Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The face of Norris Hall is visible to the right. Photo taken from the middle of the drillfield on Sunday, June 17. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. Photo taken from the middle of the drillfield on Sunday, June 17. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The semicircle of Hokie Stone victim memorials have been moved forward to make room for the renovations. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The full text of the Memorial Project Notice visible in the foreground is available in this Virginia Tech News Story: "University announces plans for intermediate and permanent memorial to honor victims of April 16 tragedy". Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
Cho Seung-Hui's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
17 April 2007 The talking heads keep talking about the "VT Massacre", not that it doesn't deserve attention, but this is too much attention. And VT is getting a bad wrap unfairly on one specific point: the notification of students on campus as to what was going on. The media seem obsessed with the 2-hour gap between the first shooting and the campus-wide email. They think the whole campus should have been told immediately. This is a short-sighted and impatient assumption, and is definitely not appropriate in a time like this when cooler heads should prevail. First, when the first shooting occurred, no one knew what the hell was going on! As with any incident like this, the police responded immediately, and their first priority was to figure out what happened. From what the VT police have said, they had reason to believe the shooter had left campus. So, what good would it have been to lock the campus down? And even if they had, how would that have stopped the assailant from coming back, as this may have only added police officers to the list of the dead. My point is VT authorities didn't notify anyone immediately because they didn't know what to tell them! In this age of information and 24-hour TV news, many have been spoiled into thinking they should have answers immediately, and that someone has failed them if they don't. Spoiled is definitely the best word for that outlook. Answers aren't always available right away, and rarely is the complete picture seen even days after an event like this, if ever. So, why are some in the media out to vilify the very people who were trying to protect the public and figure this whole thing out? I can see no reason other than lack of understanding and sensationalism, neither of which is an acceptable answer. --- On a different note about the incidents of yesterday: As a life member of Kappa Kappa Psi Honorary Band Fraternity, as was receiving updates on the status on members of our chapter at VT. All were accounted for by midday and none harmed. But we did get unfortunate news: One of the fallen was a member of the VT Band, a brother-in-arms, if you will. From the Marching Virginians website: The Marching Virginians are deeply sorrowed by the loss of fellow MV and friend, Ryan "Stack" Clark. He was a loved friend, mentor, and role model who will always hold a special place in the hearts of all the MVs as a true example of The Spirit Of Tech. Stack, we thank you for all the memories, and for sharing with us your true love of life. We will love and miss you always. Please continue to keep those up at Virginia Tech and their families in your thoughts and prayers. -the Progressive Conservative posted by Matt Collins at 4/17/2007 08:51:00 AM -- Original Source: http://conservativeprogress.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-vt-massacre.html This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
WCC leader backs calls for effective US firearms regulations
News Brief By staff writers 18 Apr 2007 World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia has expressed "deep sorrow" over "this new horror of random violence" that took place at Virginia Tech University on Monday 16 April 2007. To his prayers for the families and the wounded, he added international church concern for more effective regulation of firearms. "Churches around the world join churches and councils of churches in the US in sending sympathies to those who are suffering, and in upholding parishes in Virginia in their ministry during these difficult days", said Dr Kobia in a statement published yesterday. Dr Kobia affirmed that "In deference to those who have died and with concern for the future, we all must ask why such killings happen so easily. Why are these incidents repeated as if there are no remedies? "We are all Virginians in our sympathy, but many people around the world are also Virginians in their vulnerability to the misuse of unregulated guns", Kobia declared. "Wanton killings", "indiscriminate use of armed force" and "widespread availability of deadly weapons" are features of the Virginia tragedy but are also present daily in Darfur and in Iraq, he said. Dr Kobia called for "firm and appropriate controls" on the globalized trade in small arms. He notes, among other factors, that the "pro-gun position adopted by the US administration" has been "one of the major obstacles" to progress toward that goal. The World Council of Churches, which brings together Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and indigenous churches across the globe, has a longstanding concern for combating violence. The Decade to Overcome Violence and build a culture of peace has brought together church and civic groups. It has included a 'peace to the city' initiative which included action on gun crime and domestic attacks. -- Original Source: Ekklesia http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5069 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License
Note: I found writing this piece to be a way of channeling my own anger at the massacre this morning. But I recognize that anger is only one part of the grief process. Please join me in praying for the families and friends of those killed. American worships the gun. Today, 33 more were sacrificed on the altar of our devotion to the gun. Specifically to semi automatic handguns. There are already dozens of articles from disciples arguing that the massacre today at Virginia tech could have been avoided if some of the students had been carrying guns so they could shoot the killer before he killed them. We trust the gun more than we trust God. The brutal reality of our gun fetish is that selling guns and ammo is highly profitable. But it is not simply the fact that the market values short term earnings from gun sales more than the social, cultural, political and long term economic damage that gun violence does to our society. More importantly, the gun industry long ago learned to effectively invest their short term earnings into the social, political and cultural sphere. Their investments in the NRA, especially since 1977 years have returned 10 fold and the results are a culture in which gun ownership is intimately connected with the values of self-sufficiency, responsibility and security that so many Americans identify with. We'll call these frontier values. As much as we'd like to wish that the new Democratic congress would seize on this moment to pass some common sense gun laws, the reality is that many of the new members of Congress were partly by actively courting those with frontier values. Unless their constituency shows signs of disconnecting handguns from frontier