Virginia Tech piece posted at the Hesperia Star
Writer recalls time at Virginia Tech
It’s a piece I wrote for the Daily Press, but which they ended up deciding not to run. I added the name of the now-identified shooter to the piece as edited by Daily Press Managing Editor Keith Jones. (No point in wasting a good edit.)
It’s ironic, but the fact that it’s now the #10 most-read story across Freedom Communications today makes me irrationally angry and frustrated. I’m tired of hearing familiar names like McBride or WUVT or Ambler-Johnston or Norris Hall or the Duck Pond or Smith Mountain Lake in the national media associated with this sort of thing. I don’t want to see Blacksburg in the AP video crawl on the bottom of the Hesperia Star site or hear NPR calling for reports from WUVT (which they never refer to as “woovit,” as those of us who worked there did).
The longest I’ve lived anywhere in a continuous stretch was my six years in Blacksburg, and it feels like a violation to have this be what my school will be known for forever. It must be how Kent State students must feel.
To me, Norris Hall is where my college girlfriend (an industrial engineering student) studied and it was the building across the Drill Field from my original dorm, West Eggleston. It was at Norris Hall that I heard that my friend Aislinn had died, when I was waiting for my girlfriend to get out of class.
Ambler-Johnston is where I went to study and get away from the chaos of the fraternity house, but ended up making good friends. It was the place that I first heard Nirvana, Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam and where I first logged onto a BBS in those primitive days before the World Wide Web.
This is probably an awful admission, but I’ve never cried for 9/11, although thinking about the passengers on Flight 93 calling their loved ones always brings me to the brink. But I keep crying about what’s happened in Blacksburg and getting angry at everyone and everything, rebuffing my family when they call me on the phone.
I know the real victims are those who have been shot and their families, but this is going to stick with me for a long time to come, I think.
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I’ve been thinking about you all day, sir, worried about how this was affecting you. You know how to reach me if ever you need an ear.
Hang in there, old friend.
Comment by Stephen — April 17, 2007 @ 21:40
I’m with you. I’m having a really tough time concentrating and staying away
from the news. Maybe because the whole thing is so unreal. I don’t WANT
to believe anything I’m reading.
Fortunately, my contacts in Blacksburg are also safe.
And it saddens me that the word “Massacre” will forever be linked to
Virginia Tech.
Comment by Wendy — April 18, 2007 @ 3:44
Let me echoes Stephen’s offer. I admit popping up here in the last few days specifically to see if you were talking about this at all. Let us know how we can help.
John
Comment by John — April 18, 2007 @ 7:23
Also been thinking about you as I’ve been in touch with some other friends who went to VT and lot as P. has had to pull some long hours lately as the pieces fall into place. *BIG HUGS!!!*
–Dommy!
Comment by Dommy! — April 18, 2007 @ 15:59
[…] All the Virginia Tech stuff has turned my thoughts to my former co-worker, Beau Yarbrough. A proud VT grad, Beau is a writer at a Southern California paper and shares his thoughts on the tragedy at his blog, LBY3. […]
Pingback by u s e y o u r h a n d s » An Insider’s Perspective — April 24, 2007 @ 23:50