Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Remembering Jarrett
Jarrett Lane's close friends joined his family to cement memories of the slain student.
Photo by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times
Sitting in the apartment they shared near Virginia Tech, Don Janocha ponders life without his Virginia Tech friend and roommate, Jarrett Lane. Lane was killed in the shootings at Virginia Tech.
Related
Photo gallery
Audio slideshow
Complete coverage:
BLACKSBURG -- Reminders of Jarrett Lane are everywhere.
The holes in the apartment's window blinds? They're left over from the soft-pellet gun wars Lane often had with his roommates. For hours at a time, they'd crank up techno music, turn on the black lights and shoot glow-in-the-dark pellets at one another.
Friends and roommates are still finding the yellow cylinders -- reminders of their 22-year-old friend who was slain in the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings -- on the floors, in the couch cushions, in the shower stall.
There are other reminders, too, including the Velcro tape they stuck on the living-room ceiling for the TV remote, to keep it from getting lost.
On the night of the shooting, Lane's best friends and roommates couldn't go near his Terrace View apartment. Five slept in a single bedroom of one friend's apartment -- the three girls spooned up in the double bed, the two guys lying on the floor in sleeping bags.
"We got no sleep at all," Erin Burress said. "But it was nice to be so close."
Now, the places where Lane lived -- his apartment, his mother's home in Narrows, even his hometown church -- have become a refuge for his best friends.
They're changing, they say, as they process their grief and guilt, and question their faith.
As the campus prepares for its annual emptying out, these young men and women are staying in Blacksburg to cling to what comforts them: the people and places that remind them of Jarrett Lane.
Unfolding tragedy
Beneath the Velcro strip in the living room, Lane's friends gather daily to rehash the horrors of April 16 and to laugh about the memories that came before it.
David Sikole, a freshman from Narrows, sits on the couch -- the place where he slept, at Lane's invitation, after a winter break falling-out with his family. Lane used to tutor Sikole in math and buy gas for his car when he was broke.
Sikole lives in West Ambler Johnston, the now-notorious site of the first shooting: "I woke up at 7:25, and as soon as I heard, I messaged Jarrett on AOL to see if he had heard," he said.
Sikole joked about taking down the shooter himself.
"Just lock your door, man," Lane wrote back.
But he didn't take his own advice about staying put.
He had a paper to turn in for advanced hydrology in Norris Hall. As a senior, he'd had to get special permission to take the graduate-level class.
Though he already had more than enough credits to graduate, Lane wanted to be ahead of the curve in grad school. And he had long admired professor G.V. Loganathan, whose recommendation letter helped him win a full ride to graduate school at the University of Florida.
When word of the second shootings reached him, roommate Phil Stetler checked Lane's schedule online, and his fears were confirmed: Lane was in Norris Hall.
For the next several hours, the friends stayed in touch via cellphone -- inventing reasons why they had not yet heard from Lane.
Stetler reassured the others: "They're holding people at Norris for questioning." That had to be what was taking so long.
Amanda Bishop figured that Lane had probably jumped out of the windows when the shooter stormed his class. "He was so skinny and he jumped around a lot, so I could just picture it," said Bishop, a junior from Giles County.
But Lane would've phoned by now, they all knew.
Could it be, Burress wondered, that Lane was injured and alive but unconscious? His coat and wallet had been stolen at a bar the weekend before. Maybe he was OK but hospital workers didn't know whom to call.
Friends gathered with Lane's mom, Tracey Lane, at the Inn at Virginia Tech. "By 6, they started pulling some parents into private rooms to give them the news," Stetler recalled. "You heard people screaming, and all you could do was wait to have your name called."
For Sikole, the guilt was immediate: "I keep thinking: When the first shooting happened, Jarrett wanted me to lock my door.
"I should've been worried about him, too."
Collective comfort
On Thursday, the gang piled into two cars and drove to Narrows. Tracey Lane had an order from Pizza Hut delivered and, later, they walked through town to see her son's old haunts.
"A lot of kids change a lot when they go away to college," said his oldest sister, Alicia Farrell. "But seeing Jarrett's friends and how fun and caring they are made us realize that they knew the same Jarrett that we knew."
The skinny Lane who was constantly trying to bulk up to impress the ladies.
The 22-year-old who told Liz Roots' sorority sisters that Lane Stadium was named for his grandfather. ("Jarrett Lane, you need to tell them you're kidding," his mom would scold, shaking her head.)
The senior who spent six hours a day at the downtown Starbucks, so he could be with Burress during her Starbucks shift breaks and bring her lunch.
The Narrows native whose favorite beer was New Castle but who'd settle for Yuengling when money was tight.
Lane's friends and two sisters walked together to the Narrows football stadium, where he once made game-winning touchdowns and gave his valedictory speech.
It was raining, and beneath a stadium awning Burress admitted that she'd once had a crush on her best friend.
They talked about last New Year's Eve, when the group stayed up till 5 a.m. debating religion and politics. Roots confided that she hadn't been as involved in church at college as she was in high school.
"What are you waiting for?" Lane asked her. "You never know how much time you have left."
Since his death, Roots and Burress say their minds circle back often to that New Year's conversation.
Why would God take Lane when he had so much to offer? Burress asks herself.
"And then I think, maybe he was taken because he was so sure of Christ," she said. "Maybe it was to give people an example."
As they left the stadium, the group stopped in front of the town library. There was a concrete culvert nearby that still bore the footprint of Lane at 8 years old.
His friends and sisters took turns touching it.
All good memories
On Sunday, Stetler and Roots attended services at First Baptist Church of Narrows with the Lane family, something they plan to continue until Roots graduates in December. After the service, Tracey Lane sent them home with one of her many memorial plants and two cans of coffee she'd bought for her son last month.
On Tuesday, Burress returned to her job at Starbucks after a two-week bereavement break. Employees of the Main Street coffee shop were so distraught at Lane's death that the company sent workers from Lynchburg, Roanoke and Northern Virginia to fill in.
"The good thing about Jarrett is, you're sad you lost him, but you can't cry too long because every memory you have of him is funny or good," she said.
Most nights, Burress and Roots meet on the couch beneath the Velcro strip to work on a scrapbook they're making for Tracey Lane. It includes a picture of their friend with Stetler at a Tech football game, their bodies painted maroon and orange -- including the top of Lane's shaved-for-the-occasion head.
"His head was so smooth, the paint just slipped right on," Stetler said.
"You were both so crusty by the end of the day," Roots remembered, laughing.
The friends have viewed the campus memorials and the commemorative stones. They realize the grief extends far beyond their circle.
"At first I thought, 'I know you're a Hokie, but you just can't understand," Burress said. "But now I see how big it is. There are 31 other people out there who I'm sure were amazing, too."
For the immediate future, though, they are cloaking themselves in the comfort of close friends and the Lane family. Later this week, they plan to visit their friend's grave. The cemetery is behind the track where he once ran hurdles.
"We have one video of him running track," said Stetler, a Galax native who met Lane six years ago when they competed against each other in high jump.
"He's a blur in the background," Roots said.
But if she pauses it at just the right moment, they can see their friend again up close and larger than life.
"I just wish we could hear his voice," Roots said. "I'm so afraid I'm going to forget his voice."
Photographer Sam Dean contributed to this report.
