-- 2. Jamie Bishop - 35 years old --



Christopher James "Jamie" Bishop, a German instructor slain in Norris Hall, lived an "action-packed 35 years," a former teacher says.

Bishop, who wore his hair in a ponytail and was an avid amateur photographer, had been a Virginia Tech faculty member since 2005. His wife, Stefanie Hofer, is an assistant professor of German there.

Bishop completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Georgia in 1993, then was a Fulbright scholar in Kiel, Germany. He lived abroad for four years before returning to the University of Georgia to earn his master's in 1998, according to his personal Web site.

Of his time in Germany, Bishop wrote on his site that he "spent most of his time learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer and wooing a certain Fraulein." News reports said the reference was to Hofer. Calls to their home were unanswered.

The bespectacled Bishop, who referred to himself as Herr Bishop at Virginia Tech, grew up in Pine Mountain, Ga., and was valedictorian of Harris County High School, where he was on the tennis team. He was active in the art club, science club and debate team, said social studies teacher Gail Sheppard, who taught Bishop and his younger sister, Stephanie.

"Jamie lived 35 years, and I guarantee it was an action-packed 35 years," Sheppard said.

The Rev. Matthew Mitchell, pastor of First United Methodist Church, which Jamie Bishop attended as a youth, said Pine Mountain is a small community of 1,500 people. The Bishops live three blocks from the church, and the family walked to church on pleasant days, he said.

Michael Bishop, Jamie's father, is the writer-in-residence at LaGrange College, the oldest private college in Georgia. He has published more than 30 books of science fiction and fantasy literature, including "Brighten to Incandescence," a collection of short stories for which his son designed the cover art. Jeri Bishop, Jamie's mother, is a counselor at Rosemont Elementary School in LaGrange.

LaGrange College President F. Stuart Gulley issued a message yesterday saying that like many higher education institutions, the college would review its emergency policies.

"Such tragic and senseless loss of life is a reminder that much in life is random and cannot be fully anticipated, let alone understood," Gulley said. "Even the most carefully crafted and practiced security plan cannot guarantee our safety when there are those intent on doing such incomprehensible harm."

-- 3. Ryan Clark - 22 years old --



Martinez, Ga., a biology, English and psychology major. He was a resident adviser on the fourth floor of the dorm where the rampage began.

Just a month from graduation, he was a member of the Marching Virginians Band and intended to pursue a PhD in psychology. Called "Stack" by his friends, Clark carried a 4.0 grade-point average, said Vernon Collins, coroner in Columbia County, Ga.

"He was just one of the greatest people you could possibly know," Gregory Walton, a friend who graduated last year, said as he fought tears. "He was always smiling, always laughing. I don't think I ever saw him mad in the five years I knew him."

Arielle Perlmutter posted on MSNBC.com that she had been friends with Ryan for a decade. "Ryan and I worked at Camp Big Heart, a camp for children and adults with special needs for part of every summer since I was in high school," she posted. "Ryan was one of the most amazing, loving and caring young men I have ever met. He went into every day of camp, trying as it could be, with a smile and a open mind. I rarely, in the years I knew Ryan, saw him frown.

"Ryan directed the music/dance program at camp and brought cheer to all the campers around him. He was constantly smiling and dancing, signing and cheering. The campers would gather around Ryan and hug him. We have a picture of a year that Ryan was at camp on his birthday. All of the campers were surrounding him, hugging him, and all you could see of him was his head sticking out above the crowd. They all loved 'Mr. Ryan'. Camp will never be the same and we will all bear the scar of this tragedy for many years to come. Ryan will never be forgotten, and always be missed."

Perlmutter, 27 and a teacher in Buford, Ga., later told MSNBC.com that Clark had always wanted to work with kids. “We’d joked about him coming to work at my school, so that we'd be closer."

"I don’t think there’s enough words to explain how you feel when someone passes,” she said. "But he was one step above a lot of people."

-- 4. Lauren McCain - 20 years old --



Freshman Lauren McCain claimed two heroes on her MySpace page: Jesus Christ and her brother, Joel.

She loved all music ("except country!") and liked sci-fi movies ("if it has to do with some alternate-reality or post-apocalyptic world, that's great.")

She was an international studies and German major, according to friend and study-mate Matt Croushorn, a fellow member of Campus Crusade for Christ. Croushorn was taking macroeconomics with McCain this semester. He thinks McCain was in her German class at the time of the shootings.

"She was a really nice person. She was smart," he said. "She was fun to talk to."

Croushorn said McCain was the only one of his friends whom he couldn't reach by yesterday morning. When he tried to call her once more, her mother answered.

McCain's mom told him that she still hadn't found her daughter, whose body was not identified until later in the day, he said.

"I just didn't know what to say," Croushorn said.

-- 5. Jocelyne Couture-Nowak --



Before Jocelyne Couture-Nowak moved from rural Canada to Virginia, she wanted to be sure of one thing: that her family would be safe.

She checked out schools for her two daughters. She looked for a good neighborhood.

They moved to Virginia Tech about 2001 when her husband was hired as head of the horticulture department.

Her friends say she had several passions in life but the biggest were her children, her gardening and her Francophone heritage.

Couture-Nowak was killed in Norris Hall, where she was teaching French. She is mourned by her two daughters and her husband, a skilled gardener.

Couture-Nowak was born in Montreal and raised in Nova Scotia. She met her Polish husband, Jerzy Nowak, in the small town of Truro, 100 miles north of Halifax. She taught French part time at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and her husband ran the horticulture department.

As an Acadian and a lover of the French language, she worried that her daughters would lose their mother tongue as they grew older. So she fought along with two other Truro mothers in 1996 to establish the area's first Francophone school.

Looking to build support, they went to preschools with pamphlets, said her friend Nicole Bagnell, "then we divided up the phone book looking for any names that sounded French."

"It was always about the children with her," said friend Heather Parker. Like the time Couture-Nowak helped Parker build a flower bed: She had Parker watch where the children ran and built the bed around those pathways.

"She was very concerned about what her kids would see on TV, that it wasn't too much violence," Bagnell said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made special mention of Couture-Nowak in a speech in Ottawa this week. The agricultural college where she once taught flew flags at half-staff. And friends -- in Virginia and in Truro -- talked about her legacy.

The agricultural college is planning a scholarship in her name. Tech is doing the same. And the Acadian school she founded in 1997 has grown from 36 students to 118. The school's first class of seniors graduated last year.

"We used to take hikes in the woods," Parker said. "She touched and smelled and felt everything."

-- 6. Daniel Perez Cueva - 21 years old --



In 2002, Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, moved to Woodbridge from Peru, enrolled at Hylton High School and pursued the dream he and his mother shared: a university degree.

It was not to be. The junior international studies major, with a minor in French, was killed in Norris Hall.

"He was a very, very advanced student," remembered Mariel Amador Morales, his high school teacher of English for Speakers of Other Languages. "A very smart young man."

Two years after arriving in the United States, Perez graduated from high school and enrolled at a community college in Miami, transferred to Northern Virginia Community College and then to Virginia Tech. This spring, said his best friend, Hugo Quintero, Perez had been interviewing with the French and Italian embassies in Washington, hoping for a summer internship.

"We both come from very humble backgrounds," Quintero said yesterday, unable to separate himself from his fallen friend and unable to think in the past tense. "We're both hardworking, trying to be the best we can. We come from abroad, and we're trying to achieve the American dream."

It was a dream Perez's mother, Betty Cueva, hoped to achieve for her children. "Her goal," Amador said yesterday, "was to put her kids through college." In Peru, Cueva had been a teacher. Here, she cleaned houses, cooked at a restaurant and ironed clothes for extra money. Her son, too, was working hard: In high school, he was a member of the National Honor Society and a swimmer.

"He was one of the best swimmers at the time from Hylton," Quintero said. "He went to regionals. He was an unthinkable athlete." He spoke both French and Italian, family friends said. "We are talking about a great human," Amador said.

Perez's father is still in Peru, and the family has been working on getting him a visa.

In the short time since Perez died, Quintero has been listening to one of their favorite songs, "Amigos," by an old Argentine rock group, Los Enanitos Verdes. The lyrics, he said, are essentially this: "No matter where the place is, you'll always have a friend in me."

As soon as Quintero heard about the shootings, "I began to call Daniel, but he wasn't picking up his phone. I tried to call again, but the call wasn't going through, and then I said, 'Maybe he's taking care of people. Maybe he's stressed out.' "

He exchanged messages with friends of Perez's and talked to Perez's older sister, who lives in Seattle, but no one had news until Perez's sister called Quintero after 10 p.m. Monday.

"I've got news about Daniel," he remembered hearing. "He didn't make it."

-- 7. Kevin Granata - 45 years old --



Kevin Granata, 46, had two great loves: his work and his family.

He was a professor of biomechanics whose specialty was studying how human skeletal systems respond to stress and neurological dysfunction. Granata authored dozens of academic papers and conducted scores of experiments.

"He was a scientist, a hardworking scientist, trying to understand things," said Brad Bennett, research director of the Motion Analysis and Motor Performance Laboratory at the University of Virginia's Kluge Children's Rehabilitation Center, where Granata worked before he joined Virginia Tech.

"He was great to brainstorm with," Bennett said. "He was the first guy in the morning and the last guy to leave at night."

His enthusiasm for his work was contagious. "He loved research, and he loved figuring things out," said colleague Sara Wilson, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Kansas, who had studied with Granata at the University of Virginia.

Granata had an engineer's practicality but also had a playful side, said Barbara Leech, another co-worker at the University of Virginia. He would wear a shirt and tie, looking businesslike, but team it with jeans and cowboy boots, she said.

Leech said her office has been "inundated" with calls of condolence.

Granata was a devoted husband to his wife, Linda, and their three children, Alex, Eric and Ellen, all in their teens.

-- 8. Caitlin Hammaren - 19 years old --



Caitlin Hammaren, a sophomore who would have turned 20 in May, was thinking about becoming a lawyer, according to those who knew her at Minisink Valley High School near Middletown, N.Y.

Hammaren left such a mark that her high school music teacher, principal and even district superintendent remembered her vividly yesterday as they absorbed the fact that she is gone.

"She was a lovely young lady," said Martha Murray, superintendent of Minisink Valley Central School District in Orange County. "She was talking about being a lawyer. She'd actually inquired about it with one of our local attorneys just recently."

Hammaren graduated from high school in 2005 and was studying international studies at Tech. She was president of her high school choir and a member of the National Honor Society, Murray said.

-- 9. Jeremy Herbstritt - 27 years old --



Jeremy Herbstritt, 27, of Bellefonte, Pa., received several academic scholarships and earned two undergraduate degrees from Pennsylvania State University before enrolling at Virginia Tech last fall as a graduate student, according to a Penn State spokesman. Family friends said the tall, lanky young man was a devout Catholic, a cross-country runner and a civil engineering student who wanted to pursue an environmental career.

On Monday, Herbstritt's parents were notified that he was killed at Norris Hall. His father, Michael, who works as an engineer at Penn State's Office of Physical Plant, and his mother, Margaret, were in Boston watching their daughter run the Boston Marathon, according to Penn State spokesman Geoff Rushton.

Jeremy Herbstritt earned his first undergraduate degree in 2003 with a dual major in biochemistry and molecular biology. He earned another bachelor's of science degree in civil engineering in 2006, graduating with distinction, Rushton said.

The personable young man had other distinctions as well.

According to his high school yearbook, he was voted "most talkative guy" in his senior class when he graduated from Bellefonte Area High School in 1998, according to Principal Ann Hutcheson. "Talkie-talkie, everybody likes to talk," noted his yearbook entry. "Or at least Jeremy Herbstritt and Denise Ritter do. Their mile-a-minute mouths wear out the ears of their classmates." Herbstritt also ran cross-country in high school and later ran the Boston Marathon, she said.

Herbstritt and other family members often ran in Bellefonte, a close-knit rural community near Penn State, according to Mike Shuey, whose family lives across the street and whose son used to play basketball with Jeremy.

