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Brian Roy Bluhm

Brian Roy BluhmBrian Roy Bluhm was ready for his future. By all accounts, it looked to be promising.

Bluhm, 25, had only one class left to complete before earning a graduate degree in civil engineering from Virginia Tech this May.

He had a job lined up in Baltimore, and he had recently rented an apartment there.

Those plans were destroyed Monday morning.

"He was just such a good boy, a nice boy and so thoughtful," Bluhm’s grandmother, 87-year-old Stella Bluhm said by telephone yesterday from her home in a Waterloo, Iowa, retirement community.

"He was anxious to get started with his life," Bluhm’s paternal grandmother said. "It’s such a terrible, terrible thing. I can’t understand why such a thing would happen. He was in the prime of his life, and you can’t understand why the Lord would take him."

Over the years, his family also had lived in Michigan, Louisville, Ky., and Virginia, Stella Bluhm said.

A message left yesterday at the Stephens City home of Bluhm’s parents was not returned.

Bluhm had studied civil engineering as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. While pursuing his graduate degree, he also taught freshman engineering students, said Jennifer Mullin, a doctoral candidate at Tech who had taught with Bluhm.

Mullin said she last saw him about two weeks ago at the library on campus, and the two chatted briefly.

"Everybody right now is just shocked and saddened. He was a good guy," she said.

Bluhm was also a big sports fan — he was a regular at Tech football games — and had a particular passion for the Detroit Tigers baseball team, which has memorialized Bluhm in several ways.

Tigers centerfielder Curtis Granderson penned a blog post about Bluhm on his MySpace Web page, and the team’s public-address announcer mentioned Bluhm during a moment of silence for all the shooting victims before a game Tuesday.

He also was devoted to his faith, his grandmother said.

"A good Christian boy," is how she described him. "He went to church, and he loved the Lord."

— Julian Walker, Media General News Service

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