The tributes began before the first body was in the ground: A semicircle of stones on the Drillfield, words on MySpace and FaceBook, scholarships and honorary acts that continue even now. From the pies left on the porch step to the research library erected in the slain professor’s name — people are hungry to do something.

Today on the same spot where the tears and the footsteps turned the spring grass brown, Virginia Tech will dedicate the April 16 Memorial, a more permanent version of the ad hoc shrine created a day after Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members .

For four months now, the world has mourned, and strangers have hugged, and prayers for the dead have been offered from Blacksburg to New York City to a remote village in Nepal.

These pages reflect some of the tributes.

Stacked up against all that was lost, the deeds are small, Band-Aids taped across a gaping wound. But for many in the Virginia Tech community and beyond, they are the only means of saying to the victims and their families: We remember and we feel.

And: Thank you.

— Beth Macy

Ross Abdallah Alameddine , 20
Alameddine, of Saugus, Mass., was a sophomore who died in French class. The jazz fan and video game enthusiast, son of Dr. Abdullah and Lynnette Alameddine, is memorialized by a scholarship established in his name at Austin Preparatory School in Reading, Mass., where he graduated in 2005.

 

 

 

 

Christopher James “Jamie” Bishop , 35
Besides teaching German, Jamie Bishop was an illustrator, and his artwork will be on the cover of “Passing for Human,” an anthology co-edited by his father, Michael Bishop . The book will be released next year by a publisher in the United Kingdom.

Jamie Bishop did covers for five of his father’s books, as well as for other authors.

As Virginia Tech sets up a German scholarship in Jamie Bishop’s honor, LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga., where Michael Bishop is writer-in-residence, is setting up the Jamie Bishop Scholarship Fund in Graphic Arts.

Jamie Bishop’s widow, Stephanie Hofer , teaches German at Tech, but this fall she’ll spend time in Germany, going though the mourning process with her family there. Richard Shryock, who chairs Tech’s department of foreign languages and literatures , said the school is giving Hofer “full flexibility” to return when she is ready.

Michael Bishop said he hoped that in moving forward Tech will not forget what happened.

Even though Jamie Bishop is gone, his father said the tradition of using his son’s illustrations on his book covers may continue.

“I keep thinking that perhaps there is something among his art that I could possibly go and pull and put on a book cover later,” Michael Bishop said. “Obviously, he can’t do something new, but he did have a small body of fairly substantial work.”

Brian Roy Bluhm , 25
Brian Bluhm’s family long ago moved from the Detroit area, but that didn’t diminish his devotion to his beloved Detroit Tigers baseball team.

The Tigers organization returned that love in the days and weeks after his death. Bluhm’s favorite player, center fielder Curtis Granderson , spoke about Bluhm on a Detroit-area radio show.

On his MySpace page he responded to a question Bluhm had sent him but which he had never answered.

The team made a replica jersey of Bluhm’s all-time favorite Tiger, Charlie Gehringer, and sent it to his family to display at Bluhm’s memorial service, according to the Detroit Tigers’ Web site.

Bluhm’s parents, who live in Winchester, Va., set up the Brian Bluhm Virginia Tech Civil Engineering Scholarship Fund in his memory.

Bluhm’s father, Dennis , addressed the Virginia Tech Review Panel on July 18, a day before what would have been his son’s 26th birthday, he noted. Bluhm would have been in the third week of his new job by then.

“He loved life,” Dennis Bluhm said. “He loved the Lord Jesus Christ and he lived his faith.”

Ryan Christopher “Stack” Clark , 22
Ryan Christopher Clark spent a lot of his short life helping others.

The Virginia Tech senior and triple major from Georgia was a member of the student service organization Circle K, an officer in the Marching Virginians and a resident assistant in West Ambler Johnston residence hall.

He lost his life while coming to the aid of someone. Clark had planned to pursue a doctoral degree in psychology, focusing on cognitive neuroscience, but police said he was shot and killed trying to help Emily Hilscher, the other student killed in Ambler Johnston Hall.

