The Knuckleheads of the Day award

Today's winner are Virginia Tech University President Charles Steger and Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine. Kaine gets the award for the following.

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Tech officials could have saved lives if they had quickly warned the campus that two students had been shot to death and their killer was on the loose, a panel that investigated the attacks said.

Instead, it took administrators more than two hours to get out an e-mail warning students and staff to be cautious. The shooter had time to leave the dormitory where the first two victims were killed, mail a letter, and then enter a classroom building, chain the doors shut and kill 31 more people, including himself.

Even before the killings, the university had failed to properly care for the mentally troubled student gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, the panel found.

One victim's mother today urged Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to "show some leadership" and fire the university's president and campus police chief for their lack of action during the April 16 attack. Others demanded accountability for errors that were made.

Kaine, however, told The Associated Press that the school's officials had suffered enough without losing their jobs.

"This is not something where the university officials, faculty, administrators have just been very blithe," Kaine said. "There has been deep grieving about this and it's torn the campus up."

They're all torn up? How about the families of the ones who died Governor. They've lost their family members forever.

The report clearly says the University failed in its job. 32 people are murdered and no one is going to get fired? How many students and faculty need to be slaughtered before a President is held accountable? 100? 200? Tell me.

An eight-member panel appointed by Kaine spent four months investigating the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history and issued its report late Wednesday.

"Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference," the panel. "So the earlier and clearer the warning, the more chance an individual had of surviving."

The first victims were shot shortly after 7 a.m. It wasn't until 9:26 a.m. that the school sent an e-mail to students and faculty warning: "Shooting on campus. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case." Cho opened fire inside Norris Hall about 20 minutes later.

*****

"The alert should have been issued and classes should have been closed," the panel's chairman, Gerald Massengill, told the AP Thursday.

But the panel also concluded that a lockdown of the 131 buildings on campus would not have been feasible. And while the first message sent by the university could have gone out at least an hour earlier and been more specific, Cho likely still would have found more people to kill, it said.

"There does not seem to be a plausible scenario of a university response to the double homicide that could have prevented the tragedy of considerable magnitude on April 16," the report said. "Cho had started on a mission of fulfilling a fantasy of revenge."

The report detailed a breakdown in communication about the gunman, who had shown signs of mental health problems for years.

His middle school teachers had found signs of suicidal and homicidal thoughts in his writings after the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. He received psychiatric counseling and was on medication for a short time. In 2006, he wrote a paper for his Virginia Tech creative writing class about a young man who hates students at his school and plans to kill them and himself, the report said.

The university's counseling center failed to give Cho the support he needed despite the warnings, including his referral to the center in 2005 because of bizarre behavior and concerns he was suicidal, the panel said. It blamed a lack of resources, misinterpretation of privacy laws and passivity.

Individuals and departments at Virginia Tech were aware of incidents that suggested his mental instability, but "did not intervene effectively. No one knew all the information and no one connected all the dots," the report said.

The report said the response by university and Blacksburg police to the dormitory shootings was well coordinated, and said the police response at Norris Hall was "prompt and effective," as was triage and evacuation of the wounded. But it also noted university police may have erred in prematurely concluding that the first two shootings were the result of a domestic dispute.

"As you read the report, it's clear that so many of the mistakes that were made result from a failure of leadership at the very top levels of the university," said Cathy Read, stepmother of slain freshman Mary Karen Read.

My heart goes out to the Reads who lost so much that April day and to the rest of the families.

Thirty two people didn't have to die if the University would have acted. Instead they took the course of least resistance, and people died for it. The very least that should happen is Steger being shown the door. For not doing that Governor Timothy Kaine you are the first Knucklehead of the Day.

Also note- Now its pretty clear why Kaine didn't want any family members on the investigation panel. He wasn't going to do shit for these people.

As damning as the report on Steger was, his press conference yesterday shows to be an unfeeling, unrepentant idiot.

RICHMOND, Va. - With anguished parents demanding his firing, Virginia Tech's president bristled at suggestions Thursday that he bears responsibility for the bloodbath on campus, calling it a crime "unprecedented in its cunning and murderous results."

At a news conference where he was grilled about an independent panel's conclusion that lives could have been saved had the school warned the campus sooner that a killer was on the loose, Charles Steger suggested there may have been nothing anyone could have done to stop the rampage by gunman Seung-Hui Cho that left 33 people dead.

"No plausible scenario was made for how this horror could have been prevented once he began that morning," Steger said.

He said he will neither resign nor ask the Virginia Tech police chief to quit, despite bitter demands by some of the victims' families that he and others be held accountable for the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

"In my view of the world, the buck stops at the top," said William O'Neil, whose son Daniel was among the students slain. "I think that in this case, his lack of leadership and his lack of compassion for the families is just astounding."

It took administrators more than two hours to get the first e-mail warning out after Cho killed two people in a dormitory. In the interim, Cho mailed off a video confession to NBC and then made his way across the Blacksburg campus to a classroom building, where he killed 30 more victims and committed suicide.

Steger said that during those two hours, administrators carefully considered how to deal with the first burst of gunfire, including a warning or a complete campus lockdown.

In the end, according to the report, administrators concluded that the shooting was a boyfriend-girlfriend dispute and that the gunman had probably left the campus. Also, the report noted, they were afraid of causing panic, as happened at the start of the school year, when the first day of classes was called off because an escaped murder suspect was on the loose near campus.

Asked whether he would have done anything differently that day, Steger said no.

Read that again, if he could have done anything, Steger wouldn't have done it. In other words he'd let 32 people die again. What kind of fool is this man? For being an unrepentant accomplice to murder, Charles Steger is our other Knucklehead of the Day.

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Blood Money

Virginia Tech University is settling with the victims' families of last April's massacre.

WASHINGTON | Virginia Tech will offer the families of the 32 slain students and faculty members a one-time payment of up to $180,000 from a fund used to solicit private donations after the April 16 massacre.

Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, said Wednesday the university planned to distribute all of the $7.5 million fund to the families of those killed, and to the more than two dozen people wounded. Those injured in Norris Hall will receive between $40,000 to $90,000 apiece, depending on the severity of their injuries.

