Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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I was driving to work at midmorning on Monday when my mobile telephone rang.

A friend informed me that a gunman had opened fire at Virginia Tech and people had been injured and possibly killed -- 33 killed, it would later turn out, and at least 15 others injured.

As soon as I could, I called my daughter, Katherine, on her cellphone.

She answered promptly in her dorm room, sounding tired.

A late sleeper and a second-semester freshman at Virginia Tech, she knows the ropes: Her first class on Mondays starts at 4 p.m.

Katherine had heard about the shootings from her roommate.

"Why did this happen?" she asked.

What do you tell your 19-year-old daughter with the kindest heart of anyone you've ever known?

You say you don't know. You say some people are sick, and some get sick -- maybe from academic pressures, maybe from broken hearts, maybe from things we can't begin to appreciate.

"But why?" she asked.

Seeking perspective

You talk about kids on other campuses who kill themselves in a variety of ways, and how it happens every year.

"But they don't hurt anybody else," she said.

You talk about Charles Whitman, the student who climbed the tower at the University of Texas in Austin in 1966 and opened fire, killing 15 people and wounding 31.

But that is too distant in miles and years to be relevant. You mention Columbine High School in Colorado, where, in 1999, two students shot 12 classmates and a teacher to death and wounded 26 others before committing suicide. "That was high school," Katherine said. "This is college. There's no drama here."

Then you tell the unvarnished truth: Drama exists wherever people are. We should not live in fear, but we should remember than anything can happen at any time, anywhere.

Good experience

Virginia Tech was Katherine's first choice of college. She studied ferociously to earn acceptance to it. I supported her fully.

Her brother, Michael, graduated from Tech in May 2006, and recently returned to Blacksburg to work for a company in Tech's Corporate Research Center. He's thrilled to be back.

But Monday morning left us and a lot of other people nonplussed: How could such a terrible thing happen in such an idyllic place, at a school that, Michael says, every student seems to love?

Tech has more than 25,000 students. Yet it is known for feeling small.

At freshman orientation, Tech officials come across as warm, smart and unpretentious. They emphasize their willingness to do what it takes to see that each student graduates.

Other news stories may question the handling of the initial shooting, and wonder why classes weren't canceled immediately.

But this story is not about that. As far as we can surmise, it is about an armed individual who used at least two handguns to kill 33 people and wound others -- the worst mass shooting in American history.

It is about students jumping from windows to escape the horror.

It is about the innocents who did not escape, and their families and friends.

Despite its size, Tech seems to win over whole families and welcomes them into the larger Tech family.

On Monday, I received telephone calls and e-mails from relatives, friends and the parents of other Tech students in Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, Texas and Tidewater Virginia.

The Tech alumnus who is the father of Katherine's first-semester roommate sent an e-mail from his office in Newport News, asking about her safety and saying that he was crying as he typed.

My daughter and I spoke again. All of her friends appeared to be safe, she said.

Her condition? "Confused."

Mine? Angry.

Angry at the person who did this thing.

Angry about the people who got shot.

Angry about the helplessness that other students, and their parents and friends, felt.

Angry at the stain on Virginia Tech's name, at the unavoidable future mentions of this episode at otherwise joyful events -- commencement in May, the first home football game, next summer's freshman orientations.

This occurrence is part of Virginia Tech's history, bigger than the academic excellence, bigger than the bowl victories, bigger than the war heroes honored at the War Memorial beside the Drillfield.

And everybody, from the oldest alumni to the youngest freshmen in their dorm rooms, wants an answer to the unanswerable question: Why?