Story by Chris Graham

Jim McCloskey had had the same feeling after 9/11.

“As a cartoonist, that was the real challenge that I had,” says McCloskey, an editorial cartoonist at The News Leader in Staunton, whose image of the Hokie Bird head in hands in anguish over the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16 that left 33 people dead has become iconic.

Also iconic is the image that world-renowned Waynesboro artist P. Buckley Moss created in the aftermath of the shootings featuring a floating angel in blue clutching a heart encasing the familiar orange Virginia Tech “VT” logo.
“It just made so much sense to do the angel,” says Moss, who put the image on the cover of her weekly newsletter two days after the shootings - and was “tickled” to see hours after it made its first appearance that students at Virginia Tech had copied it off the Internet to use in their own memorial tributes to friends who had been lost.

Matt Bolling was still “in shock” at that point - the 2006 Virginia Tech graduate had worked in Norris Hall, where 31 students and faculty members lost their lives, as a student assistant in the engineering department.

Bolling also had been a member of the campus a cappella singing group Juxtaposition - and remembered how the group had put together a tribute concert following Hurricane Katrina and decided to see if he could set something into motion in that way following the shootings.

“Not being at the school, and it being the end of the semester, I didn’t think I could really push that side of things. But I had just finished a CD for the group - produced the whole thing, did all the graphic work and everything - and just decided to go that route,” Bolling says.

Before long, the effort had expanded outside of Blacksburg and encompassed music groups representing colleges and universities across Virginia.

“I sent out 15, maybe 20 e-mails to addresses that I had - and groups just started coming out of the woodwork. I guess within two or three days, I had 24 of the 27 final groups that are on the CD set already signed on to it. It was amazing how quickly people got in touch with me - even if I didn’t know they were there,” says Bolling, whose two-CD set, “For Today: We Are All Hokies,” registered more than $7,500 in sales within a week of the shootings.

Another Tech alum, Staunton city horticulturist Matt Sensabaugh, is channeling his creative energies in a more environmental setting.

“The basic idea behind it is doing sort of a living memorial for the folks that were lost - and in honor of the folks that live on,” says Sensabaugh, a 1998 Virginia Tech alumnus who is working on plans for an avenue of trees lining the entrance to Staunton’s Montgomery Hall Park - and a concept that he hopes horticulturists in cities across the Commonwealth and across the country will pick up on themselves.

“I was shooting e-mails with some of my buddies - and we’re sort of scattered around. But I have three friends - one down in Florida, one down in Georgia, and another out in Kansas City, Mo. - they’re actually going to try to do the same thing, plant 32 trees in their town or their community,” Sensabaugh says.

The ultimate goal is to “try to set up a program sort of similar to the America’s Anniversary Garden - where it encourages communities to plant 32 shade trees as a memorial, to try to make something positive of it, something that could have a long-term good impact,” Sensabaugh says.

Matt Bolling is already seeing something in the way of a positive impact from the “For Today” CD.

“It’s rewarding. I’m really glad to be involved with it. All the e-mails that I get from people buying the project - people that I know, and people that I don’t know - I’m just glad that I can use my talents to benefit other people rather than using them for my own gain,” Bolling says.

P. Buckley Moss says the response to her Virginia Tech angel “has renewed my faith.”
“My kids are Golden Hokies - so I got messages from all over the country from people who know that we’re Virginia Tech people,” Moss says.

“What is so sad about this is when you listen to people talk about the victims, how they were all very creative, very wonderful in their different fields, and very top of the line and enthusiastic and all of that, you just think, Oh, my God, wasted, wasted, wasted,” Moss says.

“We’ll get something out of it. We’ll get a new ruling for mentally disturbed people,” Moss says. “And that poor guy was mentally disturbed. You think about that kid being shuffled and lost in the shuffle as he grew up. If someone had reached him earlier in his life, and been able to really communicate with him, how would things have turned out differently?”

Jim McCloskey is still trying to sort through his feelings - about the tragedies and his artistic response to them.

“I’ve wrestled with it - was it the right thing to communicate?” McCloskey says. “That’s the big danger - because you’re dealing with emotions, and I didn’t want to trivialize it, and I didn’t want to do anything that wasn’t up to the gravity. You might think that’s melodramatic, but it’s not.

“You’re doing something that’s immediate, but you’re trying to jump ahead - is this going to portray what you want to portray for the ages? Because once it’s there, it’s there,” McCloskey says.

“The response has been very positive - but that said, hearing from people is not always the measure of a good cartoon,” McCloskey says. “It has to come from you - it’s not whether someone else tells you that it’s positive or negative. Those doubts that you have as a cartoonist - does this measure up with the situation? And for people to take the time to let you know how much they appreciated it was gratifying.”

For further reading

Jim McCloskey - www.newsleader.com

P. Buckley Moss - www.pbuckleymoss.com

“For Today: We Are All Hokies” - www.fortodaycd.com

Filed under: 6-July 2007 Issue