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To President Steger, the Board of Visitors of Virginia Tech, to the entire Virginia Tech community, and especially to those family members here and elsewhere who have lost loved ones – those beautiful 32 lives that were just described so eloquently – good morning to each of you.

When I stood with you in this community one year ago, like you, my mind was a sea of clashing and conflicting emotions. Today, while the emotions are somewhat different a year later, there are still many emotions – many emotions that are hard to describe, hard to reconcile, and I'm sure that is something that is shared by all who are here.

The predominant emotion I feel is similar to that described by Dr. Steger– a profound sense of sorrow and sympathy for the family members who lost loved ones one year ago. I've not lost a spouse. I've not lost a child. But I have a spouse and I have children, and in my love for them, I can glimpse, just as I know many of you can, how difficult it would be to live my life without them.

Those of us who haven't had the experience can not fully appreciate it, but we can glimpse in the relationships with our own loved ones just how devastating this last year has been for these 32 families. They have borne that sorrow with grace and courage. They have borne that sorrow and sadness with the help of others, many of you. They have endeavored to work so that the sorrow and pain that they feel can be part of an effort to make us stronger and better and safer. So that is a primary emotion today – one of sadness and sympathy, but also of tremendous respect for the family members who have borne this most grievous of losses and done so with such grace and commitment to helping others.

Another emotion is an emotion of pride and admiration in the Virginia Tech community – administration, staff, faculty, and the broader Virginia Tech community, those who care for and love this institution in Blacksburg and Montgomery County, around the Commonwealth of Virginia, around this nation, and around this world. Students, alumni, friends, people who may have no connection with the university, but who have reached out to it in its time of greatest need. Much good has been done by this community in the past year to support and bear the burdens of those who have suffered, to help this campus heal and make it stronger, to reach out to other campuses and other communities and help them be strong as well, and that is an important thing to acknowledge.

I was able to participate in the initiation of a student project – Virginia Tech ENGAGE – six months ago designed to produce 300,000 hours of community service to honor the lives we have just commemorated. As of today, the broad Virginia Tech community has performed over 500,000 hours of community service in communities around this world to honor the students and faculty members that we mourn today.

And a final emotion, an emotion that was so sharpened by the presentations of the lives of these students and faculty, was a sense of lost promise. If Virginia Tech wanted to be represented by 32 people that would tell the story of who this university is and more importantly, aspires to be, those 32 descriptions – so moving – that we just heard make us mourn the lost promise. All of those individuals from youngest to oldest had been contributing and giving and had more to give, had more to give this Virginia Tech community and this world.

The world was cheated on April 16 a year ago – cheated out of the accomplishments that were surely to come from these extraordinary lives. Their lives were just too short for all the promise and for all the good that was within them.

Sometimes in times when emotions swirl around and conflict, I find that a thought will stand in the center while emotions swirl around it, and over the course of the last few weeks as I've been thinking about being here at Virginia Tech today, there has been such a thought, a simple one.  It is not a thought of mine. A simple, enigmatic thought from the 90th Psalm, in the King James Version of the 90th psalm, which is a psalm of Moses, and the phrase goes like this, "Teach us to number our days so that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." A more colloquial, recent translation makes it simpler, "Teach us how short our lives are so that we may become wise."

These lives, these 32 lives, were too short, but we all leave and we all leave this world too quickly. We all live lives that in the grand scheme of things are short and what the psalmist tells us is that we must reflect upon the very brevity of our life, the finitude of our experience, and if we do so, if we think about that, we will be wise.

How does knowledge of short lives of these 32 individuals and our own lives make us wise? I guess what the psalmist was trying to say, is if we realize how short life is, how brief all lives are, we will focus on the things that are important. We will not worry so much about the kinds of things that can preoccupy us that aren't important, but we will instead focus on the things that really matter: faith, relationships with family and friends, dedication to great causes and principles, service to others. The lives of these 32 as described demonstrate that they understood this important bit of wisdom.

The mission of this university, of Virginia Tech, demonstrates that this wisdom is at the core of what we are to do –“ Ut Prosim,” “That I May Serve” – is the mission of Virginia Tech. Not at this institution of higher education “That I May Learn.” You might think that learning would be the central message of this institution – it's not. Learning takes place here, but it is not learning for learning's sake. Not “That I May Earn.” Students who come to college come to gather skills so that later they can do other things – earn a livelihood for their families, be productive – that's important, but that is not the mission. The mission is "That I May Serve." That is one of those central bits of wisdom that we are to grasp if we deeply acknowledge the fact that all of our lives are brief and short. The only way to extend beyond that brevity and that finite experience is by making a difference for someone else.

We can't break out of the bonds of our own brief lives except by touching others' lives and hoping that those consequences and impacts and effects go on and on and on. And again, it is so clear from even these brief descriptions of the lives of these 32, that they understood that. They understood that in order to be fully human, in order to be full Hokies and live the mission of this university, they needed to live their lives in ways that would touch others.

This is a fitting memorial and commemoration today. This physical memorial that we see is a fitting memorial and commemoration, but the best memorial is just to live that mission, is to understand, with the all too painful awareness of the brevity of life, that we must be wise and that wisdom is measured in the mission of this university by our service to others. God bless you all.

 

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