South Jersey Students at Virginia Tech Are Unharmed by Massacre

When lawyer Gene Jensen heard on the radio of his car that there had been a massacre at the hands of a crazed gunman at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, he immediately pulled over and used his cell phone to call his son, who attends Virginia Tech and is a graduate of Holy Spirit High School, a Roman Catholic high school located just outside of Atlantic City in Absecon. The good news for the Jensens is that Stephen, the son, does not have classes on Mondays, and the shooting was on a Monday. So Stephen was asleep, safe and sound, in his college dormitory when his father's telephone call came through around 10AM. However, both Stephen and his father sometimes spoke in shaky voices when, later on, they recounted the events of the day at Virginia Tech, events which by the time of their recounting had claimed the lives of 33 people, including the gunman himself.

Stephen is a varsity swimmer and a political science major at Virginia Tech. He graduated from south Jersey's Holy Spirit High School in 2003. "Something like the greatest shooting massacre [on the campus of a college or university] in United States history happening right before our graduation definitely sends shock waves through our community," Stephen reflected.

2004 Oak Crest High School graduate and Virginia Tech horticulture major James Clayton was also okay. Oak Crest High School is in Mays Landing, New Jersey, about 20 minutes northwest of Atlantic City. "We were in lockdown in the classroom, but they let us all call our parents," Clayton said.

By the time of this writing, it is likely that nearly everyone in the United States has heard about events that were like a horror in a nightmare which took place in the peaceful, quite college town of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the campus of Virginia Tech.