Posted on Apr 19, 2007

 A biting wind blew across the Union College campus Tuesday evening, making it feel like it was freezing. 
   The wind made it impossible to light candles at a vigil for victims of Monday’s massacre on the Virginia Tech campus hundreds of miles away. Still, more than 300 people came out to pay their respects and ultimately lock arms and encircle the Nott Memorial in solidarity with their fellow students in Blacksburg.
   “It’s pretty cold outside,” Union College senior Charles Holiday noted to the crowd, “but I can’t imagine how cold those parents feel knowing their children aren’t coming back.”
   Holiday spoke as a student, but also as a victim of campus violence. He was stabbed in February 2006 in a racially motivated incident while visiting Cornell University. His attacker is in prison.
   Students attending Tuesday night’s vigil joined those from colleges around the country in honoring those who died at Virginia Tech. Thirty-two students and faculty members were killed in the bloodshed, the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. The gunman also killed himself.
   The Union College vigil was planned by several students, including ceremony leader Brian Gulask, a senior from Rochester.
   He described the scene he saw from the top of the Nott’s east steps, students who may not even know each other coming together. “It’s horrible that it comes to this type of event for that to happen,” he said.
   Also on the steps was a maroon and orange Virginia Tech flag and sweatshirt. Union residence life Director Todd Clark proudly wore his Tech sweatshirt as he spoke to the crowd. He is a 1995 Virginia Tech graduate.
   He repeated accounts of heroism in the ordeal. Resident adviser Ryan Clark “ran into the fire” responding to the initial disturbance at the residence hall. He was one of two people killed there. Professor Liviu Librescu also “ran into the fire” by holding off the shooter as his students escaped. He died also.
   “More so than ever in my life, I am a proud member of the Virginia Tech community,” Todd Clark said.
   Clark read e-mails he’s received from friends. He choked up over a line in one letter from a friend and staff member in the alumni office at Virginia Tech: “I never thought I’d listen to my son utter the words, ‘Is my daddy dead?’ ”
   He read the line as his own 2-year-old son, Owen, donning his miniature Hokie sweatshirt, wandered around his feet.
   Then there was Schenectady resident Paul Farrell, a 1949 graduate of Virginia Tech, who climbed the east entrance stairs to express his pride as a graduate.
   Farrell told the crowd he studied engineering in the same Norris Hall where most of the killings took place 60 years later. He’s lived in this area for 40 years.
   Union College President Stephen Ainlay is in California, but sent a letter commending the students for their show of support.
   Following the vigil, hundreds locked arms around the memorial at a nearly 50 foot radius from the building.
   Afterward, sophomores Tony Morello of Greenwich, Conn., and Brett Huntley of Kingsboro, Mass., said they came out simply to show support.
   They came from a play rehearsal they cut short so they all could attend.
   “We all decided that this was more important,” Morello said. “We just wanted to give as much as we can to the families of everyone in Virginia.
   “It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”