“This is intended to provide financial assistance to the families and students who lost a loved one or who were physically injured,” Feinberg said.

Vincent Bove, a spokesman for seven of the families, said the money would “help the families get back on track.”

But Bove cautioned that the relatives of the victims would keep up their criticism of how Virginia Tech officials responded to the shooting and continue to explore ways to make the university accountable.

None of what I say below is a criticism of the families. For the most part, I've been supportive of the way University officials have responded to the families and public since last April.

Note- Today is the four month anniversary of the tragedy. Don't dismiss me when I say that many of the victims' family members are counting anniversaries like that. My wife and I lost a son almost five years ago, in the beginning we counted months and even days. The pain never goes away and certain days are going to invoke pain for the families. For I've been there and done it myself.

Also note that students are already returning to Virginia Tech. This also has to stir feelings among those left behind. Where and what would their children, brothers, sisters etc be doing today if they were at VT? Yesterday was also four months since this family last saw or spoke to their daughter.

Here are some observations.

1- The families shouldn't be expected to keep quiet after this settlement. They are still welcome to criticize the University if they want. After all there is a thing called free speech in this country.

2- One University official is saying this payment is final(With the exception of any money being possibly given by the state of Virginia itself. At least one victim's loved one isn't happy and thinks the settlement shouldn't be finalized yet.

Its four months since the massacre. Most money collected after such an event, comes in the immediate aftermath and then trickles off. More money could come in, but as the official said at present the fund will have a $200,000 deficit after today's offer. IMHO I wouldn't hold out hope for much or any more money from the Hokie Spirit Fund if I was the families.

3- Even after the families receive what is coming to them my hunch is most will never feel relieved or compensated. No amount of money can bring you back a loved one you lost, and the settlement will feel like blood money. Whatever the money is spent for, even the most noble of things like scholarship funds in honor of those who died, are just never going to make up for the loss they have suffered. I've been active with cancer support groups for years, and know a few people who have gotten malpractice awards. It almost never compensated these people, because no amount of money can replace someone you loved. God bless the families of those who died.

Cao agrees with me, and sees the settlement as blood money.

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Test run

Its possible the Virginia Tech killer was practicing at Norris Hall two days before the killing spree.

ROANOKE, Va. - Two days before the Virginia Tech massacre, witnesses saw a suspicious man in a hooded sweat shirt and found at least one exit door chained shut in the building where Seung Hui Cho killed 30 people, police said Friday.

Cho chained most of the exits of Norris Hall before firing 174 rounds of ammunition in just more than nine minutes there, but investigators said they had no indication he was the person who had chained the exit the first time.

"It would be speculation to suggest that he was practicing locking the doors," State Police Superintendent Col. Steve Flaherty said in the first update on the investigation in months.

Police did not learn of the April 14 incident until after Cho killed 25 fellow students and five faculty members in four Norris Hall classrooms April 16, State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. Police would not say who reported seeing the man, or who found the door chained.

Cho, a mentally disturbed student, also killed two people in a dormitory and fatally shot himself as police broke through the chained doors. Another 23 people were wounded, Flaherty said.

Like most tragedies and disasters, The Virginia Tech massacre could have been avoided. If school officials had taken immediate action after the first two killings or if authorities would followed up on Cho's mental status, or in this instance some one reporting the April 14th incident to police. Maybe 32 innocent people would be alive today.

Investigators have not found the hard drive to Cho's computers, Flaherty said.

"That's a piece of evidence we would love to find, along with his cell phone and possibly some other documents," he said.

My guess is that Cho disposed of these either just before the first killings or during the time he went to mail his package to NBC. There is plenty of evidence to say there was a method behind this young man's madness.

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The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine. He gets the award for the following.

RICHMOND -- Seeking to ease the frustration voiced by some families of the Virginia Tech massacre victims, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Saturday promised them full and complete access to his panel that is investigating the tragedy.

Kaine spent more than two hours behind closed doors with about 60 people representing some 20 families of Tech shooting victims.
*****

Just exactly how the families will speak to the governor's review panel - through a liaison or something more fluid - remains to be worked out, he said.

In a statement earlier this month, 13 families said they felt shut out of the process. Some demanded a seat on the eight-member panel, which Kaine handpicked. The group is chaired by Gerald Massengill, the retired state police superintendent.

*****

Kaine has resisted calls to expand the panel beyond eight members to include the victims' families. He compared it to a trial jury, whose members are impartial because they have no connection to the crime. That doesn't mean the victim is ignored, but it means the victim does not sit in judgment.

The governor repeated Saturday that he would not change the panel's makeup.

Rather, he said, he wants to be flexible in giving access. Some family members want a private audience. Others are willing to publicly communicate, and still others don't wish to speak.

He said the families would have "full access" for their questions and recommendations.

As I blogged before, I feel the families deserve a seat on the committee. They have lost so much, they deserve to be heard. Its one seat, how thats going to interfere with any investigation is beyond. This is just political and bureaucratic stupidity being inflicted on people who deserve better, and that makes Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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Lessons in foregiveness

Below is an article from the Catholic Herald. It details how Peter and Cathy Read are dealing with the loss of their daughter Mary Karen. Mary Karen was killed at Virginia Tech on April 16th.

My wife and I and can understand a little of the anguish the Reads are going through at this moment for we've lost a child also. Their daughter Mary Karen was an incredible young lady who was taken away far too soon. Some of Mary's quotes and what her family is going through was part inspiration for a recent internet story I wrote. Don't take me to task for using that tragedy, my son's death was inspiration for another story I wrote. My stories were meant to honor the Read's loss and my son.

Today marks two months since Peter and Cathy last saw Mary Karen alive. Tomorrow is two months since her death. Trust me from personal experience, they feel these anniversaries. After losing Daniel, my wife and I counted similarly.

Dear wife both admire Peter and Cathy Read and feel their pain. There is nothing worse that can happen to a parent than to have your child die, alone be brutally murdered. That they can heal and learn from Mary Karen today and not be angry is just amazing. I wish I could set aside the anger I have over Daniel. God bless them and their entire family.