values, any vote for limiting the sales of hand guns will be doomed. It may be that changing our gun culture requires looking at movements that have successfully challenged large corporations with large amounts of cultural capital. The anti-smoking movement comes to mind. The last 30 years have seen a drastic shift on the public perceptions of smoking. The parallels are striking. The right to smoke was once also closely associated with frontier values. The industry also heavily invested in cultural, social and political institutions to maintain and promote the cigarette. For a time it seemed that they were effective. But these days its very hard to find anyone in political office trumpeting the rights of smokers. What were the tactics and strategies of the anti-smoking lobby? They brought law suits by second hand smokers against big tobacco. Unfortunately a law passed in 2005 protects the industry from any parallel suits. Another tactic of the anti-tobacco movement was its relentless funding of anti-smoking advertising. Through memorable add campaigns they have gradually associated with smoking with disease and decay. It seems this solution has much potential given the brutal reality of gun crime. Is the anti-gun lobby much less well funded? Have they not found the right message? Of course, part of the anti-smoking victory can be attributed to the scandal of Tobacco companies lying to consumers for many many years. This highlights a major difference between gun industry and the tobacco industry is that gun manufacturers are much less visible in the debate then big tobacco was. The NRA is by far the most visible and powerful gun lobbying organization. The wikipedia article on Smitth & Wesson tells the interesting story of how gun owners turned on the hand that fed them after Smith & Wesson was seen to have compromised on gun control. But there is hope. In the United Kingdom after the Dunblane Massacre, more than 700,000 Brits signed the Snowdrop petition calling for a total ban on the private ownership and use of handguns in the United Kingdom. The petition led to the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 which completely banned handguns in the UK (this was the final in a long series of hand gun control laws) According to a report from the home office, from mid-2005 to mid-2006, only 49 people were killed by handguns (Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2005/2006, page 36). This is a rate of roughly 1 per million compared to 55 per million in the US (FBI 2004 Crime report). It turns out that a mandatory five-year jail term for carrying a hand gun does have an effect. I lived in the UK from 2004 through 2006 and noticed that fatal shootings were so rare that they regularly made the national newspaper. People take the hand gun ban for granted and find the gun religion in our country to quaint and strange. On one of my first evenings in the UK I watched a documentary in which a UK reporter went deep into US gun country and interviewed gun disciples. It was like watching an exotic safari. Change is possible. Massacres like the one at Virginia tech do not need to be a reoccurring horror in our headlines and our lives. Let's work together to end our worship of the gun. This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 6:44 pm by TimN -- Original Source: Young Anabaptist Radicals Blog http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2007/04/16/the-altar-of-the-gun/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
Wooden plaque remembering and honoring nine students from Political Science and International Studies. It is currently displayed on the fifth floor of Major Williams Hall. Photo taken Monday, June 18.
Transnistria survivor Liviu Librescu killed in Virginia Tech massacre
During Tuesday's massacre at Virginia Tech, in the USA, a holocaust survivor with ties to Tiraspol was killed. Liviu Librescu had survived deportation from Romania to the killing fields of World War II's Transnistria. The territory was never part of Romania or of any independent Moldovan state. By Times staff, 18/Apr/2007 BLACKSBURG (Wires, Tiraspol Times) - Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born Israeli professor, survived the killing fields of Transnistria as a teenager but fell to the bullet of a lone gunman in an American university campus Tuesday. The 76 year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at his lecture hall entrance so his students could escape. Librescu was among the thirty-three people who were murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student, Korean-born Cho Seung-hui, 23. At Virginia Tech, his recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it; although he was shot through the door, he was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows. A hero to his students A number of Librescu's students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor's students "lived because of him". Librescu's son, Joe, said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives and regarded him as a hero. His death came on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish family in the city of Ploieşti, Romania. During World War II, his native Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany and started an extermination campaign of Jews. His family was first interned in a labor camp in what the Romanians at the time called Transnistria and then transferred to the ghetto of Focşani. According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war. Others put the number higher, pointing to Romanian attempts to whitewash the scope of the crimes it committed while it occupied Transnistria (today known by its official name, Pridnestrovie, or by English names such as Transdniester and Transdniestria). Anti-Semitic Romanians " - We were in Romania during the Second World War, and we were Jews there among the Germans, and among the anti-Semitic Romanians," Marlena Librescu told Israeli Channel 10 TV on Tuesday. From 1941 to 1944, Romania invaded occupied Transnistria (Pridnestrovie) which was a territory outside its own natural ethnic and historical borders. At no time in history was this territory ever part of Romania or of any independent Moldovan state, having also been majority Slavic and a traditional part of Russia or Ukraine. During the Romanian occupation, the area was used as a giant slaughter house of Jews. At no time did Romania ever attempt to formally incorporate the territory into any Romanian or Moldovan state, recognizing that the natural border had always been the Dniester River; today the border between Pridnestrovie and Moldova. Liviu Librescu survived the Holocaust to become an accomplished scientist in Romania. He left the Romanian communist regime in 1978 after a direct request was made by the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, to President of Romania, Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. After emigrating to Israel, from 1979 to 1985 Librescu was Professor of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University. From 1985 until his death, he served as Professor at Virginia Tech. (With information from AP, Wikipedia) See also: » Romania whitewash of Transnistria invasion angers Holocaust survivors » Transnistria, the artificial name for "the Romanian Auschwitz" » Re-affirming independence, Tiraspol celebrates its liberation from Romania -- Original Source: http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/news/transnistria_survivor_liviu_librescu_killed_in_virginia_tech_massacre.html
