william and mary tour guide dies

LEADING SENIOR AT W&M DIES IN STUNT

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Alex Reyno was graduating from the College of William and Mary in May. A tour guide for the admissions office, the senior from Springfield was leading his last tour late Tuesday afternoon.

In honor of the occasion, “he decided to do something extravagant,” said Sam Sadler, the college’s vice president for student affairs.

As the group passed by Crim Dell, Reyno dove backward into the campus pond near the University Center.

The lighthearted stunt quickly turned tragic, however, when he failed to surface.

Other students in the area jumped in to search for him. But it was too late.

Despite efforts to revive him by campus police and Williamsburg paramedics, he had only an intermittent heartbeat and wasn’t breathing on his own during the ambulance ride, said a spokesman for the Williamsburg Fire Department.

Reyno was pronounced dead at Williamsburg Community Hospital about 30 minutes after he arrived, Sadler said.

Outside the emergency room, clumps of students cried, hugged each other, quietly communicated the bad news to friends via cell phone, or sat on the curb with their heads in their hands.

Even President Timothy Sullivan appeared shaken as he left the hospital.

“It’s a very, very tragic situation,” Sadler said.

Reyno was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity, assistant director of orientation, a good student who was a finalist to be the commencement speaker and a campus leader, Sadler said.

The tours he led were typically for parents and high school students considering William and Mary.

His death was a tremendous loss and particularly devastating in light of the other tragedies the small, tight-knit campus community has suffered recently, Sadler said.

Reyno was the fourth student to die this academic year. A freshman killed in November when a trash truck struck him as he biked on campus. Colin Trevor Smith, 20, from Stillman Valley, Ill., was pronounced dead at the scene on Campus Drive near Wake Drive.

And in March, two William and Mary students committed suicide. An 18-year-old freshman from Fairfax Station jumped from the fourth-floor of his Monroe Hall dormitory, and a 23-year-old first-law law student died in her off-campus apartment from what police believe was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Reyno’s final grand gesture was apparently planned, Sadler said. A female student leading the tour with Reyno knew what he was going to do, Sadler said. Reyno pulled her into the pond after him, but she quickly surfaced as expected, Sadler said.

He said doctors were still trying to determine why Reyno didn’t.

Patti Rosenberg can be reached at 223-5686 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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Death of Spirited Student Shocks William and Mary Campus

Alex Reyno was a senior at the College of William and Mary, and to say that he loved his school is an understatement.

He worked for the admissions office, giving tours of the Williamsburg campus that were marked by his passion for life and his soon-to-be alma mater. Often he'd startle the high school students he was leading around by jumping up on a statue to deliver a memorable pitch for William and Mary, where he was to graduate May 11.

On Tuesday afternoon, the 21-year-old from Springfield was giving his last scheduled tour. He wanted to finish with a flourish to impress the students, so he concluded the tour by jumping into Crim Dell pond.

The surprise stunt turned into a tragedy: Reyno apparently hit his head on something in the murky water and didn't surface. Some students who saw it happen jumped in, feeling their way around the pond, which is 10 to 12 feet deep. It was a few minutes before David Gettings found Reyno in the waters.

Gettings was too upset yesterday to talk about the attempted rescue. Like many others on the small, tight-knit campus, he was stunned by the death of one of its most popular students. Reyno, a graduate of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, was the fourth William and Mary student to die on campus this school year. Two students committed suicide, and a third was hit by a garbage truck while riding his bicycle. The school also lost one of its alumni, mission specialist David M. Brown, in February when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated.

Sam Sadler, the college's vice president of student affairs, announced Reyno's death Tuesday evening in an e-mail to students, saying the year "has brought enough sadness to last a lifetime."

Reyno wanted to make his last tour a "memorable one," and now it would be, Sadler said yesterday, but for a much different reason.

"Alex got more fan mail as a tour guide than anyone else," Karen Cottrell, dean of admissions, said yesterday. "People would enroll here and walk up to Alex after they arrived on campus to tell him he was the reason they came to William and Mary. I am not kidding. He was a remarkable young man, the best example of William and Mary."

Cottrell said Reyno had applied to Georgetown and Duke universities for a job in their admissions offices.

Agustin Reyno said his son was very active and giving of his time. He was a volunteer assistant coach for the Bruton High School track and field team in Williamsburg, and he played for his college's club rugby team.