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Living passionately and spreading her own joy to those she encountered, 19-year-old Mary Karen Read aspired to be a teacher. Despite the fact that her life was taken from her in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, she has been posthumously teaching a relevant and perhaps even jarring lesson in the massacre’s aftermath — a lesson of forgiveness.

“When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive,” Mary had written in a little red notebook discovered by her family in her dorm room at Virginia Tech the day after she was killed in her mid-morning French class in Norris Hall on April 16.

While forgiveness is probably not one of the first words that come to mind in the wake of the events that ended her life and the lives of 32 others, including the killer, it was what the college freshman believed.

Finding her hand-written quotes on forgiveness was not an eerie coincidence, but rather meaningful and providential, according to Peter and Cathy Read, Mary’s father and step-mother, who are parishioners of St. Mary of Sorrows in Fairfax. In fact, the quotes have brought healing to the family and many others present at Mary’s funeral, where Peter read them publicly. As wounds were still fresh and feelings of anger inevitably rising, Peter Read knew he had to share his daughter’s message with others.

The notebook was first discovered while Cathy collected Mary’s belongings from her dorm room the day after her murder. Filled with anguish and sorrow, she opened the first page of a small red notebook and found the names of Mary’s friends and their birthdays. She placed it alongside photo albums, picture frames and some other things in one of the milk crates she gave Mary before she went off to college.

It was not until the morning of Mary’s funeral one week later on April 24 that the contents of the notebook were discovered with the help of Mary’s younger brother, Brendan. Waving the notebook in the air, the 2-year-old announced his new possession, then dropped it on the floor and ran off. His timing was impeccable.

Seeing the notebook for the first time, Peter reached down to pick it up and began reading. He discovered that for three years Mary had been collecting quotes on various subjects of interest typical for a teenage girl including boys, love and friendships.

The last 10 quotes she wrote, however, caught her father’s attention. Dated Feb. 4, 2007 about two months before her life would be taken, Mary wrote about the profound importance of forgiveness.

“Forgiveness means letting go of the past.”

“Forgiving is not forgetting. It’s letting go of the hurt.”

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.”

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future,” were among some of her last entries.

“I just read them a couple of times and I realized this was something we needed to share,” said Peter, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. Although the family had initially decided not to have a eulogy, he felt compelled to share his daughter’s message at the funeral. “I knew it touched people by their reaction, but I didn’t know how deeply and widely ... they needed to hear that message from Mary,” he said.
Days following the funeral several people had told the Reads they had reconciled broken relationships after hearing Mary’s messages of forgiveness.

“This never should have happened,” said Cathy in the midst of sobs about the horrific massacre. “But God did things to cushion the blow and that helps us carry on,” said the Navy Commander, as she wiped her tears.

The message of forgiveness was no surprise to Mary’s family, who remembered her as a vibrant and bubbly teen who lived life to the fullest and was filled with love for Christ. She greeted all those whom she encountered with a smile, said Peter, who donned a Virginia Tech tie and Virginia Tech pin on his lapel in honor of the victims.

“It’s hard to find a picture of her not smiling,” he said. The teenager’s happy disposition was a constant in her life from the time she was a small child, her father said.

“Her grandmother used to call her ‘little Mary sunshine,” he continued. “She grew up that way and that continued to be the core of who she was. That’s how she dealt with the world,” he said of his daughter who played the clarinet in the Annandale Marching Atoms. She also had a gift of “bridging gaps between people.”



Although Mary had challenges in her life, Cathy said, she allowed those challenges to “pull her closer to God. She knew who she was and she knew her faith.” She was faith-filled and devout, words not often associated with teens. In an index card posted on her desk in her dorm room, Mary had written a Scripture passage and had incorporated her own name in it. It read, “For I know the plans I have for you (Mary),” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11).

Cathy was distraught reading that passage and could not understand God’s will. What about Mary’s future? What about her plans? she wondered. She later realized that Mary “has a future in heaven. She went to heaven … God has plans for her.”

To confirm those sentiments, the family received a letter of consolation from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. According to the Reads, the letter stated, “Mary has not gone, but she’s gone ahead.”

Although he has Mary’s notebook of quotes practically memorized, Peter often goes through it.

“It helps me remember what matters, which direction Mary … would want us to go. It’s easy to continue to wallow in despair and be angry and let that turn to hate, which is so far from what we need,” he said. “A lot of people are responding out of fear … to seek vengeance and seek some kind of justice which isn’t tempered by mercy,” he continued. However, the notebook sheds light on a powerful way to find healing and comfort through forgiveness. Peter often contemplates the “Ave Maria” sung during Mary’s funeral and remembers that during Mary’s life he “would ask the Blessed Mother to watch over her.”



The pain and the hurt are still raw and deep. “Unless you’ve been through it, you can’t understand the depth,” Peter said. The family is “overwhelmed by grief and sadness … it’s worse than you can ever imagine,” he said.

Despite the suffering, it is their own faith, the prayers of family and friends and the little red notebook that has helped sustain the family, the Reads said. “I’m sure Mary is helping us too … She’s right up there close to God. She helps us all the time,” said Cathy.

Peter spoke of the great support from the clergy, especially from Father James Arsenault who was on campus within 10 minutes of knowing of the shootings. He was there, “taking care of families, taking care of students,” said Peter also noting the support of their pastor, Father James Barkett of St. Mary of Sorrows, in their time of grief.

“It’s not just Mary it’s all of them. They were living for bigger things. Now they are all doing that work as part of the communion of saints. It gives me comfort,” her father said. Even though they were brought together through a horrific school shooting, “God’s purpose finds its way through that.” Although, Peter admitted, “We won’t know until we’re there.”

Speaking about the victims, he noted the heroism of the professors who made sure their students were safe before going to find out what was happening. He said, “If you want to talk about imitation of Christ that’s where you look.”

Mary’s five younger siblings: Stephen, Patrick, Hannah, Brendan and Colleen, are all finding it difficult to fully grasp their big sister’s permanent physical absence. However, said Cathy, in their childlike faith, they all end their night prayers by saying, “good night Mary in heaven.”

