The Athletic did a nice job trying to tie together the past week. (It’s paywalled so I cut and pasted below.)
‘It changed our world’: A week of grief, confusion, anger and hope at the University of Virginia
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — If anyone on campus stopped feeling the loss, they didn’t need to walk far to see another reminder. By the time classes at the University of Virginia resumed on Wednesday, the reminders were everywhere.
On Nov. 13, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a student and former walk-on football player, allegedly shot and killed football players Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler on a charter bus as it returned to campus from a field trip. Mike Hollins, another teammate, and a classmate, Marlee Morgan, were also shot, but are expected to recover.
“Remember Lavel. Remember D’Sean. Remember Devin,” scrolled the destination signs on the buses that ferried their classmates around UVA Grounds.
Stray boxes of Kleenex were spread across the idyllic campus. Several sat inside the Culbreth Theater, home of UVA’s drama department, which had hosted the field trip for 22 students to the Mosaic Theater 120 miles away in Washington D.C. to view “The Ballad of Emmett Till” and eat a meal at Ethiopic, a half mile from the theater.
Virginia’s football team had suffered a painful road loss to Pitt a day earlier and arrived back on campus that night. The players went to the play anyway.
“What kinds of kids, on their only off day, get on a bus and ride two hours to go see not only a play, but a play with such heavy material?” said Michael Haggard, a family friend and lawyer serving as the spokesman for members of the Perry family, who were not ready to speak publicly about their son. “Every kid on that bus was just the best of the best.”
Inside the Culbreth Theater, large photos of the trio — each of them smiling ear to ear, their names emblazoned in white print below their faces — were perched on easels inside the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that face Culbreth Street, less than a football field’s length away from where they were murdered.
At the entrance to the theater, a box of blank Post-it notes sat on the floor next to a white rose. All week, students wrote thoughts and notes and stuck them to the windows.
“It’s OK not to know what to say,” read one Post-it.
Throughout the chilly week, makeshift memorials sprouted up around UVA’s campus in the days since the players’ death. Outside Culbreth Garage, flowers and cards leaned up against the stop sign guarding the garage’s exit. “Never forget,” read a card taped to the metal post.
Farther up the street, one side of the Beta Bridge was painted orange with Davis, Chandler and Perry’s initials and numbers. The other was painted blue with “UVA Strong” written around the university’s logo and their numbers written in orange inside white hearts. “We will always be a family,” read one message.
Flowers, notes and mementos sat at the base of the statue of Homer on the iconic south lawn outside Old Cabell Hall.
Ground zero for the campus’ grief was at the north gate of Scott Stadium at the corner of Alderman and Whitehead. An orange sign leaned against the wall with Davis, Chandler and Perry’s names written in blue marker. “Never stop saying their names,” it read.
People sat silently on the steps they’d often traversed to attend Cavaliers games, staring at the gate where hundreds of bouquets of flowers, notes, stuffed animals and letters marked the tragedy and the lives of three beloved members of a shocked, gutted community. Others made it a meeting place, chatting in the courtyard behind the steps, sharing a hug or quietly crying together.
Someone arranged a bouquet of white roses into a 1, 15 and 41 in front of the memorial, acknowledging Davis, Chandler and Perry’s jersey numbers. Inside Scott Stadium, another bouquet of white roses rested at the 50-yard line on top of UVA’s V-Sabre logo.
The stadium won’t be full again until next fall after Virginia’s players chose to honor their teammates at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday instead of playing Coastal Carolina in their home finale.
But in a variety of places and in a variety of ways before 9,075 gathered at John Paul Jones Arena on Saturday, people sought ways to share their grief with one another, rather than bear it alone.
Said university president Jim Ryan on Saturday: “It changed our world.”
At 10:39 p.m. a week ago Sunday, UVA sent out an alert for students to shelter in place. Twenty-four minutes earlier, Jones allegedly killed Davis and Perry, as well as Chandler while he slept, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday.
Authorities say Jones methodically shot his targets; his motive remains unclear. Though Jones was on the football team in 2018, there was no overlap between him and the players he is accused of shooting.
One of the 22 students on the bus, Ryan Lynch, told multiple media outlets she heard him say, “You guys are always messing with me,” as he rose from his seat and began firing.
