VA Tech Tragedy Touches Girl Scouts

I have just learned the sad news that Girl Scout troop leader Linda Granata (Virginia Skyline Council) lost her husband in the shootings at Virginia Tech, where he was a professor. The Granatas' 11-year-old daughter is a Junior Girl Scout. Please help lift this fellow Girl Scout family up with your prayers.

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Kevin Granata, 45, an engineering science and mechanics professor who was married and had three children. He had served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before going to Virginia Tech, where he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.

Department chief Ishwar Puri said Granata was one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country, working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

Engineering professor Demetri Telionis said Granata was successful, but also kind. "With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities," Telionis said. "He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly."

Granata was known worldwide for his research into how muscles accomplish complicated movements, said Stefan Duma, another engineering professor.

"He liked to ask the big questions," Duma said. "When we had students defending their Ph.D., and he kept asking 'Did we have the total solution?' He was really interested in whether we answered the big questions. That's really a sign of a great scientist."