Sean McQuade's Background
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The messenger: a VT survivor's story
Derek O'Dell of Roanoke County returned to Virginia Tech on Aug. 16 -- four months after the shooting. The bullet wound in his right arm is healed. Other wounds run deeper.
Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Virginia Tech junior Derek O'Dell, who was wounded in the April 16 shootings on campus.
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The voice leapt above the hum from the waiting room television at Montgomery Regional Hospital.
News of the shootings at Virginia Tech was not two hours old, and the network chatter was already relentless.
But the voice distinguished itself because the people in the waiting room recognized it.
It was the voice of Derek O'Dell, the very man O'Dell's aunt, uncle and girlfriend were waiting to see.
They knew only that he had been shot, was not seriously wounded, and they still didn't know exactly how it had happened.
Yet there was his voice, quiet and calm, telling the story of how XXXXX-XXX XXX had entered his classroom and sprayed bullets through it.
O'Dell had been unable to speak to his parents or girlfriend, other than to send a text message.
He had been bandaged and tended to, yet no one had asked him what had happened.
Until the call came from MSNBC.
At last, someone was asking.
He could tell the true story of what happened in Norris Hall, he thought. Maybe his mother, in Colorado on business, would hear him and know he was OK.
If nothing else, he could release the horror of what he had seen and survived.
So the ordinarily quiet, attention-shunning O'Dell began to talk.
And for the next days, weeks and months, he kept on talking.
To reporters, to friends, to his old high school.
To his psychologist, to the widow of his professor. He talked.
To the guy who sat feet from him and whose blood he saw spill out, he talked.
It was by accident, but before wounds had ceased to bleed, O'Dell seized on just what he needed for his wounded psyche.
He would talk.
The trauma had not set in, the search for answers had not begun, and already he was changing.
And it wasn't all bad.
The trauma
Joanne Hawley was two-thirds of the continent away from Blacksburg when she heard. The story came to her fully formed: the mass shooting; 33 dead, including the perpetrator; numerous wounded; and her son, Derek, a sophomore who had just turned 20, among them, and alive.
She had been in a conference all day in Colorado, ignorant of the events at Virginia Tech.
She emerged to see a cousin, who spun the terrible yarn for her. Hawley, a post-traumatic stress disorder counselor, knew right away what her son could be facing, "the whole constellation of symptoms."
The flashbacks.
The nightmares.
The jumpiness.
The constant vigilance and sense of danger.
As a psychologist would later tell her and her husband, Roger, what used to be normal in all their lives was gone. There would be a new normal.
Hawley arranged for her son to meet with a psychologist just 26 hours after the shooting.
"That's the only thing I could do from 2,000 miles away," she said.
What she longed to do was hug her quiet boy, the skinny kid with round shoulders and remarkable blue eyes who demanded his parents remove insects from their home rather than swat them, even wasps.
O'Dell had been raised in a peaceful home by pacifist parents. He decided at 10 to become a veterinarian after he saw a dog hit by a car and was helpless to give it aid. He played soccer at Cave Spring High School, but he excelled at a more cerebral game: chess. He seemed wired for the game's calm intensity, predisposed to thinking moves ahead and to analyzing every match after it was over.
He was a state champion, but shunned the attention it earned him.
"He didn't want extra attention that other people didn't have," his father said.
Unlike his war-protesting father who is prone to questioning the establishment, Derek O'Dell always sought the comfort of the group and felt warmth in his associations -- his high school, his university.
He rarely played with toy guns as a child. The only weapons in the O'Dell home are Civil War relics Roger O'Dell inherited -- a sword and rifle over the mantel.
Before April 16, he had never been in the presence of live gunfire.
The face was male, Asian. Just a sliver of it visible when the door to Room 207 cracked open 20 minutes into class and closed again quickly. Probably some kid confused about which room was his. Minutes later, the same face appeared at the door again.
"Why are you looking in here again?" O'Dell thought, annoyed. "You just looked in here."
Jamie Bishop continued his lesson in German grammar until the next interruption.
"Is that what I think it is?" someone asked. No, it must be just more construction noise.
Later, O'Dell would think, "That was my first mistake."
The messenger
In the days after the shooting, O'Dell craved details.
He scoured news reports, Web sites, television for new nuggets of information to help him re-create the event.
This was real-life game analysis. The chess player was trying replay the match in his head.
Did xxxxx-xxx xxx come to Room 207 second or third? How much time did he and his classmates really have to react? Did he do all he could to help?
If he couldn't know the why, at least he wanted the what and how.
When he wasn't searching for details, O'Dell was talking. In the first two weeks after the shooting, he was interviewed dozens of times by reporters.
It seemed to help. He told his mother, "If I'm talking about it, I'm not thinking about it."
His psychologist would later tell Hawley that this seemed to be part of O'Dell's healing.
It was a therapeutic role he adopted for himself: the messenger.
Yet, he couldn't bring himself to say his assailant's name. He wanted to forget the killer, yet worried that if he blotted the man from his memory, he might also lose the memory of those who died.
The event that would forever mark the before and after in his life, he referred to only as "that day."
The clap of a woman's flip-flops on stairs made him jump.
When he returned to class the Monday after the shooting, he would not sit near the door, as he had in Norris 207. When he took his seat, he quickly formulated an escape plan.
Thoughts of how he could defend himself leapt to mind involuntarily: "This isn't only a laptop. It's a weapon." He knows it doesn't make sense.
And then, two weeks after the shooting, one of his roommates made a jarring discovery.
The fleece jacket O'Dell wore when he was shot bore not only the holes where a bullet passed through his right arm, but three others.
Two between the collar and right shoulder indicate a bullet missed his neck by inches.
And a single hole near the zipper seemed to show a bullet had narrowly missed his midsection, perhaps even his heart.
He had come even closer to death than he realized.`
This must be some sort of criminal justice class experiment, he thought. Later, someone would come and ask them what they saw to test the validity of eyewitness accounts, right?
The wounded professor staggered toward the shooter, was shot again. Just feet away, blood erupted from Sean McQuade's neck.
O'Dell scrambled under his desk. A shell casing rattled to stillness on the floor near him.
This was real.
He crept toward the rear of the room, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and that gun.
Gunfire roared in his ears. It was all he could hear. Where was the shooter? From beneath a desk, he caught only glimpses of his feet. He followed the sound of the gun. The shooter was walking through the room firing rhythmically. Classmates fell into the aisles as they were hit.
And then it was quiet.
The recognition
The May trip to the beach was no escape.
The O'Dells and the family of Derek's girlfriend, Laura Jones, arrived at their rented beach house on the Outer Banks to a cheerful banner that read, "Surf or Sound Realty Welcomes Derek O'Dell!"
Inside the house were baskets of baked goods and gift certificates from businesses for miles around -- well more than you could spend in a week, his parents said.
He's like a star, his mother remarked. People recognized him -- at a roadside fruit stand in North Carolina backcountry, at Mass at the Catholic church in Buxton, where the Cape Hatteras lighthouse is.
O'Dell's churchgoing had slipped in recent years. Now, he wanted to go to Mass all the time. He had survived when others hadn't. Why? What did God have in store for him?
He didn't trust he would be so blessed again.
Every night at the beach, he locked his bedroom door.
The door! What if the shooter comes back?
He leapt across the desks to reach the door. His right arm felt numb. A bullet had passed clean through his biceps. He peeled his jacket back, fashioned a tourniquet from his leather belt, felt for his cellphone and dialed 911.
"Quiet! Quiet!" Trey Perkins, a classmate, told him. "He might come back."
O'Dell's right shoe was missing. It had come off during his crawl to the back of the room. He had to have it back. If he had to run, he thought, he didn't want to be hindered by slipping in his socks on the slick floor.
Perkins tossed it to him. He slipped it on, braced his back against the wall, and jammed his foot beneath the door like a wedge to keep the killer out.
The appreciation
"I was involved in the incident at Virginia Tech," O'Dell said with remarkable understatement, but he assumed the audience already knew.
He returned to his old high school, Cave Spring, in June, but not to talk about the shooting.
Rather, it was to lead a panel discussion where he and, as Principal Martha Cobble put it, "people who had survived their first year of college" would reveal the secrets of college life to seniors.
Take a hammer and a screwdriver.
Make boyfriend/girlfriend visitation rules with your roommate.
Don't be embarrassed when your parents cry on move-in day.
O'Dell, who had not necessarily been anonymous at Cave Spring but was not homecoming king either, had offered to organize the event when Cobble mentioned it to him.
He tucked "Virginia Tech tragedy" at the bottom of the list of topics he distributed. But the shooting lurked in the room, waiting for discussion.
At the end of each session, he gave a brief summary of his role in the shooting. Once he mentioned his attacker by name. "XXX XXXXX-XXX" he said, pausing as he realized he had the names out of order. "Or however you say his name," he added dismissively.
