Empty Rhetoric Won’t Bring Leslie Sherman Back
She lit up a room; remembering her vitality and sacrifice can help us work to end gun violence
If Leslie had been there, she would have told a joke. Or 12. We all would have been smiling. Then laughing. Then, doubled up, hugging our sides, rolling in the proverbial aisles.
But she couldn’t be there. So we cried, instead.
West Springfield High School dedicated its track to Leslie Geraldine Sherman before the assembled student body, the news media and quite a few local dignitaries, including Leslie’s parents and her sister.
Leslie, Class of 2005 and Virginia Tech Class of 2009, wasn’t there for the commemoration of her love of running and her selfless devotion to the cause of personkind. She never made it to college graduation, either. She died 14 years ago in her French classroom — in Room 211 of Norris Hall on the Tech campus.
With so much violence in our world today, I think folks have become anesthetized to the sheer number of our fellow Americans who have perished at the end of the barrel of a gun. Up to 38,000 of us fall victim to gun violence every year. That’s about 100 per day.
But Leslie’s death was personal. In 2007, a lunatic took the lives of 32 students and…