For years, Clark had also worked as a volunteer at Civitan International’s Camp Big Heart in Atlanta, a retreat for people with developmental disabilities, said the camp’s assistant director Liz Hodapp. This season, for the first time since he was 14, Clark missed a summer at the camp.

His presence will still be felt at Big Heart, though. Civitan recently created the Ryan Clark Civitan fund to memorialize their volunteer and to help provide the outdoor experience for those with special needs.

Austin Cloyd , 18
In life Austin Cloyd was very active with the Appalachia Service Project , an organization that coordinates volunteers to make needed repairs to people’s homes.

Since April 16, the organization has received more than $85,000 in donations in her name.

“For as horrible a thing it’s been ,” Renee Cloyd said of her daughter’s death, “at least we’ve had these positive things to focus on, and that’s been really good.”

Renee Cloyd lives in Blacksburg and is working with several organizations at Virginia Tech, along with the Appalachia Service Project, to bring nearly 100 students to do repairs in Jonesville, Va., over two weekends in November.

Bryan Cloyd, a professor of accounting and information systems at Tech, will return to teaching this semester, his wife said. Austin’s brother, Andrew, is heading into his junior year at Blacksburg High School.

“It’s harder for him in some ways,” Renee Cloyd said of her son. “Now he’s an only child. He wasn’t before.”

The Cloyds have been in contact with Austin’s classmates who survived the attack on Norris Hall .

“I really feel for the wounded,” Renee Cloyd said. “We’ve tried to touch base with the ones in Austin’s class and are glad to see that they are physically healing, and we want them to heal completely. We’re just glad they survived.”

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, 49
In the horticulture department he heads at Virginia Tech, Jerzy Nowak was known as a workaholic who put in 60- and 70-hour weeks.

“It’s not happening now,” said Richard Veilleux , a professor in the department. “It’s impossible now that he’s a single father — kind of a sudden change in his lifestyle that obviously is going to make a big difference.”

Veilleux said Nowak, who has a daughter in middle school, took a couple of weeks off after his wife’s death but has since returned to running the department.

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak taught French at the university, and Tech’s department of foreign languages and literatures is setting up a scholarship in her memory.

But she was also an avid gardener, as well as a lover of French culture, and her husband’s department is memorializing her as well. The department is in the process of expanding the Hahn Horticulture Garden on Tech’s campus, and plans to incorporate a terrace garden dedicated to Couture-Nowak.

Associate professor Holly Scoggins said it is likely to be a simple memorial, with a French-style bench surrounded by plants that Couture-Nowak liked.

The Hahn family agreed to the Couture-Nowak memorial in the garden. Scoggins said they not only gave permission, but donated toward the project as well.

Kevin Granata , 45
Kevin Granata was killed when he left his office to try to stop Cho — after shepherding students from a third-floor accounting class into his office and locking the door.

Over the summer, when faculty and staff were directed to move back into Norris Hall, the reaction was mixed, said Michael Madigan, a fellow engineering professor.

It eased the transition, he added, when several of Granata’s students decided to continue his research, studying factors that contribute to lower-back injuries — in a lab that has been renamed the Kevin P. Granata Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab . They’ll also be presenting the results of Granata’s work at upcoming national conferences.

“It’s helping everyone to cope, I think, by doing something to help honor him and remember him,” Madigan said.

Immediately after the shootings, Granata’s sister-in-law Lois Diersing set up a fund for the education of his three school-age children. His widow, Linda, “has a lot of friends who are always asking how they can help,” said Mike Diersing, Granata’s brother-in-law and a fellow Tech engineering professor.

Matthew Gregory Gwaltney , 24
Last month the Gwaltney family held a cookout for their son’s many friends, said Ricky Castles, one of Gwaltney’s friends from Virginia Tech.

“It was kind of a celebratory tone,” he said. “It was just a good opportunity to talk to other people that had known Matt.”

Items illustrating various facets of Gwaltney’s short life were displayed on a table, including a scrapbook put together by the civil and environmental engineering department, where he was in the second year of a master’s degree.

Included were notes from students in the labs Gwaltney taught as well as excerpts from positive teaching evaluations.

