What the Janitor Saw
Out of all the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, one story has stood out for me. In "A Cold and Blustery Morning," Donna Alvis-Banks and Anna Mallory of the Roanoke Times use a narrative structure to show what the horrible day was like from the vantage point of different participants. What I like most about this story is that it begins from the perspective of the kind of source many reporters ignore. Here they introduce us to Gene Cole, a campus custodian:
Cole lives alone. He grew up with six brothers and a sister in McCoy, a rural community on the outskirts of Blacksburg.
“I didn’t go very far in school,” he says, noting that he attended Prices Fork Elementary School. “I couldn’t learn that good.”
But he enjoys being around some of the world’s most brilliant minds in his daily grind, one that starts at 5 a.m. and ends at 1:30 p.m.
By 4:15 a.m. Monday, he was in his ’89 Mazda pickup, driving in pre-dawn twilight to his custodial job at Tech’s Norris Hall.
A blustery day. The wind tried to push him back.
With scenes like this one, Alvis-Banks and Mallory powerfully re-create the day's drama. Thank you Brian Summers for this suggestion. www.roanoke.com/vtnarrative/wb/114124
Are there Virginia Tech stories that any of you would like to suggest?