Think of all the songs and melodies that have echoed in your mind and wouldn’t go away.  It’s a common experience.

The one that stuck in my head over the past few days didn’t even have a melody; it didn’t even have words, just a title: Shani’s Song.

Those words have been reverberating in my thoughts recently because a former colleague, named Shani, was my personal, most direct link to the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  Shani was a Hokie through and through.

Shani McNamara came to work for our company straight out of Virginia Tech.   Bright, attractive, eager to make her first job a successful experience, she was an energetic and  quietly confident young woman.  From 1992 to 1994, our public relations clients adored her, both as a professional and as a person.. I, along with all her colleagues, loved her too.  She left us to marry  fellow-Hokie, Patrick Bowers.

Now the mother of two Hokies to be, Shani and her family live in Midlothian, VA.  We communicate via email, and it was her email asking for prayers for the “Hokie Nation,” that evolved into “Shani’s Song,” and she doesn’t even know it.

I also had a few sports-related encounters with the Hokie Nation. The first was during the miserably cold and rainy, inaugural Music City Bowl at Vanderbilt Stadium, when VTU walloped Alabama.  Then in 2003, a couple of buddies and I traveled to the beautiful Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg to see a Thursday night football game against Texas A&M.  We sat with 85,000 Hokie fans in a driving rainstorm generated by Hurricane Isabel, and watched the Hokies romp once again.  In 2004, in a specially arranged season-opening college game at FedEx Field (home of the Washington Redskins), the Hokie Nation made up at least 90 per cent of the more than 90,000 (dry) fans.  But for a disputed offensive pass interference call, the Hokies would have ruined the season for eventual national champion Southern Cal.  All of “us Hokies” were upset; Shani and I shared the disappointment via email.

These and other Hokie memories came flooding back when I first heard about the unbelievable carnage in Blacksburg.  After reading Shani’s email, I couldn’t get the thought out of mind, that my life and the lives of dozens of other Nashvillians would have been much less enriched had we not known and experienced the bubbly, positive energy that she brought with her to Nashville.

Who knows how many lives won’t be touched, how many friendships won’t be formed, how many positive contributions won’t be made because of this tragedy?  Any murder is a reprehensible crime, but when the victims are primarily young people it seems even more so.  I know there are many in Nashville who grieve every day from the loss of a loved one to murder.  Like the Hokies who won’t be with us, we all miss out on what might have been.

I wish I could write the song or the melody, but maybe Shani’s Song is not just about tragedy;  maybe it is a song telling us all to treasure our friends, our loved ones and to fully appreciate life’s experiences.  Thanks Shani, for being my friend and for providing your song of appreciation. I don’t know if the Hokie Nation is better for it, but I know I am.

Bo Roberts is a Nashville marketing consultant and managing partner of Roberts Strategies.