BLACKSBURG -- Lugging sleeping bags and pillows, wearing flip-flops and work boots, dozens of Virginia Tech students loaded vans Thursday afternoon for a 3 ¹₂-hour drive from campus to Lee County.

The group looked like they were preparing for a late-season camping trip. But the 36 volunteers are part of a project organized by Renee and Bryan Cloyd, parents of Austin Cloyd, one of the students killed during the April 16 shootings. The Cloyds will lead another trip to Lee County next weekend with a slightly larger group of mostly Tech students.

The work is being done through the Appalachia Service Project, a volunteer organization that repairs homes of low-income people in rural Appalachia. But Mark McMurray, a Tech senior and friend of Austin Cloyd, expects the experience to be about a lot more than hammering nails or insulating homes.

"You're healing," he said. "We're coming together. We're meeting more Hokies, more people, going out there and having a good time and making a positive impact."

The Cloyds, who live in Blacksburg, didn't choose ASP by accident. They've been involved with the organization for years, and their daughter spent summers in high school as an ASP volunteer. She enjoyed and talked about the work so much that many of her friends at Tech already knew about the organization before the Cloyds began planning the trips.

Courtney Lynne Bush, a sophomore going on the trip this weekend, sees it as a way to do something that she knew her friend enjoyed.

"It's like doing something with Austin," she said. "She's just not there physically."

When the university kicked off a massive volunteer effort in mid-October with an event on the Drillfield featuring dozens of volunteer organizations looking for help, students crowded around the Appalachia Service Project booth.

The university hopes to generate 600,000 hours of volunteer service through VT Engage. The Cloyds have also been heavily involved with that effort, which will honor the victims of April 16 in its first year.

For those students who don't want to miss Tech home football games against Florida State and Miami the next two weekends, there will be more Appalachia Service Project trips next year. One in late February and early March will include students from colleges throughout the region.

Another in early April will be Tech-specific and will likely be part of a course on service that Bryan Cloyd, a Tech accounting professor, plans to teach.

The planning for both VT Engage and the ASP trip has taken up plenty of the Cloyds' time, first getting the word out and recruiting students and then organizing the details.

The couple held two training sessions last month to prepare students for the cultural differences they'll encounter in Lee County and for the physical work they'll do. Renee Cloyd sounded very maternal as she reminded students to give multiple phone numbers to their parents so they could reach them and joked that they couldn't make copies of permission slips excusing them from their Thursday and Friday classes.

Bryan Cloyd proudly showed off his power tools as he prepared students for the construction work. The couple clearly enjoy the interaction, and Bryan Cloyd said they discovered very quickly how volunteering helps the healing process.

"If it were not for those positive things to focus on, we would be struggling a lot more than we have," he said.

Larissa Mihalisko, a Tech senior and friend of Austin Cloyd, has never been involved with ASP. She thinks the events of April have led to increased volunteerism among students and said the work they do will create a snowball effect.

"I know people are going to get so much more out of this than just one weekend," she said.

McMurray and Mihalisko are going on next week's trip. They said the friends they lost April 16 will be in their thoughts while they're volunteering, but in a positive way. Mihalisko said the intent is not for it to be a four-day eulogy but a celebration.

McMurray explained his thoughts by recalling something that Renee Cloyd told him.

"You can't bring back your friends. You'll never be able to bring them back," he said. "You can't live their lives. But you can live your life better because of them."