Liviu LibrescuIn April 2007, Time magazine put out a special report about the Virginia Tech shootings. They talked a lot about the shooter--how to stop such things from happening in the future, what made him do it in the first place, stuff like that. They talked about the events of the day--how it all went down. And they also highlighted several of the people who had been killed. One of those people was a professor: Liviu Librescu. Librescu had survived the Holocaust as a child.
When his Solid Mechanics class heard the shots, "he braced his body in front of the door, yelling to his students to head for the window. They pushed out the screens, jumped or dropped into bushes below to escape. "I must've been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last," said Alec Calhoun, who landed in a bush and ran. The two students behind him were shot, he said, and as he climbed out of the window, he turned and looked at his teacher, who had stayed behind. Librescu was shot to death through the door."
I thought about this man. He had experienced unspeakable things during the Holocaust when he was just a child. Then he moved on with his life and was successful. He married, had children. He became a professor, moved to America. And then this scene of death comes upon him again, at Virginia Tech. He didn't run. He didn't tell everyone to get out and then run to get out himself. He barred the door, trying to save the young men and women in his class. These weren't his own children. These were students. And he gave his life trying to save theirs.
The young lives snuffed out--sad and senseless. It is tragic to have lost all of these lives to a madman's gun. But Librescu's story stood out to me. I hope that someday, if it ever came to that, the person blocking that door would be me. I would hope to have that kind of quiet courage.
Read a good, short biography of his life at:
http://www.vt.edu/remember/biographies/liviu_librescu.html
No comments:
Post a Comment