Services held for shooting victims

About 100 members of the Virginia Tech marching band played in a memorial service Saturday for bandmate Ryan Clark, remembered as a gregarious young man who went to lengths to make fellow students feel included.

Clark, a 22-year-old from Martinez, Ga., was one of the first victims Monday of gunman Seung-hui Cho on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Hundreds of mourners packed the gymnasium at Clark’s former high school to hear rousing songs from his former bandmates and praise for the young man with a contagious laugh. Clark was in his fifth year in the Marching Virginians, who traveled to this small eastern Georgia town for the service at Lakeside High School, where Clark and his twin brother, Bryan, graduated in 2002.

A memorial service was also held Saturday in Virginia for Emily Hilscher, who was killed in the same dorm as Clark, a resident advisor.

About 1,500 people filled the football field of Hilscher’s alma mater, Rappahannock County High School in the town of Washington. The memorial was held outside on a warm spring day because Hilscher, 19, of nearby Woodville, loved the outdoors and horseback riding. Several people came in riding outfits, and a hunting horn was played at the end of the service.

Other services Saturday included one for Reema Samaha, who was killed while sitting in French class. More than 1,800 people packed St. Timothy’s Catholic Church in Chantilly, Va. A large photograph of Samaha, smiling and dressed in white, sat on an easel in front of the church’s altar.

Friends and family remembered the 18-year-old from Centreville, Va., as a dancer who loved movement and grace. Lisa Samaha, a cousin from Lebanon, said, “Dance was her world, and she was our star.”