Remembering April 16, 2007

I was 12-years-old on April 16, 2007. For some reason, my memories of that day haven't faded with time.

I had just gotten home from school when my friends and I saw the news flash across the television screen. There had been a shooting at Virginia Tech, a tragedy that seemed worlds away from a seventh-grader in Northern Virginia with few ties to the University.

We watched as the death toll rose from 15 to 20, 20 to 30, and finally, from 30 to 32. Nobody said much — what's there to say?

The next fall, I remember watching the season premiere of College GameDay from my living room couch. Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso were set up just outside Lane Stadium, anxiously awaiting the return of football — and normalcy — to Blacksburg. A tear trickled down my face during the emotional pre-game ceremony. I didn't quite understand why.

A few months later, my older brother was offered admission at Virginia Tech. He said yes.

I followed suit exactly four years later. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, we had become a Hokie family. If you were to visit our Fairfax house today, you'd find a Virginia Tech flag flying outside and a miniature schnauzer with an orange and maroon collar hanging around his neck.

And if you were to visit my Blacksburg apartment today, you'd find me — now 21 years young — just trying to get through the day without shedding too many tears. I understand why I'm crying now.

This town, this school, this community, it means so much to Hokies, past and present. It's difficult to quantify, nearly impossible to explain why our feelings run so deep for a place where we spend such a brief period of our lives.

In the days following April 16, 2007, Fowler eloquently described what makes this place so special.

"There is a collective strength of spirit there that feels quite different from other campuses we visit. It's a big school, of about 26,000. But it feels like a tight community," Fowler wrote. "It's not a curriculum or a setting for everyone. But most students who are there want to be nowhere else. That spirit seems to endure long after leaving Blacksburg. Once a Hokie, always a Hokie."

That overwhelming sense of unity is what makes April 16 so difficult. Blacksburg isn't just another college town to us. It's home. And when tragedy strikes, we take it harder than anyone. And we should.

This place will never be fully whole again, the memorial outside Burruss Hall serving as a painful reminder that we continue on without 32 of our fellow Hokies. But we must continue on.

That's why we now go to class on April 16. We move forward, determined to soldier into the future with heavy hearts, refusing to let one troubled soul tear apart the place that we hold so dear.

It's not easy. It probably never will be. Professors will choke up mid-lecture. Students will wipe away tears as they traverse silently across the drillfield. Alumni will reconnect with old friends, desperate to reminisce on their time in Blacksburg and remember lives lost.

That's how we choose to honor Liviu Lebrescu, a beloved Engineering professor who died on that fateful morning protecting his students. That's how we choose to honor Ryan Clark, a fun-loving Marching Virginian and Resident Advisor known to his friends as "Stack."

That's how we choose to honor Mary Read, Erin Peterson, and G.V. Loganathan. That's how we choose to honor Brian Bluhm, Christopher Bishop, and Reema Samaha. That's how we choose to honor all of our fallen Hokies.

And it's fitting, really. As we sit here today, nearly 10 years later, those names still matter. And they'll always matter. Each passing day we move farther away from this unspeakable tragedy, but memories will remain forever.

They were our friends, our classmates, our professors.

They were Hokies.