Collegiate Times

“… I know the plans I have for you,” begins Jeremiah 29:11, the biblical passage that rested above Mary Read’s desk, written in soft, loopy strokes. As an added touch, Mary inserted her own name at the end. “I know the plans I have for you (Mary).”

The second part of that verse reads: “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

The two pieces of that quote are meant to be related. But to anyone who looks at that verse and then looks at Mary’s tragic end, those two parts would seem very distinct and disparate.

It makes more sense in Mary’s case, because everything about her, ancestry, friends and personality was contrasting. But it never affected her, because like that quote, Mary had her
devout faith in God as a link that brought together disassociated parts.

Her heritage is split, right down the middle. Her mother, Yon Son Yi (Zang) is Korean. Her father, Peter Read, served in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in South Korea. There Mary was born, in Seoul, at a United States Army hospital.

It was in Korea where her bridge began. Her parents took her to a Korean Catholic Church in Songtan, South Korea, about an hour’s drive south of the capital. There she was baptized; there she was attributed to the Lord.

“She just gravitated towards people. She always knew what other people needed, said Cathy Read, her stepmother. “She had a lot of empathy for other people,”

She needed that, because as a military child, she lived an itinerant life, moving from Texas to California to Tennessee, before finally settling in with her father and stepmother in Annandale, Va in 2001.

None of that, though, could keep a wide-eyed, cherubic girl from being happy.

“You had to work hard to catch her when she wasn’t smiling,” said her father, Peter Read.   “Even if she was upset, she would smile just a little less.”

Her father believes that the principles of faith, instilled in her at baptism, brought her happiness and serenity.

“We always talked about faith, hope and love,” said Peter Read, reciting a line from I Corinthians. “That’s what Mary believed in.”

In high school, she could run with many different crowds. Though there were big divides among the groups, Mary’s seemed to have an innate ability to move across those rifts as though they were smooth surfaces.

She played clarinet in her high school band, but was still elected to the homecoming court her senior year. It’s a feat that truly impressed her band-mates.

“She was what you think of when you think of the girl in band: cute, smiley, but still a band nerd,” said Emily Sample, a senior at Annandale High School. “But she was the first band nerd to ever been elected to homecoming court. She was the only one of us that fit in anywhere.”

Her father knows why.

“Like everything, Mary had a foot in both worlds,” said Peter Read. “But her faith really straddled those divides.”
She came to Blacksburg in the fall of 2006, and like most freshmen, felt lost in the morass of a giant state school. She wasn’t happy and even considered transferring.

Soon though, like she always was able to do, she found a place she fit in.

In mid-October she attended a fall retreat in Tennessee with 300 members of Campus Crusade for Christ. She’d been attending weekly bible studies, but fell in love with the group on that trip.

“She had a desire to learn and grow,” said her bible study leader, Kami Trevillian. “That was evident by her consistency at Bible study. I’m not sure if she missed a week.”

The organization became Mary’s foundation. In the spring, she applied to lead her own study group.

On Monday, April 16th, she was to be told of her acceptance; she would lead a group of young women trying to find their faith in God.
Her faith had led her to prosper; her place in life was to help people feel God’s spirit.

And a week later, almost 1,000 went to church because of her.

Afterwards, the caravan to her gravesite stretched a mile in length. As it left the church parking lot, it passed by her high school’s oldest rival.

Any animosity between the groups was forgotten; another gap bridged as students in gym class stood along a fence, silently watching the slow-moving procession.

The caravan marched on for eight miles, unabated by traffic as police shut down one of Northern Virginia’s major arteries.

As it neared the cemetery, the procession turned off the main road, and cut through her old neighborhood. Scores of people stood along the route, some in maroon and orange, most in Annandale’s red and white.

It ended at Pleasant Valley Memorial Park, a scant mile from her home.

There, her beloved high school band began to play. As it struck the opening notes of Amazing Grace, the sun slipped out from the clouds and started to shine. It quickly disappeared, though. A moment, but a brief one.

There at Pleasant Valley, Mary was interred. To some it was the end of a life, one cut way too short. But to those that knew Mary best, it seemed her new life had already begun.

After she was buried, people gathered back around the band. The director, Jack Elgin, wanted to play Annandale’s fight song, but could not decide what tempo was appropriate for the occasion.

Before the funeral, Mary’s father came to Elgin and told him that Mary would show him the right way to do it.

She must have, because as the drums were struck and the pace picked up, the crowd began to clap.