Personal Reflections on the Virginia Tech Tragedy From a Victim's Spouse With Commentary by a Close Colleague

Abstract

This is a story of one of the Virginia Tech professors whose wife, a charismatic French instructor, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, was killed in her Norris Hall classroom on April 16, 2007 while trying to protect her students from the armed, deranged student-shooter threatening her classroom. Jerzy is the head of the Horticulture Department at Virginia Tech. The author reflects on his and his youngest daughter's posttraumatic and secondary traumatic experiences, focusing mostly on the interface between family and his profession. Jerzy's reflections are complemented by those of Richard Veilleux (text in italics), a professor in Jerzy's department who served as acting head while Jerzy was coping with primary needs after his wife was slain. As a plant stress physiologist/eco-physiologist, Jerzy sees a more generic biological pattern of adaptation to extreme situations by comparing the role that community played in his and his family's posttraumatic adaptation to everyday life to the alliances that plants form with soil microorganisms that help them to withstand stresses.