Herbstritt and his family were active in their parish, and Jeremy frequently attended Mass when he was home on break and on vacation, according to Pam Vaiana, a family friend and principal of St. John the Evangelist Catholic School, which Jeremy and his three younger siblings attended.

"He was a thoughtful kid," she said. "He lived his faith."

Yesterday, Vaiana retrieved his elementary school photo.

"His smile filled his face," Vaiana said. "He was a really good kid. I talk to my children about drugs and alcohol, but these outside things you can't control, and they just rip your heart out."

-- 10. Rachael Hill - 18 years old --



News of Rachael Hill's death hit hard at Grove Avenue Christian School in Richmond, a school with just 260 students, said Mark Becton, pastor of its affiliated church, Grove Avenue Baptist.

"What was so special and yet painful about it was that she was part of a graduating class of 10 seniors who knew each other very well," Becton said. Many of Hill's close friends returned to their school to grieve together yesterday.

Becton described Hill as a "gracious and infectious" young woman who grew up in a deeply religious family in suburban Richmond.

She was honored by the school last year as sportswoman of the year for her play on the volleyball team. Afterward, Becton said, she turned to her coach and quipped, "I think I can have my jersey retired now."

Now, Becton said, they will retire the jersey.

-- 11. Emily Hilscher - 19 years old --



Emily Jane Hilscher, a 19-year-old from Woodville, Va., was on her way to becoming a veterinarian.

A freshman, she was majoring in animal and poultry sciences with a concentration in equine science. She was known around her rural Rappahannock County community as an animal lover, said family friend John W. McCarthy, also the county's administrator. She was a member of Virginia Tech's equestrian team.

"She worked in a vet's office here last summer," said McCarthy, who has known Hilscher since she was a small child.

She graduated last year from tiny Rappahannock County High, in the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains. The Hilscher family lives on a rambling property up a long driveway, McCarthy said. On MySpace, Hilscher lists her home town as "Crappahannock," in the way teens do, but says she makes the "best of" living in the rural county of 7,000 residents with no fast-food outlets and only one stoplight. She said her friends are what keep her smiling.

Bob Chappell, superintendent of the Rappahannock County schools, issued a statement yesterday saying the community was mourning the loss of this "bright, talented young lady."

Hilscher leaves behind a brother and an older sister, McCarthy said.

On her MySpace profile, the blue-eyed Hilscher calls herself the "pixie" and says she's into "snowboarding, riding and music."

On a group devoted to her memory on Facebook, a fellow student says he'll remember her walking home from horseback riding at Tech.

The teenager said she liked every kind of music except country and classical. "Give me something I can bang my head to or dance like crazy and I'm all over it," she wrote.

McCarthy said Hilscher and his oldest daughter, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, had been friends since childhood. "She's crying her eyes out," McCarthy said.

He said Hilscher was a "caring, thoughtful person" whose "endless potential was cut off long before it should have been."

-- 12. Matthew La Porte --



The news of the death of Matthew La Porte, 20, stunned his neighbors in Dumont, N.J. Electricity and phones had been out during the day after a nor'easter swept through the quiet town 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. The La Porte family did not know the fate of Matthew until late Monday, said the family's priest and neighbors.

That's when the family -- mother Barbara, father Joseph and younger sister Priscilla, a high school senior -- got the call.

"What is there to say? What can I tell you?" Joseph La Porte said in a phone interview yesterday morning. "All I could tell you is he was in the corps of cadets at Virginia Tech, in his second year. He had an Air Force scholarship. I can't tell you any more," he said as he began to weep. "Every time I talk, I just break down."

The family's immediate concern, said their priest, the Rev. James Bouffard of Sacred Heart Parish, was to inform Matthew's elderly grandparents as gently as possible, and they set off in the car on the grim mission.

Neighbors soon got the news themselves. "I'm stunned," said Marie Grieco, 56, who lives next door, as she set to work cooking up penne for a pasta salad.

La Porte was quiet but funny, friends and neighbors said. He attended church with his family on Sundays whenever he was in town. He was long and lanky and often wore a buzz cut from his military training.

In eighth grade, La Porte had chosen Carson Long Military Institute in Pennsylvania to provide the discipline that would boost his grades and help him get into a good college, said Dane Rogich, 20, who grew up a few blocks away.

At Virginia Tech, word was that La Porte had died a hero.

Jim Tenney, 19, played trumpet in the regimental band, Band Company; La Porte played tenor drum. He said cadets were told of La Porte's death Monday night by another cadet. In the end, the cadet said, La Porte was killed while trying to help those around him.

Bouffard said: "What some people call instinct is simply acting on what you know to be right." Then he quoted John 15:13: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."

-- 13. Jarrett Lane - 22 years old --



When Donald Lowe, the athletic director at Narrows High School, thinks of Jarrett Lee Lane, one thing comes to mind right off: "that smile."

Lowe coached Lane in football, one of the four sports that the high school valedictorian lettered in before making the short trip southeast to the college he always dreamed of attending, Virginia Tech.

"He had a great smile, a tall one," Lowe said.

With a population of 2,000, Narrows had few people who hadn't heard of Jarrett Lane. He had played football, basketball and tennis and had run track; the hurdles was his best event.

He was a senior majoring in civil engineering.

His family declined to comment yesterday on his death but issued a statement through a funeral home director in Narrows.

"All of us are deeply stunned and in shock over the loss of our son, grandson and brother, Jarrett Lee Lane," the statement read. "He was a fun-loving young man, full of spirit. He had a caring heart and was a friend to everybody he met, both at Virginia Tech and here in Narrows. We are leaning on God's grace in these trying hours and appreciate all the prayers, expressions of sympathy and thoughts."

Steve Brady, assistant principal at Narrows High, said Lane played in the band, too.

"He was doing exactly what he wanted to do," Brady said. "He wanted to go to Virginia Tech, and he wanted to make everyone proud of him and, I mean, he has."

"I tell you what, he was a quiet leader. You never heard him complain, never heard him say anything negative," Lowe said.

When the football team ran laps, it was Lane who was always leading the pack, his coach said. When it came time to run gut-busting wind sprints at the end of each practice, no player ran as hard from start to finish as Lane.