But there is no apparent link between Jones and his victims, and their interactions during the day were minimal, Lynch said.
He sat by himself at the play and had mostly kept quiet throughout the trip, sitting in the back of the bus and making only nominal conversation with the other students, according to Lynch. She said Jones wasn’t a student in the class but was invited to join the trip.
On Monday morning, police with a warrant entered Jones’ dorm room at Bice House on Grounds and found a large collection of weapons that included a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle and a Smith & Wesson model 39 pistol — along with a pair of full or nearly full 30-round AR magazines, a box of Winchester .223 ammunition, and a pair of Glock 9-millimeter magazines. He also had a binary trigger that allows automatic weapons to fire faster.
But in the shooting, authorities say he used only a handgun.
Jones’ father told a local television station that his son had seemed withdrawn lately, but he was wrestling with the shock of the news himself and apologized to the victims and their families. His mother told the station she spoke with him the day of the shooting and he seemed normal. He was excited about his upcoming birthday; Jones turned 23 on Thursday.
Jones was convicted of a misdemeanor gun charge in 2021 but didn’t report it to the university as required, according to reports. And he’d twice been denied as he tried to purchase guns from a shop in 2021 but legally purchased a gun from the same shop in 2022, the shop owner said in a statement this week.
After his arrest, Jones was brought back to Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail and appeared by video in court Wednesday. He faces three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of malicious wounding. The Virginia and U.S. flags outside the jail flew at half-staff.
Hollins, a survivor and football player, was seated near the front of the bus and had quickly exited with two others but returned, his mother told multiple news outlets. Perry, one of his best friends, was still inside. Hollins approached the entrance and encountered the gunman, so he turned and ran before he was shot in the back, she said. Hollins ran into Culbreth Garage before stopping before he went too far, fearing he might not be found and bleed to death, his mother said. A nursing student helped him until an ambulance arrived.
Jones, who had been wearing a burgundy hooded sweatshirt on the field trip, allegedly fled the scene in his black Dodge Durango.
While the campus was locked down, police and medical personnel identified the bodies and notified families.
Mike Hollins Sr., Hollins’ father, raced to UVA University Hospital and arrived around 2 a.m. “I really didn’t know what happened, because they couldn’t release anything,” he said.
When he saw his son, he was intubated and sedated. “I was devastated,” Hollins Sr. said.
Before UVA publicly identified the victims, Cavaliers coach Tony Elliott gathered his team around 10:45 a.m. Monday, once the lockdown was lifted. Elliott confirmed the news that many had heard overnight: Three of their brothers were gone.
Police apprehended Jones — without incident, they said — at the corner of Acton Street and Edgeway Street just east of Richmond in Henrico County approximately 80 miles away.
The university canceled classes and, Tuesday morning, the team gathered in the meeting room and Elliott opened the floor for the Cavaliers to celebrate their teammates. For almost an hour, they shared stories and memories. They laughed together. They cried together. Some went to the hospital across campus to see Hollins.
That afternoon, Elliott sat next to athletic director Carla Williams and spoke publicly about the loss for the first time. “It feels like it’s a nightmare, and I’m ready for somebody to pinch me and wake me up and say that this didn’t happen,” Elliott said.
No one was sure what to do or how to move forward, but they were certain they wanted to do whatever they did together.
Tuesday night, thousands of students and members of the community bundled up in blankets, coats and hats for a chilly, silent candlelight vigil and filled The Lawn. A Virginia player broke the 45 minutes of silence with a 60-second prayer before those in attendance left candles, flowers and notes on the steps of Old Cabell Hall, where they still laid on Sunday.
By late Tuesday night, Virginia’s team, along with the leadership council Elliott set up, knew there was no way it could prepare to play Coastal Carolina on Saturday, but waited to announce the cancellation until Wednesday morning.
Elliott wanted players to decide whether to play. There was no formal vote. They didn’t need one.
Elliott and receivers coach Marques Hagans elected to sit down with ESPN for an interview that would air on “College GameDay” on Saturday. While the nation’s eyes were on the first-year coach’s program for a tragic reason, he wanted his players to be celebrated for how they lived.
In the hospital, updates on Hollins’ status buoyed the spirit of the family, team, campus and community. He needed two surgeries, but by Wednesday, he was taken off the ventilator. He had been communicating with pen and paper but because of the toll on his body, doctors advised the family not to tell him what had happened to the men he called his “brothers.”
