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Victims Are Heroes, Loved Ones

April 18, 2007

By Jim Nolan, Lindsay Kastner & Holly Prestidge

A spirited Henrico County teenager and a former basketball player at Thomas Dale High School in Chesterfield County are among those killed in Monday's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.
Rachael Elizabeth Hill, 18, was a freshman interested in biology who lived on the second floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall. She graduated from Grove Avenue Christian Academy and lived with her parents, Alan and Tammy Hill, in Glen Allen.

Matt Gregory Gwaltney was a second-year graduate student in civil and environmental engineering, and had received an undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech in 2005. He was a 2001 graduate of Thomas Dale.

Yesterday, friends and family mourned the loss of each victim.

"When you talk to a parent who's just lost a child over something as violent or tragic as this, you just don't know how you will be to comfort them," said Mark Becton, senior pastor of Grove Avenue Baptist Church, who spoke with Hill's mother yesterday morning. "But the first words out of her mouth were, 'We want all the glory to go to God, because that's the way Rachael would have wanted it.'"

School officials said Hill was an only child and had attended the 261-student academy since kindergarten. She was captain of the volleyball team and known for spicing up her conservative school uniform with colorful pairs of Converse high-top sneakers.

"Rachael had a wonderful, close, loving relationship with her parents," School Superintendent Clay Fogler wrote in a letter to the church community yesterday. "Any parent would have counted it a privilege to have called her their daughter."

Fogler said Hill was an excellent piano player and enjoyed curling up on the sofa with her mother and watching movies such as "Pride and Prejudice."

"It is difficult to capture the beauty, intelligence, poise, leadership and other wonderful traits that Rachael possessed," Fogler said.

Now, when he reads the C.S. Lewis quotation that Hill chose to appear under her yearbook photo, he sees it as almost prophetic: "God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain."

Hill was interested in biology but had not decided on an academic major to pursue at Virginia Tech, school officials said.

Her roommate at Tech was a classmate from Grove Avenue, and the two lived on the second floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall. That's two floors below where authorities said Cho Seung-Hui, a 22-year-old English major, began his rampage Monday at 7:15 a.m.

"We have several students who go there, so we began calling," said Becton, recalling the anxious moments Monday as word of the shootings spread beyond the campus. "And all were accounted for, except for Rachael. We didn't find out until 11:15 that night."

Yesterday, the church opened its doors to offer a place to grieve and pray, a gesture repeated at many churches and schools throughout the state and in the hometowns of the victims.

Inside the lobby of the house of worship was a colorful poster on a bulletin board devoted to Hill and signed by her former classmates and teachers.

"The Lord Gives Strength To His People. The Lord Blesses His People With Peace," it reads.

Gwaltney was always full of encouragement for Vernon Hamilton, his younger basketball teammate at Thomas Dale, Hamilton recalled yesterday.

"He was the type of person that everyone would dream of having the opportunity to know. He was a hard-working kid," Hamilton said. "He was a great kid."

Hamilton, a senior at Clemson University in South Carolina, said he began to receive calls about his former teammate's death late Monday night. No one had heard from the graduate engineering student, but they hoped for the best.

"But when it started to get late . . . I was really worried," said Hamilton, who added that Gwaltney wasn't the type of person to stay out late on a weeknight.

Gwaltney left for college ahead of Hamilton but returned home for the summers, when the two would sometimes share an impromptu basketball game. "I'd see him at the YMCA, still playing pickup," Hamilton said.

In high school during Gwaltney's senior year, the two played together on a team that brought home district and regional championships. But Hamilton said he'll remember Gwaltney as much for his good nature as his skill on the court.

"I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to know someone like Matt Gwaltney," he said.

Liviu Librescu, 76, a professor
When she thinks of her dear friend Liviu Librescu, Jo Anne Meirovitch will remember his elegant manners.

"He would kiss my hand as a greeting," she said. "He was very attentive. When you were with him, he would ask, 'Do you need this? Can I get you something?'

"We have very friendly manners in this country, but his manners were polished. I don't think most of us are that careful with our manners. He was old-fashioned, Eastern European."

Librescu, 76, of Romania, was that and more.

On Monday, he was a hero and a victim.

When Cho Seung-Hui walked through Norris Hall on a deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, he came to the classroom where Librescu was conducting a class in solid mechanics.

"When the shooting started, he looked concerned, but he never panicked," said Richard Mallalieu, a student in the class in Room 204. "When I went out the window, he was guarding the door."

