In Remembrance...

April 16, 2007, it was an unusually cold day, actually snowing in parts of Virginia.  Late that morning, I got a frantic text message from my daughter, "Mom Meg isn't answering her phone!"  Knowing my daughter's impatience and tendancy to panic easily, I texted back, "How long have you been trying?"  She asked in return, "Haven't you heard what's happening??"  At that point, I called her.  I was at work that morning, insulated from the news.  She had already heard that there was a sniper shooting people on the campus of Virginia Tech, and 2 were already confirmed dead.  Meg, one of her closest friends, was there for her first year of graduate school. 

Immediately, I turned on the small television that I've kept in my office at work since September 11, 2001.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  There was live footage from the campus, and you could clearly hear gunfire.  My mind flashed back to my four years there as a student.  I had always loved how peaceful it was on our campus in the little southwest town of Blacksburg, Virginia.  We were a large school - population nearly 25,000 then, but the little town of Blacksburg had only a population of around 8,000.  The student population in 2007 was over 40,000, but the town is still small.  It was unfathomable to me that this was happening there.

Right away, I got on the phone to call my husband and my sister and her husband.  All four of us are VT grads.  Over the next few hours, we tried to get in touch with people that we knew had kids there.  Eventually, my daughter heard from Meg - thank God for Facebook!  As you can imagine, phone lines in and out of Blacksburg were all busy, so many parents tried frantically for hours to reach their children.  Ultimately, it was Facebook that most of the kids used to communicate with each other and with their families.  Later that afternoon, I got another text message from my daughter; "They say 32 dead."  It was a haunting message that I looked at many times over the next weeks, still not believing it had happened.

When word began to come out about the victims, we were shaken to find out that an old friend that we adored had lost his beautiful daughter, and a co-worker of my husband's had lost a nephew.  I felt helpless.  I wanted to help in some way, but there was really nothing I could do but offer words of love and support.  Then I got an idea: I would appeal to all of my stamping friends to send cards to the families.  I posted on Splitcoast Stampers and asked for cards to be sent directly to me, which I then forwarded to our friends.  The response moved me to tears.  Cards flooded in for weeks.  The one pictured here is the one that I made. 

On this day, three years later, I am aching to be on the Virginia Tech campus for the memorial services.  My sister and her son - now a sophomore there - are running in a 16-mile marathon today in rememberance of the 16th of April, 2007.  Please say a prayer for them, and for the families of the vicitims.  Three short years later, it will be a difficult day for them.