A memorial scholarship fund for Gwaltney has been set up at his former high school, Thomas Dale in Chester, Va., as well as at Virginia Tech.

Evelyn White, guidance coordinator at the high school, said the school has received numerous inquiries from alumni, people in the community, people who attended Virginia Tech and people who just work in civil engineering.

“It was just coming from everywhere,” White said.

Caitlin Hammaren , 19
Caitlin Hammaren, an international studies major from Westtown, N.Y. , was honored shortly after her death at the annual Virginia Tech Relay for Life.

The top fundraiser for the American Cancer Society’s Tech benefit, the 19-year-old had raised more than $2,000 before her death. An additional $6,000 in donations was given in remembrance of the slain sophomore.

Hammaren’s parents, Chris Foote and Marian Hammaren, were among those who participated in the April 20-21 event.

Hammaren was studying international politics and French and was a resident adviser at Virginia Tech. The San Antonio chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association established a scholarship in Hammaren’s memory. The scholarship was awarded to a San Antonio-area student who will enter Tech this fall.

Another scholarship in Hammaren’s name has been set up through the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program. It will benefit students at Minisink Valley High School in Middletown, N.Y., where Hammaren was president of the chorus, violinist with the orchestra and a member of the National Honor Society.

Jeremy Herbstritt, 27
Running was as much a part of Jeremy Herbstritt’s life as learning. The civil engineering graduate student and teaching assistant completed many marathons in his native Pennsylvania.

On April 16, Herbstritt’s sister and running partner, Jennifer, competed in the Boston Marathon. After finishing the race in under four hours, Jennifer Herbstritt learned of her brother’s death when she and her parents were driving back to their home in Bellefonte, Pa.

A week after his death, the Trail of Esperanza 5K race in Blacksburg was dedicated to Herbstritt. Organized to provide aid to the Dominican Republic and New River Valley, the race drew 46 runners . Many wore signs on their T-shirts that read, “I run for hope and in remembrance of Jeremy Herbstritt.”

Herbstritt’s siblings — Jennifer, 25, Joseph, 19, and Stephanie, 18 — helped organize Herbie’s Hometown Loop, a family-oriented race in Bellefonte.

This year, Bellefonte High School awarded a scholarship in Herbstritt’s memory. His mother, Peg , said it was earmarked for a science or engineering student who participates in track or cross country .

Peg Herbstritt recently returned to her job as a nursing instructor.

“There are days when I miss him so much and I just want to hug him,” she said. “Prayers have been helping. We still need prayers.”

Rachael Hill , 18
Rachael Hill, a freshman from Glen Allen, Va., and graduate of Grove Avenue Christian School in Henrico County, was honored with a $2,000 scholarship in her name awarded by the Richmond Chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association.

 

 

Emily Jane Hilscher , 19
There are two common elements in all the stories about Emily Hilscher — that she was one of the first people to die April 16, and that she loved riding and helping horses. And in all of the stories, the latter fact consistently and potently outshines the former.

Hilscher studied veterinary science at Tech. Throughout high school, she worked at Rose Hill Veterinary Clinic near her home in Woodville, Va.

“Animals loved her, as people did,” the clinic’s secretary, Camilla Brown, told USA Today.

The Virginia Tech Equestrian Team has established a fund to benefit Hilscher’s school, the department of animal and poultry sciences .

Teresa McDonald, the team’s head coach, wrote on its Web site, “We plan to work with her parents when they are ready to come up with something that they feel will honor her memory.”

Jarrett Lane, 22
In a hot warehouse operated by Tech’s buildings and grounds crew, members of the Site and Infrastructure Development office gave out their July employee-of-the-month award posthumously.

Several employees — former co-workers of Narrows native Jarrett Lane — praised him not only for being polite and good-hearted, but also for his great technical mind. They presented his mother, Tracey Lane, with a plaque and $650 to put in the scholarship fund of her choice.

She had come from Narrows with her mother, daughter and three grandchildren to accept the award and to eat a barbecue lunch .

She wants to plant a tree or place a park bench at Tech in her only son’s memory. With the money she gets from the Hokie Spirit Fund, she plans to create scholarships in his name for a needy civil engineering student at Tech and for a graduate student at the University of Florida, where Jarrett had been awarded a graduate teaching fellowship.

She’s thankful for the town of Narrows, where scholarships were given out in June at both the Narrows High School and Southwest Virginia Governor’s School graduations.

“It is a long road,” she said. “We’re just so thankful we live in a small community.”

Matthew La Porte , 20
We will never know all the names and acts of the heroes of April 16. Some of the stories of that day will inevitably escape untold.

But one that did not involves Matthew La Porte, a sophomore and Air Force ROTC student from New Jersey. Investigators believe he rushed and tried to tackle the gunman and was killed in the attempt.

In the summer edition of Corps Review, La Porte’s former roommate, Cadet Nathan Boggs, reflected on his friend’s heroism.

“It was not something that Matt was required or expected to do, but he did it out of genuine love and concern for the people in his class,” Boggs wrote. “His legacy of sacrifices is unparalleled and my greatest desire is to have that same sense of selfless sacrifice, being willing to act when I am needed most and to do so fearlessly. There is no question in my mind that Matthew Joseph LaPorte is my hero and I am proud to have been so close to him.”

Liviu Librescu, 76
The night before Marlena Librescu moved to live with relatives in Israel, she visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

The July 19 event, sponsored by the foundation arm of the law firm Holland+Knight , honored winners of an annual high school essay contest designed to encourage the study of the Holocaust.

This spring, lawyers at the firm couldn’t stop thinking about Liviu Librescu — the Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who died on Holocaust Remembrance Day while blocking the door to his Norris Hall classroom, saving eight of his students’ lives.

They pulled out their checkbooks. The top winner of the essay contest, they decided, would get more than the normal scholarship prize. By the time the checks were tallied, $18,000 had been raised for a special Librescu-named fund, a spokesman for the firm said.

At Librescu’s funeral in Israel, the Romanian government presented Marlena Librescu with the Grand Cross of Romania, the country’s highest civilian honor — for his scientific achievements and the heroism surrounding his death.

G.V. Loganathan , 53
Civil engineering professor G.V. Loganathan was a voracious reader who had books in every room of his house. To commemorate him, the civil and environmental engineering department at Tech has established a library and student resource room in his honor.

The department is also working to continue the research of Loganathan and his slain students.

“The parents want that,” said department chair Bill Knocke.“We’re taking partially written theses and coalescing the work that had been done to see what we can publish.”

Tech has been working with the Loganathan family to secure work for his wife, Usha, Knocke said. His eldest daughter, Uma, who graduated in May from the University of Virginia, interned for the engineering college this summer.

“The Indian community has been very supportive of the family,” Knocke said, as have some of Loganathan’s former students and their families.

The wife of one grad student organized a schedule for friends to mow the Loganathans’ Blacksburg lawn.

Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan , 34
When Partahi Lumbantoruan’s parents traveled from Indonesia to Blacksburg to pick up their son’s posthumous Ph.D., Rhondy Rahardja helped show them around.
Rahardja, also from Indonesia, had been friends with their son, who went by the nickname “Mora.” Rahardja said he has stayed in touch with Lumbantoruan’s parents since they returned to Indonesia, and his own parents have become friends with them back in his homeland.

Rahardja said the Lumbantoruan s were doing pretty well, considering all that has happened. Mora’s brother recently got married, said Rahardja, who added that his parents had been pleased to attend the ceremony.

Henh Ly, aka Henry Lee , 20
Two scholarships have been established in the name of Henry Lee, the Roanoker and William Fleming High School graduate, one by the Kiwanis Club and the other at his high school.

Lee’s family, Chinese immigrants who came to Roanoke from Vietnam 13 years ago, remain devastated and far removed from the ongoing study of the events that killed their son, said Nancy Calkin, a close family friend.

Lee’s parents, in particular his mother, continue to grieve his loss deeply, and his siblings try to keep news of the shootings away from her.
His siblings, however, are carrying on.

Chi Ly, who graduated from Tech in May, landed a job as an accountant in Blacksburg, where she will live with her brother Manh, who is returning to Virginia Tech for his senior year.

Lauren Ashley McCain , 20
Lauren McCain was planning to lead a small-group Bible study with Campus Crusade for Christ at Virginia Tech this school year. But her faith will continue to be held up as an example by the organization, said its campus director, Jeff Highfield. He said McCain figures prominently in a soon-to-be-published book titled “Lifting Our Eyes: Finding God’s Grace Through the Virginia Tech Tragedy.”

McCain’s family miss her terribly but “have a continuing trust in God though the whole situation,” he said.

As for the roughly 500 students involved in his organization, Highfield said the degree to which they are coping with the shootings varies widely.

“There are some that are doing well and are excited to see how God is going to continue to use this in some way positively, prayerfully. But there are others who are struggling.”

Daniel O’Neil , 22
The environmental engineering graduate student inspired people with his music even after his death. More than 100,000 people listened to Daniel O’Neil’s original acoustic guitar compositions on the Rhode Island native’s Web site.

Several of O’Neil’s friends from his hometown are working to put his music on a CD.

“We have copyright of the music,” said his father, Bill . “If this happens, and I believe it will, we’ll sell them through a Web site, and it will benefit one of the scholarships we’ve established.”

Bill O’Neil said the first scholarship honoring his son was set up through the Rhode Island Foundation. The endowed fund will annually support a Lincoln High School graduating senior who plans to pursue music as a personal passion, not necessarily as a college major.

Another scholarship, the Engineering Design Prize, has been established at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where Daniel O’Neil did his undergraduate work.

Bill O’Neil said his family is coping with the loss of their smart, talented, fun-loving son.

“We’re doing all right,” he said. “We’re doing OK.”

Juan Ortiz-Ortiz, 26
A native of Puerto Rico, Juan Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz lived a life of joy. His greatest joy was his wife, Liselle Vega Cortes, whom he married last August. Both were graduate students at Virginia Tech — Ortiz in civil engineering with a concentration in water resources and Cortes in geotechnical engineering.

Cortes said her husband’s memory has been honored in both the United States and Puerto Rico.

“Several Masses were made, the first being April 22 in St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Christiansburg, to which we belonged while we were studying,” she said. “On April 23, another Mass was celebrated, this time in the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, where Juan made his undergraduate studies in civil engineering.”

Ortiz received a posthumous master’s degree from Tech. The College of Engineers and Surveyors of Puerto Rico gave him the posthumous title of professional engineer.

Cortes said her husband also was awarded a medal from the Hispanic Caucus of Virginia Tech honoring his legacy. Puerto Rico’s Colegio Nuestra Senora de Belen dedicated its high school graduation ceremony to Ortiz and established a medal for the best student in science and mathematics in his name.

Ortiz is buried in Puerto Rico. Cortes has returned from her homeland to finish her master’s work at Virginia Tech and is expected to graduate in December.

Minal Panchal , 26
Panchal was one of two Indians killed in the attacks of April 16. Before Virginia Tech, Panchal studied architecture at Rizvi College of Architecture in Mumbai, India.

In 2003, Panchal was nominated for the Charles Correa Gold Medal for her graduation thesis, “Children’s Museum: An Environment for Development of Children at Borivli.”

The resource she envisioned is about to become a reality: The college has proposed Panchal’s concept to the state government and hopes it will result in a children’s museum in Borivli, said www.daijiworld.com .

Akhtar Chauhan, a principal at Rizvi College, told the Web site that the school “will provide all the technical expertise and assistance.”

“It was her dream and we will fulfill it.”

Daniel Alejandro Perez, 21
Mariella Lurch has no doubt her younger brother is in heaven.

“A brother like him will never be forgotten,” the Peruvian native said. “When my time comes, I’m pretty sure that God will make sure we’re brother and sister again.”

Perez was a member of Peru’s National Swimming Federation before coming to the United States. He loved singing and he loved his little dog, Shiloh. At Virginia Tech, Perez was a sophomore studying international relations. His mother, Betty Cueva, lives in Woodbridge, Va.

People in the Woodbridge area have rallied to his mother’s aid with donations and expressions of support.

