At the Hokies' Heart

In Northern Virginia, Alumni and Families Are Bound by School Ties

Virginia Tech sophomores Alison Arber, left, and Kate Griffin joined a vigil in Alexandria. Their friend Caitlin Hammaren was among the dead. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

Even the shutters are a shade of burgundy at Richard Fenyak's house on Greymont Drive in Fairfax County, where everything, from a stained-glass window leaning against a living room wall to his mailbox painted with the "VT" initials, tells of his Hokie pride.

Up the road, six plain black mailboxes away, sits another Virginia Tech mailbox.

Across the street flaps a flag with the school's mascot perched against a white backdrop.

These symbols have been up for years on this Centreville block, telling of residents' ties to the university ages before a gunman's rage turned the world's attention to the school this week. On this one block lives a father of three girls who went to the school. There is a government worker who lives near the insurance agent who lives about seven homes away from the construction worker. All graduated from there.

"We're all proud together and sometimes we're disappointed together," said the insurance agent, Everett Brock, a 1973 graduate whose two nephews and niece also attended Virginia Tech. "Just like 9/11, everyone felt like circling the wagon. Well, now we have this tragedy that happened to us. . . . It's kind of heartbreaking to think we will now be synonymous with the worst shooting ever."

The Washington region is home to an estimated 35,000 Virginia Tech alumni, most of them in Northern Virginia. And so while the rest of the nation watches the events in Blacksburg unfold with some distance, those in Northern Virginia don't have the same luxury. They must watch with the knowledge that they are only a family member away. Or a co-worker away. Or a neighbor away.

"You don't have to go far before you're touched," Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly said yesterday. "It's three degrees of separation. Not six."

More than 600 people turned out last night for a vigil at the county Government Center organized by the faith community and county officials. The memorial service was preceded by an emotional meeting between the supervisors and Tae Sik Lee, South Korea's ambassador to the United States. The meeting, arranged at Lee's insistence, was the ambassador's second appearance in two days in Fairfax to express his condolences after it was made public that the young man who gunned down 32 people was a South Korean citizen. "We share the same agony," he said.

Market Square in Old Town Alexandria also was packed last night as hundreds of people turned out for a vigil organized by the Tech alumni in the area. Theresa Dombrowski, a 1983 graduate, said her goddaughter is a sophomore there. As she spoke, tears streamed down her face. "It's personal," she said. "We're here to grieve for everyone -- the families, the wounded, the kids, the professors who died." Just then a young man came to light his candle off hers.

All across Northern Virginia, there were signs of grief. The marquee at Tysons Corner Center read: "Our sincere condolences to Virginia Tech as they mourn the loss of their family and friends." Flags hung at half-staff, from the Wal-Mart in Manassas to Westfield High School in Chantilly, from where Cho Seung Hui and two of his victims had recently graduated. A steady stream of visitors also poured into the bookstore at Virginia Tech's Falls Church campus, looking to buy Tech sweatshirts and T-shirts to wear tomorrow in a nationwide show of solidarity for the victims and their families.

"They're selling like I don't know what," said Annie Lee Powell of Falls Church, a Tech alum and retired Fairfax County teacher, who was getting in her car after purchasing a maroon T-shirt. "Last night I couldn't tear myself away from the TV. I just cried and cried."

Fairfax County is particularly affected by the tragedy because Cho graduated from Westfield in 2003, three years before victims Reema Samaha and Erin Peterson. Less than a year ago, another graduate, Michael W. Kennedy, fatally shot two Fairfax police officers before he was gunned down.