Librescu was shot and killed saving the lives of his students.

"He was a gentleman and a scholar," said Dr. Leonard Meirovitch, husband of Jo Anne and a retired member of the engineering science and mechanics department. "He was very dedicated to his job and was always willing to do his part."

Librescu, known as an extremely private man, was recognized around the world as an expert in aeroelasticity and composite structures.

Meirovitch and Librescu had been friends since they met in Israel in the early 1980s. They had been colleagues at Virginia Tech since 1985.

Librescu's son Joe told The Associated Press in Israel that during World War II, his father was interned in a labor camp. He survived that, only to live under the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.

Collaboration with engineers and scientists outside of Romania was not permitted under Ceausescu, a restriction under which Librescu chafed.

When Librescu requested permission to immigrate to Israel, he was fired and told he could not leave the country for a year because he had knowledge the government considered top secret.

Eventually, he and his family were permitted to immigrate to Israel. Then, he met the Meirovitches, who encouraged Librescu and his family to come to Virginia Tech on a sabbatical.

Liviu Librescu decided Blacksburg would become his home.

"I told him he would have a much better future professionally in the United States," Meirovitch said. "It did not cross my mind that he would be the subject of a tragedy."

Maxine Turner, 22, of Vienna
Last week, Virginia Tech senior Maxine Turner, 22, was leading young female engineering students around Roanoke, showing them the potential and opportunities for women in engineering. Today, her friends, family, boyfriend and sorority sisters are mourning her death.

Turner, a chemical-engineering student, had three weeks left before she graduated and began a new job.

"She already had a job lined up," said Tory Boivin, a Danville resident, a mechanical-engineering major and a freshman at Virginia Tech. "We were just inducted into the [engineering] sorority [Alpha Omega Epsilon] this weekend. We saw her on Sunday. She was up in front telling us about the rules of the sorority. Now she's gone."

Turner took time to make sure young women, such as Boivin and the other 60 members of the sorority, would have the support they needed to succeed as female engineers.

"She was a chemical engineer and an Alpha," Boivin said. "Our sorority is really new, it's an engineering sorority. . . . She's one of the very few female chemical engineers. Engineering, being female is different."

On Sunday night, Turner inducted the young women who would follow in her footsteps into a male-dominated world, but with the support of other women like them. In three weeks, she would start her own career. But by Monday night, the dream was over.

"We don't know any details yet," fellow engineering student Erin Burdick said yesterday. "We don't know how or where she died, just that she's gone."

— Rebecca Blanton, Media General News Service

Jarrett Lane, 22, of Narrows
Jarrett Lane rose to the top at Narrows High School in the tiny town of Narrows in Southwest Virginia.

He was valedictorian of the class of 2003, carrying a grade-point average of more than 4.0. He lettered in four sports, participated in academic competitions and played trombone in the band.

"He was the kid who did all the dirty work and got none of the glory," said Todd Lusk, who was Lane's varsity basketball coach and neighbor. "He didn't care if he didn't get the glory as long as we got the win."

Narrows High School Principal Robert Stump said the school asked a lot of Lane because it's so small. It had about 300 students in grades eight through 12 while he was enrolled. The town of Narrows, which is split by the New River in Giles County, had just more than 2,000 residents in the 2000 census.

Stump said Lane's family was too upset yesterday to speak with reporters and had asked school officials to serve as intermediaries.

Lane, a senior at Tech who was majoring in civil engineering, was the youngest of three children and "what every parent hopes their kid grows up to be," Lusk said.

A memorial was set up in the school's lobby with flowers, candles and Lane's athletic jerseys and yearbooks. A vigil was scheduled for last night at the town's First Baptist Church.

As word of Lane's death spread Monday evening, more than 100 of his former classmates, friends, even students from rival Giles High School gathered at the town's recreation center.

Lane recently learned that he'd been accepted for graduate school at the University of Florida. He planned to study coastal engineering.

Justin Waldron, who graduated from Narrows High in 2006, said he considered Lane a mentor.

Waldron said Lane was determined during high school to attend Virginia Tech but was now eager to continue his studies in Florida.

"He was set on becoming something great and making something of himself." — Will Jones

G.V. Loganathan, 51, a professor
Monica Tiburze remembers the class she took in water resources engineering, taught by G.V. Loganathan, as being quite challenging and difficult.

She also remembers that Loganathan, a professor of civil engineering and environmental engineering, won the award for faculty member of the year — voted on by engineering students — multiple times.

