RIP, LESLIE SHERMAN

School Shooting Victim Lit Up a Room

15 years later, we remember her heart, her smarts, and her humor

Fifteen years ago Saturday, local public school officials sent everyone in our district home three hours early. We thought they were closing campuses because bad weather threatened the area.

The surprise and jubilation of that morning, however, quickly morphed to shock and deep, deep sadness.

Early news reports said a lunatic had shot and killed a couple of students at Virginia Tech University. As word trickled out, two student deaths became 10. Ten students became more than 20. When all was said and done, 32 students and professors lay dead on the Tech campus, victims of a senior who had sent out warning signs that everything was not OK.

The high school where I taught for more than two decades is one of many “feeder”schools to Virginia Tech. In any given year, we send dozens of grads down to the picturesque Blacksburg campus, nestled in the Appalachian foothills near Roanoke. As one of my colleagues said a couple of days after the Tech shootings, “We’re definitely a Hokie campus.”

About 250 of our kids — freshmen through graduate students — were enrolled at Tech on April 16, 2007. One of them was Leslie Sherman, who graduated from our suburban D.C. high school in 2005, and had just celebrated her 20th birthday.

Leslie’s laugh was infectious, her enthusiasm even more so. She loved life and, clichés aside, lived it beyond the fullest. As a Washington Post tribute said of this effusive, exciting young woman, “She was the unofficial team cheerleader, whatever the team.”

Leslie ran cross-country and track. She had finished the Marine Corps Marathon the previous October and had her sights set on New York City the following fall. She never took one of my classes, but I knew her quite well. Leslie spent the better part of her four years in high school “dining” during lunch in my classroom, with her cross-country buddies who worked on the newspaper and yearbook staffs.

Leslie also loved — and lived for — her friends. I remember where Leslie sat each day, at the table near the blackboard on the left-hand side of the room. I remember her laugh. I remember a happy kid, with a heart big enough for all of us.

One of Leslie’s favorite things to do as a high school student was to grab her camera on a beautiful spring day and record snap after snap — of trees in bloom, of the paddle boats down at the Tidal Basin, of the somber yet comforting countenance of President Abraham Lincoln presiding at the D.C. Memorial dedicated in his name.

Another of Leslie’s passions was languages. She had just about mastered French, and wanted to tackle Russian, aiming for a career in international relations. She was silly, but serious, too. She liked to quote Forrest Gump. And her kindness was legendary.

I really believe that if Leslie Sherman had lived, she would be part of the U.S. State Department efforts now trying to solve the Ukraine puzzle.

Leslie was in her French classroom at Virginia Tech, on the second floor of Norris Hall, when she died. She was one of 32 victims in the deadliest school shooting in this nation’s history. Her family, which includes her friends, her classmates and her teachers, still talk about what a great and giving person she was.

Every April, we do this young life justice by remembering her smarts, her laugh, her practical jokes. As they say down on the Virginia Tech campus, we will neVer forgeT.