He implored the students to appreciate their professors. Five died on April 16, he said. "They're amazing people. Be grateful for everything they do for you."
Then he pulled out his fleece jacket and passed a pencil through the bullet holes in a strange kind of show-and-tell.
"Without God, I know I wouldn't be here," he said.
The door handle jiggled, then turned. It came unlatched. The shooter pushed the door, forced it open a few inches.
O'Dell stood on the hinged side of the door, his left leg stretched across to secure it. Katelyn Carney stood in front of the door, pushing on it with both hands. They forced it closed again.
Bullets ripped through the wooden door. One came through Carney's hand. The door shook with every gunshot, like someone pounding on it. Every bullet came closer to O'Dell than the last.
He closed his eyes, prayed for it to end. And for the moment, it did.
All around him, people were bleeding, dying or dead. Sean McQuade listed over. O'Dell wanted to help, knew how to help.
But the door. He couldn't leave the door.
The absolution
It was late July, and O'Dell stood outside a building at the University of Virginia. He was there for the public comment session of the Virginia Tech Review Panel appointed by the governor.
It was the kind of atmosphere that put him on high alert.
He stepped into the building lobby, which bustled with people during a break in the meeting. Who were they? He studied identification badges, trying to sort out who was who, why they were there.
In the auditorium, he noted exits to the left and right of the stage and took his seat in a row near the front. Hours later, he could recount that eight people sat on his left, three to the right. One row back, there were only two people -- that would be his escape route.
For weeks it had been as normal a summer as it could be. The reporters didn't call much anymore. He worked at his regular job at the Cave Spring Veterinary Clinic, hung out with his girlfriend, Laura, cooked her pasta for their third-anniversary dinner.
But there, with the panel onstage before him, and parents and spouses of those who died around him, his happiness left him.
As speakers took to the lectern, he looked down, his eyes searching a blank sheet of paper on his lap. He fiddled with his pen. Another speaker was called: "Dave McCain."
He looked up, and the tears began. He knew Lauren McCain, who had sat just in front him in the German class, was dead. But until now, it was just information. When her father rose from the row in front of him, the reality of her death broke through.
Later, McCain asked to speak to O'Dell privately.
These meetings were always awkward at first, and for O'Dell, guilt-laden. What could he say to someone whose child was dead when he still lived?
Without fail, the parents recognized his feelings and absolved him. "We're glad you're here," they would say. "You have a purpose."
If it's a parent of someone who died in Room 207, they often want details -- anything to help them know if the one they lost suffered.
It started a week after the shooting, when he met with the widow and parents of his slain professor, Jamie Bishop.
He also met with his classmate, Sean McQuade, who had no memory of the shooting. It was O'Dell who first told him the details.
McCain asked some questions about his daughter and thanked O'Dell, not only for speaking with him, but for what he did in Room 207.
He used a word that both makes O'Dell uncomfortable and eases his guilt: hero.
Again he came back, again the bullets pierced the door. And again the killer was thwarted.
Inside Room 207, they could hear the echo of gunfire fading down the hallway. Minutes later, voices -- the police.
The police hurried them out, but O'Dell couldn't help feeling he was abandoning those left inside. And where was the shooter?
They crept down the stairs to the front door of Norris Hall. A police officer blasted a chain from the handles, and they were out.
O'Dell sprinted through the wind and snow, took six steps in a single bound, hurdled a wall. The shooter could be anywhere out here.
They flagged a police car, were delivered to an ambulance, which delivered them to the hospital. The ambulance doors closed and it pulled away. Only then did he relax.
The first days back
"I might have to stop at some point," O'Dell warned the police lieutenant.
He wanted to know what the lieutenant could tell him. He expected to see drawings of where the bullets came through the door. He didn't anticipate a trip back into Norris Hall.
The lieutenant told him they would take it slow, so he agreed to press on.
Like others, he had vowed not to be defined by what happened to him. But he added a corollary: Let your response define you.
He returned to school Aug. 16 -- four months to the day after the shooting -- feeling weak, vulnerable, unsure what school would be like now. Would he be able to concentrate?
In his first days back, all the major network news organizations interviewed him. So did several local affiliates.
Some people might look askance at his apparent thirst for attention, he knew. But he didn't seek the interviews.
When a reporter asks for his help, he feels obliged to respond.
"He's gathering something from it," Hawley said.
He was changing, and it was not only the trauma that had done it.
He spoke up often now. He carried himself with confidence. He felt it.
People around him had noticed it, too. The veterinarian he worked for once worried about O'Dell's ability to communicate with pet owners. Not anymore.
"This is not the old Derek at all," his father said.
O'Dell took his strength where he could get it.
Twice during the first day of classes, he returned to the arch of stones memorializing the April 16 fallen. He prayed with them, told them about his day. He told Bishop about the new German professor. He asked them for strength.
He has largely forgiven XXX, and manages to forget him most of the time, too.
Still, he has an urge to meet XXX's family and do for them what the families of the dead have done for him so many times, to release them from their guilt.
That might be a last step in O'Dell's own healing. In the meantime, he had taken another major step.
He walked slowly by the lieutenant's side to Norris 207.
The door was brand-new. Inside, the room was pristine white, sanitary. The lights gleamed, the walls shone.
He entered doing what came naturally. He told the story again, every detail.
He was scarred, yes, but with the scars came a recognition of something in himself he had not known before.
Don't be defined by the experience. Be defined by your reaction to it.
He stood in the spot where he made his stand that day. No fear rushed back to him, no weakness.
He felt strong, not only for the triumph of returning to that spot, but because what he did there at that door showed him his strength, revealed to him his courage.
"This," he thought, "is my conquering spot."
How Virginia Tech survivors are doing since shootings 
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 19, 2007
Caroline Merrey, 22, Parkville, Md.
Caroline Merrey still sends e-mail messages to former classmates who, like her, escaped from Liviu Librescu's class April 16. Now that she has graduated and moved to take a job in Chicago, Merrey said, "I feel like I'm kind of on a different planet out here. A lot of them are still back in Virginia."
Merrey, who lives in Mount Prospect, Ill., fell onto her back after jumping out a second-floor window to escape the shootings but was released from the hospital hours later. She's now an assistant engineer at Parsons Brinckerhoff.. Hilary Strollo, 19, Gibsonia, Pa.
A few days after Hilary Strollo was shot in the head, abdomen and buttocks, she vowed to her brother she would return to campus before the semester was out. "I want to dominate my finals," she said. It was Strollo who waved to the Hokie marching band from her hospital window three days after the shootings and started the "Let's Go, Hokies!" cheer. Later, she was rehospitalized for emergency surgery in Pittsburgh, where her parents are doctors. All told, she had four surgeries, including one to remove a bullet lodged in her spine and one to repair her liver, which had become infected after her initial release. Her brother Patrick, who graduated from Tech in May, spent the summer tending to his sister at home in Gibsonia.
Jamal Carver, 21,
Virginia Beach
Jamal Carver spent the summer relaxing and undergoing physical rehabilitation in his hometown. The engineering science and mechanics major, shot in the arm and side, spent a week in the hospital. By e-mail, Carver said he is coming back to Tech, expects to graduate in the spring and will probably go to graduate school.
Colin Goddard, 21
Bullets went into his leg, his buttocks and his shoulder, but Colin Goddard, a senior in international studies, wasn't about to change his summer plans. "I had this opportunity... and that wasn't possible if I couldn't walk," Goddard said in June. "So it was a goal that I set myself, to be able to walk in time." After surgery that left him with a metal rod in his leg and weeks of physical therapy, Goddard made it. His quote came from Madagascar, where he's volunteering for CARE International.
Allison Cook and Emily Haas,
Henrico County
Allison Cook and Emily Haas are both juniors, both from the Richmond area where they were friends before going to Virginia Tech, and both in the same sorority. Both were in the same French class when they were shot.
Cook was hit in the lower back, side and shoulder and spent a week in the hospital. She suffered a collapsed lung. Haas was grazed in the head by two bullets, received two stitches and left the hospital the day of the shooting.
According to an article in The Arrow, the Pi Phi sorority magazine, Cook and Haas have recovered well. The two told The Arrow they will return to Tech this fall.
Matt Webster, 23, Smithfield
Matt Webster, an engineering student in professor Liviu Librescu's class, survived the shooting by pretending to be dead. A bullet grazed his head and ricocheted into his right arm. He was released from Montgomery Regional Hospital on April 16.
His family said he spent the summer working in a Blacksburg eatery and riding his mountain bike during his off time. He will return to Tech as a senior this fall.
Alec Calhoun, 20,
Waynesboro
Jim Calhoun didn't fully grasp how scared his son Alec must have been April 16 until he went into his Norris Hall classroom and looked down from the window where his son jumped. "The drop is over 19 feet," said Calhoun. "I thought, well, I'm not sure I could live through a jump like that."