Trying to better understand the location of heaven, Mary’s younger brother Patrick wondered if heaven is invisible. Finding satisfaction in the affirming answer from his mother, he understood why he could not see his sister anymore.

In an effort to lead people to Christ, Mary had joined Campus Crusade for Christ and applied to be a Bible Study leader on campus. It seems as though she has not allowed her death to stop her from doing the work she felt called to do. Through her message of forgiveness, she has already helped change many hearts and helped people forgive and let go of hurt. Recounting the words a good friend told him after Mary’s funeral, Peter said, “Mary’s work in Christ is just beginning.”

Give them a voice

From AP-

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Relatives of Virginia Tech shooting victims said Monday they felt "ostracized" from a governor's panel studying the killings, and they questioned the use of their loved ones' names to raise millions of dollars for a memorial fund.

Peter Read, whose daughter Mary Karen Read was killed, thanked the eight-member panel for its work and told members that the victims' families could remain objective if included.

"We bring a qualification to the table that we don't feel any of you can match _ which is an intimate knowledge of what Seung-Hui Cho took from us," Read said as his wife Cathy stood by his side.

He then read a statement that was written on behalf of 13 families.

"We are angry about being ostracized from a government-chartered panel investigating a government-sponsored university, and about how the university has used the names and images of our loved ones to raise millions of dollars without any consultation," the families said.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's spokesman said the governor wanted "specialized expertise" when he named the eight-member panel, which includes former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, psychiatrists, educational specialists and former law enforcement officials. The panel was charged to review the tragedy, the circumstances that led to it and the response.

"Family is important to us. It's also important, I think, to the governor that he have a panel that was viewed as being totally objective and not driven by emotions," said panel Chairman W. Gerald Massengill. He is a former Virginia State Police superintendent who oversaw the agency's response to the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon and the 2002 Washington-area sniper attacks.

The panel is eight people, giving one slot on it to the families of the Virginia Tech massacre is the right thing to do. As a parent who lost a child, unless you've been through the experience yourself you'll never understand it. The Reads and the other families have lost too much already, lets not take away their voices too. All the families would be happy to remain quiet, if they could only have their loved ones back. They need to and a have a right to speak up.

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Norris Hall to reopen

From AP-

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Officials at Virginia Tech University have announced a plan to reopen offices and laboratories in Norris Hall later this month.

The building, which is where Seung Hui Cho went on a deadly rampage, firing 174 rounds, killing 30 people and wounding 24 others, has been vacant since April 16th.

When the building is reopened on June 18, facilities in the building will be used by the Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering departments. They were the primary occupants before the shooting.

Dozens of suggested uses for the building were made by faculty students and others, which ranged from returning it to classrooms to making it a memorial to knocking it down, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said.

Virginia Tech officials said Norris Hall contains sophisticated laboratories that cannot be moved and are essential to the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics.

Officials are developing a plan to convert general classrooms at Norris Hall for other uses.

I still think the University should rename the hall after Professor Librescu. If not for that brave man, more people would have died.

Expect the reaction of the families of those who died on April 16th to be mixed. As it will be from students and faculty at the school.

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Nice thought

From NBC 4-

As many as 30,000 people were expected to attend evening ceremonies at Lane Stadium as the school issues diplomas to graduates, as well as diplomas and class rings to the relatives of 27 students killed in a shooting rampage April 16. Five faculty members also were slain.

Peter and Cathy Read's 19-year-old daughter, freshman Mary Karen Read, had hoped to earn a degree at some point. Peter Read traveled from Annandale with 15 family members for the ceremony, saying, "This is right for us." He called the diplomas, class rings and other recognition "an incredibly important gift" from the university.

Read said he's impressed that Virginia Tech provided another diploma and ring for Mary's mother -- his ex-wife -- Yon Son Yi, of New Jersey.

As I noted earlier, little mention has been made of Mary Karen's birth mother. Perhaps she is keeping her grief private. Thank you Virginia Tech for not forgetting Yon Son Yi.

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Public pain and mourning

Tomorrow night will be commencement night at Virginia Tech University, less than a month since last month's massacare. All the students who died are being degrees by the university as part of the evening's ceremony. Some of the families plan to be there, some not.

I've been through the grief process after losing a child, but not in a way near what these families are experiencing. For their children's deaths happened in a very public way. The wife and I sent a mass card to Mary Karen Read's family and as I'm finding out many others are showing ourpourings of sympathy. If I were the families, I don't know if this would be of comfort or not. Bottom line- I don't know what to say, but suggest you read the USA Today article below and say a prayer for all these families.

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Bryan Cloyd had misgivings when he got a letter inviting his family to this weekend's graduation ceremonies at Virginia Tech. His daughter Austin, 18, just a freshman, would be awarded her degree — posthumously.

The decision facing Cloyd, a Virginia Tech accounting professor, also confronts other families of students killed April 16 in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history: Do they attend graduation ceremonies that begin Friday, and experience a potentially painful reminder of all that was lost? And are they ready to spend time with other families who share their indescribable grief?

Cloyd's first reaction: "I'm not sure we're ready for that. We cry every day about one victim. Frankly, we're a little scared to immerse ourselves in the grief of 31 others."

His family, though, reconsidered. They've decided to march proudly Friday night into Lane Stadium with graduates from the Honors Program, behind a group of bagpipe players — "something that Austin was excited about doing. So we wanted to do that, too."

To attend commencement or stay home — that has become the latest in a series of emotionally wrenching decisions facing 32 grieving families, including those of five faculty members killed during the shooting rampage by student Seung Hui Cho.

As thousands of parents are descending on Blacksburg, Va., for the ceremonies, the victims' families, including 16 interviewed by USA TODAY, are caught between two worlds. They are torn between dwelling on what happened that day — when two students were killed at West Ambler Johnston dormitory and 30 other people were gunned down at Norris Hall two hours later — and moving on with their lives.

The families say they're going through an intensely private grief while fielding calls, cards and computer messages from thousands of people around the world.

They search for forgiveness but also are determined to make sure that a state review panel fully investigates how the shootings might have been prevented, including questions about whether more should have been done to treat Cho for mental illness.

Many of the families say they're eager to establish ties with other victims' families, and yet wary of facing the emotions such bonding could bring.

