On Sunday, we packed our vehicles in the morning and started on the drive home, but stopped in Kill Devil Hills to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Located on the site of the Wright Brothers’ first controlled powered flight in Kill Devil Hills, the Wright Brothers Visitor Center features exhibits and presentations, as well as full-scale reproductions of the 1902 glider and the 1903 flying machine.
The Wright Brothers National Memorial from afar
Mio running along
Following the path up to the memorial
Mio looks like she could be in flight herself, hoisted on Daddy’s shoulder.
Approaching the towering memorial.
It’s an impressive sight to see!
Dan and Mio at the birthplace of aviation.
Dan is a bit of an aviation enthusiast these days with his drone hobby, so he enjoyed learning more about the Wright Brothers and visiting the memorial.
Hangin’ out with Wilbur.
Giving Wilbur some respite from the sun.
Full-sized statues re-enact the scene of the first flight.
Mio and I on a replica of the Wright Flyer
Dan joined us on the Wright Flyer
After visiting the memorial, we grabbed lunch and continued on our way home. The drive took much longer than we expected thanks to all the traffic of returning vacationers, but we made it back safely albeit exhausted and drained. Our time in Outer Banks was memorable, and it was a nice relaxing getaway with the family. We look forward to returning again someday!
April 16th. The most tragic and heartbreaking day that Virginia Tech had ever seen; the day that our school and campus community was changed forever. For the past five years, this day has been the most difficult day of the year for me to get through. For the past five years, I’ve avoided looking back on blog entries and records I kept from back then, because it was painful enough to remember this day without unearthing all the details and emotions I had felt at the time, and because I felt like it’d just be reopening an old wound.
I remind myself, though, that I have the responsibility to remember. If we don’t, who else will? However much I talk to Dan or my closest friends and family about it, they will never fully understand… only those that were also in Blacksburg, on April 16th of 2007 and experienced the tragedy unfold will be able to remember it in the same way. We must remember so that we can work to hopefully prevent such an event from happening again, and so that we can honor the lives of the students and faculty who were lost.
I dug through my old blog posts from April five years ago, and found this entry which most effectively conveys my experience of April 16, 2007.
The Aftermath
April 22, 2007 7:02 pm
It’s been almost a week since the tragic events of April 16th occurred on our own campus, but it feels so much longer. The day of the shooting alone felt like three or four days as my roommates and I were stuck indoors in our apartment, glued to the television, shedding more and more tears as the death toll continued to rise. It feels like a month has passed now, and the disbelief that this happened on our campus still remains.
In these past days, I’ve experienced the most incredible pain and witnessed more sadness that I’ve ever seen up close in my entire lifetime. Losing a friend in such a horrible way is really unthinkable, especially on a campus that I know so well. As I watched everything unfold on TV last Monday, I felt like I was watching a horror movie, that it was so distant… except the buildings, the streets, everything were places I had walked carelessly just days prior to the massacre. Now our campus seems so different, and it’s not just the yellow tape around Norris Hall and the memorials that are popping up all over the drillfield. Is this really the same place? I never questioned our safety here until now. Every time that I hear sirens now, I feel a really sick feeling in my stomach.
Tuesday (4/17) was the first day I had stepped onto campus since the killings. The sky was a bright blue and it was so sunny and warm, it was hard to believe it had been flurrying and so windy the day before. The beautiful day made me all the more sad, and I couldn’t stop crying when my friend pointed out that “God makes the sky so blue on the day of departure.” The convocation was great – George W. Bush gave a terse but good speech, and the concluding poem by Nikki Giovanni (“We will prevail… we are Virginia Tech.”) moved me to tears. I walked around campus a bit with my friends to sign the memorial boards and to just let everything sink in, and despite the unchanged beauty of our campus, there were still reminders – a sidewalk with a huge bloodstain, a small concrete pole mowed down by a SWAT car. The candlelight vigil at 8pm was amazing. I was stunned by the number of people who came out for it – I have never seen that many people come together on the campus before. I was a wreck there, but I think that crying it all out has helped me slowly embark on the healing process.
Seeing our AASU board completely broken at our meetings this past week was really heartbreaking for me. All because the killer was a Korean, our Asian community has been getting hit hard by the media. One thing I’ve taken out of the experience is that you cannot trust the media – they are heartless, and will stop at nothing to try to get even one word out of you. In the days following the shooting, my email inbox has been flooded by requests for interviews, my cell phone was constantly ringing (where do they get my number?), our AASU answering machine is full, the phone in the office is constantly ringing, and reporters flock to you while you walk campus, simply because they want a reaction from someone to represent the Asian community. This is not a race issue. Can they not understand that we are going through everything that everyone else on this campus is suffering right now? We knew people who were killed; we are grieving too. The school that we all love has been branded as the site of a historic massacre. The last thing we need is a lot of unnecessary stress and harassment just based on the fact that we share the same race or ethnicity as killer Seung-Hui Cho.
I went up home for a couple days, and took some friends with me, just so we could get away from the constant reminders for a little while. It was a little more relaxing, and it was nice to see my family. Of course, we couldn’t completely escape it – right around then was when they released the video and photos that Cho had sent to NBC so it was all over the news channel, and of course the thoughts never really leave your head when something like this has happened at your own beloved campus to people that you knew personally.