Calhoun even saw the bent branches on the boxwood where his son and another classmate landed.
The senior was the last student to jump from Liviu Librescu's classroom. He's kept in touch with the other students in the class - all but one of whom lived, thanks to Librescu's blocking of the door. The events of April 16 "will never be out of his mind for too long," his father said.
Garrett Evans, 30, Chicago
A senior in economics and statistics, Garrett Evans was shot in the leg in German class. A video, made from his hospital bed, was broadcast on YouTube. Evans was quoted in newspapers and broadcasts worldwide for his comment about XXXXX-XXX XXX: "An evil spirit was going through that boy. "
The Roanoke Times has been unable to find Evans or learn his progress.
Kevin Sterne, 22,
Eighty Four, Pa.
Kevin Sterne is the subject of the most famous image from April 16. Sterne, his face concealed, was photographed as rescuers carried him from Norris Hall, still bleeding badly from his right leg. After two weeks in the hospital, Sterne took to crutches and crossed the stage at graduation to pick up his diploma. He's returning to Virginia Tech this fall to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering.
Sean McQuade, 23,
Mullica Hill, N.J.
Sean McQuade, who is believed to have been the last shooting victim released from a hospital in the Virginia Tech region, turned 23 on Aug. 1.
As he continues to wrestle with the effects of being shot in the face, McQuade has inspired numerous fundraisers in southern New Jersey.
In a recent post on the Web site where she writes updates on her son's condition, Jody McQuade said Sean no longer has feeling in his face and is planning to undergo facial nerve surgery.
Guillermo Colman 38,
Harrisonburg
Quietly, busily and determinedly, Gil Colman is moving on. Colman was shot in the head April 16. The bullet, which lodged behind his left ear, was removed that day.
Since then, Colman has kept a low profile. A friend serves as his spokesman.
He probably doesn't have a lot of free time to talk. Despite his injury, Colman still works full time at Blackwell Engineering in Harrisonburg and is finishing a graduate degree in civil engineering.
He continues to receive medical treatment for his injuries. Two months ago, he and his wife, Nell-Marie, celebrated the first birthday of their son, Daniel.
Chang Min Park, 27,
South Korea
Chang Min Park, a civil engineering student, was injured in the attacks. According to the New York Post, Park was shot in the side and in his left hand.
He spent just more than a week in Montgomery Regional Hospital, but now, four months later, he's much improved. Dong Ha, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, said Park "has recovered completely" and will continue his studies at Virginia Tech in the fall.
Katelyn Carney, 21, Sterling
Katelyn Carney, a student in Jamie Bishop's German class, was shot in the left hand. She also suffered minor head injuries as she tried to block XXX from entering the classroom. He repeatedly banged the door against her head. The gunshot wound was a result of his shooting at the doorknob. Initially, Carney was hospitalized for nearly a week. This summer, she had a second surgery on her hand, continued her physical therapy and entered counseling. She returned to Tech for the second summer session to continue her major in international studies.
John Wallace "Wally" Grant, 64, Blacksburg
Wally Grant, the head of Virginia Tech's School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, was injured by ricocheting bullets while fleeing the gunman. He caught shrapnel in his upper right arm before he ducked into a restroom, where he warned a student to stay put.
Although he typically works between the spring and fall semesters, this summer he took some time off.
In a rare interview with his hometown paper, the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail, he reflected on the events of April 16. The 27-year Tech employee said the bullet fragments can't be removed, but he experienced a quick recovery and has full use of his arm.
Elilta "Lily" Habtu, 22, Woodbridge
Lily Habtu, whose parents came to the United States from Eritrea when she was an infant, suffered multiple gunshot wounds April 16 in the German class.
The worst injury came from a bullet that entered just below her chin. After more than a week in the hospital, she was able to go home but is expected to need reconstructive surgery, as well as physical therapy.
The senior psychology major was awarded her degree in May, although she was not able to attend graduation ceremonies. She is continuing to make progress in her recovery, according to her family.
Justin Klein, 20,
Catonsville, Md.
When asked if her family was tired of hearing from the media, Diane Klein said "no" in a very simple way. "We don't talk to people like you," she said by phone in July.
Her son Justin was shot three times by the gunman and has stayed fairly private ever since.
But less than two weeks after the shootings, the junior mechanical engineering student was back on campus, his wheelchair surrounded by friends. "The Hokie community is strong and resilient," Justin Klein said in a statement. "We will persevere, we will go on and we will heal."
Derek O'Dell, 20,
Roanoke County
Derek O'Dell was shot through the right arm in German class and was released from the hospital the day of the shooting. The bullet missed hitting bone, nerves or major arteries.
The Cave Spring High School graduate, who has designs on becoming a veterinarian, worked this summer at the Cave Spring Veterinary Clinic. An avid chess player and president of Tech's chess club, he accepted an invitation from the United States Chess Federation to play in a national tournament in Philadelphia in early August.
He visited family in California and kept in touch with a few of his wounded classmates.
O'Dell will return for his junior year at Tech.
Kristina Heeger, 20, Vienna
After spending the summer going to physical therapy and working for her stepfather's company, Kristina Heeger took a family vacation to Spain shortly before she planned to return to Virginia Tech for her junior year, said Chalinee Tinaves, who roomed with Heeger last year. Heeger was shot in the back in Jocelyne Couture-Nowak's intermediate French class and had to have much of one of her kidneys removed.
"She's basically almost back to normal," Tinaves said. "Every once in a while she has a little pain here and there."
Tinaves said she and Heeger returned to Tech for a short time during the summer and her friend toured Norris Hall. That experience "definitely shook her up a little bit," Tinaves said.
"She's definitely positive about returning and being back around her friends, but it's going to be probably taking it one day at a time."
Compiled by Roanoke Times writers Donna Alvis Banks, Matt Chittum, Albert Raboteau, Beth Macy and Neil Harvey and research librarian Belinda Harris.
An unbelievable' recovery for Va. Tech victim
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 By Jessica Driscolljdriscoll@sjnewsco.com HARRISON TWP. Sean McQuade celebrated his 23rd birthday on Aug. 1 "a true celebration of life," wrote his mother, Jody, on her Web site, which chronicles Sean's recuperation.
McQuade, who was seriously injured during the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings, faces several more challenges on his road to recovery but is progressing every day, thanks to support from his family, friends and community.
He was seriously injured when a bullet entered his cheek, shattering his jawbone into five pieces.
In the last month, Sean started his own once-a-week chess club in Mullica Hill, threw the first pitch at a July 27 Phillies game and is steadily gaining weight now that he is able to eat solid foods again.
In her Aug. 9 post, Jody McQuade said Sean will soon return to New York City for a visit with a surgeon who will work on replacing his shattered jaw joint. The family is also preparing for the possibility of surgery to replace his seventh nerve, which runs out of the skull and along his fractured ear canal and jaw.
"We're still waiting to see if it heals on its own, because we've been told that is a possibility," said McQuade's grandfather Chuck Forsman. "Right now he is deaf on the right side, but we're hopeful that his hearing will return when the damage is mended."
McQuade's childhood friend Matthew Egge is amazed at his friend's speedy recovery and unbreakable spirit.
"When you think about what he went through, certain images come to mind," said Egge. "But then you look at Sean. I visited him about two months ago right before I moved to New York, and he jumped right up to shake my hand. The only thing that even seemed different was that he was skinnier and that he couldn't really close his eye or smile on one side. But he's still intelligent as always and his speech and thoughts are clear. It's nothing like you'd imagine."
Egge also spoke to McQuade on the phone on his birthday.
"He was talking about shooting hoops with his brother and training at the gym. I think he will definitely recover completely. It's unbelievable but that's Sean."
The two funds set up in McQuade's name "Friends of Sean McQuade" at Susquehanna Patriot Bank in Mullica Hill and "Sean McQuade Alumni Fund" at St. Edmond's Federal Savings Bank in Sewell are still accepting donations, but contributions have slowed during the summer months.
"We have received a modest amount of money this summer, but I think that reflects the fact that people are on vacation," said Dave Hibbard, manager of the Susquehanna Patriot Bank.
To remind people about McQuade's recovery, Comcast has teamed up with the banks and local companies to produce a commercial about the McQuade family's need for support.
"This is the third week of our TV campaign to drive interested traffic to the family's Web site and encourage people to make donations," said Comcast Spotlight's Don Lea.
Woodbury Nissan, Professional Pulmonary Service of Woodbury, Russo Homes of Swedesboro and Rock Products of West Deptford paid for the commercial's airtime, Lea said. It will be aired for the next few weeks and again after Labor Day. Lea hopes that the commercial, which airs on Comcast channels like ESPN, TNT and HGTV, will reach thousands of people.
Sean will take part in an exclusive interview with ABC's Bob Woodruff, according to Jody McQuade's Web site. Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb that struck his vehicle while he was reporting in Iraq.