University officials plan a mostly upbeat ceremony at the football stadium Friday night, but one portion will be devoted to the 32 victims. Their photos will be flashed on a giant screen as the school's alma mater is played.

The university's president and provost will leave the stage to greet the families, who will be given class rings. There will be a special page on the victims in the commencement program.

The school has assigned a staff member to each family for the weekend, has invited them to dinner Friday and brunch Saturday, and has offered to pay travel costs for relatives from as far as Egypt, India and Indonesia.

Even so, some say they can't go back to Blacksburg less than four weeks after racing there in a panic to learn whether their loved ones were among the victims.

"To make that drive down there is just too much. It's too soon," says Tracy Littlejohn, whose cousin Erin Peterson, 18, of Centreville, Va., was among the victims.

The parents and young wife of doctoral candidate Waleed Mohammed Shaalan, 32, "are too sad to come" from Egypt, says Hesham Rakha, one of Shaalan's graduate school professors.

Slain freshman Henry Lee's family won't come from nearby Roanoke even though his sister, Chi, a senior, is getting her bachelor's degree in accounting.

"We were planning to have a big party for her graduation," says their brother, Joe. Since the shootings, "everything has kind of blown away."

Others will attend, but with mixed feelings. Some are anxious about seeing other graduates head off into the world toward opportunities that their slain family members will never experience.

"We should be there for him," says Linda Gwaltney, step mom of Matthew Gwaltney, who was to have accepted a master's degree in engineering. She will attend with Matthew's father, Greg.

"It's going to be difficult," she says. "I'm not looking forward to it, but it would feel worse not going."

Personal pain on public display

The first thing the victims' families discovered was that while their grief was personal, the attention focused on the massacre was global. Many weren't ready for both at once.

Some families remain too shaken to talk much.

"We're still struggling with it," says Michael Bishop, a science-fiction writer who lost his son, German language instructor Christopher James Bishop, 35.

Girish Suratkal, whose sister-in-law Minal Panchal of India was killed at 26, says the family is "still coming to terms" with the tragedy.

Littlejohn says Peterson's parents "are in constant prayer, trying to get their minds around the fact that she's gone."

Barbara La Porte, who lost her 20-year-old son Matthew, a sophomore member of the university's Corps of Cadets, says she's "just trying to get some normality back to my life."

Liviu Librescu, a 76-year-old professor from Israel, was the oldest victim. The Holocaust survivor barricaded the door of his aerospace engineering class as students leapt from the windows. Everyone in the room survived — except him.

Since the shooting, his family in Raanana, near Tel Aviv, has been told repeatedly of his heroism, says Ayala Librescu, his daughter-in-law.

She says some in Librescu's family don't like the attention, but "others feel proud and honored to be able to talk about Liviu and give him all the respect he deserves for everything he has done."

It's been nearly impossible for the families to grieve in private. Interview requests arrive daily, as do condolences in all shapes and sizes: cards and e-mails, flowers and fruit baskets, Internet messages on Facebook and MySpace. Peterson's parents bought 500 thank-you cards for starters.

Former co-workers of Matthew Gwaltney, 24, planted a Japanese maple tree with leaves that are maroon — one of the school's colors — in his family's backyard in Chesterfield, Va.

Although most families might find comfort in the outpouring of support, "it may delay their grieving," says psychologist Edith Fresh, associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta.

"There's no set order for this type of grieving," Fresh says. "It's kind of an ebb and flow. They may feel anger, then depression and then back to anger. There's no completion date."

Many families have focused their time and attention on creating memorial funds to benefit schools and churches, college scholarships and theater programs, as well as campus security and firearms safety.

The family of Maxine Turner took out a half-page ad in a northern Virginia weekly newspaper to thank well-wishers for their words and actions, including rebuilding their fence and doing yard work.

"It is unbearable," they wrote of the loss of their 22-year-old daughter and sister, who was about to graduate with a degree in chemical engineering. "And yet, we must bear it."

Trying to forgive but not forget

How will they bear it?

They could take a page from a red notebook in which 19-year-old Mary Read wrote her favorite quotations — a notebook her father found the morning of her funeral.

The ever-smiling freshman's last entry, which he read to hundreds of mourners, was about the power of forgiveness: "When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive."

Peter Read — who with his wife, Catherine, will attend their late daughter's commencement — finds it a powerful message, but one that is difficult to embrace.

"I'm not saying forgiveness is easy or instantaneous," he says. "We all have this huge mix of unresolved feelings."

Several have spoken of forgiveness — for Cho and his family, the school, the mental health system. Joe Samaha, who lost his daughter Reema, 18, and also plans to be in Blacksburg this weekend, says his family's surname means forgiveness in Arabic. Cho's family, he says, "has also lost a son" and should be consoled.

Despite the two hours that passed before Virginia Tech alerted students and faculty members about the first shooting, few families blame school officials.


TIMELINE: How the tragedy unfolded

"We don't need to blame anyone," says Liselle Vega Cortes, the widow of fellow graduate student Juan Ramon Ortiz, 26, of Puerto Rico. "What happened there could have happened anywhere else."

For others, the path to recovery is paved with a desire for justice.

Joe Ly, who spells his name differently than brother Henry Lee, says the university "should have been paying closer attention" to Cho's mental state.

Mildred Granata, whose son Kevin, 45, was an engineering professor with three kids, blames gun laws that allowed Cho to buy two weapons, even though Cho had been ordered to undergo outpatient psychiatric treatment.

"I'm angry that this happened to my son, and my grandchildren are fatherless," she says.

Several families want the review panel created by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to study everything from the university's actions the morning of the shootings to the state's mental health system and gun laws.

"I do not want to go through life as an angry person, and to avoid that I know that I must forgive," Cloyd says. "But I am not sure that meaningful forgiveness is possible without also addressing the question of responsibility, and then doing something to ensure that the underlying problems are fixed."

'We want to share our grieving'

Several victims' relatives say they want to get in touch with each other, eventually. It's a step that helped survivors of past crime rampages.

Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was among 13 victims of the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, says the families affected by that ordeal came together to raise money for a new school library.