Jason Cooper (jasoncooper@tiraspoltimes.com)
Campus life after the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 08:01AM "April is the cruellest month." When T. S. Eliot penned that opening line to "The Waste Land" in 1921, he had no idea how it would resound in modern America. Oklahoma City, Columbine High School, and Virginia Tech—our calendars mark all three within a span of five days, a week soaked in grief. "As a youth minister, you anticipate weddings, not funerals," said Matt Rogers of New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF), a Christian community that meets in the Student Center at Virginia Tech. "We have no playbook for something like this." I spoke at NLCF two weeks after the tragedy, accompanied by the Ruegsegger family, whose daughter Kacey survived gunshot wounds at Columbine High School eight years ago. "Very few people know what you're going through," Kacey told the students gathered for the somber service. "We've been there." The news media portrayed yet another mass killing on a U.S. campus. What greeted the visitor, though, was an overwhelming display of national solidarity. Banners and posters hung in many school buildings, covered with tens of thousands of handwritten messages of support. And a cluster of spontaneous memorials appeared around campus. Each day, visitors filed past the mounds of mementoes—a baseball, a Starbucks cup, a teddy bear, a favorite novel—that gave individuality to the 33 who'd died. Spring arrived late in western Virginia. As April faded into May, redbud and wild dogwood trees dotted the surrounding hills. Tulips and daffodils set off the gray stone university buildings. "It's usually such a happy time," mused one student. "We pack our books and stereos and head home, some of us with diplomas. This year, a gray haze hangs over everything." Before departing, many students paid one last visit to Norris Hall, blocked off with a green fence and yellow police tape. Where they used to attend classes, state patrolmen now stood guard. Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/15.56.html
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
Virginia Tech's Korean Christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre. Deann Alford | posted 6/06/2007 08:02AM The alert that two students had been shot on campus blipped into Jong Nam Lee's e-mail inbox around 9:30 that fateful Monday morning, April 16, as the Virginia Tech research scientist was writing a paper. Months earlier, a gunman had been loose on campus, and within the past two weeks, there had been two bomb threats. Still, the warning prompted the soft-spoken engineer, who serves as an adviser to Virginia Tech's Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), to check on his son, a student at the university. Josh Lee was safe. His morning class had been canceled. But within minutes, Lee's wife, Mi Oak, shared the unimaginable news with her husband. A suicidal gunman had killed 32 and injured 28 on campus before putting a gun to his own head. Quickly, Lee and dozens of other campus ministry leaders and their student leaders pulled out all the stops to respond. Ninety miles away in Lynchburg, David Chung, pastor of Blacksburg's Korean Baptist Church and a professor in Liberty University's Korean-language seminary, heard the news while on class break. Immediately, he canceled class, packed a bag, and made a beeline for Blacksburg. Korea Campus Crusade is based at Korean Baptist Church, a Korean-language congregation. Worship is held Sunday afternoons at the 155-year-old Blacksburg Baptist Church, across the street from the sprawling Virginia Tech campus. Nearly every congregation and on-campus ministry was hit in some way. "Cru"—as Campus Crusade for Christ is known at Virginia Tech—had four student fatalities. Baptist Collegiate Ministries lost one student. New Life Christian Fellowship, a student-oriented startup church, had two fatalities and ten student attenders injured. One graduate student affiliated with Korean Baptist took bullets in his hand and arm. One of Their Own—Lost in America The day after the slaughter, Korean American leaders realized the tragedy had gone beyond the unimaginable. The shooter was Korean. Seung-Hui Cho was a 23-year-old South Korean immigrant with permanent resident status in the United States and a Virginia Tech senior English major. Inside Cho's dorm suite, police found a long-winded rant in which the mentally unstable student railed against rich kids, women, and religion. During Cho's nine-minute shooting rampage, he was supposed to be in a "Bible as Literature" class. For the Korean American community, Cho was not a faceless perpetrator. He was one of their own who had lost himself. Working the phones, Lee and Chung talked to Korean Christians around the nation and in South Korea to ensure that Christian leaders received an accurate account of what had happened. "Everybody is in shock," Chung said, concerning his own congregation. Later, South Korea's president issued a personal apology. Lee Tae Sik, South Korea's ambassador to the United States and a Christian, called on his fellow citizens to fast for 32 days to honor each of Cho's victims. Condolences and flowers poured into campus buildings from across the nation and the world. Among them were 32 identical bouquets flanking the center aisle of Virginia Tech's War Memorial Chapel. Tags revealed that the sender was the Korean Church Association of Austin, Texas. For many Americans, the empathy of the global Korean community for all 33 who died was a struggle to comprehend. For Soo-Chan Steven Kang, a Korean American associate professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, it was perfectly understandable. Korean culture instills a sense of group identity and strong feelings and fears about shame. Also, many Koreans believe they are lumped together in public perception for good or for ill. In America, Koreans are Christian or attend church at nearly three times the rate found in their mother country. Some 25 percent of Koreans in South Korea identify themselves as Christian. But about 70 percent of Koreans in the United States are affiliated with a church, if not for spiritual guidance, then at least for cultural connection. Within the U.S. population of 300 million, there are only about 1 million Koreans, and they are concentrated in gateway cities such as Los Angeles. Only 10 percent of the 10.2 million Asians in the U.S. are Korean. As a result, immigrant Koreans often stick together. Kang said this "stick-togetherness" helps them whether they are first generation (having arrived in the United States after age 16 or so) or "1.5 generation" (having immigrated as children, sometimes old enough to remember their lives in Korea). Fear and Wonder In the days after the shooting, classes were canceled. Most Korean American students went home to their parents. One reason was fear of ethnic reprisals. In the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Koreans suffered violence and property damage after a Korean American shot an African American. Some Korean Americans across the country feared a similar reaction. But Chung said that most Korean students who remained in Blacksburg were not worried about a backlash. Instead, they were asking deep questions: • What do we need to learn from this tragedy? • What is God telling us? • What should my life's priority be? By Thursday, Korean American pastors from throughout the East Coast and Korean seminary students from Liberty planned to come pray on campus. But amid attempts to cope with the crisis, the entire campus involuntarily had become a reality TV show. Satellite trucks ringed Virginia Tech's Drillfield. One Christian leader called the media crush a "second trauma" for students. The situation became abusive and manipulative. One KCCC leader told CT, "They were just leading us to say what they want[ed] us to say, trying to ask a lot of nosy questions that seemed irrelevant and could hurt a lot of people." Church leaders were anxious. "We were worried about our pure motive for our prayer meeting being distorted," Chung said. He canceled the event. Chung had been asking himself and others: "What role should we play in light of this rampage?" "I'm still asking God's wisdom," he said. "I believe there will be a message from God. God is saying something—isn't he?