Professor Chris Hall, former aerospace engineering blogger, but now department head at VPI and too busy to blog, checks in with a message:

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I have heard from many of you throughout the last 24 hours. I'm sure I speak for the entire department, when I say that we thank you for thinking of us and for your many thoughtful notes. It means a lot to us.

As far as I know there were no casualties from the department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. We won't really know that until the names are released though. My son is a sophomore in Engineering Science and Mechanics, which is the department that Occupies most of Norris Hall. He is safe, but his undergraduate research advisor was one of the fatalities.

The departments of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Civil and Environmental Engineering lost three good men, and there are several folks in the hospital. The three fallen professors are Liviu Lebrescu, Kevin Granata, and
G.V. Loganathan.

Liviu was an internationally known mechanician and was teaching a junior-level course on Solid Mechanics yesterday morning in Norris Hall. I did not know him well, but occasionally chatted with him about his home country of Romania.

Kevin was a young professor with a young family. His field was biomechanics, and my oldest son chose to major in ESM because he wanted to work in Kevin's lab. My son, Duncan, a sophomore, has worked in Kevin's biomechanics
lab for the past year. I thoroughly enjoyed Duncan's stories of how Professor Granata was teaching him how to program nonlinear controllers for inverted pendula. I know Duncan will miss those lessons.

G.V. was an award-winning professor of environmental engineering, whose expertise was in water resources. Most recently he won the university's prestigious Wine Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Again, I thank you all for your kind messages. I will let you know more when I know more. Please feel free to forward this email to friends and colleagues.

It sad to hear that these brilliant, dedicated, teachers, and those with so much potential were be brought down by a single troubled individual. My thoughts and prayers go out to their families.

Ditto

A little sad, yes. But we all have to die, and we can't choose when. They chose how to die, and at least some of them chose very well. We should be proud of them, honor them, build statues of them, and even envy them for their evident character. It's one thing to teach a mechanics class well, quite another to save the lives of a dozen of your fellow men and women at the cost of your own.

And he wasn't a "troubled individual." He was a right evil bastard who should have been smothered at birth.

Carl said: He was a right evil bastard who should have been smothered at birth.

Way off. As a newborn, somebody loved him and wiped his baby-boy bottom just like most of the rest of us. Evil does not exist in newborns, so smothering one is incomprehensible. That he was evil in his actions, I can't dispute, but smothering at birth is getting close to a backhanded evil comment.

As a newborn, somebody loved him and wiped his baby-boy bottom just like most of the rest of us.

I don't think so, Mac. I don't think he could have developed such a screwed-up personality in the mere 3 years he spent outside the bosom of his family.

It's a nice thought to imagine all parents instinctively love their babies and treat them well, but that is unfortunately far from reality.

I said and Carl replied: As a newborn, somebody loved him and wiped his baby-boy bottom just like most of the rest of us.

I don't think so, Mac.

Oh, okay, as a newborn he was scoping VaTech and planning his evil deeds for almost 20 years in the future.

Carl says: I don't think he could have developed such a screwed-up personality in the mere 3 years he spent outside the bosom of his family.

Its actually quite possible. Though I think it more likely that he would have wound up killing just himself. Depression is bad enough, but loneliness can be overwhelming. I know, I've been there and got darn lucky.

Carl finishes: It's a nice thought to imagine all parents instinctively love their babies and treat them well, but that is unfortunately far from reality.

"All parents" you are correct, sadly. However, I don't think its nearly as bad as you think. But, the formative years and the environment your raised in do tell in your outcome tremendously. I just had to take issue with smothering him when he wa a baby...just a nasty thing to say IMHO.

Sure it's possible, Mac. Had he gone to war, or had his parents snuffed in a car crash, or had some other kind of world-changing event, he might be a little wacked. But even then, people with sound personalities usually do OK, don't turn into antisocial screwballs without an ounce of empathy for their fellow men.

Deliberately shooting one harmless person to death may barely be conceivable in someone with a weak personality and some recent overwhelming experience -- but doing it again and again and again? Watching someone die by your own hand, and then doing it again a few seconds later? C'mon. This isn't mere depression, or existential angst, or a reaction to a really bad hair day. This bespeaks something evil and rotten at the very core, some hideous fundamental flaw in the personality.

I just had to take issue with smothering him when he was a baby...just a nasty thing to say IMHO.

Sounds like you have a baby at home, or recently had. I sympathize. I've been there, and I wish nothing ever had to be done or said in this vale of tears that's ugly or brutal. But nasty decisions are part of grown-up life, it seems. Sometimes you have to tell your child no and put up with their uncomprehending misery. Sometimes you have to shoot your dog. Sometimes you have to see your son off to war, or pull a trigger yourself and kill someone else's son. We do these things not because they are nice, but because they are necessary. Often enough, nice only flourishes inside a fence that nasty builds and maintains.

That said, you took my comment too seriously. Of course he couldn't have been smothered at birth, because we couldn't have known how he'd turn out. I only meant that now, when we know how he turned out, we would do well to psychically smother him -- treat him as an ugly accident, not an object to waste time and effort "understanding." There are better places to spend our human compassion and empathy.

Yeah Carl, I have five tax breaks at home ;P

You said: I only meant that now, when we know how he turned out...

There I agree. Children at birth are the picture of innocence. Then the parents get a hold of em and it all goes downhill from there. Sigh.

You said: That said, you took my comment too seriously.

I did, because of my children. Gives me a burning rage in an instant sometimes too...didn't notice did you?

Reactive Attachment Disorder? Don't know if that is the case here, but if so, then Carl really may not be far off the mark. And if so, the parents (or somebody associated with the birth) is to blame.

I did, because of my children. Gives me a burning rage in an instant sometimes too...

Well, me too. That's what it means to be a father. My daughter is starting to think about college, and so imagining this scene from personal angle is a little too easy. I'd be much happier if I could imagine her -- and about five of her classmates -- pulling out a .38 equalizer from her purse when they heard the first shots.

But this is a bit naive, I realize. The true equalizer is will, not metal. That's why the unarmed 75-year-old Holocaust survivor was the most effective man on the scene. He had the will. Had ten others been like him, we'd be mourning three heroes, not three dozen victims.

How can you teach this to your kids, though? Embedded in a victimizing, infantilizing culture, it's very hard, without being dismissed as a Neanderthal crank.

Carl asked: How can you teach this to your kids, though?

Martial arts training is an excellent start, but ONLY if you can find an instructor that teaches mental discipline as well as physical. I was lucky, I received training in calming techniques that allow you to support the fight part of "Fight or Flight" responses. Once you control your panic, you can analyze much better. Granted, having a gun pointed at you may be a different case, but I still think if the habit is instilled in you at an early age, it becomes a benefit rather than a detriment.