Originally written Friday, April 20th, 2007
BY EDWIN COONEY
Only six short months have passed since a 32 year-old milkman named Charles Carl Roberts did his dastardly deed at the schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania ending the lives of eleven innocent Amish girls.
Now, a 23 year-old legal immigrant man from South Korea, Seung-Hui Cho, has tripled Roberts’ carnage total just six months distance in time and a few hundred miles south at Blacksburg, Virginia’s Polytechnic Institute.
Like all tragedies, the hows and whys are being examined and the opportunities and driving forces of the killer are the source of genuine review, regret and, most certainly, opinion.
Although there are indeed circumstances of this tragedy that are explainable and even understandable, it is likely that both time and the inevitable investigations will uncover facts which may, in many of our minds, make this tragedy appear more like a calamity.
Though we will insist that we genuinely seek solace for ourselves and the victims’ families, the fact is that Americans are pretty hard to satisfy when it comes down to identifying and ultimately agreeing on what the essential realities are in connection with an event of this magnitude.
For instance, local police authorities have explained that the reports surrounding Cho’s killing of Ryan Clark, the dormitory resident advisor, and Ms. Emily Hilscher around 7:15 that morning appeared to be a “domestic matter,” and that they had no way of knowing that other students in other parts of the Blacksburg, Virginia campus were at any risk. Still it seems to many observers that some kind of precaution might reasonably have been taken since this violent and deadly crime had occurred in a place of such a highly dense and vulnerable population. The sheer logic of such an assumption by local police and school authorities—that the early morning killings was a domestic matter--was most certainly a factor, however small, in the shooting episode that began nearly two and a half hours later at Norris Hall.
Then, too, there is the significance of Cho’s temporary confinement in the Carilion mental facility at nearby St. Albans, Virginia in December 2005 following reports to the police of Cho’s “scary” behavior as experienced by two campus coeds. Some, no doubt, will insist that since one of that agency’s doctors had pronounced Cho as “mentally ill,” although of no apparent danger to himself or anyone else, that he should have been removed from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. However, there is reason for the institute’s position that since the school isn’t in the mental health business and wasn’t privy to the diagnosis, it was not within the school’s domain to take any punitive action against Seung-Hui Cho.
Next, there is the concern expressed about Cho’s behavior on the part of several members of the university’s English faculty. One professor, Nikki Giovanni—-a poet—-had expelled Cho from her creative writing class as early as October 2005 because his behavior was frightening other students. Additionally, other professors including Dr. Lisa Norris -- who separated Cho from the rest of her creative writing class last fall and tutored him herself due to his strange behavior and writing style -- and Dr. Edward C. Falco -- who had become appalled over the profanity and violence of Cho’s work --expressed their concerns to Carolyn D. Rude who is currently the Chair of the school’s English Department. Finally, according to the New York Times, Dr. Norris passed her concerns about Cho on to Mary Ann Lewis, the Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Even more frustrating, it appears that Dean Lewis was helpless to act since she apparently had no record of complaints about Cho except the concerns expressed to her by the English Department faculty.
Thus we have a chain of ironies which paved the way to the holocaust of Monday morning, April 16th, 2007!
So, what of the rest of us? What can we possibly learn from the almost unfathomable events which took place last Monday at Blacksburg, Virginia’s institute of academic endeavour?
The answer to that question isn’t easy to identify, but perhaps there is a clue. That clue can be found—I believe—in the actions of two of the heroes of this, America’s latest nightmare.
The first of the two heroes I have in mind was one of Seung-Hui Cho's victims. His name was Liviu Librescu, a native of Romania who, during World War II, was, due to his Jewish faith, an object of Nazi Germany’s brutality. Then, during the 1960’s and 70’s, Dr. Librescu found himself persecuted once again in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania for refusing to join the Communist Party. The release of his book on aerospace technology, which was secretly funneled through Norway during the mid 1970s, brought Dr. Librescu to the attention of western scientists and engineers. Hence, he first migrated to Israel and then to the United States. Since 1985, he had finally found a peaceful life on the campus of Blacksburg, Virginia’s university teaching engineering. Then, without warning, came the crazed gunman Seung-Hui Cho . Suddenly there was no time for Dr. Librescu to think of the peaceful walks he liked to take in the woods or the classical music he enjoyed so much at home or even of Marlena-his wife-or indeed of his forty-year-old son Yossi, a computer engineer in Israel. All there was time for was to stand in the open doorway of his classroom and direct as many students as he could to evacuate the building through the room’s open windows while he took five of Cho’s bullets into his body.
Hero Number Two is the good Reverend Alexander W. Evans of Blacksburg’s Presbyterian Church. Beginning on Monday afternoon, it was he who took on the task of informing and comforting the almost countless family members and friends of that morning’s victims. Hour after hour, the sobs and moans of the bereaved as they desperately sought to grasp and cope with the loss of those they loved must have seared not only into Reverend Evans’ ears, but most assuredly into his very soul! Nevertheless, Reverend Evans listened, prayed and comforted with all of the energy both physical and spiritual that he possessed. Without a doubt, he sanctified a good many of his prayers with his tears. However, if he was to be true to his soul, what else was there to do?
One of the satisfactions I get out of writing these weekly columns is that of venting some of my opinions. While that is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in today’s opinionated America, out of respect for Dr. Librescu and the Reverend Mr. Evans, I’m going to resist, at least for this week.
Why? Because sometimes opinions are just too easy. Also, more often than we like to think is the case, opinions can be quite self-serving, especially when they’re driven solely by our political and/or personal agendas. However, there’s a much more substantial reason which I believe encompasses the heroic trait common to the brave actions of both Liviu Librescu and Alexander Evans.
What lives at the core of the courage of these two men is their certain knowledge of the power of genuine humility. Both demonstrated during this time of tragedy and sorrow that sometimes the needs of others are more important than how we feel or what we think! However important our “well-founded opinions” may be, the welfare of the least of us is more significant by far than the opinions of all of us!
Liviu Librescu and Alexander W. Evans are heroes because they dared to put you and me first!!!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY