Virginia Tech Inundated With Gifts

A supportive message engraved on a 150-pound Mississippi River rock, a gift from Itawamba Coummunity College is displaedy at the University Unions and Student Activities Center on the Virginia Tech campus, Thursday June 19, 2007 in Blacksburg, Va. After a student gunman killed 32 people on campus, Virginia Tech was showered with gifts of comfort including the rock hauled in the trunk of a car from Tupelo, Miss. The Library of Congress sent staff to advise Tech on what to save and how to save it, university spokesman Larry Hincker said. (AP Photo/Don Petersen) (Don Petersen - AP)

"Mostly every day it was `Where do I put this?'" he said.

Estrada remains in awe of the speed at which creative expressions were bestowed. Detailed weavings and quilts that seemed like they would take months if not years to make arrived in weeks. Portraits of the 27 students and five faculty members killed showed up shortly after their images were made public.

The volume of gifts has been both soul-soothing and overwhelming to university officials, who have no space to display them all and no time to plan what will become of them. The volunteers have recently taken down, sorted and packed an assortment that ranges from construction-paper notes in a child's scrawl to plaques engraved in gold.

It took a week to move everything by truck to a storage building for cataloging, which is expected to take student workers until the end of the year. The Library of Congress sent staff to advise Virginia Tech on what to save and how to save it, Hincker said.

Another task that looms is writing thank-you notes. Estrada said the list of givers runs 1,000 pages in a database.

Still on display is the rock from Itawamba Community College that was hauled in the trunk of a car from Tupelo, Miss. So is the car hood, and two maroon and orange quilts from so many coverlets that Estrada said "you couldn't count them in a day."

The orange life ring from the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico with messages in Spanish was a meaningful gift in itself, he said, but it became even more meaningful when he learned that the guardsmen included Virginia Tech alumni.

Some of the gifts were intended for victims' families.

Marlena Librescu, widow of Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, received a portrait of her husband and an engraved wooden plaque.

The artist who carved the plaque was moved by the account of Librescu barricading the door to his engineering classroom with his body so his students could jump to safety out second-floor windows, Estrada said.

Gifts still arrive daily. A framed photo of a columbine flower growing in a rock crevice came from Columbine High School in Colorado. Talladega Speedway sent a 30-by-30 banner, and students from a Crow/Cheyenne school in Montana made a blanket.

As soon as a bin holding origami cranes is emptied, it fills up again. The paper cranes arrive a thousand at a time, following Japanese tradition, Estrada said.

"You could look anywhere in the building and realize we're not alone," he said. "The world cares."