Jody McQuade said to keep an eye on the news between August 19 and 21 for the interview. ABC's Cathie Levine confirmed the interview, but said it had not yet taken place and no details were available for the air date.
© 2007 Gloucester County Times© 2007 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
The Roanoke Times Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A willing master of the Hokie Spirit fund
Kenneth Feinberg's prior work with the 9/11 fund helped prepare him for the raw emotions he faces.
BLACKSBURG -- By the time Kenneth Feinberg stepped in to administer the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, the fund was 2 12 months old, more than $7.1 million strong and facing increasing criticism from the people it strived to help.
Virginia Tech administrators -- novices in the highly emotional work of crime victim compensation -- were in over their heads.
Enter Feinberg, a man who colleagues say has witnessed more than his share of "horrible raw emotion."
As special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the Washington lawyer had spent almost three years acting as the fund's public face and ultimate authority.
If anyone knew what it was like to battle questions of worth and due, all the while facing fire from victims' families, survivors and the public, it was Feinberg.
That didn't mean handling the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund would be simple.
"It was easier substantively -- there weren't near the number of victims, there is a finite amount of money and distribution isn't required by any statute to give different amounts" to different victims, Feinberg said. "But you're still dealing with individuals who are in grief or in pain, and that part of the role never gets easier."
At least this time, though, he had experience to guide him.
Feinberg's work with the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund began about a month after the April 16 shootings, shortly after he received a call from Mary Vail Ware, director of Virginia's Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund. Ware had worked with Feinberg during the aftermath of 9/11 and was phoning a number of experts on Tech's behalf.
The university needed help with fund distribution, Ware told Feinberg. Did he have any advice?
He did, and he decided to hand-deliver it.
"I came down to Blacksburg for a day and met with President [Charles] Steger and other members of the Virginia Tech administration and, right then and there, they asked if I would come on as a pro bono unpaid consultant," said Feinberg, who is founder and managing partner of the Feinberg Group, a high-profile law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York.
His response was almost immediate.
"He mentioned it to me and we both just looked at each other and said, 'Of course,' " said Camille Biros, business manager for Feinberg's law firm.
"There were some 20,000 donors who gave money to the fund, all in the hope that it would be used wisely and effectively," Feinberg explained. "In light of the tragedy, and the willingness of so many thousands of people to contribute dollars to the fund, I thought the least I could do was spend a few months helping make sure the fund had its maximum impact."
Ware was relieved.
"I think it's helpful to not have the walking wounded serving the wounded," she said. "By having Ken there, they have someone outside the situation looking at it critically and offering sound advice."
For Tech, the chance to pass the fund's control to such a well-tested expert was an obvious asset.
"We now realize that we are not in a position to pre-suppose what is best for victims or their families," Steger said in an announcement about Feinberg's appointment. "With no experience in dealing with crime victims, we felt it best to seek expert advice in disbursements of these monies."
Steger and other Tech administrators who met with Feinberg were unavailable for comment on their impressions of the lawyer.
But Biros, who has worked with Feinberg for more than 27 years, described him as "dynamic," "very, very bright" and "extremely generous."
After 9/11, "when he was sort of thrown into town hall meetings with family members, he was the only one there for them to express their angst and horror," she said. "He very quickly learned you have to take this slow and go one step at a time to understand how to deal with this type of emotion."
Feinberg and Biros met similar heartbreak soon after they began work on the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.
"The scale of it is so much different, but we were just remarking in our conversations with each other, the feeling is exactly the same," Biros said. "It's like you can close your eyes and go back in time."
In mid-July, Feinberg drew up a draft distribution plan for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and began scheduling meetings to discuss it with those affected.
Embedded within the proposal, Feinberg said, were two lessons gleaned from his 9/11 fund days.
The first is to offer the same compensation for all who died.
The second, he said, "is the incredible importance of transparency, of due process, of meeting directly with families in large groups and individually to give people an opportunity to comment on the protocol [and] to vent about life's unfairness."
Hours after a July 30 meeting in Trenton, N.J., Feinberg said he'd met with more than 100 people at gatherings throughout the eastern United States and was pleased with the way discussions were going.
"The families and the students who I've met with have been extremely gracious," he said then. "They're understandably angry and frustrated with life's misfortunes, but they have been extremely gracious to me personally, and very constructive, and I'm grateful to them for a host of suggestions on how to improve the draft protocol."
But Feinberg's efforts aren't always embraced.
In a post made to a Web site that chronicles the recovery of wounded shooting victim Sean McQuade, McQuade's mother, Jody, wrote: "Mr. Feinberg did make notations about how we felt, but my feeling is he already knows what they intend to do and is just humoring us with the meeting."
"It was even over exactly when it was scheduled to be over," she added. "How ironic!"
The noted mediator, however, is no stranger to criticism.
In his 2005 book, "What is Life Worth? The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11," Feinberg writes that some 9/11 family members "took the microphone during town hall meetings to denounce me as 'arrogant' and 'insensitive.' "
Others, he writes, viewed him as a representative of the U.S. government and "I became an outlet for all their anger arising out of 9/11, including their anger over the government's failure to prevent the attacks."
Asked if he thought he was now taking some heat for Tech, Feinberg nodded.
"I am the person who is targeted by many families to send a message back to Virginia Tech as to their concerns, yes," he said. "I expect that. It's part of the process. It's perfectly understandable."
His skin perhaps thickened by years of managing the 9/11 fund, Feinberg seems able to rationalize anger and frustration with relative ease.
"Ken understands that he's not making people whole; he's not making anybody happy," Ware said. "He's just trying to do the best he can to help them any way he can."
Even so, the job takes its toll.
"It's difficult," Feinberg said. But "unlike the 9/11 fund, which occupied my time for 33 months, this is a two- to three-month assignment, and it's a burden, but it's one that I'm glad to assume."
Posted on Sat, Jul. 28, 2007
By Sam Carchidi
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
...Sean McQuade, a Clearview High (Gloucester County) and Virginia Tech graduate, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. McQuade was shot in the face in the in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16. . . . The Aug. 12 game between the Phils and Braves at Citizens Bank Park has been moved from 1:35 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. because it will be telecast by ESPN.
Contact staff writer Sam Carchidi at 215-854-5181 or scarchidi@phillynews.com.
Spirits high for Va. Tech victim from Glouco
By MEG HUELSMAN
Courier-Post Staff
CHERRY HILL
The bullet fired by XXX-XXXXX-XXX is still lodged in Virginia Tech graduate Sean McQuade's skull.
The right side of his face is paralyzed and will require multiple surgeries.
Regardless, his spirits are high and he is determined to get well and continue on track with all of his dreams and aspirations, his father, Ralph McQuade, said at a benefit brunch in Cherry Hill Sunday afternoon.
About 160 friends, family members and neighbors came to show support and donate money to help the McQuade family pay for medical and rehabilitation costs not covered by insurance.
"He's doing well," Ralph McQuade said at the benefit at Swanky Bubbles restaurant on Evesham Road. "Nothing really hurts him right now, and he's determined to recover and get better."
All of the money raised at Sunday's benefit will be donated to the McQuade family, neighbor and event organizer Kelly Marucci said. Swanky Bubbles owner John Frankowski, who lives in Mullica Hill near the McQuade family, offered use of his restaurant for free.
"I'm just doing the neighborhood, friendly thing," Frankowski said. He also owns a Swanky Bubbles in Philadelphia.
Twenty-one-year-old Sean McQuade is known by his friends as a math whiz, a comic and a great friend. His family is amazed by the young man's determination to recover.
"Right now, he wants to focus on the future," Ralph McQuade said. "He knows that he was a gunshot victim, but he doesn't know all the details. He's very strong."
McQuade's professors from Virginia Tech arrived at his bedside three days after graduation to give the mathematics major his diploma, Ralph McQuade said.
"It was really great," the proud father said at the benefit Sunday. "Sean was in the honors program for mathematics and was working to become an actuary."
Thirty-three students, including the 23-year-old shooter, died in the massacre, which has been termed the worst shooting spree in U.S. history.
McQuade must continue rehabilitation and undergo several surgeries to repair the nerve damage to his face. The bullet lodged in his skull, his father said, will never be removed. Instead, it is expected that a type of fluid bubble will form around the metal and the brain will function normally.
McQuade did not attend the afternoon benefit.
When asked if he was angry about the Virginia Tech shooting, Ralph McQuade paused.
"There really isn't anyone to be angry at," he said. "The shooter is already gone, and Sean is recovering and I've met so many great people."
