Juan Ramon Ortiz Ortiz

The family and friends of Juan Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz, 26, a civil engineering graduate student, have been grieving over the loss of his life since April 16.

“He was an excellent student, an excellent friend, an excellent husband, an excellent son and he always tried to be a better person, to improve himself, without knowing that he was already excellent,” said Ortiz’s wife, Liselle Vega Cortes.

Before coming to Virginia Tech, Ortiz was a student at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, Ortiz’s country of origin.
Ortiz is the only Puerto Rican victim from the April 16 shootings.

Ortiz was the president of Polytechnic University’s chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers. Ortiz also tutored younger students at the Polytechnic University. Ortiz graduated from Polytechnic University in June of 2005 and after working for a year, he came to Virginia Tech in the fall of 2006.

“My husband was a person that enjoyed life to its full extent,” Cortes said. “He lived each day with energy and happiness as if it was the very last and transmit that feeling to every person he met.  As a husband, I can tell you the same.”

According to a memorial posted by CNN, the family neighbors in San Juan remember Ortiz as “a quiet, dedicated son who decorated his parents’ one-story concrete house each Christmas and played in a salsa band wit his father on weekends.”

According to an article in The New York Times, Ortiz’s ultimate goal was to become a teaching. He was a teaching assistant in Norris when he was killed.

“He was an extraordinary son, what any father would have wanted,” Ortiz’s father told the Associated Press. Ortiz and his wife, Cortes, met at Polytechnic University and both decided to attend Virginia Tech after graduation in order to attain a master’s in civil engineering.

“We lived each day of our marriage as if there was no tomorrow and he gave always his very best to make me happy,” Cortes said.