BLACKSBURG, Va. – The blooms of brilliant yellow tulips that were bursting to life in front of Norris Hall on the morning of April 16 have long since died off. But they will be reborn next spring.
Thirty-two former Virginia Tech students and professors, and one deranged killer, will not.
More than two months since the worst college massacre in this nation’s history and less than two months before the start of the college football season – one that never will be forgotten on this serene campus nestled at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains – Virginia Tech coaches and players, some who knew the victims and others who took classes in Norris, are on a mission to heal a team, a university and a town.
“I want us to be the Yankees of 9-11,” Tech quarterback Sean Glennon told The Post. “I want for us to do for Virginia Tech what the Yankees did for New York that year [2001].”
It is an unfathomable burden to heap on any team, almost as unthinkable as the horror that occurred in rooms 207 and 211 of Norris Hall, where 30 of the 32 killed by gunman Seung-Hui Cho were shot and where 25 were injured.
The Hokies are capable of winning the ACC title and contending for a national championship, but no one knows if they’ll be able to focus on the nationally-televised Sept. 1 home opener against East Carolina when the ghost of Cho may still be haunting some of them in the classroom.
“It’s weird,” said Tech wide receiver Eddie Royal. “When I’m in class, every person that walks by [the door], I’ve got to look at him.”
Royal and Glennon weren’t shot – no football player was injured – but in a way they are two more of Cho’s casualties.
And the entire team could suffer. Despite a consensus Top-25 preseason ranking, no one knows if the roiling emotions will hurt or help the Hokies this year.
“There’s a lot at stake this season,” Tech coach Frank Beamer said. “And everyone would like a happy ending. But no one knows. I tell the kids the bigger things get, the smaller you have to make your focus.”
Virginia Tech is a big university with a small-town feel.
Royal, Glennon, the killer, and two of the victims all attended Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va. Although Glennon, 21, and Royal, 21, barely knew Cho, a 23-year-old senior, and had just a nodding relationship with the two victims, freshmen Erin Peterson, 18, and Reema Samaha, 18, the junior quarterback and senior wide receiver have become the players reporters seek out because of the incorrect assumption that the five shared a high school connection.
“I don’t think I’ve been asked about football,” said Glennon.
Football, as is the case in many small towns that are home to universities boasting big-time athletic programs, is the life blood for many in Blacksburg. Athletic director Jim Weaver said the university is considering how best to remember the victims: a moment of silence; the releasing of 32 balloons; a memorial logo placed at each 25-yard line; a video tribute.
“I want to make sure each of those 32 have their name in the stadium – and the injured,” Beamer, a Tech graduate, said as he sat on a ledge outside of Norris. “I don’t want anyone to feel alone.”
The 32 victims forever will be remembered together. Tech is in the process of transforming a makeshift memorial that was placed in front of Burress Hall, located next to Norris on the edge of the Drill Field. Thirty-two eternal red lights glow behind 32 head-size rocks of Hokie Stone, the locally quarried dolomite/limestone that has been used to build almost every campus structure, including Lane Stadium.
On Sept. 1, in Lane Stadium, the Hokies’ season will begin and the healing will continue.
A crowd of more than 66,223 will cheer for the first time since April 17, when a Convocation ceremony, attended by President Bush, erupted into an affirmation of Hokies pride. The mourners, somber at the outset, burst into cheers of, “Let’s Go Hokies!”
The campus needs more cheers. On the morning of April 16, a cold, howling, early-spring wind swept down from the Blue Ridge. A popping sound answered the wind. Cho had shot two students dead in West Ambler Johnston Hall. Some three hours later, after mailing a chilling, rageful video, Cho stormed Norris Hall, chained the doors and began the carnage.
The football players’ cell phones began ringing. They turned on their televisions.
“We were watching it and for at least the first hour; they were saying six or seven injured, one reported dead, which is terrible, but you can deal with that,” said Glennon. “Then an hour later they said at least 20 dead. It went from one to 20. Everyone just stared at the TV. At least five minutes went by and I don’t think anyone said anything.”
There hasn’t been a week of normalcy here since Cho snapped. Cards and signed placards began arriving from universities as close as West Virginia and as far away as Eastern Washington. Beamer gave Glennon 32 miniature lunchbox keychains and the quarterback placed one on each Hokie Stone at the memorial. Each week, Beamer rewards his hardest-working player with a battered old lunch box to carry to and from practice.
The spring game was canceled. A somber graduation ceremony, in which some of the deceased received diplomas posthumously, was held.
The Hokies will report for fall practice on Aug. 4. Beamer will speak to his players. Then he will try to do the impossible: He’ll try to get his Hokies to focus on living in the moment.
“I don’t want this to sound callous, but if this had to happen, there isn’t anywhere better for it to happen than Virginia Tech,” said Glennon, who chose Tech over Ohio State, Georgia Tech and Virginia. “The way everyone responded. I came here because there was such a feeling of closeness. It’s closer now. It’s as if God wants to prove how resilient people can be.”