BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech spent Easter mourning together for lives lost a decade ago.
Throughout the day alumni, community members and politicians joined the families of those killed and survivors wounded at events both public and private to continue the evolving healing process.
For the families, it was another sad reminder of the people they’ve lost but also a reminder of their shared bonds in the wake of the mass shooting on campus that left 32 dead and 17 wounded.
“What I’ve realized is what we have here is a family reunion of an unintentional family,” said Joe Samaha, whose daughter Reema Samaha was killed in the shooting.
The day offered the unintentional family time to get together, and it offered the community an opportunity for hearing from its leaders and showing unity.
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Sunday morning, Gov. Terry McAuliffe with his daughter Dori McAuliffe laid wreaths at the campus memorial before a moment of silence. They were accompanied by Tech President Timothy Sands, his wife, Laura Sands, and former Tech President Charles Steger.
In the afternoon, the families and survivors as well as about 1,000 people from the community — mostly dressed in maroon — gathered for speeches from Sands and Sen. Tim Kaine, who was Virginia governor in 2007.
Those present also heard the biographies of the 32 people killed spoken by Scott Johnson, a former member of Tech’s office of recovery and support and Patricia Raun, a performance professor.
Sands talked briefly about the resiliency of the Tech community. That bond is something he’s come to respect greatly since arriving at Tech in 2014, he said.
Sands then read a letter from former President George W. Bush, who came to campus in 2007 shortly after the shooting to take part in a convocation ceremony.
The letter offered prayers from Bush and the rest of the country. Bush expressed his sorrow and sympathy for the Tech community 10 years after the shooting.
“A decade later, the pain is still fresh,” Sands read from Bush’s letter. “It is impossible to understand why 32 lives were taken from this earth far too soon. I know that the families who lost a loved one miss them every day, especially today.”
Kaine expressed his admiration for the “resiliency” of the campus community that came together on April 16, 2007, which he said was the “worst day of my life.”
In many ways the anniversary falling on Easter is an important representation on the political work to be done in the wake of the shooting, he said.
“It’s a day of new beginnings, new life and new hope,” Kaine said.
Kaine said he hoped at the time there would be an impetus to work on gun purchase background checks and develop new measures of school security. In the time that’s passed, he said, there have been some improvements, but not enough, especially in mental health laws.
He said the realization came flooding to him while visiting Orlando last year in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting, which left 49 people and the shooter dead.
“Deep inside me was the unarticulated hope that the Virginia Tech shooting would be the worst,” Kaine said.
After the speeches and the reading of the biographies, Kaine and Sands walked down to talk to the families, survivors and local dignitaries who had gathered.
New policies to prevent future tragedies is exactly what Samaha, who is president of the Virginia Tech Victims Families Outreach Foundation, wants.
Samaha said he hopes that universities around the country will continue to take advantage of the organization’s 32 National Campus Safety Initiative, which helps universities improve their safety protocols .
But beyond talking about policy, those gathered continued to heal together, as they have regularly since 2007.
Samaha doesn’t like to say the healing process has been going on for ten years. That timeframe is “too simple,” he said.
Instead he — and others from the unintentional family who lost people like his daughter — think of this anniversary in a different unit of time.
“It’s been 3,653 days,” he said. “And I’ve thought about her every one of them.”