UNC pals mourn a helpful guy

Jamie Bishop knew little about computers when the temp agency at UNC-Chapel Hill sent him to help the College of Arts and Sciences tech department.

Jason Li, the director of the college's Information Technology Services, thumbed through Bishop's resume, full of studies and research in German and literature. Li shook his head and showed him to a desk.

"I figured I could use him for something," Li said. "For $7 an hour, what did I really expect?"

But the savvy Bishop surprised Li. He honed his skills and persuaded the technology director to let him try Web programming and design. In about a year, Bishop secured a full-time, permanent job.

Li and dozens of colleagues swapped stories about Bishop on Tuesday, a day after a gunman killed him while he taught a German class at Virginia Tech.

Love brought Bishop to Chapel Hill. Stefanie Hofer, a German native and Bishop's eventual bride, accepted a spot in UNC's doctoral program for German literature, friends said.

"He would have followed her anywhere," said Jacques Morin, Bishop's close friend and former UNC colleague.

The couple collected a robust and diverse group of friends in Carrboro, where they hosted weekly gatherings where the men would cook and watch films and let the women cluster to gossip and complain, Morin said.

Bishop carved out a role helping UNC instructors meld multimedia into their classrooms. He worked in the foreign languages building.

"Having Jamie as a technician, you almost looked forward to having computer problems," said Clayton Koelb, chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. "Usually he would not only take care of the problem you called about, but he found some other problem you didn't know you had and fixed that one, too."

Bishop eventually secured a part-time gig teaching introductory German at UNC. He majored in German at the University of Georgia and earned his master's in it as well. A Fulbright scholarship had taken him to Germany after college. There, according to his Web site, he spent most of his time "learning the language, teaching English, drinking large quantities of wheat beer, and wooing a certain Fr…ulein."

Bishop's art became central to his life. He had penciled comic strips as a teen and designed covers for father Michael Bishop's science fiction novels. Computers let him stretch his photography into vivid collages.

This spring, he applied to Radford University's master of fine arts program, said Todd Stabley, a former colleague at UNC-CH who wrote him a letter of reference.

Bishop and Hofer headed to Blacksburg, Va., in 2005 when Hofer took a teaching position. Bishop helped instructors with technology and taught introductory German classes.

That's where he was Monday, when Cho Seung-Hui barged into his classroom.

"If this guy had taken a second to talk with Jamie, if he had any idea who he was shooting, this never would have happened," Stabley said. "Jamie is the kind of guy who makes you want to change your outlook in life."

(Continuous news editor Jane Ruffin and news researcher Lamara Williams-Hackett contributed to this report.)