If you were lucky enough to have a choice, there were only two ways to go Monday morning on the campus of Virginia Tech: away from danger or toward it. Seventy-six-year-old engineering professor Liviu Librescu chose the second option, saved a classroom full of students and became a hero -- at the cost of his life.
As a child, he had survived the Holocaust. As an adult, he had survived persecution for defying Romania's brutal Communist regime during the Cold War. With their children grown, he and his wife, Marlena, had spent a quiet two decades on a peaceful university campus in rural Virginia.
But Monday, trouble found him once more. With bursts of gunfire rattling through the second floor of Norris Hall, Librescu closed his classroom door, giving his students time to escape through the windows, recalled senior Caroline Merrey of Baltimore, the third student to jump.
"He saved my life," Merrey said.
As they fled, Librescu held the door shut with his body while the gunman, 23-year-old Tech senior Seung-hui Cho, tried to force his way inside.
Moments after the last student leapt to safety, Cho apparently forced the door open and shot Librescu to death.
"My father has showed a sense of his courage in standing up for what he believed since long ago," said Joe Librescu, his son.
Librescu's actions struck a chord around the world.
"Just one candle can light up a room filled with darkness. Professor Librescu has lit the entire world with hope, reminding us that heroes can still exist even in our dark times," Evan Goldenthal of Toronto wrote on a Facebook.com page of tributes to Librescu.
What Librescu did was one of the most conspicuous acts of heroism to surface thus far in the bloodiest massacre inflicted on an American campus by a lone gunman. But it was not the only story of bravery and determination in the face of mortal danger.
Students also fought off attempts by the gunman to force open the doors to other classrooms.
In one case, Cho had shot as many as a dozen students in a German-language class, then departed in search of new targets. Two students held the door shut when the gunman returned, and he fired several rounds into the door in frustration.
There were numerous reports of students using articles of clothing and in one case even a piece of wire to fashion tourniquets and stop bleeding from gunshot wounds, as well as taking other first-aid measures for themselves and others.