As soon as Hollins was no longer intubated, he pressed his family for answers on what happened. “I’ve never heard my son cry like that before. That’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life. That’ll affect me until the day I die,” Mike Hollins Sr. said.
Hollins’ recovery amazed doctors, but body and spirit heal at different paces. Hollins was being weaned off pain medication and was able to walk and shower on his own by Thursday.
In his mind, he’s been processing why it happened and wrestling with questions about what he might have done differently to prevent his friends’ deaths, his father said. On Friday, Hollins commented that in “normal times” he’d be checking into the team hotel ahead of kickoff. His father brought up the lyrics of Don Henley’s “New York Minute” in response.
Hollins is expected to make a full recovery and could be 100 percent in “two to three months,” his father said. He intends to return to the football team when he’s healthy.
“He’s going to play harder for his friends that died. He’s going to do it for them, not himself,” Mike Hollins Sr. said.
Perry’s family arrived in Charlottesville early in the week and intended to leave after arranging for their son’s body to be flown back to Florida, but elected to stay to attend Saturday’s memorial.
Through the week, as they navigated the pain, they dealt with the painful minutiae of a life ended too soon. The team had turned the players’ lockers into shrines to them with flowers and notes, but Perry’s family had to remove his personal effects from the locker. His parents, Happy and Sean, found themselves cleaning out his apartment, a reminder of a time before their lives were shattered.
They’d helped him decorate that apartment. Now they were packing his belongings into boxes.
Cavaliers teammates found ways to be together. A group made its way on Thursday night to Japanese steakhouse Sakura to share food and memories. And on Friday night, the team gathered to do what it always does the night before games: go to the movies.
At the Regal Stonefield, they watched “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” a film that continues the story of Marvel’s first Black superhero and also mourns and celebrates the life of Chadwick Boseman, who starred in the original but died at 43 of colon cancer in 2020.
Elsewhere on campus on Friday night, a few hundred members of the student body and community returned to The Lawn for a short, chilly concert from the Cavalier Marching Band. It was dark, so band director Elliott Tackitt asked for volunteers from the audience to use their cell phones to illuminate the music for the band.
The band played four brief arrangements, including “Amazing Grace,” before closing with a slow, somber rendition of “The Good Old Song,” the de facto school song of the University of Virginia. At rehearsal on Thursday night, the band took time to journal their feelings from a tragic week.
“It was an opportunity for us to come together as a tight community and support one another but to share what our individual experiences have been knowing that this tragedy has disproportionately affected members throughout our UVA and Charlottesville community,” Tackitt said.
Each member of the band wrote a response to three prompts:
— This week I felt…
— I wish to express…
— For the future I hope…
Ramirez read some of the responses to those in attendance on Friday night.
“Love will get us through this,” Ramirez read. “Together.”
The cancellation of Saturday’s game also meant the cancellation of the pregame festivities for Senior Day. But families of players had already booked trips into town so they came anyway.
Saturday morning, players participated in a private Senior Day celebration instead. Their teammates formed a tunnel in the team’s indoor facility. Players ran out, shook hands with Elliott and came back for photos with the family and friends on the field. Then they took a group photo with Elliott and Williams.
Instead of a narrow 18-minute window before the game, they took their time to soak in the moment before eating brunch with their families and teammates. Players then drove across campus to memorialize their teammates inside John Paul Jones Arena that afternoon.
Saturday morning, The Lawn played host for the merging of a memorial run with the 31st annual 4th Year 5k, a long-standing tradition that honors Leslie Baltz, a student who died the night of the final home football game in 1997. Roughly 1,800 people were signed up for the event but an additional 2,000 showed up to complete the run to honor Perry, Davis and Chandler, who were memorialized at each mile marker on the course.
“This has been an unimaginably hard week. One with incredible loss but also pain and fear,” Ryan said as he addressed the crowd before the race. “I want you all to know how I’ve admired how you’ve cared for each other even when you’re in pain and struggling. I hope you continue to do that because it’s the only way through something like this.”
That afternoon, well-wishers gathered outside the gates of John Paul Jones Arena hours before doors opened. Some wore suits and ties, dressed in formal funeral attire. Others wore orange and blue Virginia gear.