Reach Meg Huelsman at (856) 251-3345 or mhuelsman@courierpostonline.com
Published: June 25. 2007 3:10AM
At Virginia Tech, a Search for Happiness As the Mourning Continues
Workers set up chairs on the field at Lane Stadium for commencement activities at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The stadium is being readied for Friday's commencement. (Steve Helber/ AP Photo )
For a video of Sean being honored at a recent Philadelphia Flyers game, click on the link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd5kiOq_57A
The messenger: a VT survivor's story
Derek O'Dell of Roanoke County returned to Virginia Tech on Aug. 16 -- four months after the shooting. The bullet wound in his right arm is healed. Other wounds run deeper.
Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Virginia Tech junior Derek O'Dell, who was wounded in the April 16 shootings on campus.
Related
The voice leapt above the hum from the waiting room television at Montgomery Regional Hospital.
News of the shootings at Virginia Tech was not two hours old, and the network chatter was already relentless.
But the voice distinguished itself because the people in the waiting room recognized it.
It was the voice of Derek O'Dell, the very man O'Dell's aunt, uncle and girlfriend were waiting to see.
They knew only that he had been shot, was not seriously wounded, and they still didn't know exactly how it had happened.
Yet there was his voice, quiet and calm, telling the story of how XXXXX-XXX XXX had entered his classroom and sprayed bullets through it.
O'Dell had been unable to speak to his parents or girlfriend, other than to send a text message.
He had been bandaged and tended to, yet no one had asked him what had happened.
Until the call came from MSNBC.
At last, someone was asking.
He could tell the true story of what happened in Norris Hall, he thought. Maybe his mother, in Colorado on business, would hear him and know he was OK.
If nothing else, he could release the horror of what he had seen and survived.
So the ordinarily quiet, attention-shunning O'Dell began to talk.
And for the next days, weeks and months, he kept on talking.
To reporters, to friends, to his old high school.
To his psychologist, to the widow of his professor. He talked.
To the guy who sat feet from him and whose blood he saw spill out, he talked.
It was by accident, but before wounds had ceased to bleed, O'Dell seized on just what he needed for his wounded psyche.
He would talk.
The trauma had not set in, the search for answers had not begun, and already he was changing.
And it wasn't all bad.
The trauma
Joanne Hawley was two-thirds of the continent away from Blacksburg when she heard. The story came to her fully formed: the mass shooting; 33 dead, including the perpetrator; numerous wounded; and her son, Derek, a sophomore who had just turned 20, among them, and alive.
She had been in a conference all day in Colorado, ignorant of the events at Virginia Tech.
She emerged to see a cousin, who spun the terrible yarn for her. Hawley, a post-traumatic stress disorder counselor, knew right away what her son could be facing, "the whole constellation of symptoms."
The flashbacks.
The nightmares.
The jumpiness.
The constant vigilance and sense of danger.
As a psychologist would later tell her and her husband, Roger, what used to be normal in all their lives was gone. There would be a new normal.
Hawley arranged for her son to meet with a psychologist just 26 hours after the shooting.
"That's the only thing I could do from 2,000 miles away," she said.
What she longed to do was hug her quiet boy, the skinny kid with round shoulders and remarkable blue eyes who demanded his parents remove insects from their home rather than swat them, even wasps.
O'Dell had been raised in a peaceful home by pacifist parents. He decided at 10 to become a veterinarian after he saw a dog hit by a car and was helpless to give it aid. He played soccer at Cave Spring High School, but he excelled at a more cerebral game: chess. He seemed wired for the game's calm intensity, predisposed to thinking moves ahead and to analyzing every match after it was over.
He was a state champion, but shunned the attention it earned him.
"He didn't want extra attention that other people didn't have," his father said.
Unlike his war-protesting father who is prone to questioning the establishment, Derek O'Dell always sought the comfort of the group and felt warmth in his associations -- his high school, his university.
He rarely played with toy guns as a child. The only weapons in the O'Dell home are Civil War relics Roger O'Dell inherited -- a sword and rifle over the mantel.
Before April 16, he had never been in the presence of live gunfire.
The face was male, Asian. Just a sliver of it visible when the door to Room 207 cracked open 20 minutes into class and closed again quickly. Probably some kid confused about which room was his. Minutes later, the same face appeared at the door again.
"Why are you looking in here again?" O'Dell thought, annoyed. "You just looked in here."
Jamie Bishop continued his lesson in German grammar until the next interruption.
"Is that what I think it is?" someone asked. No, it must be just more construction noise.
Later, O'Dell would think, "That was my first mistake."
The messenger
In the days after the shooting, O'Dell craved details.
He scoured news reports, Web sites, television for new nuggets of information to help him re-create the event.
This was real-life game analysis. The chess player was trying replay the match in his head.
Did xxxxx-xxx xxx come to Room 207 second or third? How much time did he and his classmates really have to react? Did he do all he could to help?
If he couldn't know the why, at least he wanted the what and how.
When he wasn't searching for details, O'Dell was talking. In the first two weeks after the shooting, he was interviewed dozens of times by reporters.
It seemed to help. He told his mother, "If I'm talking about it, I'm not thinking about it."
His psychologist would later tell Hawley that this seemed to be part of O'Dell's healing.
It was a therapeutic role he adopted for himself: the messenger.
Yet, he couldn't bring himself to say his assailant's name. He wanted to forget the killer, yet worried that if he blotted the man from his memory, he might also lose the memory of those who died.
The event that would forever mark the before and after in his life, he referred to only as "that day."
The clap of a woman's flip-flops on stairs made him jump.
When he returned to class the Monday after the shooting, he would not sit near the door, as he had in Norris 207. When he took his seat, he quickly formulated an escape plan.
Thoughts of how he could defend himself leapt to mind involuntarily: "This isn't only a laptop. It's a weapon." He knows it doesn't make sense.
And then, two weeks after the shooting, one of his roommates made a jarring discovery.
The fleece jacket O'Dell wore when he was shot bore not only the holes where a bullet passed through his right arm, but three others.
Two between the collar and right shoulder indicate a bullet missed his neck by inches.
And a single hole near the zipper seemed to show a bullet had narrowly missed his midsection, perhaps even his heart.
He had come even closer to death than he realized.`
This must be some sort of criminal justice class experiment, he thought. Later, someone would come and ask them what they saw to test the validity of eyewitness accounts, right?
The wounded professor staggered toward the shooter, was shot again. Just feet away, blood erupted from Sean McQuade's neck.
O'Dell scrambled under his desk. A shell casing rattled to stillness on the floor near him.
This was real.
He crept toward the rear of the room, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and that gun.
Gunfire roared in his ears. It was all he could hear. Where was the shooter? From beneath a desk, he caught only glimpses of his feet. He followed the sound of the gun. The shooter was walking through the room firing rhythmically. Classmates fell into the aisles as they were hit.
And then it was quiet.
The recognition
The May trip to the beach was no escape.
The O'Dells and the family of Derek's girlfriend, Laura Jones, arrived at their rented beach house on the Outer Banks to a cheerful banner that read, "Surf or Sound Realty Welcomes Derek O'Dell!"
Inside the house were baskets of baked goods and gift certificates from businesses for miles around -- well more than you could spend in a week, his parents said.
He's like a star, his mother remarked. People recognized him -- at a roadside fruit stand in North Carolina backcountry, at Mass at the Catholic church in Buxton, where the Cape Hatteras lighthouse is.
O'Dell's churchgoing had slipped in recent years. Now, he wanted to go to Mass all the time. He had survived when others hadn't. Why? What did God have in store for him?
He didn't trust he would be so blessed again.
Every night at the beach, he locked his bedroom door.
The door! What if the shooter comes back?
He leapt across the desks to reach the door. His right arm felt numb. A bullet had passed clean through his biceps. He peeled his jacket back, fashioned a tourniquet from his leather belt, felt for his cellphone and dialed 911.
"Quiet! Quiet!" Trey Perkins, a classmate, told him. "He might come back."
O'Dell's right shoe was missing. It had come off during his crawl to the back of the room. He had to have it back. If he had to run, he thought, he didn't want to be hindered by slipping in his socks on the slick floor.
Perkins tossed it to him. He slipped it on, braced his back against the wall, and jammed his foot beneath the door like a wedge to keep the killer out.
The appreciation
"I was involved in the incident at Virginia Tech," O'Dell said with remarkable understatement, but he assumed the audience already knew.
He returned to his old high school, Cave Spring, in June, but not to talk about the shooting.
Rather, it was to lead a panel discussion where he and, as Principal Martha Cobble put it, "people who had survived their first year of college" would reveal the secrets of college life to seniors.
Take a hammer and a screwdriver.
Make boyfriend/girlfriend visitation rules with your roommate.
Don't be embarrassed when your parents cry on move-in day.
O'Dell, who had not necessarily been anonymous at Cave Spring but was not homecoming king either, had offered to organize the event when Cobble mentioned it to him.
He tucked "Virginia Tech tragedy" at the bottom of the list of topics he distributed. But the shooting lurked in the room, waiting for discussion.