Lowe was emotional while talking about Lane, saying at one point he was afraid that he might say something that wouldn't live up to the life his former player lived.

He gathered himself for a moment and said: "He is the kind of son you would like to have, that you would be proud of. But words won't do his life justice. They just won't."

-- 14. Henry Lee --



When Henry Lee learned he would be graduating second in his high school class last year, he was horrified to hear he had to give a speech at commencement.

"He said, 'Oh no, I can't do it,' and I said, 'Yes, you can, you have worked hard for this honor,' " said Susan Willis, principal of William Fleming High School in Roanoke. She spoke a day after Lee was killed in his 9 a.m. class at Virginia Tech, where he was studying computer engineering.

Lee finally summoned the courage to give the speech in front of 5,000 people. He spoke of coming to the United States as an immigrant from China and how hard it had been to not understand English.

"It was so moving," said Willis, adding that Lee, who became a U.S. citizen and changed his name from Henh Ly shortly before he graduated, spoke to a crowd that included many immigrants.

"He said, 'If I can do it, you can, too,' and we were all moved to tears. And afterward he grabbed me and said, 'Thank you for making me do this.' "

Lee, a member of his high school's French Honor Society and vice president of its Beta Club, graduated with an International Baccalaureate diploma.

Besides being a stellar student, the college freshman had a dry sense of humor. On his Facebook account, he listed groups he belonged to, including one called "My Name Is Henry Lee," whose 32 members share the name. "Wouldn't it be awesome if we have a Henry Lee convention?" Lee wrote on that page. "We wouldn't need name tags."

-- 15. Liviu Librescu - 76 years old --



Liviu Librescu, a professor of engineering and a Holocaust survivor, is being called a hero after students reported that the 76-year-old man barricaded the door to his classroom long enough for them to jump to safety from the upper-story windows of Norris Hall.

Librescu was killed by the gunman, who eventually forced his way into the classroom, according to his son, Joe Librescu, who was interviewed by CNN and the Associated Press. Joe Librescu said his father's students have e-mailed him their accounts of his last minutes.

A Romanian who survived the Holocaust, Librescu became an opponent of communism and moved to Israel. He later immigrated to the United States. Librescu taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years and had an international reputation for his work in aeronautical engineering.

"His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials and more robust aerospace structures," Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department, told the AP.

Colleagues said they will miss him.

"He was a very pleasant, jolly fellow who enjoyed joking around a little with the staff," said Wayne Neu, an ocean engineering professor. "An everyone's-friend sort of guy."

Neu said Librescu "was always one with a smile."

He was a joyful man, according to his son. "He had passions for music, for sports, for hiking, for travel. He was a passionate person."

He was killed one day after Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed in the United States and on the day it was observed in Israel.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu told the AP in a telephone interview from his home outside Tel Aviv. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."

-- 16. G.V. Loganathan - 51 years old --



G.V. Loganathan, a professor at Virginia Tech for 25 years, was teaching advanced hydrology to 14 students when the gunman arrived. His death was one of many the department of civil and environmental engineering is mourning. Nine students were killed with Loganathan in the classroom, the department chairman said.

Loganathan, 51, born in India, was remembered as a quiet, formal and dedicated scholar who took time to get to know each student. He specialized in water systems.

In India, his brother G.V. Palanivel told NDTV news from the southern state of Tamil Nadu: "We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do. "

Department Chairman Bill Knocke described Loganathan as "pure of heart" and said he had won multiple teaching awards.

Students respected him, said Yvan Beliveau, director of the Myers/Lawson School of Construction at Tech.

Loganathan received his bachelor's degree from Madras University in India, his master's from the Indian Institute of Technology and his doctorate from Purdue University. He had been an associate editor of the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, a member of the faculty senate and a counselor on the university's honor court.

He was professional almost to a fault. "It probably was six years into my tenure as department head before I got him to call me anything but Dr. Knocke. It was only after I refused to call him anything but Dr. Loganathan that he said, 'Okay, all right.'" -- Susan Kinzie and Chris L. Jenkins,

-- 17. Daniel O'Neil - 22 years old --



Daniel Patrick O'Neil, 22, was a student of engineering, but friends remembered the graduate student yesterday for his music and good humor.

"He was very intelligent, open-minded and talented; a naturally bright person and a renaissance man," Rob Harkness, a close friend of O'Neil's since he was a student at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, R.I., said via e-mail.

O'Neil entertained friends as a musician and singer, writing and performing songs on his acoustic guitar. He shared his folksy, haunting songs on his Web site, www.residenthippy.com, and his MySpace page.

"He was a loving and humorous person," Harkness recalled. "His character and virtuousness was unparalleled to anyone else I knew. His future held only promises of success, and he was someone to aspire to be like."

O'Neil received an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., last year. He enrolled at Virginia Tech to pursue graduate studies in environmental engineering.

"It is difficult to find words to express the deep sense of loss in our community," Lafayette President Daniel Weiss said in a statement. "The sympathy of all members of our College family is with this young man's family in this tragic hour."

O'Neil's family has asked not to be contacted by the media.

"He focused his life on the positive things and never took his friends and family for granted," Harkness said. "I speak for all of his friends when I say we take comfort in knowing that not a single moment has ever passed where Dan was not aware of our love for him. We now fear our own existence without him more than we fear the existence he is now in."

-- 18. Juan Ortiz - 26 years old --



Juan Ramon Ortiz was studious and serious, but he also loved salsa and played the timbales.

The 26-year-old from Puerto Rico came to Virginia Tech in August 2006 to earn a master's degree in civil engineering. His wife, Liselle Vega Cortes, 28, also an engineering student, came, too. They settled into a small apartment near campus.

They spent most nights studying. When they need a break, they watched action movies.

"We were both very committed to our studies," Cortes said. "We didn't go out very often."

Monday began like any other for the couple. They drove to campus, said goodbye and headed to different classes. When Cortes heard about the shootings, she began a frantic search for her husband.

"I tried to reach him by phone and e-mail and I couldn't," she said. "I started looking at each hospital, and I couldn't find him." That evening, she learned he had been killed.

The couple met a few years ago as students at Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. She caught his eye in a class, and soon they were dating. They married in October 2005.

