Observation1

04/09/2010
9:03am
Sitting on the April 16th memorial and a chilly day; temperature is around 40 degrees. By sitting on the memorial I can see straight across the Drill Field and to my left and right.
Preparations for Relay for Life have started; a yellow rope attached to small black poles hugs the center of the Drill Field. No more walking across the grass for afternoon classes. There are white tents on the right side of the field, and to my left, a small truck and people setting up tables. To my left a group of people seem to be struggling with the tent, I guess those thing are a bit more tricky.
9am classes have started so the Drill Field seems deserted. At around 9:15am a large truck drives onto the field and begins to unload blue portable potties. As I look to my right I noticed that the white tent has finally started to go up with the help of three men and a woman who seems to be “supervising” the situation.
As I sit and look around the busy Drill Field, an old man walks in front of me, coming from the right side of the memorial. He carries a bouquet of flowers, walks toward the middle stone, digs a whole in the ground, kneels down, and places the flowers down. My first thought was that this must have been the father or grandpa of the victim; however, as I walked up to the stone I realized that the flowers came from “The Virginia Tech Community.” Walking passed the rest of the memorial I saw that next to some of the names of other students there were remembrance poems which were placed on the day that would have been their birthday.
Before calling it a day, I decided to walk across the Drill Field to see what the Relay for Life was planning. There were cardboard signs that were waiting to be put up, t-shirts, and other purple things. On the grass sat lighting units that would be used during the dark hours of the relay. April 9, 2010 will be a busy day for our Drill Field.