"Year after year, he won that award, even though he taught a hard class," Tiburze said. "He was all about educating us. I remember him always being very open and supportive and willing to work with you if you were stuck on something, and making sure you understood."

Loganathan, 51, died Monday in Norris Hall during his advanced hydrology class. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.

Loganathan received his undergraduate and master's degrees in India and earned his doctorate at Purdue University. He was a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. Last year, he was one of three recipients of the Wine Awards for Excellence in Teaching on the Virginia Tech campus.

Loganathan also won the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, an outstanding faculty member award and certificates for teaching excellence from Virginia Tech.

"I don't think he had a mean bone in his body," Tiburze said. "He always said hi, always had a smile for you. . . .

"I've been out of school for a while, and I have the hindsight to see that he really was one of the best professors in the department."

She said she still uses the information she learned from Loganathan.

"I still remember the things he taught me. . . . He had so much valuable research and was such an asset to the faculty and was so important in the development of so many good engineers. It's just such a shame that nobody else is going to benefit from his experience."

— Paul Woody

Mary Karen Read, 19, of Annandale
In popularity-driven contests for high school homecoming queen, it's rare for a marching band member to be in the running.

Yet at Annandale High School in fall 2005, Mary Karen Read, a clarinet player, was a finalist.

"Our band has the same reputation as pretty much every band at every high school," said Annandale senior Emily Sample, a friend of Read from the band. "She was a 'bandy.' But she was a finalist because she was the kind of person who fit in everywhere, because her personality was so bright and shiny."

Read was nearing the end of her freshman year at Virginia Tech, her uncle Ted Kuppinger said.

As a lacrosse player, a member of the National Honor Society, the indoor color guard, the French club and the marching band at Annandale High School, she left behind a wide circle of friends and family in Northern Virginia and elsewhere struggling with her death.

"As my band teacher said today, she had a smile that could brighten up the entire room," said senior Greg Rosenstein, a friend and fellow clarinet player. "She pretty much touched the lives of everyone she met."

Read had not yet declared a college major, but friends said she was considering a career teaching children.

Like Cho Seung-Hui, the student identified by police as the shooter, Read was born in South Korea, Kuppinger said. Her mother is from Korea and her father is from New York, he said.

Read initially had trouble adjusting to Virginia Tech's large campus, but had recently begun making friends and was considering joining a sorority, her aunt, Karen Kuppinger, told The Associated Press.

— Sean Mussenden, Media General News Service

Reema Samaha, 18, of Centreville
Reema Samaha, a freshman from Centreville in the Fairfax County suburbs of Washington, had a beaming smile and a passion for show business.

Samaha, 18, was studying drama at Virginia Tech. She was planning to travel to France this summer for her summer-abroad program and strengthen her French, her father told CNN; she was slain Monday when the gunman opened fire in her French class.

"Dance was her life. She loved choreography," her father, Joseph Samaha, told the network in an interview yesterday. She had diverse interests and "loved the world, loved to travel," her father added.

He described her as a "terrific, dynamic person" who was "shy, until you got to know her; then she had tons of friends."

At Virginia Tech, Reema Samaha participated in the Contemporary Dance Ensemble, a student organization.

Her brother, Omar, a 23-year-old Tech graduate, told NBC's "Today" he had visited Blacksburg over the past weekend, when his sister participated in a dance recital and a cultural street fair.

Omar Samaha had to leave before his sister finished performing on Sunday; he had complimented his sister's work and hugged her, he told "Today," but "I never got to say goodbye."

Omar has another sister, Randa, who is a third-year nursing student at the University of Virginia.

The Samaha family lives in a well-off suburban neighborhood of single-family homes in Centreville. It is a mile or so away from the townhouse neighborhood where the Virginia Tech gunman lived.

Neighbors of the Samahas didn't know if the victim had known Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman, who, like Reema Samaha, graduated from Westfield High School in Fairfax County.

A friend described Reema Samaha as family-oriented, sweet and caring.

"We've all lived in the same neighborhood together for 15 or 20 years," said the friend, Danielle Ragole.

"There was a presence about her that nobody's ever going to forget," Ragole said. "She's an unforgettable person." — Peter Hardin, The Associated Press

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a professor
During her four years at Virginia Tech, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak made friends with her students and colleagues in the foreign-languages department and really enjoyed her job.

"She was someone who just gave everything for her teaching," said Richard Shryock, chairman of the foreign languages department and a fellow French instructor.