—when he allows a tragedy of this size to happen in Blacksburg," Chung said. "This is happening in our front yard." Concerning Cho, Chung told CT, "We need to pray for his parents and his sister [enduring] the worst nightmare of nightmares. To find strength to live, joy of living ... will be almost impossible without Christ." Korean Baptist Church, a first-generation immigrant church established in the early 1980s, is a congregation of 250. Blacksburg's other Korean church, Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, is a 1.5- and second-generation church that favors English-language worship. Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, the Baptist church's de facto student outreach arm, arrived at Virginia Tech about 10 years ago. Perhaps a quarter of the 90 students involved with KCCC are "seekers"—young people interested in knowing more about a relationship with Christ. The dynamic within the Korean American community is not unlike that of many American communities. University students leave their families, which range in faith from unchurched and uninterested to devoutly Christian. Like other students, they are dealing with identity issues and deciding where God and the church fit into their lives. Korean American Christian leaders focus on relational dynamics. They fellowship over familiar Korean foods, share their faith, and strengthen each other's walk with Christ. Each fall, Virginia Tech's KCCC "servants" (as leaders are called) dig through freshman rosters, looking for Korean names. Going two by two, they visit dorm rooms and leave fliers with contact information and invitations to a cookout, fellowships, and Bible studies. They help newcomers by taking them shopping and helping them move into their dorms. All hear the gospel eventually. According to Gordon-Conwell's Kang, that kind of gospel-centered support is vital to overcoming a strong sense of isolation. Because Korean parents come to the United States eager to provide materially for their children in ways they believed they could not in Korea, mothers and fathers often work 60 hours a week or more. "The younger generation is left alone to grow up by themselves [and] figure out their life by themselves, whether at home or at the church," Kang said. Because many 1.5-generation and second-generation children adopt American culture and English as their preferred language, he said, parents and children find communication increasingly difficult as the years go by. Cho himself was a 1.5-generation child. At Virginia Tech, a system is in place to make such students feel welcomed into a community. "We ask, 'Do you need anything? Is there anything we can do for you?'" said Eun Sook Ji, a Virginia Tech sophomore and KCCC member. Student reaction is typically appreciative, though sometimes KCCC students hear, "Thanks, but no thanks." Like many Christians at Virginia Tech, Ji wonders how Cho never connected with the Korean Christian community. There has been no shortage of introspection on that issue. Kang said that since 70 percent of Korean Americans say they attend church regularly, he knew "from the get-go" that Cho was probably part of the church, at least growing up. But Korean American churches sometimes find it hard to reach out to troubled members. Smaller churches, such as the northern Virginia Presbyterian church that Cho's family occasionally attended, usually have only one full-time pastor. In addition, Peter Cha, an associate professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, told CT that shame often deters Asian families from seeking outside professional help. In the meantime, Korean Americans continue to grapple with the massacre. Korean Baptist's Chung quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." Kang said the fundamental issue is the problem of evil. "We ask, 'Why does God allow these things to happen?'" he said, "rather than seeing this as the natural consequences of sinful society that Christ came to redeem. "Western Christians struggle to make meaning of what happens in America because we're insulated. It's a dying and degenerate world. We're [experiencing] the consequences of sin." Asked whether Cho had slipped through the cracks, Jim Pace, a pastor of Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship, answered, "Ultimately, yeah." Even so, he said, "You can't assume responsibility for someone's free will." Six days after the bloodbath, on a cool but sunny Sunday afternoon, Chung preached at Korean Baptist using Psalm 13 as his text. His congregation was half its normal size. Many regulars had gone home, and only a few new faces appeared in the congregation. "We have to pray that we are ready to be used by God," he told them. "We need to pray that we can be used as God's tool to share his loving-kindness to the community of Blacksburg." Chung told CT that David's lament in Psalm 13 perfectly fit their situation. "Satan is working," he said. "We are devastated. God doesn't seem to be around. Like David, we have to seek his loving-kindness." Deann Alford is a senior writer for Christianity Today. Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/16.52.html
A sermon given on the Virginia Tech campus two weeks after the shootings. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 05:31PM We gather here still trying to make sense of what happened in Blacksburg, still trying to process the unprocessable. We come together in this place, as a Christian community, partly because we know of no better place to bring our questions and our grief and partly because we don't know where else to turn. As the apostle Peter once said to Jesus, at a moment of confusion and doubt, "Lord, to whom else can we go?" In considering how to begin today, I found myself following two different threads. The first thread is what I would like to say, the words I wish I could say. The second thread is the truth. I wish I could say that the pain you feel will disappear, vanish, never to return. I'm sure you've heard comments like these from parents and others: "Things will get better." "You'll get past this." "This too shall pass." Those who offer such comfort mean well, and it's true that what you feel now you will not always feel. Yet it's also true that what happened on April 16, 2007, will stay with you forever. You are a different person because of that day, because of one troubled young man's actions. I remember one year when three of my friends died. In my thirties then, I had little experience with death. In the midst of my grief, I came