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Josh Meltzer | The Roanoke Times

Gov. Tim Kaine and President Bush sign a memorial Tuesday on the Drillfield. Kaine cut short a visit to Asia when he heard the news.

Christina O'Connor | Special to The Roanoke Times

Women hug each other Tuesday afternoon at a memorial at Cassell Coliseum. Students, victims and members of the community attended.

AP photo

Virginia Tech English professor and poet Nikki Giovanni leads the crowd in a cheer after closing remarks at yesterday's memorial at Cassell Coliseum.

AP photo

From left , Virginia Tech students Felix Gabathuler, Michael Bell, Natasha Sheibani and Margaret Riggs stand with thousands of others during Tuesday’s convocation. About 8,000 students attended in Cassell Coliseum, and about 10,000 more watched proceedings from nearby Lane Stadium. Although the scene was reminiscent of game day, the mood was mostly somber.

President Bush visited Virginia Tech on Tuesday to offer his sympathy to the university and to urge students not to lose strength one day after a bloody rampage left 33 people dead.

Bush addressed a crowd of roughly 8,000 at the university’s Cassell Coliseum, saying Monday’s shootings have resonated far beyond the campus.

“I hope you know that people all over the country are thinking about you and asking God to provide comfort for all that have been affected,” he said.

Bush was joined by his wife, Laura, by Gov. Tim Kaine and by other elected officials.

About 10,000 people who were turned away from Cassell Coliseum watched the convocation from neighboring Lane Stadium.

Authorities said Tuesday that Cho Seung-Hui an English major from Centreville, shot and killed two students at West Ambler Johnston Hall on Monday morning and killed 30 at Norris Hall before killing himself.

The shootings shattered the campus’ sense of safety and imprinted Virginia Tech into the national consciousness.

The crowd, which was composed mostly of orange- and maroon-clad students, greeted Bush and Kaine warmly and gave a lengthy ovation to Virginia Tech President Charles Steger, who has been criticized for not locking down the campus quickly enough after the first two shootings.

“Words are very weak symbols of our true emotions at times such as this,” Steger said.

Monday’s victims, who included students and faculty members, “were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Bush said. “Now they’re gone, and they leave behind a grieving family, grieving classmates and a grieving nation.”

“You have a compassionate and resilient community here at Virginia Tech,” Bush continued, calling on students, faculty and staff to reach out to one another, to their families and to the world at large.

“As a dad, I can assure you a parent’s love is never far from a child’s heart,” he said. “People who have never met you are praying for you. They’re praying for your friends who have fallen and who are injured.”

Kaine, like Bush, infused his comments with religious references, telling the crowd that it’s natural to feel sadness and anger.

Still, he urged, “do not lose touch with that sense of community.”

Kaine, who cut short a two-week trade mission to Asia after being awoken in a hotel in Tokyo at 1 a.m., followed Monday’s developments on television as he rushed back. He was struck by students’ response.

“How proud we were even in the midst of this sad day to see how well you represented yourselves and this university,” he said.

A line of students snaked around the building about three hours before the convocation started. Inside, students were tightly packed all the way up to the rafters, where the school’s tournament banners hang.

“This looks exactly like game day,” said Matt Banick, a freshman from Centreville, as he waited outside the coliseum, where the Virginia Tech Hokies basketball teams play.

Unlike on game days, the mood was mostly somber, with students holding one another and wiping away tears. At the end of the ceremony, however, poet and English professor Nikki Giovanni, offered a rousing, almost defiant, oration that had students clapping, cheering and chanting “Let’s Go, Hokies.”

“We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be,” she said. “We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.”

Leaders of campus religious organizations also offered their condolences, and representatives from support groups offered their help to students who were struggling to come to terms with the massacre. At one point, a man in the audience stood up and led the crowd in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Another man, who briefly fainted, was led out by rescue workers.

After the convocation, the president and Laura Bush joined Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, to meet with 12 to 15 families of victims. They later visited a makeshift cardboard tribute in honor of the victims near the Drillfield.

One of those victims, G.V. Loganathan, a civil and environmental engineering professor, left behind a wife and two daughters, said Nammalwar Sriranganathan, a professor who had known Loganathan for about 20 years and who was in the audience at the convocation.

“He was a quiet, dedicated professor,” said Sriranganathan, adding that his friend had been well-liked by students.

Loganathan was sick Monday, Sriranganathan said, and only intended to teach his class “and come back home.”

Another member of the audience, Larinda Cole, said she thought her neighbor was among those killed, even though his name does not appear on the list of victims compiled by media outlets Tuesday.

“We’d joke around in the hallways, he’d pick up my mail for me,” said Cole, a graduate student from Chesterfield County studying apparel and business.

Jessica Swanson, another graduate student at the convocation, said she knew one of the victims, Ryan Clark, whom she called “Stack.”

Swanson, who has Dejerine-Sottas syndrome, a neuromuscular disease that makes it difficult for her to speak, is studying for a master’s of business administration. Her comments were relayed through Kim Pagans, her assistant.

Clark, Swanson said, was “a really nice guy. A down-to-earth guy.”

Staff writers Ralph Berrier, Jared Turner, Mike Gangloff and Mark Berman contributed to this report.