Two years since the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the classroom wing where a student methodically gunned down his victims has been transformed into a center to promote peace.
But even the man who sought its creation, Jerzy Nowak, acknowledges he’s not yet comfortable in the peace center at the site of the shooting.
His wife, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, was teaching French in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall when she was gunned down on April 16, 2007. Troubled student Seung-Hui Cho killed two people in a dorm and 30 others in the second-floor classroom wing where Couture-Nowak died before fatally shooting himself.
Classes will be canceled on the anniversary Thursday, and events will include an open house at the peace center, a candlelight vigil and a memorial ceremony.
For some, a trip to campus is part of working through their grief. For others, it’s still too painful.
