. (The drillfield is a large greenspace, maybe a couple football field long, with a rather unique chapel at one end. It’s at the traditional center of campus.) So we parked downtown by the student center, put the kids in strollers, and began walking. Cam, the 4-year-old, had lots of questions, but at least at first was easily distracted by all the “police guys.”
We reminisced about the library, the former alumni hall, the gym, and a couple other buildings until we decided to cross the drill field. At the end near the War Memorial Chapel, someone had set up a makeshift memorial against a tree. There was a white candle for every dead person and a red for every wounded one. A cardboard VT was tacked to a little tree. People could sign it and/or write in the guest book below. At this point, Sherry had to explain to Cameron what had happened and why this was out there. Then both kids decided they wanted to sign the VT. Sherry helped Cam, and I helped Carson, while Susan read through the guest book.
The next thing we know, several reporters are wanting to talk to us. And that’s one thing that none of us had anticipated. That there would be reporters from everywhere—and they’d be stalking people on campus. I should’ve known when I stopped to pee at the Hardee’s near campus on my way up to Sherry’s. The commuter lot was just white sea of satellite trucks. Most of the bigger outlets—networks and 24-hour-news folks—were probably over by the Coliseum when we were at the Drill Field. (People were already lining up at the Coliseum for the Convocation at 2 pm.) So we got nabbed by the Canadian and small town press. Poor Susan got a little tearful describing why she was there. From where we were standing, we could see McBryde—where she would have been—and the police tape cordoning off nearby Norris Hall. Then the Highty-Tighties, the cadet marching band, started making their way across the drill field. Their drums startled Susan, who still talking to a reporter, thought for an instance that it was gunfire.
After that, we decided to walk up to the Coliseum, discovering that getting up to Prairie quad (where West AJ and several other dorms are) is not really stroller friendly. But we got the kids up there, and Cam again was delighted to see all the police guys and cars. We got there at least an hour and a half before the Convocation, but the line stretched past the Coliseum and down toward the football stadium. (The Convocation, btw, was a service attended by the governor and the president.) Susan got a call from a couple of her classmates. And they met us outside East AJ, across the street from the Coliseum.
And that’s where Susan learned that one of her former French professors had been killed in Norris Hall the day before. She (the professor) had two daughters, both of whom Susan knows. Our degrees of separation just got reduced to one. So Susan and her classmates decided to go to the Convocation. By then the Coliseum was full and the overflow was filling up the football stadium.
Sherry and I decided to take the kids home. So we pushed the kids back through all the people in orange and maroon still heading toward the sports complex. On our way back to the car, we were stopped by yet another reporter. He was sitting on a bench on College Ave, across from the Student Center, where a big banner reading 4-16-07 hung over the entrance. Turned out he was from Littleton, Colorado. I hadn’t realized it was also the anniversary of Columbine. He was very interested in whether we had made the connection.
Finally, we got back to Sherry’s house, in time to watch the Convocation. Sherry put Carson down for his nap, which he’d already started in the car, and Cameron stripped down to his Superman pajamas he had underneath his clothes. While we were watching the convocation, Cameron played with his train and firetrucks, alternating between telling me about his toys and asking Mommy about what was going on on TV. Toward the end of it, Cam announced that guns were his favorite thing in the world. He launched into a lengthy explanation of how they worked, including how the hammer hits the bullet. His daddy had evidently shown him how a rifle worked. Sherry was not happy.
Is it a wonder that bigger boys think they can solve their problems with guns?
I got home that evening and had a couple beers and a couple Bayers—and watched crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. (The Deadliest Catch on Discovery)
Wednesday
I cannot watch any more coverage, especially pundits and experts trying dissect and lay blame. I do want to hear the survivors’ stories. I do want to know that people like Professor Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, died saving his students. I do feel the Lee family’s pain that their Henry shouldn’t have been in class. (The Lee’s live in Roanoke.) I do want to know the shooter’s English professor offered to walk him over to the counseling center personally. But I don’t want to hear what Dr. Phil or some Israeli counterterrorism specialist has to say about what happened. Or what should have happened. It’s time to find out what really happened, honor the people who died, and help the people who survived move on. The place will never be the same, though.
Ok, now maybe I can get back to work. Ironically, I had started writing a story a couple weeks ago, inspired in part by a writing prompt from an online workshop, about a day in the life of a used bookstore in downtown Blacksburg or a college town very similar to it. Dunno if I can work on that now, though.
