Duke Burk went to class in Room 101 of Northern Illinois’ Cole Hall on a Wednesday morning, Feb. 13, 2008.

The next afternoon, he heard there was a shooting.

“When people say that, you’re like ‘Aw, it must be a town shooting or something, but then you look on the news, the world-wide news, and it’s a big deal,’” he said of the Valentine’s Day shooting at Northern Illinois, where five victims were killed and 19 were injured.

Cole Hall was just a three- or four-minute walk from his apartment last year, he said.

“It’s kind of surreal it was that close… I had five, six classes in that classroom before,” Burk said.

“I had class in that classroom earlier that week — the day before, in the morning. And then when that stuff happens, you’re like, ‘Well, what if he would have chosen the time I was in that class?’ Where people were sitting when they got shot, we sat like two rows behind that.”

Burk transferred to Iowa State after three years at Northern Illinois due to complications preventing him from entering the NIU teaching program.

As much as he’d like to forget it, the shooting will forever link him to his former home.

“I’m always going to remember Valentine’s Day for it,” he said. “Just because I’m going to remember it as the Valentine’s Day massacre. I don’t think Valentine’s Day is ever going to be the same.”

Burk didn’t know any of the victims, which was the first thing he hoped for when he got the news.

He received a call letting him know wrestling practice was cancelled, so he stayed in his apartment watching television.

School was canceled the following week, but the wrestling team only took the weekend off. Burk used the time to go home to Peoria, Ill., “to get away from everything.”

“The whole town was shut down,” he said of Dekalb. “And then we came back [for wrestling practice] and had like an hour-and-a-half talk about it, just how there are people there that can do that, but you can’t let it bother you in life.”

Security guards were all over campus and in classrooms, Burk said, which made him think, “what if something else happens?”

He wished the memorials weren’t around, “because you walk around, and you kind of wish you could forget about it.”

“It was just kind of a ghost town, and then once everybody got back, it was just like, a sad town,” he said. “Everybody was just all mournful and stuff. And I kind of try to live a happy life, so all that mournful stuff was kind of getting to me.”

Burk is now the starting 174-pounder for the ISU wrestling team, but wants to become a high school teacher.

He said teachers need to “stay on their toes” to possibly prevent such an event.

“There are kids out there that need your help, and things like that happen because they need your help, and people blow ’em off,” Burk said. “…You need to get him help, or help him yourself.”