“It’s been difficult, but Mom and I are putting all our faith in God,” Lurch said.

“I would love for my brother to have a scholarship of his own, but financially we cannot help make it,” she said. “But [Daniel] will always be with us, no matter what.”

Erin Peterson, 18
On her high school basketball team, Erin Peterson was a 6-foot -1-inch power forward. In life, she was a powerful force trying to make a difference in the world.

The freshman “was the kind of kid who led by example,” said coach and teacher Patrick Deegan . At Westfield High School in Chantilly , Va., Peterson was captain of the varsity squad her senior year. The basketball team presented her parents, Celeste and Grafton Peterson, with one of her jerseys after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, Deegan said. Peterson died with 10 other students and professor Jocelyne Couture-Nowak in her Norris Hall French class.

Peterson’s parents established the Erin Peterson Foundation to honor their daughter’s memory. At this year’s Westfield High School commencement ceremonies, they presented the first two academic scholarships from the foundation.

“Both Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, demonstrating compassion and courage, were on stage to make those awards,” Deegan said. “They’ve been inspirations.”

Michael Pohle Jr. , 23
The entire town of Flemington, N.J. , rose up to remember the football and lacrosse player in the days and months after his death.

Residents kicked in cash for a memorial scholarship in his name, while numerous local restaurants donated proceeds to the drive. Students sold rubber “Livestrong” type bracelets to raise money for the effort.

The fund hit $50,000 on its way to a hoped-for $100,000 endowment, said Craig Blanton, vice principal at Hunterdon Central , where Pohle graduated in 2002.
Community businesses have also donated time and materials to build a memorial on the high school campus, Blanton said.

Blanton counted some 250 of Pohle’s classmates at funeral services for Pohle, and he said his graduating class has decided — almost at the last minute — to organize a five-year reunion.

“They decided they wanted to get together for good reasons,” he said. “They want to keep his memory alive,” Blanton said.

Julia Pryde , 23
Friends of biological systems engineering student Julia Pryde chose to honor her by digging in the dirt. It was a fitting tribute to the earthy grad student whose research took her to Peru and Ecuador, where she hoped to foster sustainable agriculture.

Pryde’s friends created a dappled shade garden outside Seitz Hall , where the department is located. Landscape architecture graduate Tracy Buchholz designed it.

Four Hokie stones are placed campfire-like in a circle in the center — to evoke Pryde’s love of camping. Day lilies and astilbe offer Hokie colors, and a single pale yellow foxglove in the center represents Pryde .

“She wasn’t a pink and purple kind of girl,” Buchholz said.

Graduate student Kathy DeBusk asked area companies for plants, mulch and stones, and the answer was “an unequivocal yes,” she said.

“We wanted it to look like a place that if Julia discovered it out in the woods, she’d want to stop here and camp.”

Mary Karen Read , 19
Amid the awful task of cleaning out Mary Karen Read’s dorm room, her father and stepmother made a discovery through which the one they lost is teaching them how to grieve and move on.

The find was a small red notebook they paid little attention to at first. About two weeks after the shooting, back in their Annandale, Va., home, Peter Read picked it up and found it was a journal of sorts in which his daughter had been writing meaningful quotations.

Among the last, from February, were several about forgiveness.

“When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive,” read one entry. “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future,” said another.

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness,” read a third.

The Reads view the find as providence.

Peter Read told the Arlington Catholic Herald , a diocesan newspaper in Northern Virginia, that he returns to the notebook often.

Through it, his daughter helps him “remember what matters.”

Reema Samaha , 18
In Northern Virginia, high school scholarships were created in her name. In Charlottesville, a dance troupe sold T-shirts to help support Tech dancers in her honor.

In his dorm room at Tech, Rakan Omar incorporated all the things Reema loved most — dance, theater, her Lebanese heritage — in a shrine he made to honor his friend, he said. Two weeks after the shootings, he turned the shrine in as the final project for his creative process course, a day before flying to his home in Jordan for the summer.

The two friends had met in a Blacksburg hookah bar at the beginning of their freshman year. “She was belly dancing and teaching the others how to do it,” he recalled. “I just want the whole world to know her and how talented she was.”

