Virginia Tech: My Perspective

Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. Tech holds a special place in my heart, and I will never forget that morning, when I was at my own college 500 miles away.

My mother graduated from Tech, and as long as I can remember, I knew what Hokie Pride was. The "Hokie Nation" the news talked about 2 years ago? It's real. It was before the shootings, and it always will be.

Tech was my second choice - if I didn't get into Cedarville (which is a small Christian school) I wanted to go to Tech. But I got into Cedarville... and that is the ONLY reason I wasn't in Blacksburg that day.

After our daily Chapel service, I went to my first class of the day. I turned my laptop on and settled in for class. The professor wasn't quite ready, so I checked the news online.

"SHOOTING AT VIRGINIA TECH. AT LEAST 1 DEAD."

I literally gasped.

Without thinking, I slammed my laptop shut, shoved it in the case, grabbed my backpack, and ran out of the classroom. NO ONE around me knew yet.

I ran as fast as I could to the campus pastor's office. He wasn't in, so while I was catching my breath, I managed to get out the words that took us all by surprise. But at that point, only the dorm shootings had taken place - it was sad, but small.

Growing up in Northern Virginia - where 7 of the dead were from - a great many of my friends were at Tech. I was slightly worried, but knew that with 1 dead in 25,000, chances were my friends were alright. I headed to the student center, where the only TVs on campus are, as they're always turned onto the news.

It was there that I started making calls. First, my Mom. She called her life-long best friend & fellow Hokie, who had 2 sons currently at Tech - the boys I knew as my "brothers" since I was born. She'd already heard from them & they were safe. Once that was out of the way, I turned to tracking down my friends from high school... all 17 of them... plus calling friends who had siblings there to ask about them as well.

My next call was to my high school class advisor, who I was "friends" with - we had a relationship outside of school, but I still addressed her the same formal way I addressed her in class. Anyway, when she answered the phone, she didn't say "hello" - she said, "I know."

"I know. Okay, we need to make a list. Between the two of us, we should know who's there."

I called my Mom back. "Mom, there's only 1 dead. My friends are okay, right?"

At that moment, I saw it. The headline on the news had gone from "1 dead" to "22 dead."

"Mom, it says 22 dead now, but I think they mean 2. It couldn't go from 1 to 22 so quickly. So 2 dead... that's still not a lot, right?"

She was silent. I heard her take a deep breath, then, as gently as she could, she said, "No, sweetie. It's 22."

I LITERALLY fell to my knees. Right there in the student center.

"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed into the phone. "That's not right! It CAN'T be right! Mom, tell me they're okay! Tell me they're okay NOW! PLEASE!!!!!!!" It was at that point that it all hit me, and I lost it. Nobody around me understood - those who were watching the TV didn't have cause to be worried. Saddened, of course, just like everyone. But most were from the midwest - they didn't KNOW anyone there, they had nobody to worry about.

In the lobby of the student center, I turned my laptop back on. While I searched Facebook - it DOES have a good use! - for phone numbers and those who might update their Status to something letting me know they were still alive, I called the numbers stored in my cell phone. Every few minutes I'd call my advisor back and let her know who was accounted for.

My dear friend Josh told me that he was running late that morning and missed his bus onto campus.

My friend JK told me that his professor cancelled class for that morning. You know the class if you watched TV AT ALL that day - it was the one that was cancelled and those kids would've been in the building that was shot up, where 31 people lost their lives.

Friend after friend was accounted for. I saw the University President leaving the cafeteria & stopped him. I told him - he didn't know! He immediately hugged me & prayed with me, as he could see how upset I was about my friends. Then he ran off to take care of the obvious things that came up on campuses all over America that day.

I started getting calls from people wanting to know who was accounted for - I guess they remembered from high school that if anyone would be affected & take action, it would be me.

Within two hours, we'd had everyone accounted for. I was relieved, to say the least. For a brief moment, I thought everything would be alright.

But then it hit me.

Not just that my Mom was watching pictures of her beloved Tech all shot up. Not just that it could've been ME if I hadn't gotten into Cedarville or my parents hadn't found the money to send me to a private university.

It was this simple fact: my friends were hurting beyond words. And I was powerless to help them.

My then-best-friend (the one I wrote about at the beginning of my blog & who you'll hear about on my Path to Healing) came into the student center to meet me for lunch, and I remember being so relieved & hugging her so hard. I told her that I was leaving...

..."I HAVE to go, Mary. I HAVE to get to Tech. My friends need me. I can't stay here. If I leave now, I can get there by midnight tonight. I have to go."

She grabbed me by the arms, made me look her in the eye, and told me that I couldn't do anything for them there that I couldn't do from here. Besides, the police wouldn't have let me anywhere near the campus, and everyone was scattered about.

Reluctantly, I agreed.

Later that day, she took me to a house that her now-husband's family used during the summer, because they had a TV where we could watch the news and I could just let myself react rather than trying to hold it together. It was such a blessing to have that. We watched until we had to go back for curfew - just before midnight that night.

I later found out that 2 of the victims went to the high school ONE MILE from my house... and SO DID THE KILLER!!!!!!!!!

My stepsister had MET him. He'd gone to school so close that I can hear their marching band on game nights from my ROOM. If I'd gone to public school rather than private, I may have known the victims.

It all hit home... WAY too close to home!!!

I thanked Jesus for watching over my friends... and prayed for the loved ones of those who He had taken from us. I was praying VERY, VERY hard for the killer's family - it wasn't their fault, yet they were being threatened. They lost a son, too... and had to live with TREMENDOUS guilt over knowing he was responsible. Some parents are partially to blame, but in this case, they really weren't. They had to give up their business & move. Not to mention their son was dead.

I wanted nothing more than to go home, to be back in D.C. with people who "GOT IT," who understood why it hurt so much and why it wasn't just a tragic news story to me. They were all going through the exact same thing. When the semester ended a couple weeks later, I was relieved. The usual amount of Hokie bumper stickers hadn't changed... but now maroon & orange ribbons were added.

It would've been anywhere. It could've been my school. It could've been my friends. Thankfully it wasn't... but it made me realize that nowhere is truly completely safe. Blacksburg is a small college town - just like my school (the one I went to at the time, before I got too sick for school). It made the fragility of life so real to me... these kids just went to class, just like I do, and they never went back to their dorm rooms or apartments or frat houses. They were MY AGE.

When I got back home, I realized that with 1/4 of the dead coming from my area, I easily could've run into them without knowing it. The killer lived very close to me - did I pass him in the store? My stepsister doesn't talk about him... and we don't press it. There's a lot I want to ask, but healing is far more important than curiosity.

Please join me in praying for those affected by what happened at Virginia Tech two years ago as of yesterday. That morning, when I heard the terrible news, I looked at Mary and said, "By the end of the day, the entire nation will know the phrase, 'We are Virginia Tech.'" And I was right. The Hokie Nation joined the entire nation in their grief... a grief that at times still seems fresh.

Please lift them all up in prayer. They ARE Virginia Tech.