Collegiate Times

Although Blacksburg will be hosting many remembrance ceremonies and events on campus for the fallen 32 on Thursday, there are also events coming up in the communities of the victims. Two are taking place on the links, as Jarrett Lane and Erin Peterson will be honored in their own respective golf tournaments.

In the nearby town of Pembroke, Castle Rock Golf and Recreation will host the Inaugural Jarrett Lane Memorial Golf Tournament on May 9. A similar event, the Second Annual Erin Peterson Golf Tournament is being held at the Chantilly National Golf and Country Club in Centreville on April 20.

"It was the members of the community who are active golfers and friends of Jarrett that decided to plan the event," said Jarrett's sister, Alicia Lane-Farrell. "They kept in touch with my family and made sure we were okay with it."

Josh Price, a member of Castle Rock Golf and occasional lesson instructor, came up with the idea initially.  

"I didn't know Jarrett very well," Price said. "But he went to high school with my wife and her friends, and I thought it would be something great to do to get the community involved."

The tee time for the tournament is 9 a.m. with a registration fee of $300 for teams of four that can register by calling the golf course. All of the proceeds from the tournament will go to the Jarrett Lane Memorial Fund, which gives scholarships to graduates from Giles County and the Southwest Virginia Governor's School, where Lane attended.  

"Our goal is to start giving, not specifically to charities, but to children or youth that want to go to athletic, music, art or academic and leadership camps that cannot afford it," Lane-Farrell said.

His sister said that these activities helped shaped Jarrett's character.  He graduated as valedictorian from Narrows High School but was also enrolled in Southwest Virginia Governor's School where he went for half of the day to take on more challenging courses.  

Lane lettered in football, basketball and track, and he participated in the band as well as various academic and leadership clubs. An engineering student at Tech and a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, Lane also participated in various intramurals.

Lane had been accepted with a full-ride to Florida's coastal engineering program.The Second Annual Erin Peterson Golf Tournament will benefit the Erin Peterson Fund, which gives two scholarships - one for leadership and one for a commitment to excellence - to a pair of graduates from her alma mater, Westfield High School. Peterson's mother, Celeste, said that with the economic crisis, the fund is even more driven to help out those in need in the community.

"I also put the scholarship application out on FastWeb and got over 2,000 responses," she said. "Out of those responses, we gave away three scholarships."

Celeste said that the fund is also working diligently with a program at nearby Falls Church High School that targets students whose parents did not attend college and teaches them how to achieve in high school.

Last year, the tournament featured a field of 141 golfers and 60 volunteers, including former Washington Redskins Ken Harvey and Charles Mann. This year, former Washington Wizards head coach Eddie Jordan will be a participant.

"The tournament has been extremely successful with getting golfers and people from all around the community with volunteering and offering auction items," Celeste said. "The outpouring has been phenomenal."

Erin was a freshman international studies major and recent graduate from Westfield High School where she was a starter on the varsity basketball team.  

When she was home, she coached a travel basketball team. At Tech, she participated in Empower, a program that helped minorities in local high schools.  She had also been a recent inductee of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega.