Responding to Tech incident

This letter is in response to the letter titled “What Tech needs to do” from Joseph Pierro of Mechanicsville.

I see that Mr. Pierro formulated his misinformed opinion from the Richmond Times Dispatch article that once again tried to lay blame for the actions of one disturbed individual on the entire university. 

Rather than researching the facts of his letter, he instead used these misguided facts and an obvious disdain for an entire university as the basis for his letter.

Had he done some research, he may have realized what the Richmond Times Dispatch failed to mention, that the car in question was located at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute which is 2.5 miles from the site of the shooting as the crow flies and nearly four miles by vehicle. It is not a part of campus, and is separated from campus by quite a distance.

Situations such as these unfortunately cannot be prevented. There are bad people in this world, and those bad people sometimes do bad things. 

Even more unfortunately, these bad things sometimes happen to exceptional people. Deriek Crouse was not only a Virginia Tech police officer, but a veteran of our Armed Forces. He was a father of five and was undoubtedly a member of the Hokie Family. A family that within hours of his death saw some of its youngest members (current students) start a fund for his family that as of the writing of this letter has raised more than $117,000.

I have never been a law enforcement officer, an Army veteran or a leader of a university. I trust that any of those groups of people do everything that they can every day in order to protect you and me from many more bad people and bad things than we would ever want to know about.

As for “What Tech needs to do,” we Hokies will continue to take care of our family. We also will welcome new friends and family as we always do. 

If Mr. Pierro finds himself in Blacksburg on any weekend in the fall when we all get together as a family, he is welcome at my tailgate.

Michael Woods
Mechanicsville

How can school be responsible?

In response to the letter written by Joseph Pierro of Mechanicsville, “What Tech Needs to do” – Dec. 21, 2011.

I am thoroughly amazed that in this day and age anyone can hold a school responsible for random acts of violence.

Sure, each university needs to have a plan to deal with known disturbances or identified threats, but no school in the world can prepare itself for the kind of crazy acts by individuals that we have seen all too recently. 

It is obvious that Mr. Pierro has never travelled to Blacksburg and does not have the foggiest idea of how large and open Virginia Tech is. In size it dwarfs Mechanicsville. 

If we all followed Pierro’s logic, Lee-Davis [High School] would have been locked down when a student was shot a few days ago, another crazy walking the streets.

If every time a pickup truck rolled down U.S. 360 or U.S. 301 during the daytime with a shotgun hanging in the back window, then Hanover County would be forced to shut the schools every day.

Blacksburg is a city, not just a campus. UVa is housed in a city, Charlottesville. How many shootings occur there every week? Now close to home, our own VCU campus is located in the heart of a battleground.

Do we close school every day because someone is known to be carrying a gun? No, we teach our students to be vigilant and watch out for one another.

My daughter went to Virginia Tech, another went to UVa and I have a daughter that is attending VCU.

I am fully confident that our universities and their security are doing all they can to protect our kids. 

If Mr. Pierro thinks for one minute that President Steger is more concerned with Sugar Bowl profits than our children, then he is sadly under a strange misguided delusion.  Writing a letter as he did, commenting on a subject that he has little knowledge about, and accusing a very wonderful person of putting profits ahead of students is irresponsible.

I challenge Mr. Pierro to get off his high horse and drive to Virginia Tech and drive the campus. Then and only then, come back and present his wonderful plan for protecting future students from senseless random acts of violence.

And, oh by the way, introduce himself to President Steger. It is people like Mr. Pierro that have hurt the reputations of our local state schools, not the emotionally disturbed people that cause problems.

It is a new day in all our communities. Violence is escalating and we all need to learn to prepare for it. It is all of our responsibility to protect each other. 

Bob O’Neil
Mechanicsville

America’s birth linked to Savior

Having just celebrated Christ’s birth, I am reminded of the words of John Quincy Adams.

On July 4, 1837, he spoke these words: “Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day? … Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the Gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth. That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity, and gave to the world the first irrevocable pledge of the fulfillment of the prophecies announced directly from Heaven at the birth of the Savior and predicted by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets six hundred years before?”

Adams was exactly right: America’s birth is directly linked to the birth of our Savior.

In fact, the United States of America is the only nation established by Christian people, founded upon Biblical principles, and dedicated to the purpose of religious liberty. This truth is easily observed within America’s earliest history.

Jackie Lee
Mechanicsville