BLACKSBURG, Va. – 15,000 Hokies started off Saturday morning in complete silence, honoring the 32 lives lost on April 16, 2007.
“It’s the silence that’s striking,” Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said.
Virginia Tech held their annual 3.2 for 32 Run for Remembrance Saturday morning.
Virginia Tech Alum Trena Carroll says she was showing her family around campus just one week before the tragedy took place 16 years ago.
“We had our little kids showing them our dorms,” Carroll said. “One week later, tragedy struck and as soon as we could we wanted to come back to campus because we didn’t want it to scare us away.”
Graduate student Yadeen Rashid says this event brings a sense of community for the Hokies.
“We’ve made it into something under a more positive light in the sense of bringing a community together so it’s always nice to see thousands of people out here on an April morning,” Rashid said.
Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and his wife Laura attend the run every year. Sands says Hokie nation is still grieving the lives lost 16 years later.
“That grief evolves, and we can see that every year,” Sands said. “We’ve been here for nine years and its different every year. Every year it’s evolving, everyone has a different way of expressing it, but as I said earlier, I really enjoy the fact that the newest members of our Hokie nation want to fold in and be part of that.”
President Sands will meet with the families of those killed throughout the weekend, to show love and support.
“We’ll visit with the families this afternoon who come back, those families who come back each year, and that’s a very special time for everyone to get together and support one another,” Laura Sands said.
President Sands says the Virginia Tech community is as strong as ever, and will never forget the 32 lives lost.
“I think that we were that way before April 16 in a lot of ways, but that event, that tragic event brought everyone together in a way that most people have never experienced, hopefully never have to experience it. But the long term implications for Virginia Tech are that we are one community,” he said.