I came back late Friday night… the campus is struggling to latch onto a sense of normalcy. The media has calmed down quite a bit, although it seems like a lot of them are lingering until Monday, when students return to classes for the first time. Saturday, I went with Richard and Taka to help the Japanese community here put together 1000 cranes for the victims that are still in the hospitals. 1000 cranes symbolize world peace, and one of the Japanese professors here came up with the idea to fold them for this tragedy. We had to leave early, but I heard they were able to make close to five sets – 5000 cranes. We also attended the Memorial Picnic sponsored by Hokies United in the evening. Virtually every restaurant in Blacksburg had a tent out there, serving free food that they had donated to the event. People were walking their dogs, sitting and eating with friends and family, playing frisbee and soccer…. I saw no tears, and it was really nice to see so many happy faces on our campus. The only thing that brought me back to reality was when I saw Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum as I was walking around. I immediately recognized him because I’d seen him on television at the press conferences, and people were going up to him and shaking his hand and giving him hugs. My friends and I shook his hand and thanked him, and just looking at his face made me well up with tears. He tried to force smiles at us, but he looked so exhausted and worn out. There was indescribable sadness in his eyes, which had undoubtedly seen the worst things in his lifetime just in this past week. On top of that, the public and the media have been harsh in criticizing the actions of the university and the Virginia Tech police, all of it being directed at university president Charles Steger and Chief Flinchum. It’s easy to tell them that they acted poorly in the aftermath, but nobody could have ever predicted that something like this would happen. People just keep trying to find a scapegoat, but blaming others is not going to do anything to help our university community heal.
In contrast, I am really moved at how the community here has really come together in strength to understand and go beyond this tragedy. I am also incredibly touched at how much support we’ve been receiving from other universities all over the country, as well as from all my friends and family outside of Virginia Tech – I have heard from people I haven’t talked to in years, all making sure that myself and everyone here is okay. I heard that so many people wore our colors on Friday at high schools, other universities, and in the workplaces. I am so grateful for all the encouragement, support, and love.
I have never been so proud to be a Hokie.
It’s painful to remember, but too important to forget. The world stopped and watched in horror as a nightmare unfolded on our campus five years ago — it is my sincere hope that we will never have to see another April 16th.
“Take time to remember the legacies, remember the dreams and remember the talent that our community has lost. I hope you are inspired to work harder to honor the 32. Share you talents with the world for the 32. Achieve your dreams for the 32. Be more compassionate, friendly and thoughtful for the 32. Be better, for the 32.”
Today marks ten years since September 11, 2001, a day that changed America and altered and the lives of all who live in this country forever. Our sense of security was compromised, and I know for myself personally, I learned never to take our safety for granted again.
Without question, 9-11 has become our generation’s JFK assassination. We  will ask each other, “Where were you when you heard about the Twin Towers?” just as the previous generation identifies with, “when JFK was shot.”
Sure enough, I remember clearly the day ten years ago when I heard about the Twin Towers. I was a freshman at Virginia Tech, and the day started late for me since I didn’t have classes until around 11am, so I woke up mid-morning after sleeping in, as did my best friend and roommate at the time, Debbie. We were groggily turning our computers and I still was feeling half asleep when our friend Ben IM-ed or called Debbie to tell her about what had just happened in New York. We thought he was playing a prank on us and didn’t believe him at first, and then he urged us to turn on the TV. We tuned into live footage on CNN, just as the second plane hit the Twin Towers, and I know everyone says this, but it truly felt as if we were watching a movie. Except this was real, and therefore a billion times more horrifying and shocking.
I walked to class in a daze, not quite sure what to do… only to arrive and be dismissed 20 minutes into class because classes were cancelled for the day so that students could take time aside to mourn, get in touch with loved ones, and just take everything in. It was when I got back to my room that I heard about the Pentagon. Remembering that my father’s office building was very close to the Pentagon, I tried calling his cell phone, and then my house phone back in Northern Virginia over and over in attempts to get in touch with my dad himself, or my mom, who could update me on the situation up there. I didn’t get through the whole afternoon, and finally was able to reach them at around 6pm in the evening. The phone lines had beeen locked up across the DC area, and it was so difficult to get calls in. It was such a relief to finally find out that my family and friends up in DC were okay, but I could not imagine what so many other people in America were going through that day, and of course, what they had to carry with them for the months and years to follow.
That is how I remember September 11.
As I tearfully watched parts of the televised emotional memorial this morning at Ground Zero this morning, I found myself reflecting how much life has changed in the ten years since that tragic day. We know to remove our shoes, belts, and jackets without being told while passing through security at airports, and that we have to put all our carryon liquids in ziploc bags. We don’t give a second thought to passing through a security checkpoint at concerts and sporting events. Osama bin Laden has been killed, but the U.S. “war on terrorism” continues. I admit that I miss a more “innocent” era when we didn’t have to live like that, when family members could go with you to the airport gates to see you off (instead of awkwardly saying goodbyes to each other while you line up for the slow-moving security checkpoint line while wrestling your shoes off). It’s a mild inconvenience, however, that I don’t mind living with to keep our country safe and ensure that we and our children will never have to witness another 9-11 ever again in our lifetimes.
