Vigil for Virginia Tech victims

UCI CAMPUS — Thomas Wall wore a purple Virginia Tech sweatshirt to Monday night’s candlelight vigil, but it wasn’t just in memory of the deceased. It was also in tribute to his friends.

Wall, a graduate student in biology at UC Irvine, went to Virginia Tech as an undergraduate and earned his bachelor’s degree in 2003. When news broke of the massacre that left 32 people dead, names and faces immediately began flashing through his mind.

“I was worried about my friends over there when I first heard about it,” Wall said. “I still have a lot of friends over there.”

On Monday, Wall was among more than 200 people who gathered on the steps by UCI’s administration building to remember the victims of the worst campus shooting in American history. The university’s colors of yellow and blue were replaced for an hour or so as dark purple jackets, sweaters, T-shirts and flowers dotted the crowd in tribute to Virginia Tech’s colors, purple and orange. Nearby, students wrote messages to the Virginia Tech community on a series of paper banners hung by the steps.

The vigil, held a week after the April 16 shooting, lasted slightly less than an hour. Irvine Mayor Beth Krom, Orange County Human Relations Commission chairman Kenneth Inouye and a number of students and teachers spoke while onlookers held lighted candles.

“We are fortunate to be known as a safe community, but tragedies like this shake us out of our complacency and remind us that life is fragile and not to be taken for granted,” Krom said.

Chancellor Michael Drake was in Washington, D.C., on Monday night but sent a brief message that Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Manuel Gomez read to the crowd. Gomez, in his own remarks, expressed condolences to the victims and also to the family of the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho.

“This evening, we are all Hokies in spirit,” he said. “The Virginia Tech campus remembers, and they — and we — will prevail.”