Jim Dickhans / SPPSSupport was shown for the Hokies in the form of gifts from across the nation.

Greg Beecher, associate director for Administrative Services, was one of the first to see many of the gifts that were sent to the school. Administrative Services gave out its address in Squires for those wishing to send their condolences. Beecher remembers the first few gifts coming from local Virginia schools such as James Madison University and Radford University, and tacking their gifts up on the boards in Squires next to the signs and cards that Tech students had already made. 

"I don't know what triggered it, it's just that things started coming in. And that sounds like an understatement now," Beecher said. "Really, after they started coming in they would come in handfuls, and the post office started bringing these carts — these big laundry carts with wheels, you know, that you can hide a person or two in."

Beecher said one of the gifts that he remembers as especially heartwarming was from a Tech alumna who lives in Texas. The woman felt compelled to make over 7,000 care packages for students when she heard about the events on April 16. While making these care packages in her home in Texas, local news stations picked up on her story and people and companies started to give her donations. On one occasion, she got word that a donation was coming from as far away as Iraq.

"She got a phone call or an e-mail from a soldier in Iraq that notified her and said he is sending $1,000 for her for supplies. She said 'Look, I'm not a 501(c)(3), I'm not a non-profit agency, you don't even know me,'" Beecher said, retelling her story. "And he said, 'That's OK, I trust you. I'm sending you this money so you can put it for these packages.'"

With the money, the woman shipped all 7,000 packages, and she and a friend flew to Blacksburg to stand in the Squires atrium and hand them out themselves.

In addition to a flurry of gifts, gestures around the nation and the world were made in support of the Tech community. Beecher said that schools lit up important buildings with orange and maroon lights, and Niagra Falls was glowed orange and maroon.

There was also a Tech flag taken up in a space shuttle, flags flown above various embassies and a flag flown at the Statue of Liberty.

Beecher recalled receiving an American flag that was crocheted by a lady in North Carolina, a banner from a church in South Korea and an orange life preserver that was signed by the US Coast Guard in Puerto Rico, among thousands of other gifts.

He also remembers seeing over 700 banners come in, with countless other cards and handcrafted items. Each item was unique to the person, community, or institution that sent it.

"There were so many handcrafted items and it really did identify with how people expressed their grief and sorrow," Beecher said. "Some people might look at it from an outsider point of view, and go, 'I don't understand why they sent a Barbie doll that had an orange and maroon crocheted skirt on it,' but that is the way that person expressed her sorrow."

In the weeks following April 16, Beecher and his staff started seeing more and more gifts come in every day to the small 225 Squires office. The team of volunteers worked on displaying all of the gifts in the atrium of Squires so that the students and staff could see them when they returned to finish the semester.

From the beginning, Beecher and the front office staff started logging the gifts so that they could send thank you notes to every person or institution that sent a gift. This began the long process of tracking and tagging the items.

"We started tracking for the sake that we wanted to send thank you notes to all of these people, you know, sort of a standard approach and being hospitable to people and their expression," Beecher said. "So that was good that we were beginning to track that, little did we know that that was going to become tracking all of the over 90,000 archive items now."

April 16 archives

Along with Beecher and administrative services, others such as the Dean of Students' office and the University Relations office also received gifts and condolences. These offices started to consolidate the databases into one that is now being used for organizing and displaying the archives.

Beecher worked closely with Tamara Kennelly, University Archivist, to come up with a system for tagging the items with color-coded labels that identified the type of item and whom or what it was from. Materials were brought to the Prevail Archives in the Corporate Research Center last June, and archivists and volunteers started working on the collection in the beginning of July.

Some of the archives are currently being shown in the Perspective Gallery through April 20, and will be shown in the Alumni Center today from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The materials will then be moved to Newman Library where they will be displayed permanently. 

Kennelly, who has been working with the archives since 1993, has been working on tagging and archiving all of the April 16 items since they were brought to the CRC. In a room in building XVI of the CRC, Kennelly works closely with the thousands of items that cover the tables and line the walls.

"Every state in the nation has sent us something, and it just seems like every school has, too," Kennelly said, standing amidst the collected items. "You know, the big schools, the small schools, the community colleges. Just every day I find something that I think 'Wow, this is pretty cool.'"

Most cards, banners, handmade crafts and letters all have messages on them written for the Tech community. Kennelly said that a lot of things come in from people who have experienced their own tragedies such as the teachers and survivors of the Columbine High School shootings, people who were very close to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and even personal tragedies.

"We have messages from a lot of schools talking about shootings at their schools and making a resolution about how these events have happened and we'll still be strong and go forward, and it won't retract from us (as) a place of learning and of growth," Kennelly said. "It's very moving to work here. There's so much heart in the things that are sent to us."

