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Commentary

MOVING FORWARD…

A new academic year begins... with new hopes and dreams.

And with this beginning, we reflect on what we have learned in these recent months - about the quality, resilience, and perseverance of our students, faculty and staff - about the compassion and loyalty of our alumni everywhere - and about the manner in which our university goes about the process of healing and moving forward.

Visits by alumni and friends, phone calls, notes, and e-mails of concern continue to pour in. Not a day or evening has gone by since mid-April when there has not been a visitor at the memorial in front of Burruss Hall, who comes to pay tribute to the victims. It is a place that is symbolic of how our university honors a tragedy of this proportion. Another memorial to honor our alumni in the armed forces, who died in combat, stands at the north end of the Drillfield. Its planning began in the late 1940s under the leadership of the Alumni Association, and its ultimate completion and dedication was in 1960, more than a dozen years later. It, too, is a sacred place on campus and appropriate to memorialize those from World War II to the present, who have lost their lives in major wars and conflicts.

In contrast to the erection of our War Memorial, our physical tribute to victims of the April 16th tragedy was begun literally seven weeks later, and its completion and dedication occurred almost exactly four months from the tragedy. To our knowledge and from our research into other memorials, our new memorial is the most swiftly built one following such a tragedy that has occurred anywhere in our nation. I was very honored to be appointed by President Steger to chair the process. It was his concern and charge to us to create a permanent memorial in a short period of time to honor the victims and their families, and allow our university to move forward from the horrors of that April day. THIS IS HOW WE DO THINGS AT VIRGINIA TECH!

The memorial to April 16th is an arc of 32 Hokie Stones that was inspired by and follows the design of the temporary memorial created by our Hokies United student volunteers within hours of the tragedy. The small stones they placed became a focal point on the campus for all to view and pay tribute to the 27 students and five faculty whose lives were taken. It was a place where many could grieve and some could choose to leave mementos and flowers, and through which the difficult process of healing could begin.

Our memorial committee could find no more appropriate and meaningful place to establish a permanent memorial than where our students had spontaneously created theirs. And it was built swiftly, with the combined efforts of university workers, volunteer labor and many contributed materials. Its formal dedication took place on Sunday, August 19th, on the day before Fall semester classes began. The original smaller stones from the temporary memorial were placed in special presentation boxes and given to the families of the victims following the dedication. The permanent stones, inscribed with the names of the victims, came from the Virginia Tech quarry and each weighs approximately 300 pounds. In the area designated for flowers in the center of the arc of stones is a single stone inscribed with just seven powerful words. These words still echo around the world from Nikki Giovanni’s poem that concluded the university’s memorial convocation on April 17th...

WE WILL PREVAIL
WE ARE VIRGINIA TECH

As I shared in the closing to my article in the special May memorial issue of the Virginia Tech Magazine... the eyes of the world continue to peer at us, and they see what makes us truly a Hokie Nation. They see what makes us the proudest alumni in the world. And they come to understand that this feeling is so very powerful that it never, never can be violated or destroyed.