Continuing Coverage by:

Move-in Day a Time to Look Forward at Tech

August 18, 2007

By Rex Bowman

BLACKSBURG — Dad was doing the heavy lifting, and Mom was lending a hand. So 18-year-old Blythe Dougherty of Gloucester County took a break from hauling her belongings into her dormitory room to say how great it is to be back at Virginia Tech.

"For the most part, everybody's still in upbeat spirits and everybody's ready to be back," the rising junior said as beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. "And I don't know anybody that didn't want to come back after that happened."

The "that" Dougherty referred to is the April 16 massacre of 32 students and teachers on campus by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho. From Wednesday through Saturday, thousands of students, like Dougherty on Friday, put the carnage behind them during Tech's four "move-in" days, stuffing their belongings into their dormitory rooms, meeting new roommates, and, in the case of incoming freshmen, saying goodbye to their anxious parents.

"Good to be back — everybody's glad to be back," Clarence Dials, a 19-year-old junior from Virginia Beach, said Saturday. Dials was part of a platoon of fraternity and sorority volunteers who helped incoming students carry furniture, boxes and bags of last-minute purchases into their dorms. Everyone, Dials said as campus police patroled nearby, seems eager to put the tragedy behind them.

Four months after the bloodshed shut down the campus and sent students home early, the students are indeed back. They maneuvered microwaves and yoga mats up dormitory stairs, carried laundry detergent, laptops and lamps along hallways and hoisted small refrigerators over piles of clothes and notebooks. Many of the more than 5,200 incoming freshmen embraced their parents one final time.

Cho? For most, not even an idle thought. The days were all about lugging and hugging.

"I know something like that won't really happen again," said incoming freshman Michael Degen, 18, of Annandale, N.J., of the massacre. "And it's probably going to be a lot safer after that, probably safer than any other school."

Degen said he was drawn to Tech by the excellence of its architecture program and the beauty of its campus. The April attack — the deadliest on campus in U.S. history — did not deter him for a moment from coming to Tech, he said.

Among those returning was Derek O'Dell, the 20-year-old Roanoker who was shot in the right arm during Cho's rampage. On April 16, O'Dell was in room 207 of Norris Hall, studying German, when Cho burst in and started firing. Cho killed six and wounded 10 in the room. When Cho left, a bleeding O'Dell rushed to the door and wedged his foot under it, frustrating Cho's attempt to re-enter to kill more.

On Thursday, O'Dell's parents drove him back to Blacksburg, back to his apartment just off campus. O'Dell said he had gone on more vacations — including trips to the beach and Southern California — and "enjoyed life a lot more" than he ever had before this summer, but was glad to return to the school where he was nearly killed.

"There's a little bit of anxiety about coming back, but I've always wanted to come back," O'Dell said. "I never really thought about not coming back."

Jane Murphey of Virginia Beach, a Tech alumna who spent much of Friday helping her 18-year-old daughter, Anne Leigh Gibbs, move into her dormitory, said the massacre never caused her to doubt her daughter's decision to come to Tech.

"No reservations whatsoever," Murphey said. "We're true Hokies, and she's looked forward to coming here for over six years. She went to camp here, science camp, with her sister, and she loved it."

Gibbs, a freshman, has been assigned a room in West Ambler Johnston Hall, the dormitory where Cho killed his first two victims before going to Norris Hall to kill 30 more, then himself.

A report is due Friday from the panel appointed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to investigate the shootings.

Rex Bowman is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.