No one can understand the pain of losing a child unless it’s been a grim, real-life experience.
Michael Herbstritt has known it for five years. His oldest son, Jeremy, was killed on April 16, 2007, when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University before turning the gun on himself.
The deadliest shooting rampage in American history deprived a Bellefonte family of their son, a Penn State alum who loved his family, loved to run, and even loved his homework.
On Monday, his family will be joined by members of the Penn State, State College and Bellefonte communities on the fifth annual Jeremy Herbstritt Memorial 5K Run/Walk around campus.
Jeremy Herbstritt earned two undergraduate degrees from Penn State and graduated in 2003, and again in 2006 before enrolling at Virginia Tech that fall. His father Michael, who works at Penn State’s Office of Physical Plant, said his son always wanted to do something meaningful with his life.
‘He loved what he was doing in civil engineering, and I used to do homework with him. He wanted to be a professor, and to really do something meaningful with his life.’
That’s how family and friends remember Jeremy, Michael said. A man defined by passion, and who was working toward making the world a better place. As his son grew up, they had their disagreements as every father and son do, Michael said, but that phase had passed by the time Jeremy was at Virginia Tech.
‘Things were finally going great between us,’ Michael said.
In the first week of April in 2007, the Herbstritt family was headed to Boston to watch their oldest girl, Jennifer, run the Boston Marathon. Jeremy had helped his sister qualify for the race, but staring down a mountain of schoolwork, realized he wouldn’t be able to leave Blacksburg for the weekend.
‘Hey Dad, is it OK if I don’t come up,’ Jeremy asked his father in one of their last phone conversations. ‘I have a lot of homework here.’
‘I told him, ‘We’ll go to Boston. You stay there and get your schoolwork done, it’s your priority. You stay there and you do a good job,” Michael said.
‘We never knew what was going to happen.’
Two weeks later, Jeremy died in Norris Hall at the hands of Seung-Hui Cho.
Pulling a family and a community together, the Jeremy Herbstritt Memorial 5K Run/Walk was organized in 2007. Run around the IM Building and East Lawn on-campus, funds raised via donations and registration go toward building a home field track for Bellefonte High School, Jeremy’s alma mater where he and two of his siblings ran cross-country.
Year after year, community members have come out to offer their condolences and share similar stories with the Herbstritt family.
‘It changed our lives. You don’t know how much all of us want Jeremy to run with us. No one knows how much I think about him,’ Michael said.
‘Our goal through the race is to stay together. That’s what it’s been about, to pull our family – our Penn State family, our Bellefonte family – and our friends, together. Hopefully, Jeremy’s watching us, helping us – that’s what the idea of the race is.’
Registration starts at 5:15 p.m. on Monday at the IM Building. Registration is $20 and $8 for children 10 years old and younger. More information, including the running route, awards and proceeds can be found at the memorial run’s website.
