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Prior days' news: By date | Search This week's print issue Back issues: By date | Search April 18, 2007Juan Ramon Ortiz OrtizJuan Ramon Ortiz Ortiz, 26, showed a predisposition to engineering at an early age, says his cousin, Oscar Marrero. Growing up together in Puerto Rico, Mr. Marrero noticed that his cousin was always trying to figure out how things worked and how they were put together. “He always wanted to know everything,” Mr. Marrero says. That innate curiosity helped him earn an engineering degree from Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and sent him to Blacksburg, where he was working on his master’s in civil engineering at Virginia Tech. He was interested in environmental issues, concentrating his studies on water resources.  Ortiz Family, AP Images At Virginia Tech, Mr. Ortiz worked as a teaching assistant for another one of the victims, G.V. Loganathan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. When not hitting the books, Mr. Ortiz was a music lover who would play the timbales, a type of drum, in musicals with friends and family. He also enjoyed salsa dancing. Aside from that, though, he did not socialize much while living in Blacksburg. He spent most of his time either with his studies or his wife, Liselle Vega Cortes. “He was a house boy,” Mr. Marrero says. “He never smoked or drank.” His wife was also an engineering graduate student at Virginia Tech. They met and fell in love in college in Puerto Rico and married a year and a half ago. “She was in another classroom,” Mr. Marrero says, “at the moment of the massacre.” —Dan Carnevale Posted on Wednesday April 18, 2007 | Permalink |Comments |
K pena lo siento mucho de cora. K decanse en paz.
— Marinella Ferrer De Mori Apr 27, 05:26 PM #