Agustin Reyno said he and his wife, Maria, attended one of their son's games last month in the District and were approached by the parents of another William and Mary student who "wanted to thank [Alex] for doing the campus tour because they said their son made a quick decision to pick William and Mary right after the tour."

Reyno was waiting to find out exactly what caused his son's death, he said.

Jumping into Crim Dell pond before graduating is a campus tradition, some students said yesterday. But William T. Walker, the college's vice president for public affairs, said he knew of no such tradition.

"From what I understand, he was the kind of person who was very flamboyant," Walker said. "He was very vibrant and lived life to the fullest, and I think that is why he jumped in."

The pond quickly became a memorial to Reyno and was decorated with red and pink carnations, pictures of him with his rugby buddies and several cards, including one signed by a woman named Anna who wrote: "I love you Alex, you give the best hugs."

Some students said Reyno jumped backward into the pond while holding the hand of an unidentified female student tour guide, who also fell into the water but was not hurt. It was not clear yesterday what Reyno struck when he entered the water.

At Lake Braddock Secondary School, Reyno was a pole vaulter on the track team.

At 5-foot-5 and about 115 pounds, "He was one of those kids who physically didn't look like the most gifted athlete," said his high school coach, Bob Digby. "But he was a fairly good pole vaulter. That didn't surprise me -- you have to be a little nuts to be a pole vaulter," he added with a laugh.

Digby said Reyno was always in the middle of pranks and stunts, but he also had a serious side and hated to fail at anything.

His feistiness showed up during rugby matches. Often playing against opponents nearly twice his weight, he would constantly amaze his mates with bone-crunching tackles.

"Even though he was a small guy," said teammate Alex Stathes, a senior from Rockville, "his presence just filled up a room. Everywhere he went, he spread his enthusiasm and his desire to experience things fully."

Stathes said Reyno died the way he lived, celebrating life.

"The fact that he was always happy, always upbeat, makes it all the more sad that he died sort of in celebration," Stathes said. "The reason he jumped was just to be funny, to joke around the way he always did. It is so sad that it had to end that way."

Special correspondent Morrison contributed from Williamsburg.

Alex Reyno's passion for his school touched many fellow students.

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Lives Remembered

At the 9/11 memorial & museum, an alumna shares stories of courage and compassion.

September 10, 2021 By Sara Piccini

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Jennifer Joyce ’11 was sitting in a middle school classroom in Chesterfield County, Virginia, unaware of the world-shattering events taking place in New York City, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.

When she got out of class, she heard fellow students in the hallway talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. But it wasn’t until she got home and saw the look on her mother’s face that she grasped the enormity of the situation.

“It took me a little while to process it,” says Joyce, manager of interpretive programs at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. “About a week later, I remember thinking, ‘I wonder how we’ll learn about this in 20 years?’ And now, here I am.”

Trained as a public historian, Joyce works with a team of docents and tour guides who interact directly with visitors, relating the events of 9/11 and providing broader historical context. Approximately 70 million people have visited the site since it opened a decade ago.

“People come here from all over the world,” Joyce says. “You’ll hear 9/11 stories from anyone who was old enough — it doesn’t matter where they were. So the universal nature of the event is compelling and powerful.”

Actionable Stories

Located at ground zero in lower Manhattan, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum honors the 2,977 people who lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001 — including 441 first responders — as well as the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Their names are inscribed around two outdoor reflecting pools formed in the footprints of the twin towers.

As Joyce explains, the 110,000-square-foot indoor museum is built into bedrock so that the original steel column bases and concrete footings of the World Trade Center can be on public display. Along with a concrete slurry wall built to keep out Hudson River floodwaters and a portion of staircase used by people fleeing the towers, these surviving artifacts are considered archaeological assets and are federally protected.

Within the museum, Joyce finds the 36-foot-high “Last Column” to be among the most moving of the artifacts displayed. Its removal from ground zero on May 30, 2002, marked the end of the rescue and recovery effort.

“It’s covered with tributes and mementos that the recovery workers left there,” she explains. “It was a memorial that people made because they needed one. For me, it’s a reminder of how many people stepped up afterwards. There were thousands of recovery workers, and even more people supporting them, making sure they were getting fed and cared for.”

The huge steel column symbolizes a major theme that Joyce and her colleagues emphasize to visitors: the compassion and courage displayed by ordinary people in the face of terror.