The memorial was only scheduled to last an hour but it stretched to almost two as 11 Cavaliers players took to the stage to share memories and stories of their teammates.
Chandler was remembered as a player who made everyone around him smile and couldn’t stop dancing.
“You were always the first player in the end zone to celebrate when someone scored. Your energy could light up every practice,” running back Cody Brown said. “We were blessed to have you in our lives and the impact you left on us is everlasting.”
Davis was remembered for his contagious smile and penchant for parking his 6-foot-7 frame in the front row of church when he went back to his hometown of Ridgeville, S.C.
Cornerback Elijah Gaines, spoke of that love in his speech. “Lavel made Ridgeville sound like the biggest city in the world. I’m pretty sure there’s only like 2,000 people in there,” said Gaines, a native of New York City.
Gaines told the story of when Davis shared why he had “187” tattooed on his arm. Gaines thought it was an area code. Davis told him it was his hometown exit, off of I-26. “It’s my exit. That’s where I’m from,” Gaines remembered the man he called his “blood brother” saying.
Davis was a member of a campus organization called the Groundskeepers, which was founded in response to the 2017 White supremacist march and rally in Charlottesville. The group seeks to recognize the past and help the town move forward. It helped establish a memorial on campus for the enslaved laborers who helped build the campus.
Perry was remembered as a Renaissance man. He could throw clay pots. He taught himself to play the piano. And he loved all music. His roommate, Hunter Stewart, recounted singing Adele’s “Someone Like You” in the car with Perry as they drove around campus.
“Neither of us were blessed with the vocals to sing a song like that, but we persevered,” Stewart said, adding that despite his lack of dancing talent and inflexible hips, he’d do one of Perry’s signature dances from Miami as a celebration the rest of his career as a tribute.
As he closed the ceremony, Elliott said one of his most memorable days was when Perry showed Elliott the art he had created.
“D’Sean was the brother I never knew I needed,” linebacker Josh McCarron said. “No matter who you were, where you were from or what you stood for, D’Sean loved you.”
Defensive lineman Ben Smiley shared Perry’s insistence with him that football wasn’t the most important thing in life.
“Since this tragedy, I understand what he means,” Smiley said.
‘It changed our world’: A week of grief, confusion, anger and hope at the University of Virginia
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — If anyone on campus stopped feeling the loss, they didn’t need to walk far to see another reminder. By the time classes at the University of Virginia resumed on Wednesday, the reminders were everywhere.
On Nov. 13, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a student and former walk-on football player, allegedly shot and killed football players Lavel Davis Jr., D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler on a charter bus as it returned to campus from a field trip. Mike Hollins, another teammate, and a classmate, Marlee Morgan, were also shot, but are expected to recover.
“Remember Lavel. Remember D’Sean. Remember Devin,” scrolled the destination signs on the buses that ferried their classmates around UVA Grounds.
Stray boxes of Kleenex were spread across the idyllic campus. Several sat inside the Culbreth Theater, home of UVA’s drama department, which had hosted the field trip for 22 students to the Mosaic Theater 120 miles away in Washington D.C. to view “The Ballad of Emmett Till” and eat a meal at Ethiopic, a half mile from the theater.
Virginia’s football team had suffered a painful road loss to Pitt a day earlier and arrived back on campus that night. The players went to the play anyway.
“What kinds of kids, on their only off day, get on a bus and ride two hours to go see not only a play, but a play with such heavy material?” said Michael Haggard, a family friend and lawyer serving as the spokesman for members of the Perry family, who were not ready to speak publicly about their son. “Every kid on that bus was just the best of the best.”
Inside the Culbreth Theater, large photos of the trio — each of them smiling ear to ear, their names emblazoned in white print below their faces — were perched on easels inside the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that face Culbreth Street, less than a football field’s length away from where they were murdered.
At the entrance to the theater, a box of blank Post-it notes sat on the floor next to a white rose. All week, students wrote thoughts and notes and stuck them to the windows.
“It’s OK not to know what to say,” read one Post-it.
Throughout the chilly week, makeshift memorials sprouted up around UVA’s campus in the days since the players’ death. Outside Culbreth Garage, flowers and cards leaned up against the stop sign guarding the garage’s exit. “Never forget,” read a card taped to the metal post.
