By Patricia Zengerle

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 22 (Reuters) - The last time I visited a university campus it had been for a completely different reason. My daughter is trying to choose a college and the visits were packed with talk of delicious dining hall food, challenging classes and a good mix of students.

This time I was part of an army of reporters covering a tragedy.

At first glance, Virginia Tech seemed to fit right in with the places I had toured with Mollie less than two weeks earlier; another beautiful campus, another diverse student body and a great school spirit.

But the atmosphere was very different.

A few hours before I got there last Monday, a student had opened fire in two of the lovely old buildings, killing two students in their residence hall before shooting dead 30 more people and then killing himself.

It was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

It was impossible not to think that any of the slain young people could have been my own teenager. As I reported from the shocked campus, I frequently choked back tears for the lost students, but even more so for their parents.

One of the first things I saw when I arrived was a grim-faced father with his red-haired daughter, perhaps the younger sister of a student.

I guessed they were expecting the worst as they rushed by me and other reporters, their faces turned away, vanishing into the center where university officials were giving out information about the victims.

Students gathered in knots around the campus, greeting one another with cries and embraces, or gathering around a friend as he spoke into a mobile telephone.

Norris Hall, the scene of the worst carnage, was ringed by yellow crime scene tape. Monday's blustery winds grabbed some of it and carried up into a tree.

I couldn't help but think of Mollie as I interviewed the stunned students. I found myself telling one exhausted 18-year-old to try to get some sleep.

SHATTERED CALM

I live in Virginia and know many families with children at Virginia Tech, considered a jewel of the state's public university system.

One reason for its appeal is its calm rural setting, 250 miles (400 km) from the bustling suburbs of Washington D.C. where I live. Many students said they often go out without closing their doors, let alone locking them.

The shootings tore at the heart of the "Hokie nation"; the 26,000 Virginia Tech students and graduates whose greatest concern is usually the fate of their athletic teams.

Before the shooting, students had been revving up for an annual spring football game, which normally draws up to 35,000 people.

Instead, they were invaded by journalists. At one point I counted 50 television satellite trucks around one building.

One network took over a dining hall for its morning show.

"Where are we supposed to eat?" wondered one student.

The tone toward reporters gradually turned hostile. By Thursday, someone had posted a large, hand-lettered sign at the heart of the campus saying, "Media, stay away."

One 18-year-old I interviewed lived in the same building as the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho. She had never noticed the killer, who roomed on a lower floor, but said she was worried to realize she had been living so close to a mass murderer.

The FBI interviewed her, as did dozens of reporters who mobbed everyone who walked outside her residence hall. One photographer offered her $50 to take a picture of her room.

Her phone began to ring after her name appeared in my story. It kept ringing all night; she and her roommates eventually unplugged it.

With university life suspended for the moment, they joined thousands of other students going home to see their families.

I was leaving soon too, as the story wound down.

But I expect to return in the next few months, this time for a campus tour with my daughter Mollie.

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