“There’s a story I used to tell on my tours about two men, Pablo Ortiz and Frank De Martini, who died on 9/11,” she says. “Before the towers collapsed, instead of leaving the building, they decided to do a sweep of the floor they were on. They broke through jammed doors, and they managed to get an elevator open where people were trapped.” The two men and several of their co-workers saved nearly 50 lives.

“There are so many stories like that, and I think those are perhaps the most important because they’re actionable,” Joyce says.“It’s harder to put myself in the mindset of one of the police officers or firefighters who rushed in that day — but someone who just went to work to sit at their computer, that’s a much easier connection to make. What would I do in that situation?”

Reaching the Public

Growing up in an area steeped in Civil War history, Joyce says, “I’ve always been attracted to more difficult history, history that people are still arguing about.”

She found William & Mary to be a perfect fit for pursuing a career in the field. “I originally thought I was going to get a Ph.D. and teach history — I was never going to leave the ivory tower.” Then, in her senior year, she took a course in public history with Susan Kern Ph.D. ’05, executive director of the Historic Campus.

As part of her coursework, she interned in Colonial Williamsburg’s film department, helping to develop CW’s electronic field trips for schoolchildren. She also witnessed visitors engaged in misguided arguments with interpreters playing the roles of the nation’s founders, like Thomas Jefferson.

Joyce realized she wanted to reach people more directly as a historian. “It was a twofold realization: one, that people were misunderstanding history, and that made me very angry. And two, if you wanted to counteract that, the way to do it was probably not in an academic paper, although that’s certainly important. For me, it seemed more effective to go where the general public is.”

After graduating from William & Mary, Joyce went on to earn a master’s degree in public history at New York University. Finding herself in the right place at the right time, Joyce was offered a position at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in 2013 and began working at the museum portion of the site when it opened in 2014.

Among her proudest achievements is developing training for interpreters on how to deal with difficult visitor interactions, which had become more frequent around the time of the 2016 election.

Joyce challenged the interpreters to examine their own preconceptions in order to become more effective educators. “This is something that we talked about in training. What is the difference between genuine ignorance and aggravation or malice? What can we do to make sure that we’re not contributing to this interaction?”

The curriculum Joyce developed is now an integral part of interpreter training. “I’m pleased to say it’s been very successful.”

'An Amazing Moment'

In her current position, Joyce manages all of the volunteer docents, who are stationed at positions around the site to provide further detail to visitors, complementing the work of the tour guides. Many of the docents are 9/11 stakeholders, who had direct experience of the event.

Understandably, there are other stakeholders who have been reluctant to visit the site. “For some, they don’t want to go back because it was so traumatic. For others, there was a very real fear that the museum would not do the story justice,” Joyce says.

“So it’s always very special when someone tells me, ‘I wasn’t ready before, but I’m here now. I’m so glad that I came.’”

Joyce vividly recalls one particular interaction with a stakeholder. “I had just wrapped up a tour and was answering questions. One of the gentlemen on my tour, who hadn’t spoken previously, said, ‘I was here at the twin towers.’ And he told me his story,” Joyce says.

“Once he got out of the towers, the man starting walking north toward his home outside the city. By the time he got to Harlem, his shoes were falling apart. A stranger stopped him on the street, took off his shoes and gave them to him. And then this man called a friend who had a car and said, ‘We’re going to get you where you need to go.’

“It was an amazing moment.”

Honoring History

Being immersed in the retelling of the 9/11 story on a day-to-day basis is not an easy undertaking. “Focusing on the facts, the concrete information, can help,” Joyce says. “But it sneaks up on you when you don’t expect it — for example, when someone on your tour looks emotional. We spend a lot of time as an institution talking about self-care and the importance of stepping back from time to time.

“And then of course there’s the mission — that feeling that you’re doing something important in honoring these lives and telling these stories,” she says. “It’s been a privilege to interact with the men and women who were part of the event, and those who weren’t and who want to learn about what happened here.”

Alumni Tribute

In her work at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Jennifer Joyce ’11 always finds it particularly rewarding when she encounters fellow members of the Tribe.

When the site turned to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic, Joyce saw an opportunity to continue engaging alumni. She reached out to the W&M Alumni Association, which sponsored two virtual tours this past fall.

Joyce led the Memorial Plaza tour. “William & Mary is where I discovered public history, and to be able to come full circle and present to alumni was really special,” she says.

