Every day I watch the news and often hear something that makes me think that I now have heard everything. There is so much domestic violence, so many parents punishing and killing their own children by methods never heard of before, pedophiles raping and killing children in horrendous ways, and even animals being abused and killed needlessly.

Then on a windy spring morning, I watch the news while I have my morning cup of coffee and am in total shock to see the news of the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech flash onto the screen. I attended Radford University when it was the women's division of Virginia Tech. We at Radford went to football games at Tech, attended concerts and dances there. I had high school classmates and cousins who attended Tech and this has really unnerved me and I have not watched so much TV since the 911 catastrophe. It is so hard to believe that Tech is the site of the bigest mass murder on the grounds of any school. It is times like this that I always recall my late friend Norma Marek's Poem
Tomorrow Never Comes.

If I knew it would be the last time
That I'd see you fall asleep,
I would tuck you in more tightly,
And pray the Lord your soul to keep.

If I knew it would be the last time
That I'd see you walk out the door,
I would give you a hug and kiss,
And call you back for just one more

If I knew it would be the last time
I'd hear your voice lifted up in praise,
I would tape each word and action,
And play them back throughout my days.

If I knew it would be the last time,
I would spare an extra minute or two,
To stop and say "I love you,"
Instead of assuming you know I do.

So just in case tomorrow never comes,
And today is all I get,
I'd like to say how much I love you,
And I hope we never will forget.

Tomorrow is not promised to anyone,
Young or old alike,
And today may be the last chance
You get to hold your loved one tight.

So if you're waiting for tomorrow,
Why not do it today?
For if tomorrow never comes,
You'll surely regret the day

That you didn't take that extra time
For a smile, a hug, or a kiss,
And you were too busy to grant someone,
What turned out to be their one last wish.

So hold your loved ones close today,
And whisper in their ear,
That you love them very much, and
You'll always hold them dear.

Take time to say "I'm sorry,"
"Please forgive me," "Thank you" or "It's okay".
And if tomorrow never comes,
You'll have no regrets about today.

Norma Cornett Marek
©1989 All Rights Reserved

This page is dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the Virginia Tech shootings and to their family and friends my most sincere condolences. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.
Please leave a note in the Guest Book for the families and students.

My sincere thanks to Amy for creating this beautiful page and contributing it in memory of all those lost in these terrible shootings.

Marilyn

At 7:15 A.M. a 911 call goes out to the campus police that there has been a shooting in West Ambler Johnston Hall, one of the co-ed dorms. When the police arrive, they find two students dead, one male and one female. There is no sign of the shooter, no sign of a gun.

About two hours later, there is a 911 call that there is shooting in Norris Hall, a science and engineering building with other classrooms as well, and police response is immediate. The shooter walks into a classroom and begins firing as some students turn desks over in front of them for some protection. In other rooms, some students jump from windows as their professor Liviu Librescu blocks the door with his body, giving his life to save his students. There are questions about whether the shootings are by the same person or if there is another shooter involved. As we learned later, there was only the one shooter.

After a while we are told that there are 2 dead and 19 wounded but the numbers keep going up until, at what we hope is a final count, we have 33 dead and 28 wounded. The wounded were sent to various hospitals in surrounding areas and as we have now learned none of these victims had less than three bullet wounds. Such a useless waste of so many beautiful lives because one person did not know how to deal with the pressures in his life.

Virginia Tech Shooting Victims

A Holocaust survivor. A Christian teenager.

Engineers and artists, animal lovers and bookworms.

Quiet scholars and quirky class clowns.

American natives and foreign nationals.

The victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech were a cross-section of the human condition.

They were as different as the school’s two trademarks — the gaudy maroon and orange that flash across the gridiron each autumn and the dignified Hokie limestone that has formed the bedrock of the school for more than a century.

But they were alike, too — all going about their lives on what started as another ordinary Monday, alike in their fate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gunman came along.

They were teenagers away from home for the first time, professors in the twilight of their careers.

Some were Facebook devotees who shared their lives on the Internet; others were devoted Bible readers whose inner thoughts were known best by God.

By God’s grace and their own academic interests, they came from across the world and from across town to attend Virginia Tech.

Some came to spend four years getting a degree, others came to spend their entire careers.

In the end, they shared a common fate: Lives cut short on a spring morning when a cold wind filled with snowflakes and tree blossoms formed the backdrop for the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation’s history.

— John Cramer
from the Roanoke TImes