Assuring a grief-stricken campus that normalcy will someday return, President Bush assumed the role of consoler-in-chief Tuesday at Virginia Tech, site of Monday’s shocking massacre.
“On this terrible day of mourning, it’s hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal,” Bush told a hushed basketball arena packed with teary-eyed students and faculty. “But such a day will come. And when it does, you will always remember the friends and teachers who were lost yesterday, and the time you shared with them, and the lives that they hoped to lead.”
As he did more than five years ago after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the president invoked the power of prayer in helping Virginia Tech cope with the shooting deaths of 33 students and faculty.
“In times like this, we can find comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God,” Bush said on the campus in Blacksburg, Va. “As the Scriptures tells us, don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Bush was praised by Virginia Gov. Tom Kaine, a Democrat, for his skill in giving “comfort and consolation in hard times.”
In sparse, unadorned remarks, the president alluded to his own twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, who graduated from college three years ago.
“I know many of you feel awfully far away from people you lean on, people you count on during difficult times,” Bush said. “But as a dad, I can assure you, a parent’s love is never far from their child’s heart.”