The greatest honor for Joyce was being invited to speak a few words about the seven W&M alumni who perished on 9/11. Their names are inscribed at the memorial in permanent remembrance:

• Alysia Christine Burton Basmajian ’00
• James Lee “Jimmy” Connor ’85
• Michael Hardy Edwards ’90
• Mark Gavin “Lud” Ludvigsen ’91
• Christopher William Murphy M.B.A. ’98
• James Brian Reilly ’98
• Gregory J. Trost ’97

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William and Mary Hauntings

1. Sunken Garden

Welcome to the Sunken Garden, built in the mid-­‐1930s by President FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps and modeled after the Chelsea hospital gardens in England. The Sunken Garden is used for graduation ceremonies, concerts, classes, sports, special events, and other recreation. When our Indian runner was alive, this is the area where he would run. But when he was alive, this was all flat ground. So when his ghost is seen, it is seen running up in the air where he ran when he was alive, in a wide-­‐open area. This is why he is the most popular and commonly seen ghost on campus. He is seen running wearing only a cloth skirt. Students have a tradition called the William and Mary triathlon that involves streaking through the garden, similarly to the Indian boy’s ghost running through the area. But, there is more to the sunken garden! From 1775 to 1781, this area was known as The College Camp, where volunteers gathered to join the Virginia Regiment commanded by Colonel Patrick Henry, the same Patrick Henry who made the famous “give me liberty give me death” speech. The volunteers who met here left their homes and made their final goodbyes to their families, many of them for the last time, and would then travel north to reinforce General Washington’s Northern Army. Sometimes, a thick fog will slowly roll through the area, confined to the sunken garden area. Within this fog, faint images of men are seen walking through the air in what was the colonial encampment, with the sounds of voices heard coming from the fog, rolling through the empty field, as the lights on either side of the garden flicker, change colors, and dim out. The Sunken garden is host to both the ghost of the Indian running boy and the college encampment.

2. Steam Tunnels

With the College Camp came underground tunnels used to store and hide important supplies from the British if they came to Williamsburg, which they did in 1781 when General Cornwallis’s army camped in Williamsburg for ten days on their way to the neighboring port at Yorktown. These underground tunnels were dug from underneath the crypt in the Wren Building, and were forgotten until the campus was expanded in the 20th century when steam tunnels were built underground to deliver steam to heat many of the campus buildings. The steam tunnels incorporated parts of the old underground tunnels from the revolutionary war and were very expansive, stretching down the sunken garden to buildings on both sides, and even across the street. The tunnels were easily accessible, as students could walk in through the sunken garden or from one of many college buildings. This became a problem for three reasons. First, homeless would use areas of the tunnels for shelter. Second, some terrible crimes were committed in the tunnels, including murder.

Finally, fraternities and secret societies would force their pledges to enter the steam tunnels and enter the Wren Crypt, where they were tasked with stealing a bone from one of the graves and presenting it in order to be initiated. In response, the College closed off most of the entrances to the steam tunnels and added a policy stating that any student caught in the steam tunnels would be automatically expelled from campus. Now, of course there is a reason why the fraternities would make their pledges enter the steam tunnels: because of the things they would experience inside! Those inside the tunnels would hear voices coming from in the tunnels: cursing, screaming, and sinister laughter. Once the students made their way to where they heard the voices, there was no one there.

They would also feel as if someone was grabbing or breathing on them. Take a look down into the tunnel, and you’ll notice it’s actually a nice cobblestone walkway. During a tour one night while we were looking down the tunnel, there was about an inch of water in the tunnel. While the group was looking at it, they saw distinct footprints walk across the water on the right, left, and right side, making impressions of a boot or shoe that appeared that something was walking on the water. Nothing was moving across the top of the water and no one was dropping anything down on top of the water. The tour guide looked up, not believing what he saw and asked the others if they saw that. They had seen it, and asked the tour guide how he made that happen! Others who walk over the steam tunnel will hear sounds and voices coming from inside the tunnel.

3. Tucker Hall

The most controversial story on the tour is what happened here, at Tucker Hall. In addition to being a sensitive subject, William and Mary does not want you to hear this story. There’s another name to this building, a name that was twice given by the campus newspaper. That name is Suicide Hall. William and Mary has a reputation as a place where many suicides occur. With Tucker Hall, it began in 1980 when a girl studying for final exams begged her parents to let her leave and return home. Her parents refused, telling her to finish her studies first. Instead, the girl hanged herself from the girl’s restroom in the top left of the building. Two yeas later, another girl took her life in the building, but left a note behind. This note said, “she made me do it.” Since then, many others have taken their lives in the building, the last one we know of for sure was an alumnus of the college who shot himself in the head in 2004.

