Our
Beloved Ross
For
Lynnette Alameddine, doing nothing is not an option. Everyday she has to force
herself to move forward in her life without her precious son, Ross.
The night before Ross was murdered he talked with
his mother on the phone for 40 minutes. It was a wonderful, caring and loving
conversation between mother and son. He thanked her for allowing him to follow
his dreams to go to Virginia Tech and to get into technology.
The next morning Lynnette’s living hell would
begin.
Lynnette remembers April 16, 2007 in vivid detail.
It started with two phone calls, one from a friend in Florida and one from a
friend in New Hampshire. Both told Lynnette that there had been a shooting at
Virginia Tech and she should turn on the news.
That was sometime after 8:00 a.m. and CNN was broadcasting that a couple
of students had been shot in a dorm. She thought it was horrible and was
surprised that something like that would happen. Ross did not live in a dormitory
and she told herself he was all right. But nearly two hours later when the news
broke of multiple killings, deep down inside she knew Ross was in the room.
Somehow she knew he was in that building, Norris Hall.
Fighting back panic, Lynnette called her son, but
there was no answer. She waited and Ross didn’t call back. That was unusual. In
August, at the time of the Morva incident, he had called to say that he was
“ok” and that he knew she had seen something on the news by now and didn’t want
her to worry. This time, there was no word and the silence was as if someone
had punched her in the chest.
Again, Lynnette phoned the school and this time
talked to a Tech staff member, who gave Lynette the hotline number to call. The
person at the hotline told her to call the local hospitals. Lynnette responded,
“I am in Boston, how would I know about local hospitals?” With that she was given the phone number of
the Lewis Gale Hospital Montgomery (there were five possible hospitals).
Montgomery hospital told her no one by the name of Ross Alameddine had been
brought in and that she could call every hour if she wanted. Lynnette was also
given the names and numbers of all four other area hospitals to call, as a
person on the hotline told Lynnette that other victims were being transported
to those hospitals as well.
By early afternoon, there was still no word.
Sometime around 1:40 p.m. Lynnette talked to someone at the Boston Herald who told her incorrectly
that there were no New England casualties. Lynette began to hope against hope
that no news was good news; perhaps in the turmoil, Ross was unable to phone;
perhaps he was helping in some way—surely that must be the reason for his
silence. But as the afternoon gave way to early evening the flicker of hope she
allowed herself to cling to, faded.
A friend told Lynette to call Channel 7. She was
desperate and willing to do anything for information. Just sitting and not
knowing was agonizing. She was told she would be interviewed on CNN and she
agreed. “I’ll do anything to get information about my son, my Ross. I am
desperate I want news of my son, I want to know if he is ok.” The film crew
went to Lynnette’s house and taped the painful interview.
Around 5:30 p.m. or 6:00 p.m. the media began
interviewing the survivors. Lynette called the campus police. Lynnette was
curtly told, “Mama, if your child is dead, you will get a call from your local
police.”
Lynnette Alameddine waited.
Sometime around 10:45 p.m. she received a call
from a Virginia Tech chaplain who said, “Ross is gone.”
At 12:45 a.m., the local and state police arrive.
Lynette met them at the door with tears streaming down her face, telling them,
“I know why you are here.”
Lynnette Alameddine wanted desperately to get to
Blacksburg. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office called her to wish her condolences and
wanted to know if there was anything he could do. She said she needed to get to
Blacksburg, but was having problems arranging a flight. Senator Kennedy said,
”If you don’t get help, call us we will see that you get there.” Senator John
Kerry offered the same, when he called and spoke to Lynnette.
Alameddine called the school to get a place to
stay. She was told that there was no room at the Virginia Tech Inn, but a
family was willing to put Lynette and her family up. Lynnette said that was not
acceptable. The school called back five minutes later to say there would be a
room at the Inn after all.
When she got to the Tech campus, Alameddine talked
to a Virginia Tech policeman and a state police officer. She kept asking how
could this happen, why no warning? Despite the fact that the school had
previously issued warnings and locked down—I have cited earlier—she was told
that the campus was too big to lock-down. With this response, Lynnette became
angry. She also told the police they shut down the city of Boston just two
months prior for suspicious objects (neon signs) that were placed near bridges
and bus terminals. She also told them that they stopped buses, subways, and
trains as they felt it was threat. “This is a school. There was a gunman loose
on campus. You locked down the school in August, why not now?”
Alamameddine would later hear from one of Ross’s
friends, a young woman, who had heard of the dormitory shooting and had stayed
away from French class. Would Ross have done the same if he had known a
shooting had happened? The more Lynnette found out, the more upset she became.
It is now more than six years since the shooting
at Virginia Tech and life is still hard for Lynnette. She thinks of Ross every
day and remembers him with tears in her eyes. He was mature and intelligent
beyond his years; he was funny; he was wise; he made her laugh. Ross and
Lynette had a terrific relationship. She remembers how he loved to build
computers. In fact, the night before he left for Tech, he was out until 2:00
a.m. building a computer for a friend.