Polytechnic University President Ernesto Vazquez Barquet said Ortiz was president of the university's chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers and, as a senior, tutored younger students. He graduated magna cum laude and worked for a year before he and his wife came to Virginia Tech.

Cortes said she returned to the apartment for a few moments, but it was too difficult to stay.

"I love him," she said. "I still love him with all my heart."

-- 19. Erin Peterson - 18 years old --



On strips of paper, the 16 or so students who gathered at Westfield High School yesterday morning to talk about Erin Peterson each scribbled a single anecdote about her. They were supposed to write about what they remembered most about the high school basketball star. And when they were done, almost all the papers told the same story: Peterson had helped someone when it was most needed.

One girl wrote about how she had just transferred to the school and was sitting alone at a table when Peterson invited her to join her group, saying something like, "You're not going to be sitting by yourself anymore."

Another girl was in a locker room, visibly upset, when Peterson stopped to comfort her.

One anecdote described how Peterson always brought all the players together before a game to give them an inspirational pep talk.

"The thing that really sticks out about Erin was she was an excellent basketball player, but she was an outstanding person," said Pat Deegan, the girls' basketball coach. "If there was a positive activity and there were people involved in it, then Erin was going to be in the middle of it."

Peterson, a freshman at Virginia Tech majoring in international studies, had played on the high school basketball team for four years, three of them on the varsity team. Her senior year, she was the captain of the team, Deegan said.

"I've been coaching for 27 years, and I can't remember anyone who was a better leader than Erin," he said.

Mark Richardson chairs the Minority Achievement Committee at the school, which aims to ensure that all students have the ability to achieve. Erin Peterson found that achievement both on the court and in the classroom, he said.

"She was a very kind and smart individual. She did all she could to help others and was very active in the school both athletically and academically," he said.

Even after Peterson left for Tech, she was never really gone, calling the high school team on certain game days to encourage the players, Deegan said.

"When she was in the game, she was a warrior," Deegan said. "But she understood that before the game, you take in life, and after the game, you take in life."

Her loss has left a large hole, one that will never be filled, he said.

If he had written anything on that sheet of paper that morning, he said, it would have been simply: "Erin made the world a better place to be, and we're all at a loss without her."

-- 20. Mary Read - 19 years old --



Mary Read was a "fun-loving 19-year-old" who graduated from Fairfax's Annandale High School last spring, said her aunt, Karen Kuppinger of Rochester, N.Y.

Read had lived in Fairfax County since 1991, said Kuppinger, 42. Her dad, Peter, and stepmother, Cathy, are both retired military personnel who live in an older subdivision off Wakefield Chapel Road. Her mother, Yon Son, is a native Korean and U.S. citizen who lives in New Jersey, Kuppinger said.

At Annandale High, Read played lacrosse and clarinet in the concert band. She also performed in the color guard, her aunt said. She was an "excellent student" who had not decided on a major, Kuppinger said.

"Here's a story about what a sweet, family-oriented girl she is," Kuppinger said. "The last time I saw her -- a year ago Thanksgiving here at my house -- she kept disappearing while she was here. I finally said, 'Mary, what are you up to? Are you reading a good book or something?' She was knitting a beautiful scarf -- a multicolored fluffy scarf like the girls wear -- for her grandmother for Christmas. My mother still wears it. She did very thoughtful things like that always and was very close to her mother and father and brothers."

A large sign positioned outside the family's driveway yesterday read: "Mr. and Mrs. Read have gone to Blacksburg. They have small children at home and ask that they not be disturbed today."

Amir Abuelhawa, a former classmate of Mary's, said he recently spent the evening with her when she was back in Annandale during Tech's spring break. They spent the evening catching up and made plans to reconnect when she came home in a few months.

"We had the entire summer," Abuelhawa said. "Now I can't see her anymore."

-- 21. Reema Samaha - 18 years old --



Even before Reema Samaha could study theater at Westfield High School and later Virginia Tech, she gravitated toward the stage. Only it was the basement of her Centreville home, on a makeshift set she and other neighborhood children pieced together.

Somewhere on an old VHS tape, those moments are captured: a not-yet-teenage Samaha, dressed up and doing what she loved, said Danielle Ragole, a childhood friend who grew up in the same neighborhood as Samaha.

"There's just a presence about her that nobody is going to forget," said Ragole, 23.

Ragole was one of several people watching over the family's home yesterday as they remained in Blacksburg.

Samaha, who would have turned 19 in June, graduated from Westfield High School. Erin Peterson, who was also shot in the attacks, graduated the same year. Three years before them, the shooter, Cho Seung Hui, graduated from there.

In the school's main office yesterday, the phones rang constantly. Calls from the media came from across the nation and as far as London and South Korea. Near the front desk, a television remained tuned to news about the shooting. A teenage girl sat in a love seat in front of it, clutching a tissue and crying softly.

At the school, Samaha's friends remembered her the best way they knew how: by watching videotapes of past productions of the high school theater group.

"She did a belly-dancing act in last year's talent show," said Corey Vierregger, 16, an 11th-grader who shimmied to portray Samaha's verve as he remembered his friend.

Samaha distinguished herself in drama at the school as well as on the school's dance team. Among her distinctions her senior year was a $5,000 theater scholarship.

"Whoever she came across, she always had the most genuine smile," said Daniel Jeong, 19, a sophomore at the University of Illinois who knew Samaha at Westfield.

Contrary to rumors that Samaha and Cho were dating, family friends said the two did not know each other. It was purely a coincidence that they went to the same school and that they lived blocks from each other in Centreville, they said.

"It was just a random act," family friend Meredith Sanders said as she left the family's home yesterday.

"She doesn't deserve this," Sanders said. "None of them deserve this."

-- 22. Leslie Sherman - 20 years old --



Leslie Sherman, 20, was the unofficial team cheerleader, whatever the team.

As a student at West Springfield High School, she ran on the cross-country and track teams, played basketball and was president of the history honor society. At Virginia Tech, she declared majors in history and international studies and planned to study in Russia this summer after finishing her sophomore year. She ran regularly, though she did not join the college cross-country team, and was training for a marathon in the fall.

"She put everything she had into everything she did," said Emily Grossman, a freshman at Florida State University who became friends with Sherman through the West Springfield cross-country team.

Grossman said that she was not a talented long-distance runner but that Sherman motivated her to keep going when she was tired. Sherman always led the applause when someone crossed the finish line and provided an encouraging word when a teammate was struggling.

"She always kept telling me: 'You can do it. It's just another mile or two or six,' " Grossman said with a laugh. "She cheered us all on."

Sherman, who was killed in French class, developed a passion for the language in high school as a student and a member of the French Club. She talked about studying in both Russia and France, friends said.

"Leslie was so full of energy, always smiled, worked hard, and made others smile," high school classmate Samantha Esau said on a Facebook group page.

To celebrate Sherman's life, Grossman and others are planning a summer memorial run in Springfield -- Sherman's home town -- to raise scholarship money for West Springfield High. After hearing of Sherman's death, Grossman said, she sent invitations to about 75 people via Facebook. By the next day, 350 people had joined the group.

-- 23. Maxine Turner - 22 years old --



When Maxine Turner spent a month working at a Vienna lingerie store this winter, she took her work home. She wrote a blog entry telling women how to fit a bra correctly, and threw in a plug for the store, Trousseau Ltd.: "Check 'em out ladies, it's well worth it!!!"

Putting in extra work came naturally to Turner, 22, a chemical engineering major killed Monday in her German class, just weeks from graduation.

A graduate of James Madison High in Vienna, she had lined up a job starting this summer with W.L. Gore, a technology and manufacturing company in Elkton, Md.

She beat out hundreds of applicants, said Jane Gardner, a college recruiter who interviewed Turner for the job. "I just saw a very bright young woman," she said. "She talked about being a woman going into an engineering world and just her positive energy around that, and her passion for interacting with other women in engineering. I'm just really sad because I'm thinking about how she was on the brink of a really great opportunity and she invested so much of her time completing her degree."

A woman who answered the phone at the home of Turner's parents said the family, which includes her brother, Anthony, an eighth-grader, was too distraught to talk.

Friends posting comments on Turner's Myspace and Facebook accounts reminisced about a "notorious elementary school 'Tina-Turner' duo� and her �awesome strawberry sauce for pancakes."

Paul Fraser, who said he dated Turner for years in high school, recalled swing dancing every Saturday at a club in Tysons Corner.

"We'd dance all night," Fraser wrote in a blog entry. "That was our thing."

-- 24. Brian Bluhm - 25 years old --



Brian Bluhm, who worked as a graduate teaching assistant in the school's Civil Engineering Department, was one of hundreds of would-be engineers at Virginia Tech. But he stood out to friends at the Baptist student union -- where he often hung out and did Bible study -- because of his wisecracking humor and his devotion to the Virginia Tech Hokies and the Detroit Tigers, friends said.

"We gave him hard times about things. He was such a Hokie fan, and always at every game. He had these bright orange pants he'd wear," recalled former classmate Angela Antonucci, 23, of Wellington, Fla. "They were bright orange. Like the kind of vest somebody would wear cleaning up litter on the side of the road -- that kind of orange."

"He was very full-spirited and very friend-spirited," she said.

A gifted student, Bluhm chose to pursue both his undergraduate and graduate studies at Virginia Tech -- first earning his undergraduate degree in civil engineering, then beginning work toward a master's in water resources.

"My main area of research is sustainability of water quantity using safe yield of a reservoir during a critical drought period," he wrote in a recent online biography for Virginia Tech.

He was a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a 2000 graduate of duPont Manual High School in Louisville, a magnet school widely considered to be the best public high school in the state. Even among his competitive peers, he stood out, a former teacher remembered.

"He was at the top level of a school of top students -- so, the top of the top," said Advanced Placement history teacher Glenn Taylor. Bluhm was a member of the National Honor Society and the school's rock climbing team.

Ricky Castles, another graduate student, said Bluhm was finishing up his thesis this spring and was getting ready to start a civil engineering job in Baltimore after graduation. He was auditing a class in advanced hydrology in Norris Hall when the attack occurred, Castles said.

-- 25. Nicole White --



Nicole R. White was capable of being serious one moment, silly the next.

"You see things, and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?' " reads a quote the 20-year-old junior posted with her Facebook profile. Below it, she added a quote from the quirky comedy "Napoleon Dynamite," which she listed as her favorite movie.

She was a member of the Beta Club at Smithfield High School, and she worked as a lifeguard.

She was close to her family, from her mother back home in Smithfield in eastern Virginia to cousins at various colleges. Multiple cousins posted messages on her Facebook wall Monday morning, begging her to call to confirm that she was safe. By the next morning, cousin Erinn Field posted the bad news: White had been killed in her German class, which she was taking as part of her double major in German and international studies.

Relatives and close friends could not be reached for comment yesterday, but their messages filled her virtual wall alongside pictures of her long red hair and wide smile.

"Nicole was an amazing friend. She was quirky and spontaneous. She never did quite what anyone expected," Melissa Parden wrote.

In her profile, White professed her love for music including Bob Marley, Janis Joplin and Outkast, as well her love of one book -- "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

-- 26. Austin Cloyd - 18 years old --



All day Monday, friends left messages looking for Austin Cloyd, a freshman from Blacksburg whose father is a professor at Virginia Tech. A Facebook page was filled with notes from friends praying for her.

"Austin . . . you are so loved and I just hope that you are going to be alright," a friend wrote.

At 5:30 p.m. that day, the pastor from the family's former church in Illinois spoke with Bryan and Renee Cloyd. They still hadn't heard from their daughter.

About 24 hours after the shooting, her parents finally got word, said the Rev. Terry Harter. They were shown a photograph of one of the bodies.

They were unable to talk about Austin's death last night but sent an e-mail that ended: "The world has lost a very special person."

As word spread, friends cried, and laughed, at their memories. They talked about how much Austin Cloyd loved to act, to sing, play volleyball, read, go shopping. She was always dressed just so. A friend remembers a trip to Old Navy taking 90 minutes of careful analysis. Bailey Hampton, a 17-year-old friend from Illinois, said she was "high-maintenance, in a good way." Always put together.