It is difficult to know how and where each suicide occurred, but many have happened here in this building, believed to be the result of one of the girls who first took their lives in the building. During several years of renovations in the building from 2009 to 2013, students would still see the apparition of a girl standing looking out of the window in the top left of the deserted building, which had a large green fence surrounding it. When it reopened, a student and friend of a Williamsburg Ghost Tour guide was studying inside in 2014 when suddenly all of the books and materials on her table were thrown across the room. It is said that if you study in this building during finals, you will be approached by the ghost of a girl. She will ask you how your exams are going. If you say they are going well, she will become angry, yell, throw things around, and disappear. But if you say that they are not going well, she will try to convince you to take your own life.

4. Wren Building

Welcome to the Wren Building, the iconic and original building of the College of William and Mary. Named after Sir Christopher Wren (believed to be the building’s architect), was built between 1695 and 1700 and is the oldest academic building still in use in the United States. The students learned, slept and ate here. The Wren has a long and turbulent history. It was first destroyed by fire in 1705 and rebuilt by funds from Queen Anne, financed by Privateers and Pirates in 1716. During the revolutionary war, it was used as a hospital for French soldiers wounded while fighting at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. Now look behind the archway on the far right, and you will see a plaque on the wall. The plaque lists the names of more than 120 French soldiers who died while being treated for their wounds inside the Wren Building. In 1859, the Wren was destroyed by fire again and was rebuilt that year. When Virginia seceded from the Union during the Civil War, the College closed down and invested its entire endowment into Confederate bonds, which became worthless by the end of the war. The President and all faculty members, as well as 68 of the 70 students joined the Confederate Army. The Wren was used as a confederate barracks, and later as a hospital for the wounded. After the Battle of Williamsburg, the Union army occupied the Wren and also used it as a hospital.

Surrounding the Wren and in the College Yard were rows upon rows of wounded and dead soldiers, as the Wren building was overcrowded. Surgeons performed amputations in the yard, as piles of amputated limbs piled up in the blood soaked field. The screams of wounded soldiers and those undergoing surgery permeated through the college grounds. William and Mary was on the frontlines of the Civil War, as Williamsburg was under martial law. In September of 1862, following a Confederate cavalry raid through the college that killed 11 union soldiers, members of the union army retaliated by burning down the Wren Building. It was rebuilt in 1868, and remodeled to represent its colonial version in 1929. As the oldest academic building still in continuous use in the US, you will notice that some bricks towards the base of the building are more cracked, grayed, and worn than the others. This is because the later fires didn’t destroy the building’s foundation. To your right you will see holes in the base of the building.

These lead into the Wren Crypt, beneath the Chapel’s floor, where the remains of Sir Randolph, Peyton Randolph, and Lord Botetourt lie. Classes held in this building are often interrupted by the terrifying screams of someone in agony. When someone will check to see where the screams are coming from, they find no one. The sounds of mysterious footsteps throughout the building, screams, objects moving on their own, and sightings of a French soldier walking through the halls make the Wren Building one of the haunted places on campus. Hundreds of men died painful, agonizing deaths both inside the building and on its grounds during two major wars, in addition to many others who were killed in battle on the college yard, already serving as a makeshift field hospital.

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Guided Tours

Spotswood society tours.

The Spotswood Society, a volunteer student organization, offers guided tours of the Sir Christopher Wren Building and the grounds of the Historic Campus daily when classes are in session . Spotswood Society tours are informal and may be tailored to your specific interests and schedule. Tours typically begin in the center hall of the Sir Christopher Wren Building.

Self-Guided Tours

Guests are welcome to tour the Sir Christopher Wren Building’s exhibition rooms on their own.  No prior arrangements are required, though we do recommend calling ahead if there is a particular room you wish to see.  Rooms reserved for special events will not be open for tours.

Please note that the 3 rd floor of the Sir Christopher Wren Building, which houses Religious Studies , is not open for visitors.

Private Tours

If you would like to request a private tour of the Wren Building and grounds for your group, please contact the [[wrenevents, Office of the Historic Campus]] or call 757-221-1570.

Large Groups (>25 people)

Large groups in excess of 25 people must call ahead (757-221-1570) to request a guided tour. 

President’s House & the Brafferton

The President’s House and the Brafferton are not open for tours of any kind. The President’s House is an occupied residence and the Brafferton is currently in use as an administrative building housing the offices of the President and the Provost.

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