Loss Creates a Terrible Contrast in Lives So Similar

Kevin and Linda Granata are believed to have met while they were pursuing graduate degrees at Purdue University. Kevin, a professor of biomechanics, was hired at Virginia Tech in 2003. (1991 Photo By Paul Granata Via Associated Press)

The sisters, who are from Ohio, are "extremely close," said family friend Barbara Leech, a laboratory assistant at the University of Virginia who worked with Kevin Granata there. She said that Lois and her husband followed the Granatas to Blacksburg, Va., when Kevin was hired there in 2003, leaving his position at the University of Virginia. Linda is believed to have met Kevin when both were pursuing graduate degrees at Purdue University.

Slota has spent the past few days trying to reconstruct in his mind the morning's events. He has realized the attacker must have walked by their door and chained the building's entry while they were chatting that morning. Then the assailant went upstairs and continued the killing rampage he had begun at a dormitory.

He learned the rest of the story yesterday morning in a conference and counseling session for the employees of the school's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, who are mourning the death of Kevin Granata and one other professor, Liviu Librescu. There Slota, Puri and others were told that when the gunshots rang out on the second floor, Granata, a military veteran, was in his office on the third floor. He walked out and across the hall to a classroom, where 20 frightened students were wondering what to do. He directed them into his office, where he ushered them to safety -- in close quarters but behind the locked doors. Then, aware that other students might be in danger on the second floor, he and another professor, Wally Grant, went downstairs to investigate, Slota said.

Cho spotted them and shot them both. Grant was wounded but survived; Granata was killed. If the students in the classroom had tried to run out, they would have confronted the killer, too, Slota said.

"All those in that class, they all made it," Slota said. "They were locked up until the police came. [Granata] couldn't sit around and do nothing. He had to help out, find out what was going on."

Leech and colleagues said Granata was a devoted family man and the kind of person who would have confronted danger to defend others.

"He was very protective," Leech said.

Both families are grief-stricken about Granata's death and have been further traumatized by the onslaught of reporters. On Tuesday, Lois Diersing was speaking disjointedly in trying to describe the day's events and the kind of man her brother-in-law had been.

"He was very giving," she said before hanging up the telephone.