Believe it or not, it’s been 15 years since the Virginia Tech shootings of April 16, 2007 – a horrible day in Virginia history, and also “one of the worst days in my life,” as then-Governor/now-Senator Tim Kaine puts it in the following video. As Kaine explains:
“It really defined my governorship in a lot of ways…I met with families who had lost love ones…and embarked on an effort as governor – together with others – to determine what had happened and what we could do to reduce the chance of it ever happening again…I understood what the world had lost because I read in the backgrounds and achievements of all those who had been killed that day – grad students, foreign exchange students from halfway around the world, freshmen just embarking on a life of promise in college, award-winning professors, a Holocaust survivor…I felt like I understood what the world had lost and has still lost by the absence of these really accomplished and talented people.
At the time of that shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting was the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States…I wish I could still say that that shooting 50 years was the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States. Why would I want to say that about the Virginia Tech shooting? Because I would hope that we would have learned something, wouldn’t have tragedies that have since…and yet we have, we’ve had Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub and some of the other mass shootings, some even claimed more victims than the shootings at Virginia Tech…But what I also remember about that time…is how that community rallied together…the Hokie nation is close and they pulled together…
So I’m thinking about you on a tough day, I’m thinking about the beautiful young people, beautiful professors whose lives and achievements were unjustly, tragically cut short. But I’m also thinking with admiration of your spirit, which I know is as strong today as it was then and will remain so for a very long time.”
Well said, as always, by Tim Kaine.
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