Marc Childress had one thing to be grateful for Monday. His friends and students had made it through the day alive.
When those friends and students attend Virginia Tech, that’s no small thing.
At least 30 people were killed Monday at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, shot by a gunman who then turned the gun on himself. It was the worst school shooting the nation has ever seen.
And for Childress, it happened at a place he once called home. The Emporia State University professor got his doctorate from Virginia Tech about 15 years ago. He remembers it as a quiet, beautiful campus. He still knows some of the faculty there, along with three graduate students. So when Childress heard the news while attending a conference in Las Vegas, he first hit the Internet to check the stories and then hit the phone.
“I’ve been in touch with two of the students and I know the other one’s OK,” he said in a call from Nevada on Monday afternoon. “I have a lot of friends who teach there, but they weren’t in those buildings. They pretty much shut down — kept everyone in their offices and wouldn’t let them out until the coast was clear.”
The shootings happened in a dorm and an academic building on the opposite sides of campus. And the ease with which it happened has shaken a lot of people, Childress among them.
“It makes you think that things like this can happen even at Emporia State,” he said.
For more on this story, see today's Gazette