Jeremiah Tolbert

Tony has put together a really spe­cial episode of Starship Sofa this week, with a read­ing of Michael Bishop’s story, writ­ten in mem­ory of his son who was one of the vic­tims of the Virginia Tech shooting.

From Tony over at Starship Sofa:

StarShipSofa nar­rates Vinegar Peace, a SF story wrote by Michael Bishop for his son Jamie Bishop who died two years ago at the Virginia Tech shooting.

Michael Bishop says:

I wrote “Vinegar Peace” — in August of 2007 — because I had to. Our 35-​​year-​​old son, Jamie, died on the morn­ing of April 16, 2007, as one of thirty-​​two vic­tims of a dis­turbed shooter on the cam­pus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Jamie, an accom­plished dig­i­tal artist who did lovely cov­ers for four or five of my books, was hold­ing forth in Room 2007 of Norris Hall in his German class more than two hours after his even­tual mur­derer had slain two stu­dents in a dor­mi­tory on another part of cam­pus. The admin­is­tra­tion failed to issue a warn­ing — a warn­ing that might well have saved many lives — in a timely fash­ion. However, some of its mem­bers secured their own offices and noti­fied their own fam­ily mem­bers of this ini­tial event; and so the worst school shoot­ing in the his­tory of the United States claimed our son, four other fac­ulty mem­bers (includ­ing a man, Dr Librescu, who had sur­vived the Holocaust and who held a table against his class­room door until all own stu­dents could escape), four of Jamie’s stu­dents, and twenty-​​one other young peo­ple in Norris Hall, not to men­tion the first two vic­tims in West Ambler-​​Johnston dorm. Another twenty-​​eight stu­dents were wounded by bul­lets or injured leap­ing from upper-​​story win­dows. Some of these young peo­ple will live with their injuries the rest of their lives

All of the admin­is­tra­tors, with the excep­tion of a woman who later died of a stroke or a heart attack (a death that my wife and I can’t help but attribute par­tially to the stress of liv­ing with the mis­takes of the President and the other Policy Group mem­bers), remain in their posi­tions. So much for account­abil­ity, and so much for justice.

In any case, “Vinegar Peace” grew from this dis­as­ter and from a grief that I can’t imag­ine ever lay­ing totally aside. Jeri and I mourn Jamie’s loss every day in some pri­vate way, and we think con­tin­u­ally of all the other par­ents and loved ones of the slain and injured who will carry a sim­i­lar bur­den with them until they die. We think, too, of the par­ents and loved ones of the dead and wounded from the United States’s optional war in Iraq, who long for their dead and who pray for their injured with an inten­sity not a whit dif­fer­ent from our own. How ironic that our son died on American soil. How sad the wasted poten­tial and dis­fig­ured lives result­ing from vio­lence every­where. And for­give me the inad­e­quacy of these remarks. Clearly, I wrote a story because I could not address either my out­rage or my grief in any other way.

Mike Bishop

StarShipSofa is very hon­oured and hum­bled to be allowed to bring this story to a wider audi­ence. I know I speak for the SF com­mu­nity when I say our hearts and prayers go out to Mike and Jeri and all the fam­i­lies who have to live with this grief every day.

StarShipSofa Show No 82: Vinegar Peace, or, The Wrong-​​Way Used-​​Adult Orphanage

As Ever,
Tony