After Death, Before Graduation

Matt Sedensky and Kristen Gelineau (Thanks, Oliver): The workers stand near the 50-yard line in Lane Stadium, unfolding flimsy black chairs and setting each precisely in place, one beside the other, row after flawless row. It has been this way every graduation at Virginia Tech, mundane and methodical, chair after chair. Until now.

This year, some of these seats will go unfilled.

For all the losses here _ 33 lives, a carefree joyfulness, an innocence _ time creeps forward. So black-robed students will still file into the ceremony Friday, they will still celebrate, all the while battling the realization that sadness is fighting happiness, that normalcy died too, that everything has changed.

Chair after chair, carefully, perfectly. H.C. Price has done this nearly each of his 26 years here. There is always an emptiness when the stadium is vacant, but even when it fills for graduation, he knows it will still be felt.