Those Who Give Grieve, Too

Jun 26, 10:25 AM

Current Headlines: By SUE LINDSEY

By Sue Lindsey

The Associated Press

BLACKSBURG

When the world showered Virginia Tech with gifts of comfort after a student killed 32 people on campus, it fell to Steven Estrada to find a place to put everything.

He wasn't sure he was the one for the job. He had worked at the university only a month, as a temporary hire to do the student center's budget. The California native was so new to the state he didn't even know of Tech's rivalry with the University of Virginia.

"It started with e-mails," Estrada said. The volume was huge from the beginning, requiring hours to print and paste the condolences on boards. Flowers began to arrive. Then the mail came, first as letters, cards and drawings, graduating to boxes in a variety of sizes.

"They got bigger. They got heavier," Estrada said.

And they got exotic: One supportive message came engraved on a 150-pound rock from the Mississippi River. Dave Butler sent a lime- green hood from a car he raced at Langley Speedway bearing a VT logo and the names of those Seung-Hui Cho killed before taking his life.

A painting of an expansive tree from the State University of New York, Morrisville, weighed more than 100 pounds and arrived on a semi. It took a power screwdriver to open the container.

"One guy wanted to donate a motorcycle," university spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Estrada couldn't handle this alone, and his colleagues were all stretched thin as the campus struggled in the aftermath of Cho's shooting rampage April 16. He didn't know anybody in Blacksburg, but when he scoured the community he came up with 80-plus volunteers.

They showed up faithfully, filling all available display space in the cavernous three-story student center with daily deliveries of quilts, flags and banners signed by thousands.

People often feel a need to give as an act of comfort after a death, but also as a way to help restore order, said Brian Britt, a Virginia Tech professor of religious studies.

"There was something particularly upsetting about these shootings in this bucolic environment that made people feel particularly unsettled," he said. "One way to ward off evil is to give gifts."

Flags came from the White House (flown on April 17), from the Statue of Liberty and from colleges everywhere. One was from the Iraqi town of Tikrit. The U.Va. rivalry was shelved as students from other schools not only gave gifts, but came to help out.

As the days passed, the banners got longer. The longest Estrada saw was 116 feet, 10 inches from Eastern Michigan University, but an 83-footer from an elementary school came laminated.

"Mostly every day it was 'Where do I put this?'

" Estrada said.

Estrada remains in awe of the speed at which creative expressions were bestowed. Detailed weavings and quilts that would take months if not years to make arrived in a month. Caricatures of the 27 students and five faculty members killed showed up right after their images were made public.

"This person would have had to work night and day," he said.

The volume of tender expressions has been at the same time soul- soothing and overwhelming to university officials, who have no space to keep it all on display and no time to plan what is to become of it. In recent weeks the volunteers have taken down, sorted and packed up the assortment that ranges from construction-paper notes in a child's scrawl to plaques engraved in gold.

It took a week to move everything by truck to a storage building for cataloging, which is expected take student workers until the end of the year. The Library of Congress sent staff to advise Tech on what to save and how to save it, Hincker said.

Another task that looms is thank-you notes. Estrada said the list of givers runs 1,000 pages in a database.

Still on display are the rock from Itawamba Community College that was hauled in the trunk of a car from Tupelo, Miss.; the car hood; and two maroon-and-orange quilts from so many coverlets that Estrada said "you couldn't count them in a day."

He said, "You could look anywhere in the building and realize we're not alone. The world cares."

The orange life ring from the Coast Guard in Puerto Rico with messages in Spanish was a meaningful gift in itself, he said, but more so when he learned that the guardsmen included Virginia Tech alumni.

"People tell a lot about themselves by what they give," Britt said.

The professor of religious studies thinks many gifts helped the givers with their own process of dealing with the question of "why bad things happen to good people."

Gifts still arrive in Estrada's office daily. A large framed photo of a columbine growing in a rock crevice came recently from Columbine High School, the scene of another deadly shooting. Talladega Speedway sent a 30-by-30 banner, and a contingent from a Crow/Cheyenne school in Montana last week delivered a blanket made by students.

As soon as an acrylic bin holding origami cranes is emptied, it fills up again. The paper cranes come in 1,000 at a time following Japanese tradition, Estrada said.

Estrada only recently had time to apply to keep his job permanently, but he hopes to be around to see that great care is taken with the impressive collection of heartfelt expressions.

"It's very historical," he said. "It can't be taken lightly."

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