Where does a Hokie go from here .........a father to a son

[docicu3]

In my struggle to make sense of all of this I sent this to my son. It is offered as part of my own healing to my friends and family here......

Dear Jake 0930 AM 4/18/07


On a magnificent morning following the darkest day of my life the sun shines yet again in this little Maryland town as a collective cry has emoted the spectrum of emotion only humans have for the extremes of lifes causualties.* Pain and suffering, loss and relief all drain the temporary negative*energy of uncertainty and fear from all of us as we struggle to quantify how bad and how many.**
*
As I sit behind a keyboard not unlike the one*that attempted*to contact you and 26 thousand others Monday morning*many in vain during the two lost hours of 32 lives, I too struggle to communicate the urgency and the concern I have for someone*cognitively near and always dear to me as even miles away I feel your pain and sense your sorrow as my own.
*
If somehow the University was sucessful in locking down the campus by 730 AM, would not the outcome have*been that Harper Hall would have become the same morgue*for dozens of other*students trapped inside by administrative order as this very disturbed individual brought the same hell to a dorm that occured in*a set of classrooms a half mile away.* And then who would it be that would*walk the*carpet of the basketball arena yesterday*as the*parents of the deceased mourning the loss of the only thing that matters.** Different students still*executed the same*day two hours later as*if it mattered that*a campus*knew of the first two deaths and*stayed in their dorms this time trapped by an anouncement that made escape just as unlikely.* Would there not have been the same horrific*end in another building requiring just different not less funerals because the man with the guns was going to do what he planned to do on one side of Washington Street or the other.
*
But he cannot take what he doesn't have........your strength, ever growing connected to each other by the belief in one another and salted with the love for one another that only burns from the embers of common experience of*unique events and*existence.
*
In the spontaneous chanting yesterday*of "Lets Go Hokies...." at the vigil and in the gym yesterday afternoon,*a healing begins and an anthem is born that will always be so much more than encouragement to the swift, strong and skilled.* Three words that start the necessary buliding of a community and then a country that needs to believe that they are and will be strong again.* The darkness will surrender to the unrelenting*light and the seeds of love grow forever blooming over and over again.* The strength and power of your potential cannot and will not be denied.****
*
*
I love you
*
Dad

Is your son in Harper Hall?

[docicu3]

He spent two years there Pillow. This is apparrently where the killer lived as well

That's scary stuff. Glad he's ok.

[docicu3]

Monday would seem to imply that whatever small memories of being kids was left within the psyche of our children at VT will now cease to exist the way 9/11 changed the world forever........so sadly no!!!!........these young men and women will never be "okay" completely ever again.

...

Ok whatever. Glad he's alive. Is that better?

[docicu3]

Pillow I guess that last response came off like I didn't appreciate your inquiry about Jake's health. Please accept my apology and yes he is physically unharmed...thanks!!

[ddthetide]

GO HOKIES !