Photo by Gene Dalton | The Roanoke Times

Larry Hincker knows the shootings will continue to be a media topic and is looking at ways to leverage that attention.

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BLACKSBURG -- Larry Hincker's toughest time behind the lectern wasn't fielding questions from hundreds of reporters.

It was simply reading.

As Virginia Tech released the names of the 32 victims killed April 16, Hincker, the associate vice president for university relations, opened news conferences that week by reading their names and detailing their talents, interests and aspirations.

As the face of the university for millions watching around the world, Hincker wore a wearied expression that reflected the mood of the wounded campus. He read the victims' tributes with a somber, usually steady voice.

Behind the lectern, Hincker stood on the ball of his left foot and wiggled the fingers on his right hand to distract himself.

"It really works," he said, "if you're getting ready to choke and you know you can't choke. I had to do that because I choked a couple of times."

Hincker's balancing act was just a small part of the behind-the-scenes action as he and his 55-person staff tried to get the university's message out and handle requests from thousands of media while also grieving. The stakes couldn't have been higher as Tech had captured the world's attention for the worst reasons.

That attention has waned, but not vanished.

On Tuesday, Hincker was in his office preparing for the media deluge Monday, the first day of classes -- at least 100 reporters and photographers are expected on campus. Hincker knows news organizations across the world have several dates circled on their calendars: the first day of classes, the first home football game and the anniversary of the shootings.

Whether they were writing speeches and tributes to victims or answering phones and questions from reporters, Hincker and his staff made it through the week by pitching in where needed and trusting one another. But it's clear that, for a university that has vowed it won't be defined by its darkest moment, the work of its public relations staff is far from over.

'The trucks are rolling'

On April 16, Hincker was in Burruss Hall with Tech President Charles Steger and other university officials as the crisis unfolded. As they were discussing the two people shot at West Ambler Johnston residence hall earlier that morning, they heard an emergency call on the police radio of Lt. Joey Albert, who was in the room. Shots had been fired inside nearby Norris Hall.

The media requests began to pour into Hincker's office. He'd receive 350 of them that day. His secretary, who had been hired three weeks earlier, and his bookkeeper, who'd been on the job for two months, scrambled to answer the phones.

By late morning, national news outlets were running constant coverage of the shootings and sending reporters to Blacksburg. Hincker and Mark Owczarski, Tech's director of news and information, began discussing how they would prepare for the media crush.

"Larry, the trucks are rolling," Owczarski said.

By the end of the week, 714 people from 285 news organizations had signed in for credentials at the university's new alumni center, which hosted news conferences throughout the week. Its lobby became a tangled mass of camera equipment and cables spilling into the satellite truck-filled parking lot. Reporters in the building were so ubiquitous that some meetings involving state police, the governor's staff and Tech officials were held in a coat closet.

Corinne Geller, a former broadcast journalist who joined the Virginia State Police as a public information officer in 1999, said she'd never witnessed a scene like it.

"You were constantly being pulled in 12 different directions," she said. "You could tell every time something new emerged, the phones just started going berserk."

She was amazed at how Hincker and his staff kept calm.

"Virginia Tech is their family," she said. "It wasn't just a matter of dealing with the incredible amount of media there scrutinizing them. They had to deal with what happened on their campus."

Doing the job

A Midwestern flatlander when his family moved to Southwest Virginia when he was a teen, Hincker graduated from Andrew Lewis High School in Salem in 1968 and applied to one school -- Tech. He spent two years on the Blacksburg campus before joining the Navy for a four-year stint. After getting out, he attended photography school in California and stayed out West after he graduated.

While he didn't graduate from Tech, he saw the opportunity to come there to work in 1988 as a homecoming, considering himself a Hokie long before he received his paycheck and a master's degree from the school. So it was tough to keep his emotions in check while dealing with April 16.

"You'd bark an order at somebody and the next minute you've got tears and the next minute you're choked up and the next minute you're flying off and doing three things at one time," he said.

Hincker has a generally amicable relationship with Southwest Virginia media. But during his three decades in public relations, he's developed a businesslike, sometimes gruff, demeanor.

He warns reporters when he's about to use a "touchy-feely word" but doesn't give similar notice if he's about to use a four-letter one. A strong personality, management surveys label him as a micromanager, though people who work for him say he has no problem delegating authority.

Owczarski said he and Hincker were aware of only a fraction of the decisions made that week by people in their office. Micromanaging wasn't an option.

Mike Dame, director of Web communications at Virginia Tech, worked to create four versions of the Web site that week. After stripping the site down to handle the spike in traffic -- it received 2.3 million page views compared with the typical 193,000 -- his mission changed to creating an appropriate home page in light of the tragedy. Dame got a phone call from Hincker about 5 a.m. the day after the shootings.

"Make sure it reflects our grieving and does it in a very austere way," Hincker told him. "I won't be able to talk to you the rest of the day."

By that afternoon a black "In Memoriam" page was up with notices about upcoming events and a somber photo of cadets mourning.

Director of marketing Chris Clough pitched in to answer phones in the joint information center, a room filled with 30 phones being answered by Tech staff and volunteers from other state organizations. He remembers having two phones to his ears at one point -- on one line was a producer for a German news show, on the other a woman who wanted to put Tech logos on cupcakes for a bake sale.

Later that month Clough and his staff would get the university about $500,000 in free advertising so Tech could thank people for their support. Hincker hung a full-page "thank you" ad that ran in USA Today on his office door but took it down because he cried every time he looked at it.

"These folks are the heroes," Hincker said. "I was just the one standing in front of the cameras."

Still recovering

For Hincker, many details of that week are still fuzzy. He doesn't remember sleeping, only lying in bed for a few hours a night. His head and ears were hot and his arms hurt -- signs, he said, that his blood pressure was skyrocketing. He spoke at three news conferences on April 16 and held eight during the week.

Hincker described the media that week as "a howling horde," but thinks most of the reporters handled themselves professionally. Still, by April 19, he was worn out. In an emotional news conference that day he appealed to reporters that "this is not the White House." There wasn't much new information to release.

"I know that you all have a job to do. I have a job to do," he said. "I've spent my career finding ways to help journalists get their job done, and I want to try to find a way to continue to work with you."

A reporter shouted, "Thank you, Larry," and others applauded. He slept soundly for the first time that night.

Hincker wouldn't take a day off until May 6 and wouldn't feel normal physically until a trip to Minnesota a month after the shootings. With graduation, meetings of the governor's panel on the shootings and preparing for the start of the school year, the office has been busy.

Much of the university community is suffering from media fatigue. Tech's Student Government Association asked Hincker if the media could be banned from campus -- they can't be. Hincker knows the shootings will continue to be a media topic and is looking at ways to leverage that attention.

"If you're going to come back, I want you to write about the rest of the place," he told a "Nightline" producer who called about revisiting campus. "If you want my time to try to help you get your story then I want a little bit, because it's a pretty special place."