The Worst Of Times, The Best Of Us: Virginia Tech One Year Later

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Arizona State students gathered for a candelight vigil. Photo by Bettina Hansen.

I remember thinking when I was on the phone with my mother that while I was sitting safely in my room, reassuring her that I was fine, some other Hokie would never get to make that call.

By Citizen Correspondent Dan Waidelich

Date Posted: 04/08/08

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It was a Monday. Like college students do, I ignored my better judgment and decided not to attend class that morning. I had this great plan to sleep past noon and then maybe enjoy a late breakfast. My plan was shattered when my cell phone woke me up, sometime around 9 am. “Dan, there’s been another shooting on campus.” It has been almost a year since the worst day of my life. So much has happened that it seems like an entire lifetime ago, and yet, I can still feel it as clearly as ever.

I have wanted to be a Virginia Tech Hokie since I was 12 years old, and when we had an escaped convict running around campus the first day of my freshman year, I thought it could not be any worse. But here I was, on April 16th, 2007, being woken up by the worst phone call of my life.

Like the rest of the world I turned to the news. It’s a disquieting feeling when you need the television and the Internet to tell you what is going on a couple hundred yards away. Students sat in front of the televisions, locked in our dormitories, watching the worst day of our lives unfold minute by minute, casualty by casualty.

As I watched the numbers of the dead and the wounded increase I frantically scrambled to call everyone in my cell phone’s memory. I remember thinking when I was on the phone with my mother that while I was sitting safely in my room, reassuring her that I was fine, some other Hokie would never get to make that call. That was the first time I cried that day.

I knew one of the 32 people who were killed, and she was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met, inside and out. We were not the best of friends, but we lived in the same building and she never failed to ask how I was when we ran into each other. She always had this big smile on her face. She never came home from her class that morning, and the entire building could only wait, dreading her absence.

I hope that no one ever has to experience the feelings I felt, hoping that she made it out, but knowing in my gut that I was wrong.