Shattered Dreams

Struggling to find meaning out of madness, Columbine community looks inward for answers

By Sandra Fish
Camera Staff Writer

LITTLETON — Spring is a season of dreams for many.

High school students dream of magical proms, of clutching a well-earned diploma, of moving on to the "real world" — college, a job, the military.

Parents, wondering where the years went, dream of the days when teens now on the cusp of adulthood were just babies.

Tuesday, dreams died for 14 students and a teacher amid bombs and gunfire at Columbine High School.

Dreams became nightmares for their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Dreams shattered, too, for the 28 students and teachers injured in the shooting and bombing spree by two alienated seniors, and for the hundreds more who hid or fled during hours of terror.

And hearts broke again in places like Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; Springfield, Ore. — communities where parents and children were certain that others would learn from their tragedies.

But they didn't, it seems.

Today, a community, Colorado and the nation are left to ask the questions.

How?

Why?

The address is Littleton, but it isn't Littleton, really.

The area surrounding Columbine High School in southern Jefferson County, just east of the Rocky Mountain foothills, could be Anywhere, U.S.A. It's the Edge City that author Joel Garreau wrote about in the book of the same title — a virtually anonymous suburb, characterized by strip malls, chain eateries, cul de sacs and townhomes. There's no city really, just unincorporated suburbia.

It's one of the fastest growing places in the nation.

Michelle DeCarlo, a State Farm insurance agent who lives and works nearby, describes the people here as "very family-oriented individuals."

"Whatever activity their child is involved in, there's a lot of participation, family-wise," she says.

The median age is 37; family incomes are above average. Parents are computer specialists or engineers, many working at the nearby Lockheed Martin plant, DeCarlo says.

"We're in an area where people have everything you think anyone could possibly want," says Rev. Rick Barger, senior pastor at Abiding Hope Lutheran Church of Littleton.

But Barger and others paint a more troubling picture, one where everything is a little too perfect, where parents are a little removed, where neighborhoods are a little too impersonal, where some young people might be dangerously disengaged from the community and their peers.

Tragedy — two teens, armed to the hilt, opening fire at their high school — "wasn't supposed to happen to us," Barger says.

But it did.

John Tomlin left his Green Bay Packers jacket in his gold, 1985 Chevy truck Tuesday morning, partly covering a bag of M&Ms and a soft-drink bottle. He didn't need the coat on a sunny, warm, Colorado spring day.

It should have been a typical day for the 1,870 Columbine students — some recounting last weekend's prom, seniors counting down the days to graduation, the girls tennis team preparing for a 3:30 p.m. match with Bear Creek, the girls lacrosse team preparing for a 5:30 game with George Washington.

It all ended shortly after 11 a.m. at Columbine High School.

Clad in black trench coats, laden with bombs and ammunition, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold entered their high school with mass slaughter in mind.

They shot and killed on the way inside. Tossing bombs as they went, they climbed the stairs from the cafeteria to the library. They asked Cassie Bernall if she believed in God; when she said she did, they killed her. They called Isaiah Shoels a "nigger" before shooting him dead.

Some 24 hours later, the bodies of John Tomlin, Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Ketchter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Dave Sanders, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, Lauren Townsend and Kyle Valasquez — along with those of Harris and Klebold, who ended their pillaging by killing themselves — made their final exit from Columbine High School.

Thursday, Tomlin's gold pickup became a memorial, covered with flowers, notes and a sign with messages from friends.

Friday morning, Tomlin's friends and family mourned the loss at a memorial service.

They still asked the questions.

How?

Why?

Residential neighborhoods surround Columbine High School, many of them new. Southwest Plaza, with Foley's, Dillards and Sears is nearby, as is Ruby Tuesdays, Mann Theatres, Media Play and a host of other national chains.

Paved trails trace burbling creeks. Speed bumps slow traffic on side streets. There are still open spaces in this suburb that used to be ranch land. But signs on some open corners trumpet the arrival of more townhomes, new supermarkets.