Farther up the street, one side of the Beta Bridge was painted orange with Davis, Chandler and Perry’s initials and numbers. The other was painted blue with “UVA Strong” written around the university’s logo and their numbers written in orange inside white hearts. “We will always be a family,” read one message.
Flowers, notes and mementos sat at the base of the statue of Homer on the iconic south lawn outside Old Cabell Hall.
Ground zero for the campus’ grief was at the north gate of Scott Stadium at the corner of Alderman and Whitehead. An orange sign leaned against the wall with Davis, Chandler and Perry’s names written in blue marker. “Never stop saying their names,” it read.
People sat silently on the steps they’d often traversed to attend Cavaliers games, staring at the gate where hundreds of bouquets of flowers, notes, stuffed animals and letters marked the tragedy and the lives of three beloved members of a shocked, gutted community. Others made it a meeting place, chatting in the courtyard behind the steps, sharing a hug or quietly crying together.
Someone arranged a bouquet of white roses into a 1, 15 and 41 in front of the memorial, acknowledging Davis, Chandler and Perry’s jersey numbers. Inside Scott Stadium, another bouquet of white roses rested at the 50-yard line on top of UVA’s V-Sabre logo.
The stadium won’t be full again until next fall after Virginia’s players chose to honor their teammates at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday instead of playing Coastal Carolina in their home finale.
But in a variety of places and in a variety of ways before 9,075 gathered at John Paul Jones Arena on Saturday, people sought ways to share their grief with one another, rather than bear it alone.
Said university president Jim Ryan on Saturday: “It changed our world.”
At 10:39 p.m. a week ago Sunday, UVA sent out an alert for students to shelter in place. Twenty-four minutes earlier, Jones allegedly killed Davis and Perry, as well as Chandler while he slept, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday.
Authorities say Jones methodically shot his targets; his motive remains unclear. Though Jones was on the football team in 2018, there was no overlap between him and the players he is accused of shooting.
One of the 22 students on the bus, Ryan Lynch, told multiple media outlets she heard him say, “You guys are always messing with me,” as he rose from his seat and began firing.
But there is no apparent link between Jones and his victims, and their interactions during the day were minimal, Lynch said.
He sat by himself at the play and had mostly kept quiet throughout the trip, sitting in the back of the bus and making only nominal conversation with the other students, according to Lynch. She said Jones wasn’t a student in the class but was invited to join the trip.
On Monday morning, police with a warrant entered Jones’ dorm room at Bice House on Grounds and found a large collection of weapons that included a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle and a Smith & Wesson model 39 pistol — along with a pair of full or nearly full 30-round AR magazines, a box of Winchester .223 ammunition, and a pair of Glock 9-millimeter magazines. He also had a binary trigger that allows automatic weapons to fire faster.
But in the shooting, authorities say he used only a handgun.
Jones’ father told a local television station that his son had seemed withdrawn lately, but he was wrestling with the shock of the news himself and apologized to the victims and their families. His mother told the station she spoke with him the day of the shooting and he seemed normal. He was excited about his upcoming birthday; Jones turned 23 on Thursday.
Jones was convicted of a misdemeanor gun charge in 2021 but didn’t report it to the university as required, according to reports. And he’d twice been denied as he tried to purchase guns from a shop in 2021 but legally purchased a gun from the same shop in 2022, the shop owner said in a statement this week.
After his arrest, Jones was brought back to Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail and appeared by video in court Wednesday. He faces three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of malicious wounding. The Virginia and U.S. flags outside the jail flew at half-staff.
Hollins, a survivor and football player, was seated near the front of the bus and had quickly exited with two others but returned, his mother told multiple news outlets. Perry, one of his best friends, was still inside. Hollins approached the entrance and encountered the gunman, so he turned and ran before he was shot in the back, she said. Hollins ran into Culbreth Garage before stopping before he went too far, fearing he might not be found and bleed to death, his mother said. A nursing student helped him until an ambulance arrived.
Jones, who had been wearing a burgundy hooded sweatshirt on the field trip, allegedly fled the scene in his black Dodge Durango.
While the campus was locked down, police and medical personnel identified the bodies and notified families.
Mike Hollins Sr., Hollins’ father, raced to UVA University Hospital and arrived around 2 a.m. “I really didn’t know what happened, because they couldn’t release anything,” he said.
