Virginia Tech - Liviu Librescu

Liviu Librescu

In 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

The Story of Thomas L. Martin

If you've been to BYU, you've seen or been in the MARB. The MARB is named for Thomas L. Martin. I knew nothing about Dr. Martin until a BYU BioAg magazine came to our home in the Spring of 2007. In it was an article about his life. His story shocked and amazed me--and inspired me. I gave it a quick paraphrasing and wanted to share the story with you.

Thomas L. Martin was born in England in 1885. He had four older siblings who had died of malnutrition because his family was so poor. His mom worked in a factory and his dad worked in the mines. A wet nurse took care of him while his mom went to work. The conditions at the wet nurse's home were horrible--his mother actually discovered maggots on his body. So she decided to stay home and take care of her baby boy.

Thomas was sick a lot. So sick, in fact, that he didn't walk until he was almost 6 years old. When he did walk he was very bowlegged and walked very low to the ground. He only ever reached a stature of 5 feet tall.

He struggled in school and after 3rd grade his schoolmaster called him "hopeless." He dropped out of school after 5th grade so he could work in the mines. His family was struggling to earn money so they could emigrate to Utah (they had converted to the LDS faith a few years before). The mine supervisor told him to go back to school--he wasn't big enough to work in the mines. Thomas was determined, though, and told the supervisor that he was a Mormon earning money to go to Utah. The supervisor let him stay.

In 1902, at 16 years old Thomas made it to Provo. He worked for another 3 years so that his parents and siblings could join him in Utah. At 19, despite deep financial strain, he went back to school--entering the 7th grade.

He graduated valedictorian of his 1912 class of BYU. His wife (another student at BYU) encouraged him to continue to pursue his dream of a PhD, saying, "We have sacrificed too much to give up on this PhD idea." He graduated with his PhD from Cornell in 1919.

He taught at BYU for 37 years and mentored many students along the way, encouraging many to go on to earn their PhD's.

The original article can be found here:

http://lifesciences.byu.edu/Magazine/Default.ASPX?ID=18