She was a dean's list student in the honors program. She was striking, very tall, with pale skin and bright red curly hair, a big smile. Chris Nicosia, a freshman, remembers turning around at the Justin Timberlake concert last month and seeing her there unexpectedly, dressed in red, completely dazzling him.

"She radiated," Martha Harter said.

She remembered birthdays and wrote thank-you notes. She loved little kids. She taught 4- and 5-year-olds to swim at Tech, laughing with Nicosia about funny things the kids did -- like drinking from the pool. She was a lifeguard, too, someone who would take on extra work without a complaint, said her swimming supervisor, Katherine Frasca.

She took mission trips to Appalachia, climbing on roofs to patch them, helping to install plumbing or shore up worn-out walls.

In January, Cloyd and her mother hopped into a car one day and drove to Illinois to surprise old friends. They knocked on Harter's door one night, she said, and Austin stood on the doorstep, grinning.

She had turned from a high school student into a young lady, Harter said. She couldn't believe it. Harter burst out, "You're so beautiful! You're so grown up -- I can't take it!"

-- 27. Matthew Gwaltney - 24 years old --



When Matthew Gwaltney was a senior at Thomas Dale High School in Chester, Va., Class of 2001, he was voted "the kind of person you want to take home to Mom and Dad."

"He was a great scholar and just a great all-around kid," Eddie Goss, Gwaltney's high school basketball coach, said yesterday.

Gwaltney, a talented athlete who played basketball and baseball at the high school, was also a top student. He went on to Virginia Tech to earn his bachelor's degree in civil engineering, with a concentration in environmental and water resources engineering, in 2005. He stayed on as a graduate student.

"There was such great potential there," Goss said. "He was one of those kids you want to be around."

High school friend Lindsey Potts said Gwaltney seemed quiet and serious but could be funny, too. "He was really shy for the most part," she said. "But once you got to know him, he opened up to you."

Once, when the Dale basketball team was struggling to get motivated for a big game, Goss and Gwaltney pulled a practical joke to fire up the team. Gwaltney pretended that he had gotten into an argument with the coach and had been suspended for the game. He hid in an office while his unhappy teammates put on their uniforms.

"The other kids were, like, 'You can't do this coach,' " Goss recalled. "I said, 'I made my decision, but I have to tell you one thing.' Then Matt came out with that big grin on his face.'"

-- 28. Partahi Lombantoruan - 34 years old --



Through the numbness of grief, Rhondy Rahardja managed to chuckle, and so did his friend Pupung Purnawarman. The two found themselves standing in the most immaculate apartment either had ever seen yesterday -- three small rooms near Virginia Tech that a fellow student and Indonesian national, Partahi Lumbantoruan, had called home.

He is gone now. He was 34 and had been in the United States for about three years, working toward a doctorate in Tech's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

"The way he kept his books, his clothes -- everything so neat, so organized," said Purnawarman, who had never visited his friend's apartment before. Now he and Rahardja were packing Lumbantoruan's belongings in boxes and suitcases so the Indonesian Embassy can ship them to his parents in North Sumatra's capital city of Medan.

Rahardja laughed wistfully. "Everything is on place," he said. "Just like the military. He has all his socks lined up next to each other, maybe for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."

That was Lumbantoruan, a man who valued order and discipline, according to his friends. They said he grew up in a military family -- his father and stepmother were both officers in Indonesia's army -- and he came to Blacksburg with a seriousness of purpose.

In North Sumatra, his father, Tohom Lumbantoruan, told the Associated Press that the family sold property and cars to pay for their unmarried son's tuition at Tech, where he received a master's degree in civil engineering before beginning a doctoral program.

"We tried everything to completely finance his studies in the United States," the father said. "We only wanted him to succeed in his studies, but . . . he met a tragic fate."

In Blacksburg, when he wasn't around -- and even when he was -- his friends liked to kid him. "Yes, sir!" they would say in responding to his opinions, which he almost always voiced with authority. "Yes, sir! Whatever you say, sir!" And they would laugh, and so would he, despite himself, his friends recalled.

And the clothes he wore -- practically a uniform. Rahardja chuckled again at the memory. "Always the same thing, the same kind of thing," he said. "He always wore a polo shirt, very neat, no wrinkles. Khaki pants. Always khakis. And the polo shirt was always tucked in. Always. And he wore his VT hat."

Friends said he aspired to be a university professor in the United States.

They last saw him Sunday, at the university's International Street Fair. The Indonesian Students Association, of which Rahardja is president, had a booth, serving satay, barbequed chicken and beef on skewers. "He was the grill-master," Rahardja said of Lumbantoruan. Afterward, Rahardja drove him home.

They chatted about an association get-together, which had been planned for this Saturday. "We were saying we were going to a restaurant and have some fun," Rahardja recalled. "He was like, 'Oh, yeah, it's going to be fun.'"

Yesterday, Rahardja was at his friend's apartment, seeing the inside for the first time.

And allowing himself to smile.

"Khakis," he said. "He had lots and lots and lots of khakis."

-- 29. Julie Pryde - 23 years old --



Julia Pryde's passion for nature informed everything she did, from a week-long trip to South America to study water quality to the way she kept her hair: in free-flowing dreadlocks.

Pryde, 23, was studying to put her passion to work. As an undergraduate and then a graduate student in Tech's biological systems engineering program, she planned to make a difference by protecting the environment. Pryde was attending an advanced hydrology class in Norris Hall at the time of the shootings.

Pryde was a "wonderful, friendly, yet serious old soul," said Mike Rosenzweig, a friend and fellow member of the Tech chapter of SEEDS, a nonprofit environmental education group. "She rallied her friends into action and was not one to let challenges stop her from trying."

Last year, she traveled with a professor to Peru and Ecuador to work on watershed management. The year before that, she launched a program to begin composting food waste from Tech's dining facilities.

Gregory K. Evanylo, a professor of crop and soil environmental sciences, advised Pryde on the composting study. There was no dissuading her, though others before her had tried to start similar projects, he said.

