Mothers, fathers in Md. scramble to reach their kids on campus

By Richard Irwin, Brent Jones and Doug Donovan | Sun reporters

April 17, 2007

Timothy Fowler answered the phone in his Mount Airy home early yesterday to hear his son Ryan, 19, saying he was safe.

There had been shootings at Virginia Tech. The situation was chaotic.

Timothy and MaryEllen Fowler got in their car and began driving to their son.

"My wife and I cried all the way down," Timothy Fowler said.

Last night, the Fowlers - including Ryan, a business major - were together thinking about families that had not been so lucky.

"Words cannot describe how my wife, our son and I feel at this time, and we feel so bad for the parents who lost their children in such a senseless act."

Around Maryland yesterday, anxious parents of Virginia Tech students were trying to reach their children.

For Ed Cannon, the e-mail came a few minutes after 10 a.m.

The simple message from a friend said a gunman had killed someone on the campus - enough information for Cannon, with his stomach churning, to pick up the phone and check on his son, Matthew, a senior at the school.

"My son was fine," said a relieved Cannon, a graduate of Virginia Tech who lives in Ellicott City and is president of the local alumni chapter.

Maryland sends more students to Virginia Tech than any other out-of-state school, including 386 student among this year's freshman class. Cannon says about 4,500 alumni live in the Baltimore area.

Lori Bert of Phoenix in Baltimore County said she immediately called her 21-year-old son, John, a junior business major and 2004 graduate of Loyola Blakefield High School. She was thrilled to wake him up at his off-campus apartment.

"Thank God I have a lazy boy," she said. "Once I found out he was fine, the feeling in my stomach was that some parents weren't going to have such a good outcome."

Thinking about a shooting last year near the Virginia Tech campus by an escaped inmate, she added: "I said, 'Thank you for letting me be so lucky again.'"

For Ann Hach of Towson, there were not one, but two children to worry about yesterday. Both her daughters - graduates of Notre Dame Prep - attend Virginia Tech.

She said her older daughter, Ashley, left cell phone messages that she and her sister were not injured.

"I feel so sad for them,"Hach said. "I'm happy they're OK. But my older daughter could have been in that building."

Ashley, 21, a junior civil engineering student, has classes on Tuesday at Norris Hall, where the second round of shootings took place.

Her sister, 19-year-old Claire, was leaving class when she was forced to return to her building and directed to a basement computer lab.

Authorities say the gunman opened fire about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses close to 900 students. The gunman struck a second time nearly two hours later, leaving some parents like Cathy Aballo to wonder what campus security was doing in between.