At the end of each session, he gave a brief summary of his role in the shooting. Once he mentioned his attacker by name. "XXX XXXXX-XXX" he said, pausing as he realized he had the names out of order. "Or however you say his name," he added dismissively.
He implored the students to appreciate their professors. Five died on April 16, he said. "They're amazing people. Be grateful for everything they do for you."
Then he pulled out his fleece jacket and passed a pencil through the bullet holes in a strange kind of show-and-tell.
"Without God, I know I wouldn't be here," he said.
The door handle jiggled, then turned. It came unlatched. The shooter pushed the door, forced it open a few inches.
O'Dell stood on the hinged side of the door, his left leg stretched across to secure it. Katelyn Carney stood in front of the door, pushing on it with both hands. They forced it closed again.
Bullets ripped through the wooden door. One came through Carney's hand. The door shook with every gunshot, like someone pounding on it. Every bullet came closer to O'Dell than the last.
He closed his eyes, prayed for it to end. And for the moment, it did.
All around him, people were bleeding, dying or dead. Sean McQuade listed over. O'Dell wanted to help, knew how to help.
But the door. He couldn't leave the door.
The absolution
It was late July, and O'Dell stood outside a building at the University of Virginia. He was there for the public comment session of the Virginia Tech Review Panel appointed by the governor.
It was the kind of atmosphere that put him on high alert.
He stepped into the building lobby, which bustled with people during a break in the meeting. Who were they? He studied identification badges, trying to sort out who was who, why they were there.
In the auditorium, he noted exits to the left and right of the stage and took his seat in a row near the front. Hours later, he could recount that eight people sat on his left, three to the right. One row back, there were only two people -- that would be his escape route.
For weeks it had been as normal a summer as it could be. The reporters didn't call much anymore. He worked at his regular job at the Cave Spring Veterinary Clinic, hung out with his girlfriend, Laura, cooked her pasta for their third-anniversary dinner.
But there, with the panel onstage before him, and parents and spouses of those who died around him, his happiness left him.
As speakers took to the lectern, he looked down, his eyes searching a blank sheet of paper on his lap. He fiddled with his pen. Another speaker was called: "Dave McCain."
He looked up, and the tears began. He knew Lauren McCain, who had sat just in front him in the German class, was dead. But until now, it was just information. When her father rose from the row in front of him, the reality of her death broke through.
Later, McCain asked to speak to O'Dell privately.
These meetings were always awkward at first, and for O'Dell, guilt-laden. What could he say to someone whose child was dead when he still lived?
Without fail, the parents recognized his feelings and absolved him. "We're glad you're here," they would say. "You have a purpose."
If it's a parent of someone who died in Room 207, they often want details -- anything to help them know if the one they lost suffered.
It started a week after the shooting, when he met with the widow and parents of his slain professor, Jamie Bishop.
He also met with his classmate, Sean McQuade, who had no memory of the shooting. It was O'Dell who first told him the details.
McCain asked some questions about his daughter and thanked O'Dell, not only for speaking with him, but for what he did in Room 207.
He used a word that both makes O'Dell uncomfortable and eases his guilt: hero.
Again he came back, again the bullets pierced the door. And again the killer was thwarted.
Inside Room 207, they could hear the echo of gunfire fading down the hallway. Minutes later, voices -- the police.
The police hurried them out, but O'Dell couldn't help feeling he was abandoning those left inside. And where was the shooter?
They crept down the stairs to the front door of Norris Hall. A police officer blasted a chain from the handles, and they were out.
O'Dell sprinted through the wind and snow, took six steps in a single bound, hurdled a wall. The shooter could be anywhere out here.
They flagged a police car, were delivered to an ambulance, which delivered them to the hospital. The ambulance doors closed and it pulled away. Only then did he relax.
The first days back
"I might have to stop at some point," O'Dell warned the police lieutenant.
He wanted to know what the lieutenant could tell him. He expected to see drawings of where the bullets came through the door. He didn't anticipate a trip back into Norris Hall.
The lieutenant told him they would take it slow, so he agreed to press on.
Like others, he had vowed not to be defined by what happened to him. But he added a corollary: Let your response define you.
He returned to school Aug. 16 -- four months to the day after the shooting -- feeling weak, vulnerable, unsure what school would be like now. Would he be able to concentrate?
In his first days back, all the major network news organizations interviewed him. So did several local affiliates.
Some people might look askance at his apparent thirst for attention, he knew. But he didn't seek the interviews.
When a reporter asks for his help, he feels obliged to respond.
"He's gathering something from it," Hawley said.
He was changing, and it was not only the trauma that had done it.
He spoke up often now. He carried himself with confidence. He felt it.
People around him had noticed it, too. The veterinarian he worked for once worried about O'Dell's ability to communicate with pet owners. Not anymore.
"This is not the old Derek at all," his father said.
O'Dell took his strength where he could get it.
Twice during the first day of classes, he returned to the arch of stones memorializing the April 16 fallen. He prayed with them, told them about his day. He told Bishop about the new German professor. He asked them for strength.
He has largely forgiven XXX, and manages to forget him most of the time, too.
Still, he has an urge to meet XXX's family and do for them what the families of the dead have done for him so many times, to release them from their guilt.
That might be a last step in O'Dell's own healing. In the meantime, he had taken another major step.
He walked slowly by the lieutenant's side to Norris 207.
The door was brand-new. Inside, the room was pristine white, sanitary. The lights gleamed, the walls shone.
He entered doing what came naturally. He told the story again, every detail.
He was scarred, yes, but with the scars came a recognition of something in himself he had not known before.
Don't be defined by the experience. Be defined by your reaction to it.
He stood in the spot where he made his stand that day. No fear rushed back to him, no weakness.
He felt strong, not only for the triumph of returning to that spot, but because what he did there at that door showed him his strength, revealed to him his courage.
"This," he thought, "is my conquering spot."
The Virginian-Pilot © August 19, 2007
Caroline Merrey, 22,
Parkville, Md.
Caroline Merrey still sends e-mail messages to former classmates who, like her, escaped from Liviu Librescu's class April 16. Now that she has graduated and moved to take a job in Chicago, Merrey said, "I feel like I'm kind of on a different planet out here. A lot of them are still back in Virginia."
Gibsonia, Pa.
A few days after Hilary Strollo was shot in the head, abdomen and buttocks, she vowed to her brother she would return to campus before the semester was out. "I want to dominate my finals," she said. It was Strollo who waved to the Hokie marching band from her hospital window three days after the shootings and started the "Let's Go, Hokies!" cheer. Later, she was rehospitalized for emergency surgery in Pittsburgh, where her parents are doctors. All told, she had four surgeries, including one to remove a bullet lodged in her spine and one to repair her liver, which had become infected after her initial release. Her brother Patrick, who graduated from Tech in May, spent the summer tending to his sister at home in Gibsonia.
Jamal Carver, 21,
Virginia Beach
Jamal Carver spent the summer relaxing and undergoing physical rehabilitation in his hometown. The engineering science and mechanics major, shot in the arm and side, spent a week in the hospital. By e-mail, Carver said he is coming back to Tech, expects to graduate in the spring and will probably go to graduate school.
Colin Goddard, 21
Bullets went into his leg, his buttocks and his shoulder, but Colin Goddard, a senior in international studies, wasn't about to change his summer plans. "I had this opportunity... and that wasn't possible if I couldn't walk," Goddard said in June. "So it was a goal that I set myself, to be able to walk in time." After surgery that left him with a metal rod in his leg and weeks of physical therapy, Goddard made it. His quote came from Madagascar, where he's volunteering for CARE International.
Allison Cook and Emily Haas,
Henrico County
Allison Cook and Emily Haas are both juniors, both from the Richmond area where they were friends before going to Virginia Tech, and both in the same sorority. Both were in the same French class when they were shot.
Cook was hit in the lower back, side and shoulder and spent a week in the hospital. She suffered a collapsed lung. Haas was grazed in the head by two bullets, received two stitches and left the hospital the day of the shooting.
According to an article in The Arrow, the Pi Phi sorority magazine, Cook and Haas have recovered well. The two told The Arrow they will return to Tech this fall.
Matt Webster, 23, Smithfield
Matt Webster, an engineering student in professor Liviu Librescu's class, survived the shooting by pretending to be dead. A bullet grazed his head and ricocheted into his right arm. He was released from Montgomery Regional Hospital on April 16.
His family said he spent the summer working in a Blacksburg eatery and riding his mountain bike during his off time. He will return to Tech as a senior this fall.
Alec Calhoun, 20,
Waynesboro
Jim Calhoun didn't fully grasp how scared his son Alec must have been April 16 until he went into his Norris Hall classroom and looked down from the window where his son jumped. "The drop is over 19 feet," said Calhoun. "I thought, well, I'm not sure I could live through a jump like that."
Calhoun even saw the bent branches on the boxwood where his son and another classmate landed.
