Beamer: An integral part to a healing Hokie Nation

As the camera crews flooded into Blacksburg, Frank Beamer, then-head coach of the Virginia Tech football team, knew the university would not be remembered for this tragedy, but instead for how the community responded. Within an hour of the shooting, Beamer was with his entire team.

“As soon as it happened, we wanted to get everyone together, make sure everyone was accounted for and okay so we could call parents and encourage them to call their parents if they hadn’t already talked to them,” Beamer said. “So everything was happening pretty quickly.”

By almost all accounts, Beamer played an integral part in the community’s healing process, most notably by visiting with survivors in the hospital, as well as the parents of the victims. For decades, he had been known as a winning football coach. Suddenly he was called upon to be much more.

“I think he played a big part in bringing the campus together. I thought he was a great university spokesman — he and Dr. Steger both — on how that shooting wouldn’t define the university,” said Bill Roth, longtime Virginia Tech broadcaster and current professor of practice at the university.

Appearing in scores of radio shows, news segments and press conferences — both because of his job and because of the shooting — Beamer made sure to spread a message of hope, one that let the country know Virginia Tech would not be remembered for the actions of a “sick individual.”

Despite the national attention Beamer and his team received in the aftermath of the shooting, it is the personal moments that Beamer remembers with the most clarity. 

“I’ll never forget John Ballein and I walking through campus, which we did every day, but particularly during that time. I just thought people needed to see someone they recognized, and put some normal situation back into this. But there was a girl, a sweet little girl over there, a student,” Beamer recalled, pointing to his right as if she were still sitting next to him, “and you could just tell she was deep in thought. When we walked over to her she was crying. We sat down and talked with her for a few minutes, and she needed that. She needed to be able to talk to someone that hopefully made her feel better and made her feel like things are going to be okay. And we are. We are going to get through this and we’re not going to let that sick guy defeat Virginia Tech.”

Sports, particularly the start of football season, brought a sense of normalcy back to campus. It served as a positive unifying event in a point in time where most unification took place in conjunction with solace.

“When we’re in that stadium — Lane Stadium over there — everyone’s going in the same direction: Our alumni, our students, our band, our hightechs, we all have the same purpose. We all have the same goal. We all want the same thing at the end of the day. Having said that, we all needed to be going in the same direction on this, and for the most part, I think we did as a university, and there’s no question about that,” Beamer said. “But I thought that was a time that people could come, have a cause and make sure we were all together working with each other for our common goal that particular day. I remember taking the field through the stadium and everybody jumping and I never — maybe I just imagined this — but I never felt like that before and it was something different than I had ever experienced.”

The sports world outside of Blacksburg took notice as well, sending an outpouring of support. With the Hokies canceling their spring game, colleges around the country including Penn State and Ohio State showed support at their own spring games, with the Buckeyes wearing VT helmets. Angels pitcher Joe Saunders, along with other MLB players, received special permission from the league to wear Virginia Tech hats and patches. Even NBA legend Allen Iverson, who is a Virginia Native, wore a patch with Tech’s logo on his arm sleeve for the remainder of the 2007 season.