across these lines from George Herbert that gave me solace: "Grief melts away / Like snow in May / As if there were no such cold thing." I clung to that hope even as grief smothered me like an avalanche. Indeed, the grief did melt away, but like snow it also came back, in fierce and unexpected ways, triggered by a sound, a smell, some fragment of memory of my friends. So I cannot say what I want to say, that this too shall pass. Instead, I point to the pain you feel, and will continue to feel, as a sign of life and love. I'm wearing a neck brace because I broke my neck in an auto accident. For the first few hours as I lay strapped to a body board, medical workers refused to give me pain medication because they needed my response. The doctor kept probing, moving my limbs, asking, "Does this hurt? Do you feel that?" The correct answer, the answer both he and I desperately wanted, was, "Yes. It hurts. I can feel it." Each sensation gave proof that my spinal cord had not been severed. Pain offered proof of life, of connection—a sign that my body remained whole. Love and Pain In grief, love and pain converge. Cho felt no grief as he gunned down your classmates because he felt no love for them. You feel grief because you did have a connection. Some of you had closer ties to the victims, but all of you belong to a body to which they too belonged. When that body suffers, you suffer. Remember that as you cope with the pain. Don't try to numb it. Instead, acknowledge it as a perception of life and of love. Medical students will tell you that in a deep wound, two kinds of tissue must heal: the connective tissue beneath the surface and the outer, protective layer of skin. If the protective tissue heals too quickly, the connective tissue will not heal properly, leading to complications later on. The reason this church and other ministries on campus offer counseling and hold services like this one is to help the deep, connective tissue heal. Only later will the protective layer of tissue grow back in the form of a scar. We gather here as Christians, and as such we aspire to follow a man who came from God 2,000 years ago. Read through the Gospels, and you'll find only one scene in which someone addresses Jesus directly as God: "My Lord and my God!" Do you know who said that? It was doubting Thomas, the disciple stuck in grief, the last holdout against believing the incredible news of the Resurrection. In a tender scene, Jesus appeared to Thomas in his newly transformed body, obliterating Thomas's doubts. What prompted that outburst of belief, however—"My Lord and my God!"—was the presence of Jesus' scars. "Feel my hands," Jesus told him. "Touch my side." In a flash of revelation, Thomas saw the wonder of Almighty God, the Lord of the universe, stooping to take on our pain. God doesn't exempt even himself from pain. God joined us and shared our human condition, including its great grief. Thomas recognized in that pattern the most foundational truth of the universe: that God is love. To love means to hurt, to grieve. Pain is a mark of life. The Jews, schooled in the Old Testament, had a saying: "Where Messiah is, there is no misery." After Jesus, you could change that saying to: "Where misery is, there is the Messiah." "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, "and those who hunger and thirst, and those who mourn, and those who are persecuted." Jesus voluntarily embraced every one of these hurts. So where is God when it hurts? We know where God is because he came to earth and showed us his face. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: with compassion—which simply means "to suffer with"—and with comfort and healing. I would also like to answer the question why? Why this campus rather than Virginia Commonwealth or William and Mary? Why these 33 people? I cannot tell you, and I encourage you to resist anyone who offers a confident answer. God himself did not answer that question for Job, nor did Jesus answer why questions. We have hints, but no one knows the full answer. What we do know, with full confidence, is how God feels. We know how God looks on the campus of Virginia Tech right now because God gave us a face, a face that was streaked with tears. Where misery is, there is the Messiah. Not everyone will find that answer sufficient. When we hurt, sometimes we want revenge. We want a more decisive answer. Frederick Buechner said, "I am not the Almighty God, but if I were, maybe I would in mercy either heal the unutterable pain of the world or in mercy kick the world to pieces in its pain." God did neither. He sent Jesus. God joined our world in all its unutterable pain in order to set in motion a slower, less dramatic solution, one that involves us. One day a man said to me, "You wrote a book called Where Is God When It Hurts, right?" Yes. "Well, I don't have much time to read. Can you just answer that question for me in a sentence or two?" I thought for a second and said, "I guess I'd have to answer that with another question: 'Where is the church when it hurts?'" The eyes of the world are trained on this campus. You've seen satellite trucks parked around town, reporters prowling the grounds of your school. Last fall, I visited Amish country near the site of the Nickel Mines school shootings. As happened here, reporters from every major country swarmed the hills of Pennsylvania, looking for an angle. They came to report on evil and instead ended up reporting on the church. The Amish were not asking, "Where is God when it hurts?" They knew where God was. With their long history of persecution, the Amish weren't for a minute surprised by an outbreak of evil. They rallied together, embraced the killer's family, ministered to each other, and healed wounds by relying on a sense of community strengthened over centuries. Something similar has taken place here in Blacksburg. You have shown outrage against the evil deed, yes, but you've also shown sympathy and sadness for the family of the one who committed it. Cho, too, has a memorial on this campus. Life Matters The future lies ahead, and you're just awakening to the fact that you are an independent moral being. Until now, other people have been running your life. Your parents told you what to do and made decisions for you. Teachers ordered you around in grammar school, and the pattern continued in high school and even into college. You now inhabit a kind of halfway house on the way to adulthood, waiting for the real life of career and perhaps marriage and children to begin. What happened in Blacksburg on April 16 demonstrates beyond all doubt that your life—the decisions you make, the kind of person you are—matters now. There are 28 students and 5 faculty members who have no future in this world. That reality came starkly home to me nine weeks ago today when I was driving on a winding road in Colorado. Suddenly, I missed a curve and my Ford Explorer slipped off the pavement and started tumbling side to side at 60 miles per hour. An ambulance appeared, and I spent the next seven hours strapped to a body board, with duct tape across my head to keep it from moving. A cat scan showed that a vertebra high on my neck had been shattered, and sharp bone fragments were poking out next to a major artery. The hospital had a jet to fly me to Denver for emergency surgery. I had one arm free, with a cell phone and little battery time left. I spent those tense hours calling people close to me, knowing it might be the last time I would ever