The senior was the last student to jump from Liviu Librescu's classroom. He's kept in touch with the other students in the class - all but one of whom lived, thanks to Librescu's blocking of the door. The events of April 16 "will never be out of his mind for too long," his father said.
Garrett Evans, 30, Chicago
A senior in economics and statistics, Garrett Evans was shot in the leg in German class. A video, made from his hospital bed, was broadcast on YouTube. Evans was quoted in newspapers and broadcasts worldwide for his comment about XXXXX-XXX XXX: "An evil spirit was going through that boy. "
The Roanoke Times has been unable to find Evans or learn his progress.
Kevin Sterne, 22,
Eighty Four, Pa.
Kevin Sterne is the subject of the most famous image from April 16. Sterne, his face concealed, was photographed as rescuers carried him from Norris Hall, still bleeding badly from his right leg. After two weeks in the hospital, Sterne took to crutches and crossed the stage at graduation to pick up his diploma. He's returning to Virginia Tech this fall to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering.
Sean McQuade, 23,
Mullica Hill, N.J.
Sean McQuade, who is believed to have been the last shooting victim released from a hospital in the Virginia Tech region, turned 23 on Aug. 1.
As he continues to wrestle with the effects of being shot in the face, McQuade has inspired numerous fundraisers in southern New Jersey.
In a recent post on the Web site where she writes updates on her son's condition, Jody McQuade said Sean no longer has feeling in his face and is planning to undergo facial nerve surgery.
Guillermo Colman 38,
Harrisonburg
Quietly, busily and determinedly, Gil Colman is moving on. Colman was shot in the head April 16. The bullet, which lodged behind his left ear, was removed that day.
Since then, Colman has kept a low profile. A friend serves as his spokesman.
He probably doesn't have a lot of free time to talk. Despite his injury, Colman still works full time at Blackwell Engineering in Harrisonburg and is finishing a graduate degree in civil engineering.
He continues to receive medical treatment for his injuries. Two months ago, he and his wife, Nell-Marie, celebrated the first birthday of their son, Daniel.
Chang Min Park, 27,
South Korea
Chang Min Park, a civil engineering student, was injured in the attacks. According to the New York Post, Park was shot in the side and in his left hand.
He spent just more than a week in Montgomery Regional Hospital, but now, four months later, he's much improved. Dong Ha, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, said Park "has recovered completely" and will continue his studies at Virginia Tech in the fall.
Katelyn Carney, 21, Sterling
Katelyn Carney, a student in Jamie Bishop's German class, was shot in the left hand. She also suffered minor head injuries as she tried to block XXX from entering the classroom. He repeatedly banged the door against her head. The gunshot wound was a result of his shooting at the doorknob. Initially, Carney was hospitalized for nearly a week. This summer, she had a second surgery on her hand, continued her physical therapy and entered counseling. She returned to Tech for the second summer session to continue her major in international studies.
John Wallace "Wally" Grant, 64, Blacksburg
Wally Grant, the head of Virginia Tech's School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, was injured by ricocheting bullets while fleeing the gunman. He caught shrapnel in his upper right arm before he ducked into a restroom, where he warned a student to stay put.
Although he typically works between the spring and fall semesters, this summer he took some time off.
In a rare interview with his hometown paper, the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail, he reflected on the events of April 16. The 27-year Tech employee said the bullet fragments can't be removed, but he experienced a quick recovery and has full use of his arm.
Elilta "Lily" Habtu, 22, Woodbridge
Lily Habtu, whose parents came to the United States from Eritrea when she was an infant, suffered multiple gunshot wounds April 16 in the German class.
The worst injury came from a bullet that entered just below her chin. After more than a week in the hospital, she was able to go home but is expected to need reconstructive surgery, as well as physical therapy.
The senior psychology major was awarded her degree in May, although she was not able to attend graduation ceremonies. She is continuing to make progress in her recovery, according to her family.
Justin Klein, 20,
Catonsville, Md.
When asked if her family was tired of hearing from the media, Diane Klein said "no" in a very simple way. "We don't talk to people like you," she said by phone in July.
Her son Justin was shot three times by the gunman and has stayed fairly private ever since.
But less than two weeks after the shootings, the junior mechanical engineering student was back on campus, his wheelchair surrounded by friends. "The Hokie community is strong and resilient," Justin Klein said in a statement. "We will persevere, we will go on and we will heal."
Derek O'Dell, 20,
Roanoke County
Derek O'Dell was shot through the right arm in German class and was released from the hospital the day of the shooting. The bullet missed hitting bone, nerves or major arteries.
The Cave Spring High School graduate, who has designs on becoming a veterinarian, worked this summer at the Cave Spring Veterinary Clinic. An avid chess player and president of Tech's chess club, he accepted an invitation from the United States Chess Federation to play in a national tournament in Philadelphia in early August.
He visited family in California and kept in touch with a few of his wounded classmates.
O'Dell will return for his junior year at Tech.
Kristina Heeger, 20, Vienna
After spending the summer going to physical therapy and working for her stepfather's company, Kristina Heeger took a family vacation to Spain shortly before she planned to return to Virginia Tech for her junior year, said Chalinee Tinaves, who roomed with Heeger last year. Heeger was shot in the back in Jocelyne Couture-Nowak's intermediate French class and had to have much of one of her kidneys removed.
"She's basically almost back to normal," Tinaves said. "Every once in a while she has a little pain here and there."
Tinaves said she and Heeger returned to Tech for a short time during the summer and her friend toured Norris Hall. That experience "definitely shook her up a little bit," Tinaves said.
"She's definitely positive about returning and being back around her friends, but it's going to be probably taking it one day at a time."
Compiled by Roanoke Times writers Donna Alvis Banks, Matt Chittum, Albert Raboteau, Beth Macy and Neil Harvey and research librarian Belinda Harris.
An unbelievable' recovery for Va. Tech victim
HARRISON TWP. Sean McQuade celebrated his 23rd birthday on Aug. 1 "a true celebration of life," wrote his mother, Jody, on her Web site, which chronicles Sean's recuperation.
McQuade, who was seriously injured during the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings, faces several more challenges on his road to recovery but is progressing every day, thanks to support from his family, friends and community.
He was seriously injured when a bullet entered his cheek, shattering his jawbone into five pieces.
In the last month, Sean started his own once-a-week chess club in Mullica Hill, threw the first pitch at a July 27 Phillies game and is steadily gaining weight now that he is able to eat solid foods again.
In her Aug. 9 post, Jody McQuade said Sean will soon return to New York City for a visit with a surgeon who will work on replacing his shattered jaw joint. The family is also preparing for the possibility of surgery to replace his seventh nerve, which runs out of the skull and along his fractured ear canal and jaw.
"We're still waiting to see if it heals on its own, because we've been told that is a possibility," said McQuade's grandfather Chuck Forsman. "Right now he is deaf on the right side, but we're hopeful that his hearing will return when the damage is mended."
McQuade's childhood friend Matthew Egge is amazed at his friend's speedy recovery and unbreakable spirit.
"When you think about what he went through, certain images come to mind," said Egge. "But then you look at Sean. I visited him about two months ago right before I moved to New York, and he jumped right up to shake my hand. The only thing that even seemed different was that he was skinnier and that he couldn't really close his eye or smile on one side. But he's still intelligent as always and his speech and thoughts are clear. It's nothing like you'd imagine."
Egge also spoke to McQuade on the phone on his birthday.
"He was talking about shooting hoops with his brother and training at the gym. I think he will definitely recover completely. It's unbelievable but that's Sean."
The two funds set up in McQuade's name "Friends of Sean McQuade" at Susquehanna Patriot Bank in Mullica Hill and "Sean McQuade Alumni Fund" at St. Edmond's Federal Savings Bank in Sewell are still accepting donations, but contributions have slowed during the summer months.
"We have received a modest amount of money this summer, but I think that reflects the fact that people are on vacation," said Dave Hibbard, manager of the Susquehanna Patriot Bank.
To remind people about McQuade's recovery, Comcast has teamed up with the banks and local companies to produce a commercial about the McQuade family's need for support.
"This is the third week of our TV campaign to drive interested traffic to the family's Web site and encourage people to make donations," said Comcast Spotlight's Don Lea.
Woodbury Nissan, Professional Pulmonary Service of Woodbury, Russo Homes of Swedesboro and Rock Products of West Deptford paid for the commercial's airtime, Lea said. It will be aired for the next few weeks and again after Labor Day. Lea hopes that the commercial, which airs on Comcast channels like ESPN, TNT and HGTV, will reach thousands of people.
Sean will take part in an exclusive interview with ABC's Bob Woodruff, according to Jody McQuade's Web site. Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb that struck his vehicle while he was reporting in Iraq.