"She always delighted in trying to be able to find new ways, or interesting ways, to present material. She was constantly challenging herself in that way, trying to stimulate the students, and she was very successful at what she did."

Shryock said Couture-Nowak's attributes went far beyond just being an excellent instructor of French.

"As a person, she was a fabulous individual," Shryock said, "just a very personable, very warm and caring individual.

"We are a close-knit department. . . . Jocelyne and Jamie [Bishop] were two people who were universally well-liked in the department."

Couture-Nowak was the wife of Jerzy Nowak, chairman of the horticulture department at Tech.

— John Packett

Kevin P. Granata, 45 a professor
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — The Virginia Tech shootings hit close to home for some people at Wake Forest University yesterday.

Kevin P. Granata, an engineering science and mechanics professor at Virginia Tech, was among the dead. Granata was on the faculty of the joint Wake Forest School of Medicine and Virginia Tech biomedical engineering program.

Granata's research interests were muscle and reflex response and robotics, including control of lower back pain and computer simulation of walking and running.

Granata's office was in Norris Hall, where most of the shootings occurred.

Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department at Virginia Tech, called Granata one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

Virginia Tech engineering professor Demetri P. Telionis said Granata was successful but also kind.

"With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family, and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities," Telionis said. "He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly."

Granata was a gifted scientist, known worldwide for his research into how the body's various muscles accomplish complicated movements, said Stefan Duma, a Virginia Tech mechanical engineering professor.

"He liked to ask the big questions," Duma said. "When we had students defending their Ph.D., and he kept asking, 'Did we have the total solution?' He was really interested in whether we answered the big questions. That's really a sign of a great scientist."

— Laura Giovanelli, Winston-Salem Journal, and The Associated Press

Henh "Henry" Ly, 20 of Roanoke
Henh Ly couldn't speak English when his Chinese family arrived in the United States during his early elementary school years.

But he'd amassed impressive credentials by graduation last spring from William Fleming High School in Roanoke.

He was class salutatorian with a grade-point average of 4.47 and a newly naturalized American citizen.

Susan Lawyer Willis, principal of his high school, recalled yesterday how she had to convince Ly to share his story at graduation.

"He said to the crowd, 'When I came to this country, I couldn't speak English. Now, I'm number two in the class,'" she recalled. "He valued his education. It was so heartfelt. It moved us all to tears. He was proud of his American citizenship."

As a reflection of that pride, Ly, a freshman majoring in computer engineering, started going by "Henry" at Virginia Tech. That brought him some friendly ribbing from math teacher Jonathan Bayer when Ly returned to high school during winter break.

"He was happy. He was upbeat," Bayer said. "He came to rub it in our faces that he got a month off."

Ly was part of a large family from China that came to the United States by way of Vietnam, according to school officials and longtime friend Amanda Theller. She said yesterday that she and other friends have been unable to come to grips with Ly's death.

"Our friends are mourning deeply because we don't understand why, and we may never know," Theller wrote in an e-mail.

A memorial service for Ly is scheduled for Sunday at William Fleming.

Jackie O'Neill, who taught Ly as a sophomore in an AP government class, said he was just fun to be around. She struggled to recall a story that seemed worthy of his memory.

"What can anyone say? This was one of the best," she said of Ly. "We were all enriched by being around him."

Willis was holding onto the image of Ly at graduation — a confident, mature young man.

"I watched him evolve over that year, and he was ready to now move on. He was ready to be a computer engineer."

— Will Jones

Christopher "Jamie" Bishop, 35,
Jamie Bishop had been at Virginia Tech for only two years, but he quickly made an impression on students and faculty.

"He was a very outgoing and bright individual," said Richard Shryock, chairman of the foreign-language department at Virginia Tech. "He was very engaging. He was really enjoyed by his students and likewise by his colleagues."

Bishop, who was known for his long hair, started at Tech by helping in the technology department and teaching a little German, Shryock said. "This year, he switched over to teaching mostly German courses and just a little bit of technology. He enjoyed teaching German and we had renewed his contract for next year, and he was very excited about continuing on with German."

Bishop's wife, Stefanie Hofer, whom he met in Germany, is an assistant professor of German at Tech.

"Both of them were very well-liked here in the department, and they made a nice pair of instructors," Shryock said.

Bishop, who received his bachelor of arts in German and his master's in German linguistics from the University of Georgia, enjoyed working with and researching digital photography, designing Web sites and multimedia projects.

— John Packett

Joe Mackenka is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.