BU Student Remembered As ‘Bright, Intelligent, Beautiful’

Lingzi Lu’s family remembers her as the “joy of [their] lives,” an ambitious young woman, full of dreams and hopes and love for her friends and family. An outpouring of comments on various articles remembers her as an “amazing girl,” with a “beautiful smile.” All that spirit, all that life, was cut tragically short Monday, April 15, when Lu, 23, was killed in the bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a terrorist act that also claimed the lives of 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, and 29-year-old Krystle ­Campbell, of Medford.  In an open letter, Lu’s family said Lu “was a bright and wonderful child.” “We were thrilled to watch her grow into an intelligent and beautiful young woman,” the letter reads. “She was a positive role model for many others.” It was her dream to study in the United States, according to the letter. She was realizing that dream as a graduate student at Boston University where she was studying statistics, according to her LinkedIn profile. “She wanted to play a role in international business, specializing in applied mathematics,” the letter reads. “She has been studying very hard toward her goal. Sadly, it was not to be.” In her short 23 years, according to the Boston Herald, Lu worked passionately to achieve her goals, pursuing academic excellence at a competitive high school in her home city of Shenyang, China, before attending the Beijing Institute of Technology on her way to BU. According to her LinkedIn profile, Lu had already made connections with such prestigious firms as Deloitte, where she worked as a manager assistant in late 2011, and the Bank of China, where she interned in the summer of 2010. Tasso Kaper, chairman of mathematics and statistics, told the Boston Globe that Lu was a “very smart student” and a “very bright young scientist.” “It’s a tragic loss for us,” Kaper told the Globe, going on to explain that Lu was talkative and tightly connected to a few close friends. “She was really the spokesman of the group,” Kaper told the Globe. “The word bubbly maybe is kind of a corny word, but, yeah, that’s what describes her.” And she loved the city of Boston, according to her family. “While she was here, she fell in love with Boston and its people. She loved her new friends and her professors at Boston University.”  Her story and her life have brought thousands to a Facebook page dedicated to her memory, which had nearly 7,800 Likes as of Saturday morning. Lu’s family is hopeful that her life can serve as an example and encouragement […]

Read more...