"We also began to socialize," he says, inviting each other to weddings and graduations. "There was a bond that was formed." That may be more difficult for the Virginia Tech families because they live farther apart, he says.

Many family members met each other in Blacksburg during the days after the shootings, waiting first for the dead to be identified and then for their bodies to be released.

Cortes, who is coming with Ortiz's parents from Puerto Rico for the commencement, is one of the few victims' relatives who have spoken with others since then. "We are trying to stay in touch," she says. "It's very helpful to do that."

Many family members are eager to lean on each other. "I want to talk to all of them, see how they feel," Ly says. "For us, it's pretty painful. We want to share our grieving."

Going to commencement so soon after clearing out Henry's dorm room would be too painful. "I don't think it's a good time yet."

Others want to share happier memories.

"From what I've read about the other students, they were all so special and similar in many ways to Reema," Samaha says. "I hope the families will all be able to share in due course. I think about them always and wonder how they are doing. Whether we wanted it or not, our lives were intertwined on April 16."

Send them all back

Pat Buchanan at Townhall wrote-

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

What was Cho doing here? How did he get in?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion 4pposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

Cho was one of them.

Buchanan is either full of hate or just doesn't get much. He obviously hasn't met any of the thousands of Philippine immigrants to this country. Like my wife, and they have more than assimilated into this country.

As to Korean-Americans, I'll point out.

1- 99,000 have been adopted by American families since the end of the Korean war.

2- Mary Karen Read, one of those killed at Virginia Tech, was born to an American father and Korean mother in Seoul South Korea in 1988.

At least four of those killed at Virginia Tech were foreign born. I haven't gone and counted. One was the Professor who sacrificed his life for his students. Hey Pat, do you ever think of what immigrants contribute to this country?

3- The thousands of brides brought to the US by their military husbands dating back to the end of the Korean war. Military marriages have high divorce rates, but still many of these women are still married and assimilated into US culture.

4- Korean Americans have made notable contributions to this country. Take for instance, Victor Cha.

Victor D. Cha, a Georgetown University international relations professor, started his job as an Asia specialist at the White House's National Security Council during Christmas week in 2004. His boss at the time said it would be a quiet period to settle into his new job, the first time Cha had worked for the government.

Then the Asian tsunami struck, killing at least 235,000 people as it swept across a dozen countries.

Cha's sudden introduction to high-level crisis management was a revelation. Debate over the rise of China and the eclipse of the United States dominate the discussions within the ivy walls of academia. But in the real world, he discovered, only one nation had the military might and the diplomatic connections to quickly deal with the tragedy.

"You see that in the crisis of this magnitude, what is the country that steps up and provides the public good? It wasn't China. China's role was helpful but peripheral. It was the United States," Cha said. "It is not only that we responded but that everyone is looking to us to respond."

Cha, 45, will return to Georgetown this week, but his government service has had unusual impact, especially for an ivory-tower academic with no experience in policymaking.

He arrived at the White House with a reputation as an advocate for a tough approach to negotiations with North Korea -- what he called "hawk engagement" -- but in the end he drafted the crucial memo that helped persuade President Bush earlier this year to allow U.S. negotiators to meet for bilateral talks with their North Korean counterparts in Berlin.

The approach all but shattered the taboo on substantive bilateral negotiations that Bush had imposed since the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions erupted nearly five years ago. North Korea requested the meeting after refusing substantive talks at six-nation negotiations in December. (Pyongyang proposed Geneva as a venue, but that is where a Clinton-era agreement scorned by Bush was negotiated, so Berlin was chosen.)

Cha caught Bush's eye by arguing in his memo that it is time to test North Korea's intentions -- seeking an agreement with specific actions and a limited time frame. North Korea ultimately agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor in 60 days if the United States ended a banking inquiry, but North Korea has now missed the deadline by more than two weeks.

Cha declined to discuss the memo. But he said that despite media reports of intense ideological disputes over Korea policy, "from my perch, it is all what the president decides. He wanted to see if the North Koreans were serious about implementing the September 2005 joint statement." Cha was referring to a deal that had gone dormant for more than a year. "Part of trying to decide whether they are serious is that you pull on the negotiating thread a bit harder."

Cha, a fluent Korean speaker whose father-in-law was a general and minister in the Roh Tae Woo government of South Korea, was also responsible for policy to Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands, reporting to Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs. But Cha has made his mark on North Korea policy, particularly after he was elevated last year to be the deputy U.S. negotiator at the North Korea talks, working closely with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator.

I guess we're supposed to forget all this, and deport all Koreans back to their home country because of one mass murderer. That's if you take Buchanan's writing to its illogical conclusion.

Dr. Steven Taylor writes-

Now, there is no denying the fact that if we had had no immigration from Korea, then Cho would never have gone on his rampage. By the same token if the US had a policy of killing all children save for firstborns, then Cho’s rampage likewise would never have happened. In other words, Buchanan’s argument here is utter nonsense.

Buchanan goes on to list numerous immigrants who have committed violent crimes.

What about Timothy McVeigh? Last time I checked, he was home grown. The Columbine criminals? Natives. Same for Charles Whitman, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, to name a few.

The commonality is that human beings will sometimes do evil–even massive evil. Keeping immigrants out won’t stop that.

Buchanan is xenophobic but then I think that applies to much of the immigration debate that's going on right now. TFM is all for legal immigration, because this country needs workers.

Linked to- Perri Nelson, Right Voices, Third World County,

Words to live by- Mary Karen Read's funeral

The funerals of those killed at Virginia Tech have begun. Mary Karen Read's was today.

More than 900 of Mary Read's former classmates, friends and family gathered to honor the 19-year-old Virginia Tech freshman yesterday. Read, who graduated from Annandale last spring and aspired to be an elementary school teacher, was shot to death on the morning of April 16 as she sat in French class.

Mourners lined the streets near her home holding white balloons and waving signs with her name encircled in hearts as the hearse carrying her body passed by.



She had been an enthusiastic clarinetist for the Annandale band, so members of the Marching Atoms -- dressed in their concert tuxes and black dresses -- serenaded her at the burial service at Pleasant Valley Memorial Park.