Reema’s father, Joe Samaha , has been instrumental in uniting families of other victims and reminding Tech officials to include families at every turn in the aftermath, a strategy he refers to as “leave no family behind.”

“Reema was a beautiful person who would never exclude anyone,” he wrote in an e-mail. “You will never have closure without inclusion.”

Waleed Shaalan, 32
Muslims don’t use physical structures to commemorate the lives of their loved ones. “What Muslims do instead is that they pray for their loved ones constantly,” said Amine Chigani , a doctoral computer-science student at Tech and a close friend of Waleed Shaalan’s.

Shaalan left behind a wife and 1-year-old son who were living in Egypt but planned to join him in Blacksburg this summer. Survivors from G.V. Loganathan’s advanced hydrology class have reported that Shaalan saved the life of a fellow student by distracting Cho when he entered the classroom a second time.

Chigani said he and other members of the Muslim Student Association at Tech held funeral prayers in Blacksburg and in Northern Virginia. Then they organized the shipping of his body back to his Egyptian village of Zagazig .

Over the summer, they sent his family a scrapbook commemorating their son. Friends and volunteers also designed a Web site in his honor.

To financially secure Waleed’s wife and son, Chigani said, the Muslim Student Association collected $75,000 in donations from members across the United States and Canada.

Chigani says it comforts him to imagine Waleed’s son using that money for his education — earning his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Virginia Tech.

Leslie Sherman , 20
To pass the often sleepless hours between dusk and dawn, Holly Adams-Sherman will sometimes pick up a brush, dip it in oil paints and watch her daughter emerge on canvas.

It is in these moments — alone, and sheltered from work, and errands, and a seemingly endless e-mail exchange with the Virginia Tech Incident Review Panel — that Adams-Sherman does with paint what reality denies her in person.

“I’m doing a series of paintings in memory of my daughter,” Adams-Sherman said. “I’m trying to bring her to life in each one.”

The paintings, she explained, will feature vignettes of Leslie Sherman’s favorite haunts. There will be one of Seattle’s public market, one of a cluster of cherry trees in blossom and one of a dusty London bookstore.

In each, Adams-Sherman said, “there’s going to be a little Leslie.”

Adams-Sherman has also donated five paintings to the Dewitt Army Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., in Sherman’s name.

Maxine Turner , 22
There’s a tribute page for Maxine Turner on the Web site for Vienna, Va.’s James Madison High School.

Turner graduated from high school in 2003 and was set to get a chemical engineering degree from Virginia Tech when she was killed.

The page isn’t a sprawling database. There are just a handful of photos, a profile and a few comments from friends.

Turner was barely 5-feet -1-inch tall — but she belonged to a tae kwon do club and was preparing to test for a brown belt.

The pictures depict a bright-eyed woman — at the beach, at the zoo, kickboxing, laughing at the photographer — who squinted when she smiled.

Two of her high school teachers have posted recollections of a visit she made the month before she died.

“One of the last things she said to me was that she was going to come by and see me one last time after she graduated,” teacher Toss Cline wrote. “I remember feeling a little sad when she said that. Now, it breaks my heart to know I will never get that last visit.”

Nicole White , 20
Mike and Tricia White were robbed of the chance to finish sending their daughter through college when Nicole White was killed April 16, but they are helping another young woman get an education.

Through a charity called Friends of the Orphans , the Whites are helping to pay for another woman to go to college. She lived in an orphanage from the age of 13 and plans to become an accountant, according to the charity’s Web site.

Friends of the Orphans would only identify the beneficiary by a first name, Damarys, and the White s could not be reached for more details.

“None of us at Friends can comprehend the tragedy at Virginia Tech,” Charlene Dick, an official with the charity, said in an e-mail. “But I think Damarys in El Salvador represents hope! How fitting that she would continue the college education which Nicole was unable to finish.”

Compiled by Roanoke Times writers Donna Alvis-Banks, Matt Chittum, Angela Manese-Lee, Albert Raboteau, Beth Macy and Neil Harvey, and research librarian Belinda Harris.