When he saw his son, he was intubated and sedated. “I was devastated,” Hollins Sr. said.
Before UVA publicly identified the victims, Cavaliers coach Tony Elliott gathered his team around 10:45 a.m. Monday, once the lockdown was lifted. Elliott confirmed the news that many had heard overnight: Three of their brothers were gone.
Police apprehended Jones — without incident, they said — at the corner of Acton Street and Edgeway Street just east of Richmond in Henrico County approximately 80 miles away.
The university canceled classes and, Tuesday morning, the team gathered in the meeting room and Elliott opened the floor for the Cavaliers to celebrate their teammates. For almost an hour, they shared stories and memories. They laughed together. They cried together. Some went to the hospital across campus to see Hollins.
That afternoon, Elliott sat next to athletic director Carla Williams and spoke publicly about the loss for the first time. “It feels like it’s a nightmare, and I’m ready for somebody to pinch me and wake me up and say that this didn’t happen,” Elliott said.
No one was sure what to do or how to move forward, but they were certain they wanted to do whatever they did together.
Tuesday night, thousands of students and members of the community bundled up in blankets, coats and hats for a chilly, silent candlelight vigil and filled The Lawn. A Virginia player broke the 45 minutes of silence with a 60-second prayer before those in attendance left candles, flowers and notes on the steps of Old Cabell Hall, where they still laid on Sunday.
By late Tuesday night, Virginia’s team, along with the leadership council Elliott set up, knew there was no way it could prepare to play Coastal Carolina on Saturday, but waited to announce the cancellation until Wednesday morning.
Elliott wanted players to decide whether to play. There was no formal vote. They didn’t need one.
Elliott and receivers coach Marques Hagans elected to sit down with ESPN for an interview that would air on “College GameDay” on Saturday. While the nation’s eyes were on the first-year coach’s program for a tragic reason, he wanted his players to be celebrated for how they lived.
In the hospital, updates on Hollins’ status buoyed the spirit of the family, team, campus and community. He needed two surgeries, but by Wednesday, he was taken off the ventilator. He had been communicating with pen and paper but because of the toll on his body, doctors advised the family not to tell him what had happened to the men he called his “brothers.”
As soon as Hollins was no longer intubated, he pressed his family for answers on what happened. “I’ve never heard my son cry like that before. That’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life. That’ll affect me until the day I die,” Mike Hollins Sr. said.
Hollins’ recovery amazed doctors, but body and spirit heal at different paces. Hollins was being weaned off pain medication and was able to walk and shower on his own by Thursday.
In his mind, he’s been processing why it happened and wrestling with questions about what he might have done differently to prevent his friends’ deaths, his father said. On Friday, Hollins commented that in “normal times” he’d be checking into the team hotel ahead of kickoff. His father brought up the lyrics of Don Henley’s “New York Minute” in response.
Hollins is expected to make a full recovery and could be 100 percent in “two to three months,” his father said. He intends to return to the football team when he’s healthy.
“He’s going to play harder for his friends that died. He’s going to do it for them, not himself,” Mike Hollins Sr. said.
Perry’s family arrived in Charlottesville early in the week and intended to leave after arranging for their son’s body to be flown back to Florida, but elected to stay to attend Saturday’s memorial.
Through the week, as they navigated the pain, they dealt with the painful minutiae of a life ended too soon. The team had turned the players’ lockers into shrines to them with flowers and notes, but Perry’s family had to remove his personal effects from the locker. His parents, Happy and Sean, found themselves cleaning out his apartment, a reminder of a time before their lives were shattered.
They’d helped him decorate that apartment. Now they were packing his belongings into boxes.
Cavaliers teammates found ways to be together. A group made its way on Thursday night to Japanese steakhouse Sakura to share food and memories. And on Friday night, the team gathered to do what it always does the night before games: go to the movies.
At the Regal Stonefield, they watched “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” a film that continues the story of Marvel’s first Black superhero and also mourns and celebrates the life of Chadwick Boseman, who starred in the original but died at 43 of colon cancer in 2020.
Elsewhere on campus on Friday night, a few hundred members of the student body and community returned to The Lawn for a short, chilly concert from the Cavalier Marching Band. It was dark, so band director Elliott Tackitt asked for volunteers from the audience to use their cell phones to illuminate the music for the band.