It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years. On this day, we remember those whose lives were taken ten years ago, and those who have given their lives in the years since. America wept like it never had before on 9-11, but we have become stronger and soared so much higher since. And I love this country for it.
My heart is in New York City and Washington, DC today. We will never forget.
Today marks 65 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific, and the lives lost can only be estimated but it numbers in the hundred thousands. The attacks over sixty years were the first and only instances thusfar in which nuclear weapons have been used offensively in warfare.
As the granddaughter of a Hiroshima survivor (hibakusha), I’ve heard firsthand stories from my grandmother about the atrocity that befell the city that day. Her father was killed, along with many of her family members and friends. The atomic bomb not only took away countless lives, but it continues to have long-lasting effects… some genetic, that are passed on through the generations. Even I myself am not completely free from risk of unforeseen radiation effects, as the blood of a survivor runs through my veins.
Still, the constant message that is central at the Hiroshima Peace Park and at its yearly memorial services on August 6 is not that of bitterness, but of the city’s unending hope for world peace. Hiroshima is an important reminder that the world should never have to experience such a nuclear nightmare ever again.
Three years. My heart is in Blacksburg today as we remember the 32 Hokies we lost on April 16, 2007. It was exactly three years ago that our cherished Virginia Tech campus was branded as “the site of the deadliest peacetime shooting incident in U.S. history.”
Never before then or since have I felt the magnitude of pain and heartbreak that I experienced on that day and the weeks that followed. The trauma of losing a friend among the 32 victims in the horrifying tragedy, coupled with the unrelenting harassment by reporters for a comment as a representative of the Asian campus community, was too much for me to endure and I underwent counseling at the campus clinic for a week. I would quietly cry myself to sleep every night, which regrettably kept my roommates up and made them sick with worry. There was simply no escaping the tragedy, with yellow tape and police cars everywhere on campus, and our school being the top news story every time we turned on the television. I felt like I shed a lifetime of tears that week — you’d think that eventually, you’d run out of tears to cry, but they just kept coming.
They came at the convocation the day following the shooting, when the sky was a serenely calm blue in comparison to the stormy skies of the day before.
They came at the candlelight vigil later that night, as thousands of candles lit up the drillfield in the middle of our campus.
They came at the organizational board meetings for AASU and VTU, where I saw my fellow officers more broken than ever.
They came at the memorial picnic, where I shook hands with Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum and saw such indescribable sadness and utter exhaustion in his eyes, which had just witnessed the worst bloodshed he’d ever seen in his lifetime.
They came on graduation day, as my heart screamed that this was not the note I wanted my college years to end on.
They came as I laid down my graduation bouquets at the memorial, for my fellow students who were forever robbed of the opportunity to walk in their own commencement ceremonies.
But amidst all the heartache that left me bleary-eyed, there were countless tearful moments that helped me to heal. I was so humbled to see how many universities, communities and individuals reached out to us in support and love from all over the country and across the world. Students from our rival school at the University of Virginia painted their Beta Bridge in Virginia Tech’s orange and maroon colors with the message “Hoos for Hokies,” reminding us that we share more in common than we have historically been prone to admit. Colorado State University sent us thousands of paper cranes symbolizing peace. Penn State paid their respects to Virginia Tech by dressing in our school colors for their annual Blue-White football game. Niagara Falls was bathed in orange and maroon lights in a moving tribute to the Hokie spirit, marking the first time the falls had been lit in the wake of a tragedy. Every flat surface in Squires Student Center was covered in banners, posters, and memorial items sent in from around the nation, and so many arrived that they had to switch them out every day. It was these sights and more that moved me to tears and really showed our campus that love can surpass the hate that brought about such a such a horrific event.
Above all, I was inspired to see the strength and solidarity with which our campus community stood in the face of this unexpected and unprecedented tragedy. I am not sure how I would have made it through the final month of school were it not for the support of my fellow Hokies — my roommates, friends, classmates, professors, managers and coworkers.
Three years later, we are still healing. I know I have not completely healed yet, and I’m not sure if I ever will. There’s still not a day that goes by without April 16th crossing my mind in one way or another, however fleeting it may be. There are still moments when tears spill over inexplicably, when there isn’t even anything conscious there to trigger them. It’s painful to remember, but too important to forget. The world stopped and watched in horror as a nightmare unfolded on our campus three years ago — it is my sincere hope that we will never have to see another April 16th.
I ask each of you to take the time to be a Hokie today. Appreciate life a little more, take in every moment around you, count your blessings, tell the people around you that you love them, slow down, remember what’s truly important in life. And live for those 32 that do not have that chance anymore.
Although I’m all the way on the other side of the country, I will be proudly wearing my orange and maroon today in remembrance. Hearts have been broken, lives have been taken, but we will always be here standing tall and proud to be Hokies.
We are Virginia Tech. We will continue. We do it for 32.
We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. Never Forget April 16, 2007