Ross was always helpful and thoughtful of others.
After every meal he would pat his mom on the back and say, “That was great.”
Lynnette misses those gentle pats Ross gave her and gets emotional when she
thinks that she’ll never have them again. Ross loved all types of music,
especially jazz. Ross enjoyed singing and playing the piano. Every day she
thanks God that a friend made a CD of him singing at the Coffee House at his
high school Austin Preparatory School.
Ross’s friends are getting married, starting
families, pursuing their careers. She is happy for them, but sees all this and
it is so painful.
An especially poignant tribute to Ross came from
two professors who made a DVD telling Lynette how wonderful Ross was. The
tribute was especially meaningful and heartfelt because the two men made the
DVD despite specific instructions from Virginia Tech officials to staff and
faculty not to contact or to talk to the families. The university’s maniacal
intent on controlling all communications between school personnel and the
families sank to a new low when it insisted on limiting genuine expressions of
sympathy.
Alameddine often remembers Ross’s caring approach
to others. In an ironic twist of fate, months after the shooting, she found out
from one of her son’s close friends, Bryan Griffith, that Ross sat next to Cho
in an English class. The class was a horror literature/film course. Ross and
Bryan sat in the back row; Cho sat to Ross’s right. Everyone in the class
recognized there was something strange about the young man who never uttered a
word. Both Ross and Brian had tried to engage Cho, to help him, to help a painfully
shy and quiet young man. Bryan would ask Ross a question about a movie, and he
would respond, “I don’t know.” Ross would then turn to Cho and ask, “What do
you think?” He never got a response. In the end, they gave up and just assumed
that Cho was one of those “quiet smart kids.”
Ross often spoke about his friend Valerie, who
worked on a Blacksburg transit bus. He met her after going roller-blading and
getting caught in a downpour. By chance, Ross got on Valerie’s bus, wringing
wet. The two struck up a conversation. Ross would see Valerie periodically and
as their friendship grew, he learned that Valerie had been enrolled at Virginia
Tech, but dropped out. She now worked in a Virginia Tech office and drove a
Virginia Tech transit bus. He kept telling her to quit her job and go back to
school and really make something of her life. The day after the shooting,
Valerie left a note at the makeshift memorial. She had quit her job and was
going back to school.
Lynnette becomes agitated when she thinks back on
the way the school handled the 32 scholarships established in memory of the
dead. She vividly remembers that the school never asked for input from the
victims’ families. Lynnette wanted the scholarship honoring Ross to go to
Austin Preparatory School, as it was the high school he had graduated from in
2005. It took a year to get the school to agree.
The school also never asked the families what they
wanted on the permanent memorial stones. Lynnette did not want Ross’s middle
name used, but the school engraved it without asking. Only after considerable
effort did Tech agree to use just Ross’s middle initial instead of his middle
name. It was one bad decision after another. On the “We Remember” Web site
there were color pictures of most of the victims—a couple of photos were black
and white. Unilaterally and arbitrarily, the school changed them all to sepia
tone—it made the victims look as if they had died a hundred years ago. It
looked more like “We Forget” rather than “We Remember.” It was a horrible thing
to do and only after an outcry from a number of families did the school return
the photos to the previous display.
Lynnette suggested homicide bereavement counselors
be brought in for the families. The suggestion was denied.
Time and time again, the school officials did not
listen to the families and ignored their wishes. For example, Lynnette and
another mother of a victim suggested to the Office of Recovery and Support that
it sponsored a day or session in which friends of the deceased could come together
to remember them. Lynnette suggested having food, as part of a relaxed session
of remembrance. The school agreed but never followed through. Five of Ross’s
friends came. But when the sessions took place, they were counseling sessions
with everyone sitting around in a circle. The participants were given Teddy
Bears. The attendees felt insulted; they felt they were being talked down to.
Lynnette was very upset by this, but then chalked it up to yet another
insensitive Virginia Tech action.
After the massacre, the rooms in Norris Hall were
done over at a cost of $1 million. Lynnette asked to see the rooms and was
assigned a Virginia Tech police officer named Jackson to give her a tour. When
Jackson showed up, he was accompanied by a school counselor.
Alamedine was dismayed at what she saw. Despite
the large sum of money that had been spent, she could see what looked like
bullets holes in the wall; she could see the bullet holes in the corner where
Ross had been killed. She wanted the holes completely covered up. Visibly
shaken, Lynnette emailed Jay Poole, the former director of Office of Recovery
and Support at Virginia Tech, who bluntly said nothing more could be done to
repair the walls. Lynnette found out later the “bullet holes” were actually from
coat racks that had been taken down.
Doing something poorly, as Tech did so many times
in dealing with the families, is nearly as bad as doing nothing at all. (To be
continued)
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