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The killer didn't like rich kids, or so he wrote. One of the dead was wealthy in all things but money.

Jarrett Lane's mother and grandmother, the heads of the household, had enough that they could buy him a basketball goal, the kind that was inexpensive (relatively) but useful, with an adjustable height goal and wheels for greater portability.

One day back when Jarrett was in the seventh or eighth grade and just beginning to put a finer edge on his roundball skills by persistent practice with that modest basket, a wind storm hit Narrows, his hometown. A gust took that portable basket down, sending the wheels spinning and busting the backboard loose.

Cash for a replacement not being readily available, Jarrett did the best he could. He set the goal back up, what was left of it, and kept right on shooting.

By the time the young man made the Narrows High varsity as a junior, his shooting was pretty good. Problem was, he never had developed much of a touch on shots that required a backboard.

These facts were recalled with great fondness by his coach then, Todd Lusk. Still the Green Wave bench boss, Lusk once had been his future player's next-door neighbor.

With a voice struggling not to crack, Lusk recalled this week how he'd watch from his window as young Lane would continue to practice his shooting, even on a goal with no backboard. Never complaining, never decrying the unfairness of an economic system in which some could afford replacement backboards and some could not, Lane kept right on working on his jumper.

"That's what I'll remember," Lusk said this week. "He wasn't the most athletic kid, but he worked so hard. That's what made him the kind of basketball player he was."

Lane wasn't the guy who scored all the points. Joe Kinzer and Joey Powell and others did that. But Lane assumed responsibility for the little things, took the charges, went nose-to-nose with the other team's best scorer, skidded across the floor for loose balls.

"Any coach appreciates this: He was the kind of kid you had to have if your team was going to win," Lusk said.

Lusk was working hard not to fall to pieces when he was telling this story. Everybody in Narrows is. That's all you can do when one of the best young people in your whole town or anybody's town is killed.

Lane, 22, was one of the 32 shot to death at Virginia Tech this week. The killer's dead now, too, by his own hand.

Lane wouldn't have thought ill of the killer, at least while they were both alive.

"Jarrett was a quiet kid, but he'd talk to anyone," said Don Lowe, who was Lane's football coach. "He'd do anything for anybody."

Put another way by Narrows Principal Rowdy Stump: "He's the kind of young man that you'd want your daughter to marry."

Lane won't get that chance. But he will earn his degree, civil engineering, posthumously. Lane was weeks away from an undergraduate diploma. He'd already been accepted for graduate studies at the University of Florida, where no doubt he would have enjoyed watching the Gators defend national titles in two sports in weather not much like Narrows in March or November. You can bet he'd never root for Florida against the Hokies, though.

Lane knew his sports. He earned 12 varsity letters in high school: Three in football, three in tennis, two in basketball, four in track. You don't see that much anymore. There are a lot of terrific athletes out there who earn no more than two letters.

You don't see young men like Lane much, period. High school valedictorian, 4.0 grade-point average, tutor, club member, devoted Baptist, Southwest Virginia Governor's School, unbelievable son, grandson, brother and friend. The best of the best.

That all this is vivid memory now is hard -- no, impossible -- to believe.

Bragging, Lane left that up to others. He had plenty to boast about when his interception sealed the greatest Green Wave football in two decades. Narrows trailed its mighty neighbor Giles by two touchdowns before storming back for a 28-21 victory. Narrows hadn't beaten the Spartans in 11 years.

That was 2002. Since then, Giles has been a state football champion and a runner-up and beaten Narrows four more times.

Lane's interception doomed a ferocious comeback attempt by his school's archrival.

"What I remember was that great smile of his coming off the field," said Lowe, who retired to full-time athletic director status after that season. "He wasn't smiling because he was the hero. He was smiling because we had won. That's the way he was: team first, always team first."

Lowe, too, had a hard time containing his emotions when he spoke of Lane.

"All the things he accomplished, all the great things, he was an even better person," Lowe said.

Two churchloads of people, one Baptist and one Christian Church, overflowed at memorial services for Lane this week. A steady procession of admirers spoke of their recollections of him.

"It was one of the most moving services I've ever attended," said Lusk of proceedings at Lane's home church of First Baptist. "God was in that church that night. So was Jarrett."

Starting at 3 p.m. today, there will be a viewing, and the family will greet visitors at the high school auditorium. All athletic events have been postponed, reschedule times not yet decided. At 2 p.m. Saturday, the funeral will be at the same location. An early arrival would be a sensible idea.

Lane was rich, but not in the way that brought hate to the cold heart of a killer. Lane won't have to worry about how he'll afford a nice basketball goal to shoot at now. All the sports equipment he needs will be at his disposal, cost on the house.