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April 24, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Almost 1,000 square feet of white plywood became canvases for messages of grief, encouragement and hope for those affected by the Virginia Tech tragedy.Sheets of plywood were hinged together to form standing message boards, painted white and placed on the Drillfield in the days after the shootings. The number of boards grew from less than 10 to 24 as students, faculty and university supporters covered them in permanent marker.
The messages spanned several languages including German, Spanish and Latin, and ranged from inscriptions to people who lost their lives, to notes of encouragement for the Hokie Nation.
"There are 32 angels in heaven explaining what a Hokie is," one person wrote.
The term was created out of a decades-old fight song and now includes the turkey-like bird that is the university mascot.
Many messages spoke of God and prayer, including "God is a Hokie. Why else would the leaves change to orange and maroon in the fall?" and "Have fun doing the Hokie Pokie at Heaven's Gate."
One person explained the poor weather on April 16 by writing, "It was windy that day because all the Hokies were flying to heaven."
Graduate student Bebe Oh said it was great to see the students respond to the opportunity to leave messages.
"I've never been so proud to be a Hokie," she said.
She stood on the field Tuesday looking for her message from the week before about how quiet the campus was without the missing faculty and students. She said she would try to honor their memory.
"That's as much as we can do for them right now," Oh said.
She also wrote a message to Seung Hui-Cho to say she will try to forgive him. When she wrote the message, there were few others like it, but more words of forgiveness were scrawled on the boards as the week went on.
Oh spent two hours on the one-week anniversary of the shooting reading the boards and was moved to tears.
Many of the messages were addressed to victims, saying things such as "Leslie, we love you. Only the good die young," and "Librescue - you saved my best friend."
Leslie Sherman was a student who was killed in a French class and Liviu Librescue was a professor who saved the lives of the students in his engineering class by barricading the doors before being fatally shot.
While some messages were from students to teachers, others were by teachers to their students.
"Lots of things are supposed to go wrong for a first-year teacher, but a first-year teacher - or any teacher - should not have to teach to three empty desks."
Greg Stanley, who graduated from Virginia Tech in 1981, said he traveled from Charlotte, N.C., to mourn. It was gratifying for him to read the boards.
"It shows the love of people," he said. "It's about sharing heart to heart."
The words show that people set aside their superficialities and differences and wrote what was true to them, he said.
Stanley said he wrote the Bible passage from Revelations 7:17 that said "God shall wipe all the tears from their eyes."
While some messages were of hope or encouragement, others commented on the atmosphere of the tragedy.
"Blacksburg is beautiful in the spring," one person wrote. "But not this year."
Sophomore Rachel Hamilton looked at the boards for the first time Tuesday. She had tried to come read them in the days after the tragedy but was too upset.
"It was my breaking point," she said. "It's overwhelming and sad."
Hamilton said the messages said everything that she would have wanted to write.
The boards were moved Tuesday to the Old Dominion Ballroom, in a student services center, to stay safe from the rain. They will stay there until the semester ends.
Hamilton thinks it's important that the university keeps the boards.
"It shows how much we loved everybody here, even though we may not have known them."
Ashley Gebb can be reached at agebb@theorion.com
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Read more of The Orion's on-location coverage of Virginia Tech:
- Virginia Tech tragedy
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