They played "Amazing Grace" and then the school fight song, the one everybody knew by heart.

It is heartbreaking that so many so young had to die last week. But here's the clincher from what happened today. Words that can't fail to move you.

Peter Read, the father of Virginia Tech shooting victim Mary Karen Read, said he never intended to give a eulogy at her funeral Mass today at St. Mary's of Sorrows Church in Fairfax.

But the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel climbed to the lectern at the end of the hour-long service to read from one of his daughter's notebooks. He had found it only this morning. It was a little red, bound diary where the former Annandale High School student had written some of her favorite quotes on forgiveness.

" When a deep injury is done us, we will never recover until we forgive," he read from the notebook, an entry his daughter had penned in February.

"That was Mary's message," Peter Read said. "I just wanted to share it with all of you."

Incredible touching words from someone taken from us too soon. Words we should all try to live by. I wish I had that wisdon when it comes to my late son Daniel.

Sweet words from a sweet little girl. Be with God Mary Karen Read.

Update- Here is the Washinton Post article in its entirety. The version I quoted above was an earlier and shorter one. I have to compliment Annie Gowen on her excellent writing.

One comment. I've found no news reporting on Mary Karen's Korean born mother. I believe she is the Asian woman in the last of the photos in this post. She has to be grieving as strongly as Peter Read at present.

In a terrible week when blessings were few, Peter Read considers himself fortunate that his daughter Mary came home to Annandale to spend time with her grandparents the weekend before the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Everything about the weekend was just so ordinary, he recalled. Read played on her laptop, instant-messaging her friends. She and her dad prepared her first-ever income tax form. And Saturday night, she asked her stepmother, Cathy, to teach her how to make her favorite dessert, pumpkin pie.

Halfway through, her grandmother snapped a picture of Mary Read, a big smile on her face as always, waving a rolling pin above her first successful pie crust. Look closely and you can see a little smudge of flour on her upper lip.

She took a piece of pie back to school that Sunday night. Her family found the empty container when they packed up her tidy dorm room days later. The 19-year-old was among those fatally shot.

"What college freshman stays home with her family on Saturday night -- baking pies?" her grandmother, Catherine Read, of Macedon, N.Y., marveled.

But that was Mary, friends and family say. She could be introverted, but not so much that her sunny personality was shaded at Annandale High School, from which she graduated last spring. She was a member of the homecoming court. She played lacrosse, and clarinet in the marching band. Her band mates voted her "Best Smile."

Mary, killed in her French class, was buried yesterday after a Catholic Mass at St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax Station. More than 900 of her friends, family members and former teachers came to mourn her, some lining the route to the cemetery with hands over their hearts, clutching white balloons. At graveside, the Annandale Marching Atoms serenaded her with "Amazing Grace" and a final playing of the school's fight song.

At the service, her father, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told the mourners that he never intended to give a eulogy, hoping it would be more a celebration of her life. But he ended up pulling out a little red notebook taken from Mary's room he'd found only yesterday morning. In it were Mary's handwritten notes on forgiveness, dated Feb. 4.



"When a deep injury is done us, we will never recover until we forgive," he read from the notebook. "That was Mary's message," he said. "I just wanted to share it with all of you."

Read was born in South Korea in January 1988, the daughter of an American serviceman and his Korean bride, Yon Son Zhang, now of Palisades Park, N.J. She spent much of her short lifetime bridging the gap between the two cultures, her father said, as she would later bridge the divide between her divorced parents.

On her MySpace profile, when asked to describe herself, she wrote, "Uhm . . . a girl who's half-Asian and half-white."

She loved Korean food and was slowly learning how to read and write the language, her father said. And it was going to take a while. "That was something else she expected to have time to do," he said.

She lived the typical peripatetic existence of military offspring -- in Texas, California and back to South Korea -- until 1997, when her parents separated and she went to live with her mother in Clarksburg, Tenn. After Peter Read remarried, to Navy Cmdr. Cathy Read, Mary and her brother Stephen, now 11, moved to Annandale in 2001.

At Annandale High School, she got more B's than A's, but she was diligent and a member of the National and French honor societies, her father said.

She loved kids and wanted to be a teacher. She had a lot of practice with them. In addition to her brother, she had four half-siblings ages 10 months to 11 years and had "honchoed" the Easter Egg hunt for some of them just two weeks before.

"She was the teenage girl every parent would love to have," Peter Read said. "I never had to worry with Mary -- she always made the right choices, had the right friends."

She was an enthusiastic member of the marching band, concert band and the school's flag-waving "winter guard," said her band teacher, Jack Elgin. She was a section leader for the clarinets, but her personality made it hard to keep order among the unruly teens in the band, he recalled.

"She was so nice she couldn't bring herself to yell at anybody," Elgin remembered. "We used to get on her for that. She'd giggle them into doing something . . . like 'C'mon guys,' real sweet and soft-spoken."

Once at Tech, she chose a major -- interdisciplinary studies -- with hopes of later studying for a master's degree in education. Like many freshmen, though, she was sometimes sad and lonely and struggled to fit in on Tech's big campus.

"She was still getting used to it. It's big, a huge campus, so it's hard for everybody," said Tim Johnson, 19, a friend from Annandale who also attends Tech. They'd talk about it sometimes, when Johnson walked her back to her dorm after class.

In recent weeks, though, she'd begun settling down, signing up to be a Bible study leader and talking about joining a sorority, friends said.

Johnson was just one of dozens of Read's former and current classmates who have streamed by the family's tan colonial on a cul-de-sac in Annandale since last week to grieve and comfort each other. A tree in the front yard has become a makeshift shrine, with Read's picture and candles and flowers. Friends write messages on tags -- "We Love You Mary" and tie them to the branches.

Sometimes when it's quiet and no one else is around, her father stands by the tree. He says he can only bear to read a few of the little tags at a time.

He'd like for her to see it. He says he asked the funeral home if they would drive the hearse by the house on the way to the cemetery, so Mary could come home one more time.