One item that Kennelly felt especially moved by was a collection of letters from students in Flint, Mich. who live and go to school in a very rough neighborhood. The students wrote about shootings in their own school and neighborhood and the violence that happened on a daily basis, while also sharing their sympathy for Tech's situation.

"These are students that are in a very hard situation and they're taking their time out and writing these very personal letters. It's just amazing to me," Kennelly said.

Another use of the displays is to provide archives that can be studied in future years from a cultural anthropologic standpoint. In Kennelly's words, the collection can be looked at 30 years from now and will be able to portray something about Tech and the way of life that existed at that time.

With gifts that were given from all across the nation and around the world, the collection also shows cultural differences from different parts of the country.  This can especially be seen from some of the approximately 1,924 banners that have been archived.

"You get a different feeling from the Texas banner than you do from the schools in New England. You know in Texas they feel big, it's a stereotype, but if you read them you'll see in California there's this other feeling and in Swarthmore there are these really personal, heartfelt messages," Kennelly said.

Among the archived items, there is a painting that an Asian artist from New York sent with the message "the soul is coming." There are hundreds of pictures of students from different schools wearing orange and maroon and forming a big VT.  Letters also came in from the green zone in Iraq.

 "People who are in Iraq that are dealing with death and dealing with terror all the time are taking the time to send us a note," Kennelly said.

Kennelly said that there are a lot of letters and pictures sent from people who are incarcerated, holding up a beautiful, detailed pencil sketch of youthful faces. Many resident advisors from other schools also sent condolences in remembrance of Ryan Clark, who was a resident advisor on the fourth floor of Ambler Johnston.

In addition to the 33,000 paper cranes that were sent directly after April 16, many more cranes have been since sent as well. A handmade orange and maroon dreamcatcher, a neon sign that says 'We are Virginia Tech,' a poster with all of police badges from all of the different departments that provided help, quilts, a kite and even a car hood with the Tech emblem on it all can be seen across the room.

"There is this sort of common ground between people. I think it really hit people around the country; people in different schools talk about being really emotional about these events," Kennelly said. "I think there was something about the way our students were and the way our student body is; people really identify with us."

Support in sports

Kennelly said that while sifting through all of the items that waited to be archived, she found herself really affected by some of the items coming from Tech's old sports rivals.

"One of the things that fascinated me at the beginning was our rivals sending things. When we got things from UVa, it kind of just broke me up. And I still think about it," Kennelly said.

Jim Weaver, director of athletics, can recall being affected by the respect and support given to Tech by sports rivals as well.

In the game against East Carolina University that opened the 2007 football season, ECU presented $100,000 to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and were "very, very considerate to the Hokie nation," Weaver said.

Although the Hokies Respect campaign for sporting events started four years ago, the athletic department was especially concerned with respecting ECU in the first football game following April 16.

"I was so pleased that our fans were receptive and understood the respect issue that we tried to have permeate the environment that day," Weaver said.

The ECU game opened with activities that reflected on the shooting and remembered the victims, including a video of remembrance projected on the Jumbotron. Weaver said all of the opening activities were discussed with the central administration to make sure nothing was left out, and nothing went too far.

ECU wasn't the only school that offered support through sporting events. The baseball game against the University of Miami on April 20 was the first athletic contest to be played after the shootings, and Miami presented a check for $15,000 to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund from its baseball boosters group.

Penn State sold Tech T-shirts to its students and created an orange and maroon section at their annual spring football game the Saturday after the tragedy. Weaver also remembered Ohio State and Kentucky both wearing VT logos on their helmets during their spring football games.

"UVa contributed a lot of money to help the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, as well as offering to assist in counseling services," Weaver said. "In addition to that they sent a banner signed by most all of the student-athletes and the athletic staff."

One of the most significant gestures of support that Weaver remembered was the New York Yankees involvement with Tech after April 16. 

On May 23, the Yankees presented President Steger with a check for $1 million at Yankee Stadium. On March 18, the Yankees came to Tech's English Field to play an exhibition game against the Hokie baseball team.

"I must say that, to me, it was a very special day in the sense that all of the Yankee players, coaches and administrators were very gracious and genuine with their time and it was a day that everyone who was there will remember forever," Weaver said.

The Atlantic Coast Conference also gave the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund $300,000 and all of the athletic teams at the member institutions in the ACC conference wore a commemorative black rectangle in all sports this year.

"To me this was very significant of the outreach of our conference sister institutions,' Weaver said.

Weaver said that the memories of these sporting events will allow the Tech community to always remember the victims of April 16, but to also move forward.

"I think an event like the ECU first football game or the concert that was held in Lane Stadium or the Yankee exhibition, I think all of those will be memories that will help us remember," Weaver said, "They will not allow us to forget those individuals but will encourage us to move forward in a manner and a way that brings the Hokie people closer together, and more resilient and stronger than we've ever been."