Dear Middle Tennessee Virginia Tech Alumni –

On behalf of the UVa Alumni Club of Middle Tennessee, I would like to extend my most heartfelt sympathy and condolences for the losses your community has suffered.  We are grieving with you.

While the country shares in your grief, it seems there is a finer sense of loss for those of us who call or have called Virginia “home.”  As a transplanted Virginian here in Nashville, of all the intense emotion of the week nothing has gripped me harder than a powerful longing to be back there.  Back home.  It’s probably silly to try to draw comparisons between one senseless tragedy and another, but I can’t help but think that what we are feeling now, as Virginians, is something akin to what New Yorkers were feeling, and still feel, 6 years ago. 

My initial fear was that the words “Virginia Tech” would be forever associated with this event, but I truly and firmly believe that for those to whom Blacksburg was previously just a small college town amongst the Blue Ridge, the bitterness and ugliness of it all has already begun to be overshadowed.  Your spirit.  Your devotion. Your compassion.  Your concern.  Your heroics.  Your character. Your pride. Your courage. Your families. Your Family. Your moving service at Cassell.  Your students, faculty, and administrators, all of whom have represented so wonderfully the extended Virginia Tech family.  Your love for your school.  These are the things that will be remembered. 

As for those of us to whom Virginia Tech was already somehow part of our lives, well, we didn’t need to discover these truths about your school.  We already knew.

God Bless, and if anyone wants to get together on November 24 to watch some football, first round is on me.

On behalf of the UVa Club,

Andrew Breen

Class of 1996