"Sometimes we're apt to spill a little cold water on a project because we think we may have gone down that road before," Evanylo recalled. "She would have no part of throwing in the towel. That's the beauty of working with young, unjaded, enthusiastic students like you find at a place like Virginia Tech."

Mary Leigh Wolfe, Pryde's biological systems adviser, couldn't help chuckling as she recalled Pryde's determination. Wolfe also marveled at Pryde's commitment to bolster her ideals with a foundation of scientific know-how. "Her belief system was very much in place," Wolfe said with a laugh. "She was a passionate woman."

In her home town of Middletown, N.J., Pryde was passionate about swimming. Pryde, a 2001 graduate of Middletown High School North, swam for teams at her swim club, her high school and the YMCA.

Those who knew her remember a young woman committed, with great energy, to helping. Even a casual posting of hers on a Virginia Tech Web page, passing on a solicitation for volunteers to help rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, made her dedication plain.

"I thought this might interest some of you out there," Pryde wrote. Clearly, it interested her.

-- 30. Michael S. Pohle Jr. --



Michael Pohle, 23, would have graduated in a few weeks, would have stepped outside the walls of school, and would have, if his record is any indication, done much if given the chance.

"It's unthinkable that he and all the others," Craig Blanton, his high school vice principal said yesterday, before pausing. "Here he was in his prime and ready to start life."

Pohle graduated in 2002 from Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey, where he played on the football and lacrosse teams. The flags at the high school flew at half-staff Tuesday, and staff members and students observed a moment of silence at the end of the school day.

The school district released a statement saying: "Michael was a beloved member of his graduating class. . . . As we remember this outstanding young man, our hearts go out to his family and friends who are suffering a tremendous loss."

Blanton said he last saw Pohle in the fall. The biological science major was home on break and went to a high school football game to root for his alma mater.

"That's the type of kid he was," Blanton said. "Michael was a kid you wanted to get to know. He was a good student. He was a good athlete. He was just a good person."

In the days since the shooting, Blanton said he has received many e-mails from Pohle's former classmates. Some simply say, "Tell me it isn't so," he said. Others ask how they can help the family. And some wrote just to share memories.

-- 31. Minal Panchal - 26 years old --



Minal Panchal's mother recently arrived in the United States from her home in India to spend time with Panchal and her sister -- "just to visit the daughters . . . sort of just a break," said Rahul Chhabra, an Indian Embassy official.

After Monday's shootings, Panchal's mother, a widow, traveled to Blacksburg.

Minal Panchal, who grew up in the Indian state of Gujarat, was killed in a Norris Hall classroom along with other students and Professor G.V. Loganathan, Chhabra said.

Loganathan was also born in India, and small photographs of his and Panchal's faces have been placed on the blackened Web site of the school's Indian Students Association. "Our community has witnessed an unforeseeable tragedy," it reads.

From her pages at the social networking site Orkut, a picture of Panchal's personality emerges:

"humor: dry/sarcastic, friendly . . ."

"fashion: casual, contemporary . . ."

"pets: i like them at the zoos . . ."

"music: old hindi, r.d. burman, soft rock, enrique . . . and any fast music while at work."

A friend wrote, "Beauty with brains."

The first-year graduate student was taking classes in building sciences and architecture, Chhabra said.

A message left in a digital memorial reads: "Lets Pray for her Family. May her soul rest in Peace. Dear Minal, WE ALL MISS YOU A LOT."

-- 32. Waleed Shaalan - 32 years old --



When G.V. Loganathan's advanced hydrology class assembled Monday morning in Norris Hall, Waleed M. Shaalan, of course, was seated near the front.

He was that kind of student -- "a workaholic," a faculty member said.

Shaalan, 32, an Egyptian-trained civil engineer, came to Blacksburg in August from the small city of Zagazig in the Nile Delta, leaving his wife and their baby son at home. He was intent on earning a doctorate in hydrology, then returning to teach at his alma mater, Zagazig University, said the faculty member, Hesham Rakh.

"He was very, very studious," said the Egyptian-born Rakh, who teaches in Virginia Tech's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He befriended Shaalan at a mosque near the campus not long after Shaalan arrived.

"He would be at the department at 7 in the morning, and he would work until 2 or 3 in the morning sometimes," said Rakh, who lives near the apartment that Shaalan rented, a few miles from campus. "He would actually walk home at 2 in the morning, because the last bus, I think, is around 11 p.m."

So there he was, seated front and center in Loganathan's classroom, when Cho Seung Hui strode in with his guns.

"He was in the front row," said Mohamed Elghazawy, deputy consul at the Egyptian Embassy, who traveled to Blacksburg on Tuesday and was briefed by authorities about Shaalan's death. "When the guy shoots first the professor, then he goes to the students in the first row and shoots them. And this young man, he was among the first to die."

Nine students were slain in the classroom. Loganathan, too.

Rakh said Shaalan, who had just begun the academically grueling, three- to four-year process of earning a doctorate in his field, had little time for hobbies. But the professor did run into him Sunday, savoring Middle Eastern food at Tech's annual International Street Fair.

"This was the last time I saw him, the day before he died," Rakh said. "I shook hands with him, we said hello. And he was smiling, laughing. He was very happy."

He had reason to be. He had purchased an airline ticket to Cairo for May 14. From there, he was to travel north to Zagazig, to reunite with his wife of three years, Amira, and their young son, Khaled. He planned to bring them to Blacksburg, to be with him while he completed his studies.

"He was very much looking forward to it," Rakh said. "Because he missed them so much. He would always talk about them. His son is about a year and a half now, so his son was maybe 8 or 10 months old when he last saw him."

Rakh sighed. "So, you know, he was working just nonstop in the department to finish as much of his studies as he could before they arrived."

Elghazawy said Shaalan worked for Egypt's National Water Research Center after graduating from Zagazig University, then was awarded a scholarship by Tech to pursue a doctorate. This week, it fell to the embassy in Washington to deliver the horrible news to Shaalan's relatives at home.

"His family -- his dad and mom -- was in a very bad situation," Elghazawy said.

He said: "We talked to his brother and uncle in Cairo, because we can't speak to his dad and mom, because of their bad situation. They had a hard time thinking of this. For some time, they could not believe their son is dead."

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