The first sport I want to talk about in this column is baseball, because that's what the Detroit Tigers play. I spent all of last year as a struggling engineering student at Virginia Tech, and I took a workshop under a graduate student named Brian Bluhm, whom I would occasionally run into around campus. While he was always dressed in business casual during classes, he always donned a dark blue Tigers cap when I saw him around Blacksburg.
I've never had a professor or TA quite like Brian. During one of the first classes of the workshop, I was listening to my iPod while we had work time. Brian came over, tapped me on the shoulder and told me that he had to confiscate the iPod from me for the rest of class so I would focus on work.
As I took out my earphones and started wrapping the wires around the white iPod, Brian burst out chuckling. "No way, man, I'm just kidding. Go ahead and listen. Got anything good on there?"
Brian shook my hand and learned my name. From that point onward he treated me not as if he were a professor and I were a student, but as a peer and a friend. I think that's how must of us in the class viewed him, too.
The next sport I want to talk about is women's basketball. I was at a Hokies game at Cassell Coliseum last winter, waiting in line to get into the stands, when I ran into Brian for the first time since my semester workshop had ended. Instead of stiffly saying "Hi" and asking me how my studies were going, as I expect professors and teachers to do, he chatted with me like an old buddy. We talked a little bit about Hokie football, a little bit about the biting Blacksburg wind, a little bit about the construction near the engineering buildings.
He jokingly asked me if my workshop TA that semester was as great as he was. "No," I told him honestly.
The next sport I want to talk about is racquetball; that's the one I spent many hours in the spring playing against my friend Sean, who I'd met during a group assignment in Brian's workshop.
Racquetball was the last sport I played before Brian was killed April 16. Even though I spent most of that day in Main Campbell, my dorm at the time, which is wedged directly between West Ambler Johnston, the spot of the early shootings, and Norris, the spot of the later shootings, it all felt so distant at first. That abruptly changed around 11 that night, when a list of the names of rumored victims started circulating by e-mail.
When I learned Stack Clark, a guy in the marching band who had once patted me on the back, had been killed, I stopped and solemnly shook my head in shock.
When I learned Leslie Sherman, the girl who lived three rooms down from me in Main Campbell, had been killed, I cried for the first time since my pet dog died when I was a sophomore in high school.
But when I learned that Brian had been killed, I didn't know what to do. Brian had been easygoing, a nice guy, a great teacher, a friend, a sports fan just like me.He was the person who made the rigorous engineering workshop tolerable for me and my classmates.
But he was gone, and no response to that fact seemed adequate or right. I didn't know what to do about it. I still don't.
The next sport I want to talk about is wrestling. It was early 2008, about eight months after I transferred from Tech to U.Va. to pursue a career in education instead of engineering. I was writing an article about wrestling for The Cavalier Daily when I stumbled upon a message written by Angela Bluhm Jones on a Web site honoring Brian. Angela is Brian's sister, and in this message, she expressed both sadness in losing Brian and warmth in reaching out to comfort others who miss him.
Anyone who thinks that April morning seems like a long time ago and that the pain of losing so many friends so quickly has healed should look no further than Angela to see how wrong they are.
I come across one of these online messages every couple of weeks. Never a visit to one of these sites honoring Brian goes by when I don't see some remark about how much she misses her little brother. The media sensation around the shootings has died down a bit, but not the pain.
The last sport I want to talk about is football. Every time I look up Brian online I see this picture of him in glasses, a knit cap, and a big Virginia Tech sweatshirt in the stands during a Hokie football game. He has a huge grin across his face.
It's the same grin he showed me whenever I ran into him around campus, when I saw him at that women's basketball game, when he would crack jokes during workshop.
It's the same grin that was on his face when he joked that he was going to confiscate my iPod. I still have that iPod
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