One of the saddest days I can remember

I have been around for some sad days, still probably the worst was when Ronald Reagan got shot. A president being shot is horrific, I can only imagine what it was like when Kennedy was shot. I remember first hearing of Reagan at the end of school when I was in the third grade. I remember rushing home to watch coverage and originally there was specualtion the russians had done it as it was the height of the cold war.
Obviously 9/11, I was driving back from a meeting when I first heard a plane had hit a highrise office building, obviously from there things got progressively worse, I remember calling friends and family as you weren't sure where the next attack was coming from or if there were more attacks to follow. Defiantly, 9/11 was the day I feared the most for the saftey of our country.
The first shuttle disaster, I remember it was a snow day in Atlanta and so I was home from school. I remember we all hoped that somehow the astronauts had survived somehow or parachuted out when none of those possibilities was realistic at all.
Other tragidies like the second shuttle disaster, columbine and the bombings in london were all also memorable and sad and tragic.
I am sure over the next few days that we will hear more and more details about the tragedy at VT and I suspect the shooter will be a loner who had been troubled and most likely planning this event for some time. The lessons learned should be to talk to your kids and stay involved even when they are a pain in the ass and say they don't want anything to do with you, they do, they need you to stay involved. The other important lesson is teach your kids to be nice kids, the kids that do these type of things feel like outsiders and eventually seek "revenge". Make sure your kid isn't one of the kids harrasing kids on the internet or picking on other kids, to you it may be harmless, its not, and today proves that again. Its sad that someone felt bad enough that they would kill dozens of people. Today makes me sad.