Spirit Fund remains open
The Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, which was supposed to be closed for donations on Aug. 1, has been kept open.
Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney appointed to mediate the fund, discussed the plans with the families of victims and individuals, and is contracting a new plan.
“It is likely the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund will be open until the end of the year,” Feinberg said.
The fund is staying open because of family concerns expressed to Feinberg in the meetings held over the last weeks of July.
“This allows for the possibility of additional contribution,” Feinberg said.
As for the proposed payout plan released in early July, there are also substantial changes to that plan, according to Feinberg.
A new draft is being considered, and a new protocol will be finalized with Virginia Tech around Aug. 15, said Feinberg.
So far, donations to the fund have exceeded over $7 million.
-Kaci Gaskill, CT
Street renamed after Austin Cloyd
The intersection of Church and State Streets in her hometown of Champaign, Illinois was a constant source of amusement for Austin Cloyd, an 18-year-old freshman majoring in international studies and French who was killed on April 16.
"Austin was very interested in politics and social justice and that sort of thing," her father, Bryan Cloyd, told East Central Illinois paper The News-Gazette. "I can't count the number of times we were going to church on Sunday and she talked about the intersection of Church and State streets. She just thought church and state should be constitutionally independent of each other, that it was just ironic that they intersected at all.”
The Cloyds moved to Blacksburg in 2005 when Bryan Cloyd began teaching at Virginia Tech, but their old community of Champaign was no less affected by the loss of high-school student and avid churchgoer Austin.
When the town offered to dedicate a section of State Street as "Austin Cloyd Way," the family was hesitant, but couldn't resist renaming the intersection.
"We had to go for that," Bryan Cloyd told The News-Gazette. "We've gotten a lot of humor out of that. I can just imagine Austin laughing right now."
The area of State Street from Hill Street to Park Avenue was officially re-named in a ceremony last Friday, August 3, at 1pm at the intersection of Church and State streets, near First United Methodist Church, which the family attended.
Bryan Cloyd and his wife, Renee, both traveled to Champaign to attend the dedication.
"Although it is her name in a public place, it is in a positive light rather than a memorial type of venue," Bryan Cloyd said. "If I think of that as being symbolic of all of the good that teenagers do in our community, that puts it in a very positive light. I kind of view this honorary street name as symbolic of the community's recognition that the good things that all of our high school kids do for us are appreciated.”
-Caroline Black, CT
|
|
|
|
 Feinberg |
|
|
|
|
|