Also blogging on Mary- World Beyond
Linked to- Adam's Blog, Amboy Times, Basil, Blue Star, Conservative Thoughts, High Desert Wanderer, Jo, Leaning Straight Up, Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson, Pirate's Cove, Planck's Constant, Pursuing Holiness, Random Yak, Right Voices, Right Wing Nation, Yankee Sailor,

In memory of

Mary Karen Read. She was one of the 32 people murdered at Virginia Tech this week.

I read this AP article last night. It was a report on Mary Karen's father and the grief he is going through now. Having lost a child myself, I can understand a bit of what Mr. Read is going through. God bless him and all of Mary Karen's family.

The point is, that the media for the most part is concentrating on the killer. His image being plastered all over the internet and newspapers. This IMHO is only serving the needs of that psychopathic piece of scum that ruined so many lives the other day. Not just those he killed but their families also. Why not talk about the lives lost and the ones ruined instead? The MSM is glorifying this killer by their continued focus on him rather than those who died.

That's pretty much what Mr. Read said. He wants the world to know and celebrate the lives of his child and all the other lives lost on Monday. For the next few days, I may put up the stories of those who died. They are the ones we should be remembering.

Linked to- Adam, Jo, Leaning Straight Up, Morewhat, Perri Nelson, Pirate's Cove, Pursuing Holiness, Samantha Burns, StikNstein, Third World County,

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Peter Read wants you to make a choice.

He asks that you turn away from the face of the deranged gunman glaring at the camera. Gaze instead at the face of a bright and bubbly brunette who smiled even when she was unhappy, a face always in the middle of a crowd.

It is the face of Mary Karen Read, the daughter he will now see only in scrapbooks.



Hers is just one of 32 promising lives cut short at Virginia Tech — the life of a musician, an aspiring schoolteacher, a doting big sister to five siblings. A 19-year-old freshman who had just filed her first tax return and learned, the day before she died, how to make a pumpkin pie.

When you think of the massacre that befell this quiet college town, those are the memories Peter Read wants you to remember.

"We want the world to know and celebrate our children's lives, and we believe that's the central element that brings hope in the midst of great tragedy," Read said Thursday, with his wife, Cathy, at his side. "These kids were the best that their generation has to offer."

As the Reads left Blacksburg on Thursday for their home in Annandale, they were exhausted, pale, heartbroken — and furious. On television, the overwhelming image of the tragedy was the face of Cho Seung-Hui — a killer whose name Peter Read cannot bring himself to speak.

"I want to issue a direct personal plea, to all the major media," he told The Associated Press. "For the love of God and our children, stop broadcasting those images and those words. Choose to focus on life and the love and the light that our children brought into the world and not on the darkness and the madness and the death."

Several networks have already heard Read's message loud and clear — from disgusted viewers. Fox News Channel announced it would no longer run the disturbing audio and images of the gunman. NBC, which aired the material first, and cable outlet MSNBC said they would "severely limit" their use.

Read hopes the focus will swing back to the children. Children such as Paul Turner's daughter Maxine, a 22-year-old chemical engineering major from Vienna who loved beaches, swing dancing and her close-knit circle of friends. She would have graduated soon, and she had already lined up a job in Elkton, Md.

At Virginia Tech, Maxine Turner co-founded a sorority and earned a red belt in Tae Kwon Do. She loved the German band Rammstein and signed up for a language class to understand the lyrics.

It was there that she died.

On Thursday, her body rested at a morgue in Roanoke, where state and U.S. flags were lowered and access was heavily guarded by police. A hearse will arrive sometime this week to carry her home, a scenario that will be repeated many times as parents hold funerals.

Like so many today, the Read family is blended: Peter Read, a 44-year-old Air Force veteran, married Yon Son Yi, of Palisades Park, N.J., who gave birth to Mary Read. But the couple later divorced.

Yi remarried and had a second daughter, Hannah, 4 1/2. Read remarried too, and he and his wife had four children: Stephen, 11; Patrick, 4 1/2; Brendan, 2 1/2; and Colleen, 10 months.

The Reads live in a quiet cul-de-sac in Annandale, where they moved in 2001 from Virginia Beach.

Mary Read made friends fast. She joined the French honor society, the National Honor Society and the marching band. She played lacrosse for two years and moved easily between the cliques that fill high school hallways.



She wanted to teach math and science to elementary school students, and she enrolled at Virginia Tech.

In her dorm room were scrapbooks filled with hundreds of photographs — at summer band camp, at Myrtle Beach, on the arm of her father as part of the homecoming court.

The end of her freshman year was just weeks away, and she had planned to spend the summer at home, working at a deli and helping care for her siblings.

She came home Easter weekend, staging practice egg hunts for her brothers. Then, the weekend before her death, she came home again.

She divided her time between her friends and her family those two days but was inseparable from her laptop. She sat on the stairs, where the wireless reception was best, to instant message and e-mail her friends. A brother sat nearby, toy computer on his lap.

"He wanted to be like Mary," Peter Read recalled.

On Sunday, Read's wife showed his daughter how to make her favorite dessert, a pumpkin pie. And when Read took her to the bus stop at 4:30 p.m., she had a slab of the pie and a container of Cool Whip in a plastic bag.

Mary Read never called to check in when she reached Blacksburg, but her parents know what she did that night: She had recorded her favorite TV show, "House," on DVDs and watched them on her laptop during the 4 1/2-hour ride.

The next morning, she had French class in Norris Hall, where gunman Cho Seung-Hui took her life.

When news of the shootings broke, Peter Read started calling his daughter, hoping she would pick up. Then he called her roommate. The hours wore on, without word.

When Read learned that the parents of his daughter's longtime friend Danielle Waters were driving to Blacksburg late that afternoon to find their daughter, he asked to ride along.

On the drive, Olga and John Waters learned their daughter was alive. Around 9:30 p.m., Read's cell phone rang. It was his wife, and the state police were at their door.

The Reads won't talk about their grief over these past few days. It's too painful, too personal. The time is not yet right.

But they share the photos and drawings from their daughter's dorm room, which was just as she had left it.

In a plastic bag was the empty container that had held her pie. And on her desk was a calendar Mary Read's grandmother had given her years ago, each day offering a quote from a famous woman.

On April 16, the words were from a teacher, Helen Keller:

"When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another."