harrisonsdream
04-24-2007, 11:14 AM
Classes at Virginia Tech resume on emotional day
Campus remembers those who were lost
By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press
BLACKSBURG, VA. — Her back still aching from jumping from a second-floor classroom window to avoid being shot, Caroline Merrey knelt before a memorial to Professor Liviu Librescu — the teacher who barred the door with his own body and helped make her escape possible.
Merrey was glad for the pain. It's a reminder that she's alive.
"Every time I bend and feel my back sore, I kind of go back to that room and I can picture what happened," the 22-year-old senior said. "His selflessness is the reason I'm here."
Merrey joined several thousand other students gathered Monday on the main campus lawn of Virginia Tech to remember the massacre victims.
A soul-rending silence fell over the grassy oblong at 9:45 a.m., the moment the first 911 call came in from Norris Hall that a gunman was on the loose. People flinched as an occasional balloon popped, sounding eerily like a muffled gunshot.
Then came the tolling of an antique brass bell installed on a limestone rostrum at the edge closest to Norris, where Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and professors — and himself.
The bell was sounded for each victim, and after each toll a white balloon was released.
Finally, students and staff released 1,000 balloons in maroon and orange, and the crowd chanted "Hokies!"
As many as 90 percent of the students returned to campus, and class attendance hovered around 75 percent Monday. But normalcy is still a long way off.
Chemistry Professor Joe Merola tried to give a lecture, but looking at 100 students' faces — and the sweat shirt he'd placed on the seat of a student who had been wounded — he couldn't do it. "I lost it halfway through class," he said. "I burst into tears and had to turn it over to the counselors."
omg that's so sad
Campus remembers those who were lost
By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press
BLACKSBURG, VA. — Her back still aching from jumping from a second-floor classroom window to avoid being shot, Caroline Merrey knelt before a memorial to Professor Liviu Librescu — the teacher who barred the door with his own body and helped make her escape possible.
Merrey was glad for the pain. It's a reminder that she's alive.
"Every time I bend and feel my back sore, I kind of go back to that room and I can picture what happened," the 22-year-old senior said. "His selflessness is the reason I'm here."
Merrey joined several thousand other students gathered Monday on the main campus lawn of Virginia Tech to remember the massacre victims.
A soul-rending silence fell over the grassy oblong at 9:45 a.m., the moment the first 911 call came in from Norris Hall that a gunman was on the loose. People flinched as an occasional balloon popped, sounding eerily like a muffled gunshot.
Then came the tolling of an antique brass bell installed on a limestone rostrum at the edge closest to Norris, where Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and professors — and himself.
The bell was sounded for each victim, and after each toll a white balloon was released.
Finally, students and staff released 1,000 balloons in maroon and orange, and the crowd chanted "Hokies!"
As many as 90 percent of the students returned to campus, and class attendance hovered around 75 percent Monday. But normalcy is still a long way off.
Chemistry Professor Joe Merola tried to give a lecture, but looking at 100 students' faces — and the sweat shirt he'd placed on the seat of a student who had been wounded — he couldn't do it. "I lost it halfway through class," he said. "I burst into tears and had to turn it over to the counselors."
omg that's so sad