The band played four brief arrangements, including “Amazing Grace,” before closing with a slow, somber rendition of “The Good Old Song,” the de facto school song of the University of Virginia. At rehearsal on Thursday night, the band took time to journal their feelings from a tragic week.
“It was an opportunity for us to come together as a tight community and support one another but to share what our individual experiences have been knowing that this tragedy has disproportionately affected members throughout our UVA and Charlottesville community,” Tackitt said.
Each member of the band wrote a response to three prompts:
— This week I felt…
— I wish to express…
— For the future I hope…
Ramirez read some of the responses to those in attendance on Friday night.
“Love will get us through this,” Ramirez read. “Together.”
The cancellation of Saturday’s game also meant the cancellation of the pregame festivities for Senior Day. But families of players had already booked trips into town so they came anyway.
Saturday morning, players participated in a private Senior Day celebration instead. Their teammates formed a tunnel in the team’s indoor facility. Players ran out, shook hands with Elliott and came back for photos with the family and friends on the field. Then they took a group photo with Elliott and Williams.
Instead of a narrow 18-minute window before the game, they took their time to soak in the moment before eating brunch with their families and teammates. Players then drove across campus to memorialize their teammates inside John Paul Jones Arena that afternoon.
Saturday morning, The Lawn played host for the merging of a memorial run with the 31st annual 4th Year 5k, a long-standing tradition that honors Leslie Baltz, a student who died the night of the final home football game in 1997. Roughly 1,800 people were signed up for the event but an additional 2,000 showed up to complete the run to honor Perry, Davis and Chandler, who were memorialized at each mile marker on the course.
“This has been an unimaginably hard week. One with incredible loss but also pain and fear,” Ryan said as he addressed the crowd before the race. “I want you all to know how I’ve admired how you’ve cared for each other even when you’re in pain and struggling. I hope you continue to do that because it’s the only way through something like this.”
That afternoon, well-wishers gathered outside the gates of John Paul Jones Arena hours before doors opened. Some wore suits and ties, dressed in formal funeral attire. Others wore orange and blue Virginia gear.
The memorial was only scheduled to last an hour but it stretched to almost two as 11 Cavaliers players took to the stage to share memories and stories of their teammates.
Chandler was remembered as a player who made everyone around him smile and couldn’t stop dancing.
“You were always the first player in the end zone to celebrate when someone scored. Your energy could light up every practice,” running back Cody Brown said. “We were blessed to have you in our lives and the impact you left on us is everlasting.”
Davis was remembered for his contagious smile and penchant for parking his 6-foot-7 frame in the front row of church when he went back to his hometown of Ridgeville, S.C.
Cornerback Elijah Gaines, spoke of that love in his speech. “Lavel made Ridgeville sound like the biggest city in the world. I’m pretty sure there’s only like 2,000 people in there,” said Gaines, a native of New York City.
Gaines told the story of when Davis shared why he had “187” tattooed on his arm. Gaines thought it was an area code. Davis told him it was his hometown exit, off of I-26. “It’s my exit. That’s where I’m from,” Gaines remembered the man he called his “blood brother” saying.
Davis was a member of a campus organization called the Groundskeepers, which was founded in response to the 2017 White supremacist march and rally in Charlottesville. The group seeks to recognize the past and help the town move forward. It helped establish a memorial on campus for the enslaved laborers who helped build the campus.
Perry was remembered as a Renaissance man. He could throw clay pots. He taught himself to play the piano. And he loved all music. His roommate, Hunter Stewart, recounted singing Adele’s “Someone Like You” in the car with Perry as they drove around campus.
“Neither of us were blessed with the vocals to sing a song like that, but we persevered,” Stewart said, adding that despite his lack of dancing talent and inflexible hips, he’d do one of Perry’s signature dances from Miami as a celebration the rest of his career as a tribute.
As he closed the ceremony, Elliott said one of his most memorable days was when Perry showed Elliott the art he had created.
“D’Sean was the brother I never knew I needed,” linebacker Josh McCarron said. “No matter who you were, where you were from or what you stood for, D’Sean loved you.”
Defensive lineman Ben Smiley shared Perry’s insistence with him that football wasn’t the most important thing in life.
“Since this tragedy, I understand what he means,” Smiley said.