hear their voices. It was an odd sensation to lie there helpless, aware that though I was fully conscious, at any moment I could die. Samuel Johnson said when a man is about to be hanged, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." When you're strapped to a body board after a serious accident, it concentrates the mind. When you survive a massacre at Virginia Tech, it concentrates the mind. I realized how much of my life focused on trivial things. During those seven hours, I didn't think about how many books I had sold or what kind of car I drove (it was being towed to a junkyard anyway). All that mattered boiled down to four questions. Whom do I love? Whom will I miss? What have I done with my life? And am I ready for what's next? Ever since that day, I've tried to live with those questions at the forefront. I would like to promise you a long, pain-free life, but I cannot. God has not promised us that. Rather, the Christian view of the world reduces everything to this formula: The world is good. The world has fallen. The world will be redeemed. Creation, the Fall, redemption—that's the Christian story in a nutshell. You know that the world is good. Look around you at the blaze of spring in the hills of Virginia. Look around you at the friends you love. Though overwhelmed with grief right now, you will learn to laugh again, to play again, to climb up mountains and kayak down rivers again, to love, to rear children. The world is good. You know, too, that the world has fallen. Here at Virginia Tech, you know that as acutely as anyone on this planet. I ask you also to trust that the world, your world, will be redeemed. This is not the world God wants or is satisfied with. God has promised a time when evil will be defeated, when events like the shootings at Nickel Mines and Columbine and Virginia Tech will come to an end. More, God has promised that even the scars we accumulate on this fallen planet will be redeemed, as Jesus demonstrated to Thomas. I once was part of a small group with a Christian leader whose name you would likely recognize. He went through a hard time as his adult children got into trouble, bringing him sleepless nights and expensive attorney fees. Worse, my friend was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Nothing in his life seemed to work out. "I have no problem believing in a good God," he said to us one night. "My question is, 'What is God good for?'" We listened to his complaints and tried various responses, but he batted them all away. A few weeks later, I came across a little phrase by Dallas Willard: "For those who love God, nothing irredeemable can happen to you." I went back to my friend. "What about that?" I asked. "Is God good for that promise?" I would like to promise you an end to pain and grief, a guarantee that you will never again hurt as you hurt now. I cannot. I can, however, stand behind the promise that the apostle Paul made in Romans 8, that all things can be redeemed, can work together for your good. In another passage, Paul spells out some of the things he encountered, which included beatings, imprisonment, and shipwreck. As he looked back, he could see that somehow God had redeemed even those crisis events in his life. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us," Paul concluded. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:37-39). God's love is the foundational truth of the universe. Clinging to Hope Trust a God who can redeem what now seems unredeemable. Ten days before the shootings on this campus, Christians around the world remembered the darkest day of human history, the day in which evil human beings violently rose up against God's Son and murdered the only truly innocent human being who has ever lived. We remember that day not as Dark Friday, Tragic Friday, or Disaster Friday—but rather as Good Friday. That awful day led to the salvation of the world and to Easter, an echo in advance of God's bright promise to make all things new. Honor the grief you feel. The pain is a way of honoring those who died, your friends and classmates and professors. It represents life and love. The pain will fade over time, but it will never fully disappear. Do not attempt healing alone. The real healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and on this earth, the Messiah takes form in the shape of his church. That's what the body of Christ means. Finally, cling to the hope that nothing that happens, not even this terrible tragedy, is irredeemable. We serve a God who has vowed to make all things new. J. R. R. Tolkien once spoke of "joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." You know well the poignancy of grief. As healing progresses, may you know, too, that joy, a foretaste of the world redeemed. Philip Yancey is a CT editor at large. Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/14.55.html
Christian fellowship helps survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings deal with larger issues. Deann Alford in Blacksburg, Virginia | posted 4/23/2007 09:50AM Four former Columbine students worshiped with Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF) yesterday. It was the church's first Sunday worship gathering since the April 16 massacre that claimed 33 lives, including gunman Seung-Hui Cho. Christians were among the victims. Two NLCF members died, and 10 other victims were connected in some way to the church. Church leaders honored the dead, prayed for their families, and addressed why-and-how questions that went beyond forensics. The four Christians who as adolescents survived the massacre at Columbine High School almost eight years ago traveled to the southwestern Virginia campus to guide church leaders and minister to students processing grief, anger, and sorrow. Wendy Chinn, a counseling graduate student who leads NLCF's women's ministry, acknowledged that everyone is weary of the question, "How are you doing?" "Some lost someone extremely close. Others lost an acquaintance," Chinn said to the almost 400 people and network television cameras in the full auditorium. "Others still had a class in Norris, lived in A-J [West Ambler Johnston dormitory]. We remember where we were when it happened. We all grieve very differently. We're all going through it together. We know this is hard, know it's going to take time." Chris Backert, one of three NLCF pastors, referred to Mark 4, where Christ's disciples were caught in a boat during a storm. "We have all been through a storm. Why was it her? Why was it him? It could have been me." Backert noted that Jesus did not cause the storm. All the world's evil, he said, is sin that results when people choose to rebel against God. "When that tragedy strikes us, it also strikes God." Congregation members submitted written questions asking whether Monday's massacre was part of God's plan, what forgiveness of Cho would look like, and what the church is doing to help. One student asked whether he could have prevented Cho's actions by being more in-tune with God. Another asked whether it was okay to be mad at God. Pastors answered the questions by explaining that God gives each person free will. Forgiveness, they said, would look different for each person. Concerning whether the massacre could have been prevented, co-pastor Matt Rogers said that each person is responsible for his or her own action. However, he told the congregation, "Not one verse of Scripture says you're responsible for what happened." Concerning anger at God, co-pastor Jim Pace referred to Job, who responded at first with praise and then with anger to the calamity that befell him. So, where was God when the Virginia Tech massacre happened? Pace answered, "God was in us, being heroic in the face of incredible fear." Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/117-12.0.html
