Virginia Tech Massacre
The massacre that occurred at Virginia Tech on Monday, 16 April 2007, has consumed me. I am reeling from it and it’s thrown my emotions into an uproar. For two days I have been angry, depressed, and heartbroken. I have so much to say about it, but I am so emotional over it right now that I can’t organize my thoughts into anything coherent.
This happens to me a lot whenever something strikes a deep chord within me, and what usually happens is that time slides by and I never say anything relevant.
That may well happen this time, too. But before that time slides by too quickly, there is one person I had to write about: Professor Liviu Librescu.
Thirty-two people were killed on Monday by one desperately troubled man named Cho Seung-Hui, who at the end took his own life even as police were bursting into the building on the floor below. For most of those who were murdered, we will never know the immense potential that could have been realized: what might they have been capable of, had they been allowed to flourish in this world? What would their discoveries have been?
One of the professors who was murdered was Kevin Granata, who was considered one of the top five biomechanics researchers in this country. His research centered around muscle and reflex response and robotics, including computer simulation of walking and running. His work helped thousands of children with CP walk again. He was only 45 years old. He may have been the man who would have given all victims of cerebral palsy the chance to be free to walk and run. We will never know.
Another of the murdered professors - there were five in all who were murdered in addition to all the students - was G.V. Loganathan, a professor of civil engineering and environmental engineering so well loved by the students he taught that they gave him the award for faculty member of the year over and over again, despite the difficulty of his classes. In 2006, he was one of three recipients for the Wine Awards for Excellence in Teaching. He won the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was killed while leading a class in advanced hydrology.
And then there was Professor Liviu Librescu.
Professor Librescu was a Romanian Jew, an Israeli citizen, and a professor of engineering whose work has been cited more than a thousand times in the technical journals.
Student Jo Anne Meirovitch remembers him as a man with such polished, old world manners that he would kiss your hand when he greeted you. He was attentive and considerate, always reaching out to his students, as was the habit of many of his colleagues on the faculty at Virginia Tech. He was extremely highly regarded by his peers and by his students, and was very much involved in their lives, their education, and their research.
Librescu was a survivor of the Shoah, interred in a Soviet labour camp after his father was deported by the Nazis, and later lived in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. Because Ceausescu did not permit collaboration of scientists and engineers outside Romania, Librescu requested and was granted permission to emigrate to Israel - but only after being fired from his position and prevented from leaving the country for a year because, he was told, he had knowledge the government considered top secret. Menachem Begin personally intervened on his behalf, and he was finally allowed to leave Romania for Israel with his wife. During a sabbatical visit to the United States, Professor Librescu finally moved to Virginia in 1986 and began teaching at Virginia Tech.
At just after 9:00 on the morning of 16 April 2007, this man who had survived the Nazis and a brutal communist dictatorship was teaching a class when gunfire and screaming erupted from the classroom next to his in Norris Hall. As Cho Seung-Hui tried to break in, Librescu barricaded the door with his own body, urging his students to flee. They escaped out the windows, and as the last student to leave the classroom, Alec Calhoun - who looked over his shoulder and saw his professor holding door shut as Cho tried to force his way in - leapt from the sill, Liviu Librescu was shot through the door and killed.
Monday was Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many, many bright lights were extinguished on Monday morning, and the loss is almost unbearable. But out of all of them, this is the death that has stricken me most. Since I learned about Liviu Librescu, I haven’t been able to get him out of my mind.. At random moments during the day, regardless of what I’m doing, I think of him and I begin to cry. To be very honest - and I never want to be tested this way - I dont know if I could have left him there alone. I dont know if I have the ability to do something like that. I wouldn’t be able to stand it; someone would have had to drag me away. And I know that I would have found it almost impossible to live with myself afterward if I had simply fled without doing anything at all to help him.
It’s not out of any sense of courage on my own part; it’s just ingrained in me that I cannot leave while someone else is in need. An elderly man who is struggling single-handedly against an armed intruder is in need. I dont think anything could have made me leave him alone while I saved myself. I do not point the finger at any of the students who fled, and I dont blame them for being terrified in any way. We cannot help who we are, and we all act very differently in panic situations than we would if we were thinking clearly.
But all the same, I cannot help but wonder why not one single student - not one, out of all of them whose lives he saved that day - remained behind with him, or insisted that he save himself instead. That makes me sadder than anything.
I just wanted to post about this man’s life, his struggles, and his murder - before time got by me and I lost it all to the hopelessly jumbled thoughts and emotions. The word “hero” is used so often now; if you stub your toe and someone offers you a lollipop, theyre a hero.
In a world that is suddenly full of heroes who do nothing at all, here was a giant of a man who espoused every single noble attribute that word could ever hope to entail. He stands out as a shining beacon of humanity on one of the darkest days in our country’s history, and he should be forever remembered for his selfless deeds.
Insulate and weatherize your home
