Memorials

The first day went really well. I chatted with my students before class began, and after everyone had filed in, I told them all to take out a sheet of paper, as we were going to have a quiz.

They looked at me with terror. They hadn't read the book in a week.

I smiled and said "joke." The students started laughing. I think they were happy to see that some things hadn't changed.

We talked about the remainder of the semester, how I was readjusting the class requirements to help them finish with high grades, and what they had done in their time off. Finally, I told them that they could leave if they wanted, but that some of them had expressed an interest in talking about the situation on campus. In most of my classes, about half of the students left.

My students are trying to figure out how to feel about this. So is the University. It was a day of memorials, of trying to decide how to commemorate the event. Early in the morning, the university assembled on the drill field while the bells in Burruss tolled 32 times. Every time they tolled, a white balloon floated up from the crowd. Across campus, everyone froze and watched the ceremony:




When the ceremony was finished, they released a bunch of orange and maroon balloons and everyone paused to watch them.




On the way to my first class, I noticed the Addison Caldwell statue. "Addy" was Virginia Tech's first student, and he supposedly walked 26 miles to come to the University. They installed the statue this year. I think he looks like a cross-dressing female character from Little House on the Prairie. At any rate, he was sporting a little orange and maroon today:


I also stopped by Norris Hall:




There is currently a little debate on what the University will do with Norris. Some people are arguing that it should be razed and replaced with a memorial, while others think that it should be remodeled. Given the history of the University, the crowded classroom conditions on campus, and Norris' ciderblock construction, my guess is that they will keep Norris around, and will probably do little to alter the building itself. I'm not sure that this is a bad idea. In some ways, I can't think of a better memorial to the rooms in Norris than their continued use for education.

The campus is blanketed in posters letters, sculptures, and other tributes from across the country. Squires student center is covered in wall-to-wall banners:






The students have produced a few tributes of their own. Outside Burruss, I saw the letters "VT" written in daisies:


And a paper chain:


There are three official memorials. The first consists of 33 "hokie stones" outside Burruss. Each one is surrounded with remembrances of individual victims:




These surround a huge cairn of flowers, gifts, and assorted remembrances:


Basically, the whole thing looks like a landfill the day after the Rose Bowl Parade.

The second official tribute is on the drill field, and consists of 32 sign boards:




People have used these boards to write messages to the victims and to Tech itself:




My favorite memorial was set up by the Campus ministries. It is a few yards of string with 33 pieces of white cloth. Surrounding the cloth are ribbons on which people write their messages to the school and the victims.




I like this memorial because it is so alive. At times, it's a little too alive, as the ribbons can do some serious damage when whipped around by the wind. However, it's the lightest of the memorials, and the most comforting. There's something powerful about seeing the memories and kind wishes dancing in the air.


Tech is still trying to figure out how it will embrace this tragedy, and how it will fashion its memorialization. It's pretty amazing to watch the school slowly decide how it will form its institutional memory. In the meantime, the students are getting commemorative tattoos:

Today at Tech

Today I tried to wrap my mind around yesterday.

I went to the Tech campus to meet with a few students. We talked a little, but nobody really had much to say.

On the way to school, I kept seeing signs about yesterday. Here's the off-campus bookstore:



Virginia Tech was a weird mix of bustle and silence. I had to park about a mile away from campus, as Blacksburg was overwhelmed with media, parents, and other assorted visitors. However, most of the school was empty.

Here's the entrance to Squires student center:







Inside the student center, there was a billboard where people wrote notes:











I pass Norris Hall, where the shootings occurred, on my way to class everyday. Yesterday, I stopped when I saw the building surrounded by police cars. Here's a few pictures of Norris:









On the way to the convocation, I passed the memorial, which was located on the drill field:











Cassell Colosseum was packed solid, and had incredibly heavy security out front:



So I went to Lane Stadium, where they set up a live feed on the gargantuan TV:







Here's Governor Tim Kaine on the big ol' TV:



And here's George the Second on the big ol' TV:





Outside the stadium, I saw a big tank:



So, anyway, that was pretty much my day. I was going to go the candlelight vigil tonight, but I just feel a little wrecked.

This afternoon, my last student checked in. He'd gone home, and hadn't checked his e-mail. Now that I know my kids are safe, I'm moving from anxiety to anger.

Most of my students have gone home, and I'm following suit. Tomorrow morning I'll be going to New York to see my wife and daughter. I might not be posting much, if at all, for the next few days. Right now, I'm just mad as hell at the University, and I need to work around that before I can be really productive again.

Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts, and prayers. They mean more than I can express.

D-Day in Bedford

Maybe it's a lingering side-effect from growing up on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., but I have a warm spot in my heart for memorials. There's something wonderful and magical and creepy about statues of our heroes; I love these idealized forms, permanently frozen in the middle of giving a speech, riding a horse, or just sitting in a chair. More to the point, the way that we position them says volumes about our perceptions of heroes. Lincoln restively sitting. Jefferson mid-stride, papers clutched in hand. Roosevelt in a cape, Fala by his side. These iconic images are like prefabricated nostalgia, simultaneously creepy and stirring.

My special love is reserved for the military memorials. The Vietnam memorial, a brutal black slash across the mall (I hated it when they put up all those silly statues!); the Korean memorial, a ghostly aluminum and marble vision of a forgotten war, and the World War II memorial, a horrendous, pave-the-earth monstrosity that will one day play host to gangs of giggling Rastafarians overcharging tourists for nickle bags of catnip.

Oddly enough, though, my favorite war memorial isn't even in Washington. It's in Bedford, Virginia.

Before I go any further, I should mention that Bedford is a backwater's backwater. It is a nothing town, practically the defintion of BFE, fifteen minutes past the middle of nowhere. However, for all its isolation, Bedford proportionally suffered the severest losses in the D-Day invasion, so Congress decided to place a memorial to the invasion in this area. In 2001, the memorial opened amid fanfare and a monosyllabic speech by G-Dub(ya):

Driving to the D-Day memorial is a surreal experience. After getting off the highway, you wander around for a while, following the occasional little sign and mostly wondering if you've taken a wrong turn. After a few minutes, you end up on the access road to the memorial, which takes you past an elementary school, through a field, and finally to a little tollbooth, where you pays your money and you takes your ticket.

And then you're at a huge plaza, a dramatic and beautiful pile of concrete, granite and shrubbery that seems as out of place as a marble statue in a McDonald's. You drive past the flags and huge "Overlord Arch," past the poured concrete and careful landscaping, and park in one of the hundreds of empty spaces in back. You wonder who this huge memorial in the middle of nowhere is for, and then you realize: it's for you.

You start off in the English gardens that represent the planning stages of the invasion. You see where, one day (if optimism and donations have anything to say about it!) a folly will be built. The brochure that the guard gave you tells you that there will ultimately be a statue of Eisenhower here, where it will face the memorial. You stand in the same position.

The memorial is poured concrete, ugly with pockmarks and dimples. You wonder at the carelessness of its construction until you realize that it looks like one of the gun emplacements at Normandy, and you start to understand what this memorial is doing. You aren't just honoring D-Day. You're supposed to be reliving it. Not for nothing is this plaza built in the land of Civil War re-enactments.

As you climb the stairs to the main memorial plaza, you start to hear what sounds like whales breaching. Of course, you wonder what the wet snuffling snorts mean, but it would be rude to break the silence of this place, so you keep your mouth shut and your thoughts to yourself. You cross the huge plaza toward the fountain area, and the snuffling gets louder. If your wife is with you, you might make a smartass comment. If not, you keep your stupid mouth shut because the old veteran-looking guys hanging around don't look inclined to take a joke.


And then you realize what the squishy sounds are. Between the main plaza and the "Overlord Arch," there's a large pool and what looks like a sandy beach. In the pool, there are a lot of little fountains that occasionally shoot off, looking like strafing bullets and explosions hitting the water. What you're hearing is the sound of bullets without gunshots. You want to take this really seriously, but you can't, because it reminds you of how your St. Bernard used to wake you up with snorts and wet kisses.

It doesn't help that the statue in the middle of the pool has been cut off at the waist. From a certain angle, it looks like a soldier wading to Omaha beach, but it mostly looks like Johnny Eck, the amazing half-boy.


There's a black marble stall set up on the edge of the pool area. Looking through it, you see the whole point of the scene. It's like standing in a landing craft during the invasion. In front of you lies the beach area, with statues of dying men lying across it. A little further on, you see a wall of soldiers, scaling "Fortress Europe." Simultaneously awed and amused, you wonder if the snuffling was as irritating on D-Day as it is now. Then you realize that this is blasphemy, and you are despoiling a sacred place.

Still, you wonder...



Note: ironically enough, as I was writing this piece, the statue of Eisenhower was finally installed at the memorial. Here's an article on it.