Korean church leaders caution against backlash after US shootings
News Brief By staff writers 21 Apr 2007 Korean and American Korean church leaders are calling for "healing, reconciliation and peace" amid concerns that the Virginia Tech shootings by a South Korean native could lead to a backlash against Koreans. "I was really shocked to hear that this senseless crime was committed by a Korean-immigrated student," said Bishop Kyung-Ha Shin, president of the Council of Bishops of the Korean Methodist Church. In a letter from Seoul sent on 18 April 2007, Bishop Shin offered condolences to the bereaved families and the American people while hoping "there will be no undesirable negative feeling and attitude toward Koreans." Meanwhile, in the United States, more than 250 leaders of the National Association of Korean American United Methodist Churches were holding their annual meeting 16-19 April in Chicago when the shooting occurred. As word of the shooter's identity spread, the mostly clergy participants began receiving calls from their home churches asking for guidance. "The whole community was in shock and did not know how to respond, but we prayed for the victims and their family members and the school and the community," said the Rev Keihwan Ryoo, editor of United Methodists in Service, who was reporting on the gathering on behalf of the Korean-language magazine published by United Methodist Communications. Several pastors received reports that Korean American students had been bullied in their mostly white schools as the week progressed, Ryoo said. The caucus held a memorial service for the shooting victims and released a pastoral letter. "We pray that the violence that has needlessly taken innocent lives does not escalate nor happen again," said the Rev Hoon Kyoung Lee, chairman of the association. "Furthermore, we are especially concerned that the immigrant community and the children of minorities may become targeted by anti-racial backlash because of this incident. "We pray that all of our friends and neighbors will support the Korean-American community in striving for healing, reconciliation and peace." The 16 April 2007 massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia, left 33 people dead, including the lone gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English literature. Born in South Korea, he moved to the United States in 1992 at age 8 and was raised in the suburbs of Washington DC, where his parents worked at a dry cleaner store. Authorities said Cho appeared to shoot his victims randomly. In a video made prior to the killings and sent to NBC-TV, he ranted about rich kids and portrayed himself as persecuted. Lee asked people throughout the church to prayer for the shooting victims and their families, the family and friends of Cho, and the minority and immigrant community in the United States. "We departed from this meeting with a heavy heart," Ryoo reported. "A lot of churches planned special memorial services over the weekend." Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, of the Northern Illinois Conference, said the church's American Korean community is "weeping and praying" with the rest of the world. He said grief and concern over such events cross all racial and ethnic lines. "We pray for our young people and those feeling a sense of vulnerability, isolation, insecurity and fear on their campuses, and even in their homes," Jung wrote in a pastoral letter from his Chicago office. "... I encourage each of us to offer the ministries of comfort, healing and love." [With grateful acknowledgments to the United Methodist Church News Service USA and reporter Marta W. Aldrich] -- Original Source: Ekklesia http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5109 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License.
What Jesus calls us to when we're most frightened. Mark Galli | posted 4/17/2007 11:35AM When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." —John 20:19-21 Hiding is an inescapable part of the human condition, and it started early: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Gen. 3:8). In last Sunday's lectionary reading from the Gospels, we see a similar pattern. The disciples hide in a house behind locked doors, because they are afraid of the authorities who had just murdered their master. After Monday's horrific massacre in Virginia, most of us will want to go and do likewise. We'll want to hide from God, from others, and from ourselves. The massacre disturbs us not because it's unusual but because it reminds us of the many slaughters inflicted on innocents everyday across the globe. It is a frightening icon of our vulnerability and mortality. We are right to be afraid. The enlightened, scientific, rational ethos that pervades our culture hypnotizes us into believing that with every biomedical breakthrough and fresh psychological insight we are progressing as a species. That's a lie. Psychologists work mightily to shape relationships and convince us we really are "safe." But we're not safe. It's as simple as that. We're vulnerable. And we know it. And so we hide. * * * The man and woman hid themselves "among the trees in the garden." That pristine garden. A perfect garden. That spot "among the trees" must have been beautiful. The disciples hid themselves in a house. They did not escape into the wilderness, but entered a home, a beautiful place of security, family, and love. Some of us dash to an ugly place to escape our fears—into drinking or drugs or sexual addictions. Anything to dull the pain, to escape thinking about the things that frightens us. But most of us choose to hide in a beautiful place. I have a friend who hides in busyness, productivity, and accomplishments. While at work, he rarely lifts his head from his desk—he's in e-mail and phone conversations all day. At home, he's mowing the lawn, sweeping the porch, repainting the bedroom, or doing the dishes. Accomplishments are beautiful things. A resume full of great deeds done is something to be admired. My friend gets a lot of deserved praise for his productivity. But he admitted to me one day that he bustled about because when he stopped and tried to enjoy his garden in the cool of the day, he started hearing things—thoughts about his troubled marriage, his wayward kids, and his own mortality. He dashed back into productivity as quickly as possible. Some hide in organization because they fear chaos. Some hide in spontaneity because they abhor the accountability that organization demands. Some hide in frugalness because they're frightened of poverty. Some hide in vitamins and exercise and a low trans-fat diet because they believe they can forestall their mortality, or at least Alzheimer's. After this week, we'll want to hide. Some will hide in safety. This is a beautiful thing, something we rightly desire. We use helmets and seatbelts and stand in long lines to throw ourselves in front of metal detectors because we want to be safe. Maybe in the coming months, we'll come up with "more effective means of keeping our schools safe." No inconvenience, no humiliation will seem too great if it means safety at the other end. Some