Haunting memories

Derek O’Dell (maroon shirt), President of the Virginia Tech Chess Club and Chuck Ronco, VT senior and co-organizer of the Hokie Memorial Chess Tournament.

Memories of Va. Tech shooting haunt survivor
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Tamara JonesWashington Post

Blacksburg, Va. – Spring comes fitfully to this Blue Ridge valley, the wind carrying snow flurries one day and kites the next. In the cold sunlight, the dogwoods bloom and then the lilacs, defiant. It is a season of struggle. Derek O’Dell digs out his favorite fleece jacket, studying the holes in one sleeve.

April fills him with dread, sounding an internal alarm he can’t silence: Something bad is going to happen. . . .

He turned 21 this month, but his haunted blue eyes seem much older. O’Dell is tall and thin, bordering on gaunt. “But I’m deceptively strong,” he says, flexing a rock-hard biceps. Just beneath the muscle bulge are two small pink scars – proof in their own right – where the bullet pierced his flesh.

No bones were broken or tendons shredded. Three hours after the campus shootings ended, O’Dell was out of the hospital and on national television. He was able to return to Virginia Tech within a week. He credits God, not luck.

A year later, O’Dell is a junior majoring in biology, hoping to become a veterinarian. He is studious, polite, shy. He is president of the college chess club. He roots for the Phillies, and rescues abandoned guinea pigs. He will probably marry the same girl he took to his high school prom. These are the familiar traits of Derek O’Dell.

But he has become someone else now, a stranger. He startles at loud noises and scans every room he enters for an escape route. He locks bedroom doors and smells gunpowder in his sleep.

He distrusts the tender beauty of springtime. Like the season, he is unsure how to define himself.

Survivor, hero, victim, witness.

Chess champ learns to analyze quickly

Play to the future, analyze quickly. Anticipate what the opponent is going to do. O’Dell began playing chess at 6, and in eighth grade became Virginia’s middle-school champion. The game suited his quiet nature and quick mind.

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