A Holocaust survivor. A Christian teenager. Engineers and artists, animal lovers and bookworms. Quiet scholars and quirky class clowns. American natives and foreign nationals.

The victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech were a cross-section of the human condition.

They were as different as the school’s two trademarks — the gaudy maroon and orange that flash across the gridiron each autumn and the dignified Hokie limestone that has formed the bedrock of the school for more than a century.

But they were alike, too — all going about their lives on what started as another ordinary Monday, alike in their fate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gunman came along.

They were teenagers away from home for the first

time, professors in the twilight of their careers.

Some were Facebook devotees who shared their lives on the Internet; others were devoted Bible readers whose inner thoughts were known best by God.

By God’s grace and their own academic interests, they came from across the world and from across town to attend Virginia Tech.

Some came to spend four years getting a degree, others came to spend their entire careers.

In the end, they shared a common fate: Lives cut short on a spring morning when a cold wind filled with snowflakes and tree blossoms formed the backdrop for the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation’s history.

- John Cramer

Individual profiles (open in a new window)