will hide in the public's welfare. We'll debate whether there are too many guns out there, or not enough. We'll argue about how much freedom we should give up in the name of security. And we'll preach mightily what is best for the nation. Others will hide in righteous anger at the failure of authorities to warn students. We'll demand accountability until someone's head rolls. But wherever we choose to hide, we'll all be hiding from the same thing: our vulnerability, our mortality, the suddenness with which life can be snatched from us or our loved ones. Safety and public policy and righteous anger—these are good and necessary things. But they can also turn into places to hide, where we crouch in the dark, trembling and alone. * * * If hiding is an escapable part of the human condition, longing to be found is a universal human desire. As children, we relish the game of hide and seek in part, I suspect, because it is rehearsal for the game we play in life. Most of us want to be hiders; we love to find secure places where the seeker can never discover us. Some of us are really good hiders, and it takes a long time to be found. After a while, we get restless and lonely, and we yearn to hear the magical phrase, "Olly, olly, oxen free!" — the invitation to come out of hiding and to rejoin our friends. When Jesus appears to his hiding disciples and says, "Peace be with you," he is saying, "Olly, olly, oxen free! You don't have to hide anymore. You don't have to be stuck in isolation and loneliness and fear." Then he shows them the wounds in his hands and his side, as if to say, "I understand your fear. I've been there. I've sweated blood in prayer. I've hung on a cross. I know what it's like to die." This seems to me to be a word to Christians, who add to the many hiding places our culture offers an especially religious one. Sometimes we use faith to mask our deepest fears, to fool ourselves and our brothers and sisters into believing that, really, we are confident and bold in the face of death. This next Sunday we may smile and lift our hands in praise, never daring to suggest that we, too, have been shaken by the massacre of innocents. Rather than scold us for shallow and fickle faith, Jesus comes to us today as he came to his disciples. But today he comes to us in his body, the church. He reveals himself again and again in the bread and wine, in his body and blood — the wounds in his hands and side: "I understand your fear. I know what it's like to feel vulnerable and exposed and to stare into death's face. You're not alone." And at various points in worship, he offers us his peace, from the simple greeting we give one another—"Peace be with you"—to the benediction: "May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you; may the Lord lift of his countenance upon you and give you peace." In this community, he encourages us to admit our fears, to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), to come out of hiding and rejoin our friends in the fellowship of suffering. "You don't have to hide alone anymore. Olly, olly, oxen free!" * * * It would be wonderful to end here—such a note of hope and comfort! But Jesus does not stop here. Instead he blesses the disciples again — "Peace be with you" — as if he's about to tell them something really frightening. "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Jesus was sent by the Father into Jerusalem, into Judea, into the very arena where authorities came to despise and finally kill him. And he tells the disciples that the very thing that frightens them and has compelled them to hide—well, that's the place he is sending them. If hiding from fear is the universal human condition, then stepping out into the place of fear is at the heart of Christ's call on us. In one scene in the HBO series Band of Brothers, the platoon assaults a town the Germans are holding. As they begin the attack, the Germans unleash a torrent of bullets and artillery. We see two soldiers rush up to the edge of town and then fall behind a stone wall. The platoon leader orders them to move out, to storm the town. But they just sit there, grasping their rifles in fear. Finally, the platoon leader grabs them by their uniforms, pulls them to their feet, and shoves them out into the field of battle, into the place that frightens them to death. That's what Jesus does to the disciples. The disciples want to hunker down behind closed doors, but Jesus grabs them by their discipleship uniforms and shoves them outside to face bullets and artillery and maybe even death. We often wonder how we are to discern the will of Jesus for our lives, wishing he would write his will in the sky or whisper it into our ears. All the while, he is shouting to us through our deepest fears — "As the Father sent me, so I send you!" — sending us into the very situation from which he are hiding. In the coming weeks, parents will be more anxious than ever about the safety of their children. Students will wonder if they'll ever feel safe again. And all of us will feel vulnerable and exposed to the sudden and arbitrary nature of death. These are the very places Jesus calls us to go into. The place may be a physical place, like a school campus. Or it may be an interior place, where one is called to face one's mortality as never before. But wherever the arena is, that's likely where we are called to venture next. Make no mistake: There is no promise of safety in Jesus' call. As he calls us into the frightening arena, he points to the wounds in his hands and side, as if to remind us that we are afraid for good reason. It really is a dangerous world. It really does wound us. Eventually, it kills us. But while he does not promise us safety, Jesus does give us his peace. "Peace be with you." This is not the peace of pleasant feelings, of course, but the peace that comes from knowing we are in God's purpose and presence no matter what bullets may fly around us. The hymn "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee" describes the simple life enjoyed by John and Peter before they met Jesus — "before they ever knew the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too." Though John died homeless in Patmos, and Peter was crucified upside down, the hymn concludes, The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod, Yet let us pray for but one thing — the marvelous peace of God. The world continues to groan as it awaits its redemption; wailing is heard from one end of the earth to the other. How much more blood must be spilled before the one who was mistaken as a gardener on Easter morning replants the new garden? God only knows. In the meantime, we can know the paradoxical peace Jesus provides, a peace that gives us courage to face the very things that frighten us — until the day we find ourselves in a garden once again, this time with no reason to hide. Mark Galli is managing editor of Christianity Today and author of Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untameable God (Baker). This article was adapted from a sermon given at Church of the Resurrection, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on April 15, 2007. You are welcome to comment on this article below or on Mark's blog. Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/116-23.0.html
Ryan "Stack" Clark's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. The victim memorials continue to evolve, with new items, tributes, and flowers being added all the time. Photo taken Thursday, June 14.