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"We are Virginia Tech"

Posted Wednesday, April 18, 2007

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Blacksburg, VA - A poet's words silenced the room on a topic that silenced the nation. Famous poet Nikki Giovanni was at Tuesday’s Virginia Tech memorial service helping soothe the hearts of a university community and a nation coming to grips with the deadliest mass shooting in modern history.

“We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech. "

 
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"We are Virginia Tech"
Hokies stand for the National Anthem at a 2006 football game.
photo by Gene Galin


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