Jody McQuade said to keep an eye on the news between August 19 and 21 for the interview. ABC's Cathie Levine confirmed the interview, but said it had not yet taken place and no details were available for the air date.
The Roanoke Times Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A willing master of the Hokie Spirit fund
Kenneth Feinberg's prior work with the 9/11 fund helped prepare him for the raw emotions he faces.
BLACKSBURG -- By the time Kenneth Feinberg stepped in to administer the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, the fund was 2 12 months old, more than $7.1 million strong and facing increasing criticism from the people it strived to help.
Virginia Tech administrators -- novices in the highly emotional work of crime victim compensation -- were in over their heads.
Enter Feinberg, a man who colleagues say has witnessed more than his share of "horrible raw emotion."
As special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the Washington lawyer had spent almost three years acting as the fund's public face and ultimate authority.
If anyone knew what it was like to battle questions of worth and due, all the while facing fire from victims' families, survivors and the public, it was Feinberg.
That didn't mean handling the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund would be simple.
"It was easier substantively -- there weren't near the number of victims, there is a finite amount of money and distribution isn't required by any statute to give different amounts" to different victims, Feinberg said. "But you're still dealing with individuals who are in grief or in pain, and that part of the role never gets easier."
At least this time, though, he had experience to guide him.
Feinberg's work with the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund began about a month after the April 16 shootings, shortly after he received a call from Mary Vail Ware, director of Virginia's Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund. Ware had worked with Feinberg during the aftermath of 9/11 and was phoning a number of experts on Tech's behalf.
The university needed help with fund distribution, Ware told Feinberg. Did he have any advice?
He did, and he decided to hand-deliver it.
"I came down to Blacksburg for a day and met with President [Charles] Steger and other members of the Virginia Tech administration and, right then and there, they asked if I would come on as a pro bono unpaid consultant," said Feinberg, who is founder and managing partner of the Feinberg Group, a high-profile law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York.
His response was almost immediate.
"He mentioned it to me and we both just looked at each other and said, 'Of course,' " said Camille Biros, business manager for Feinberg's law firm.
"There were some 20,000 donors who gave money to the fund, all in the hope that it would be used wisely and effectively," Feinberg explained. "In light of the tragedy, and the willingness of so many thousands of people to contribute dollars to the fund, I thought the least I could do was spend a few months helping make sure the fund had its maximum impact."
Ware was relieved.
"I think it's helpful to not have the walking wounded serving the wounded," she said. "By having Ken there, they have someone outside the situation looking at it critically and offering sound advice."
For Tech, the chance to pass the fund's control to such a well-tested expert was an obvious asset.
"We now realize that we are not in a position to pre-suppose what is best for victims or their families," Steger said in an announcement about Feinberg's appointment. "With no experience in dealing with crime victims, we felt it best to seek expert advice in disbursements of these monies."
Steger and other Tech administrators who met with Feinberg were unavailable for comment on their impressions of the lawyer.
But Biros, who has worked with Feinberg for more than 27 years, described him as "dynamic," "very, very bright" and "extremely generous."
After 9/11, "when he was sort of thrown into town hall meetings with family members, he was the only one there for them to express their angst and horror," she said. "He very quickly learned you have to take this slow and go one step at a time to understand how to deal with this type of emotion."
Feinberg and Biros met similar heartbreak soon after they began work on the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.
"The scale of it is so much different, but we were just remarking in our conversations with each other, the feeling is exactly the same," Biros said. "It's like you can close your eyes and go back in time."
In mid-July, Feinberg drew up a draft distribution plan for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund and began scheduling meetings to discuss it with those affected.
Embedded within the proposal, Feinberg said, were two lessons gleaned from his 9/11 fund days.
The first is to offer the same compensation for all who died.
The second, he said, "is the incredible importance of transparency, of due process, of meeting directly with families in large groups and individually to give people an opportunity to comment on the protocol [and] to vent about life's unfairness."
Hours after a July 30 meeting in Trenton, N.J., Feinberg said he'd met with more than 100 people at gatherings throughout the eastern United States and was pleased with the way discussions were going.
"The families and the students who I've met with have been extremely gracious," he said then. "They're understandably angry and frustrated with life's misfortunes, but they have been extremely gracious to me personally, and very constructive, and I'm grateful to them for a host of suggestions on how to improve the draft protocol."
But Feinberg's efforts aren't always embraced.
In a post made to a Web site that chronicles the recovery of wounded shooting victim Sean McQuade, McQuade's mother, Jody, wrote: "Mr. Feinberg did make notations about how we felt, but my feeling is he already knows what they intend to do and is just humoring us with the meeting."
"It was even over exactly when it was scheduled to be over," she added. "How ironic!"
The noted mediator, however, is no stranger to criticism.
In his 2005 book, "What is Life Worth? The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11," Feinberg writes that some 9/11 family members "took the microphone during town hall meetings to denounce me as 'arrogant' and 'insensitive.' "
Others, he writes, viewed him as a representative of the U.S. government and "I became an outlet for all their anger arising out of 9/11, including their anger over the government's failure to prevent the attacks."
Asked if he thought he was now taking some heat for Tech, Feinberg nodded.
"I am the person who is targeted by many families to send a message back to Virginia Tech as to their concerns, yes," he said. "I expect that. It's part of the process. It's perfectly understandable."
His skin perhaps thickened by years of managing the 9/11 fund, Feinberg seems able to rationalize anger and frustration with relative ease.
"Ken understands that he's not making people whole; he's not making anybody happy," Ware said. "He's just trying to do the best he can to help them any way he can."
Even so, the job takes its toll.
"It's difficult," Feinberg said. But "unlike the 9/11 fund, which occupied my time for 33 months, this is a two- to three-month assignment, and it's a burden, but it's one that I'm glad to assume."
By Sam Carchidi
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
...Sean McQuade, a Clearview High (Gloucester County) and Virginia Tech graduate, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. McQuade was shot in the face in the in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16. . . . The Aug. 12 game between the Phils and Braves at Citizens Bank Park has been moved from 1:35 p.m. to 8:05 p.m. because it will be telecast by ESPN.
Contact staff writer Sam Carchidi at 215-854-5181 or scarchidi@phillynews.com.
Spirits high for Va. Tech victim from Glouco
By MEG HUELSMAN
Courier-Post Staff
CHERRY HILL
The bullet fired by XXX-XXXXX-XXX is still lodged in Virginia Tech graduate Sean McQuade's skull.
The right side of his face is paralyzed and will require multiple surgeries.
Regardless, his spirits are high and he is determined to get well and continue on track with all of his dreams and aspirations, his father, Ralph McQuade, said at a benefit brunch in Cherry Hill Sunday afternoon.
About 160 friends, family members and neighbors came to show support and donate money to help the McQuade family pay for medical and rehabilitation costs not covered by insurance.
"He's doing well," Ralph McQuade said at the benefit at Swanky Bubbles restaurant on Evesham Road. "Nothing really hurts him right now, and he's determined to recover and get better."
All of the money raised at Sunday's benefit will be donated to the McQuade family, neighbor and event organizer Kelly Marucci said. Swanky Bubbles owner John Frankowski, who lives in Mullica Hill near the McQuade family, offered use of his restaurant for free.
"I'm just doing the neighborhood, friendly thing," Frankowski said. He also owns a Swanky Bubbles in Philadelphia.
Twenty-one-year-old Sean McQuade is known by his friends as a math whiz, a comic and a great friend. His family is amazed by the young man's determination to recover.
"Right now, he wants to focus on the future," Ralph McQuade said. "He knows that he was a gunshot victim, but he doesn't know all the details. He's very strong."
McQuade's professors from Virginia Tech arrived at his bedside three days after graduation to give the mathematics major his diploma, Ralph McQuade said.
"It was really great," the proud father said at the benefit Sunday. "Sean was in the honors program for mathematics and was working to become an actuary."
Thirty-three students, including the 23-year-old shooter, died in the massacre, which has been termed the worst shooting spree in U.S. history.
McQuade must continue rehabilitation and undergo several surgeries to repair the nerve damage to his face. The bullet lodged in his skull, his father said, will never be removed. Instead, it is expected that a type of fluid bubble will form around the metal and the brain will function normally.
McQuade did not attend the afternoon benefit.
When asked if he was angry about the Virginia Tech shooting, Ralph McQuade paused.
"There really isn't anyone to be angry at," he said. "The shooter is already gone, and Sean is recovering and I've met so many great people."
Reach Meg Huelsman at (856) 251-3345 or mhuelsman@courierpostonline.com
Published: June 25. 2007 3:10AM
At Virginia Tech, a Search for Happiness As the Mourning Continues
Workers set up chairs on the field at Lane Stadium for commencement activities at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Tuesday, May 8, 2007. The stadium is being readied for Friday's commencement. (Steve Helber/ AP Photo )
Courier-Post Staff
CHERRY HILL
Published: June 25. 2007 3:10AM