From some ridge tops, the high-rises of downtown Denver are visible, yet the city seems far away.

The homes are large, set close together. But there's a palpable sense of distance in many of these neighborhoods.

"There is no city government in our area," says Lori Hoffner, community outreach minister at Columbine United Church and co-director of a community group aimed at reaching out to young people.

"It's fair to say we are detached," she says. "It's the garage door society . . . I think we get caught up very easily with the suburb mentality . . . Our front yards are immaculate, everything looks very well-kept.

"It's when you get behind the cedar fences that you see things are in disarray. We have to put up a good front. We don't want to talk about things that are going wrong."

That good front is evident at the homes of Harris and Klebold, well-kept, upper-middle class residences that could just as easily been those of their victims.

Last week, neighbors expressed surprise that the two quiet young men could undertake such savagery. While bouquets, poems and other mementos piled upon each other in Clement Park next to the high school, a sign from friends hung on the Klebold fence and a handful of flowers from a stranger graced the Harris house.

Eric Harris' Internet pages should have been a warning to the darkness within a suburban child.

Threats of mass killing, instructions on bomb making, a frightening level of universal hate.

In searching for answers last week, television magazine shows examined numerous possibilities — Internet communications like Harris'; fixations on shock-rocker Marilyn Manson; a variety of popular but violent movies; subcultures from Gothics to Neo-Nazis; violent computer games Harris and Klebold reportedly played together.

The television shows drew comparisons between the Columbine killers and those in other school shootings — alienated white boys. They returned to Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield searching for clues.

And during breaks in the shows, viewers could see commercials for upcoming TV dramas — dramas featuring gunfire, people running for cover, fleeing from pursuers.

Still, television news anchors and reporters asked the questions.

How?

Why?

Four years ago, a group of concerned clergy, educators, business people, mental health professionals and others looked at the young people of southern Jefferson County, and they didn't like what they saw.

A survey indicated high use of drugs and alcohol among the children, low neighborhood affiliation, a lack of parental involvement.

So they decided to reach out, forming Parents and Community Connecting Together. PACCT packed the Columbine High School auditorium in September 1996 to formally kick off the effort.

PACCT isn't a "program," really, say co-director Hoffner and founder Barger, the pastor. Instead, it focuses on a seemingly simply list of "assets" for young people, things like parental support, friendships with other adults, resisting peer pressure, resolving conflict nonviolently. The group spreads the word on the program at meetings and dinners, through churches and schools. Paper placemats offer a checklist of 40 suggested values or behaviors.

"It is so positive, it is so doable," Hoffner says.

It's about building a sense of community in a world where individualism seems to have become synonymous with freedom, Barger says, where parents believe their children need freedom and independence.

It may be that sort of freedom and independence — along with spacious suburban homes, nice cars, computers — that the Harris and Klebold families offered their children. How the Harrises and Klebolds failed to see warning signs can't be known; the families aren't talking about the tragedy. But how many parents can say with certainty how their teens spent last weekend holed up in a garage or a guest house or at a friend's?

Blaming poor parenting isn't necessarily an answer, either.

"We live in a society that is an age of the quick fix, that somehow we can pass blame on this — but it's not that simple," Barger says. "We've got too many suffering kids. I don't know what went wrong."

Images portrayed the devastating story to the nation.

A sign in the window: "1 (sic) bleeding to death."

Jason Baer, 17, heard the plea of business teacher and coach Dave Sanders to one of the gunmen while Baer hid in a storage room near the library.

"No, no don't shoot me! I don't want to die!" Sanders cried.

"That's too bad," the gunman replied, firing at the longtime teacher.

Bleeding profusely, Sanders dragged himself into a classroom after heroically herding hundreds of students from the school cafeteria Tuesday, saving their lives before taking two wounds to the chest. Students shed clothing, trying to save Sanders by stemming the bleeding.

Sanders, whose girls basketball team made the 5A playoffs for the first time since 1992 this spring, was not to be saved.

Then there was the boy leaning out the second-story library window, falling into the arms of rescuers, bleeding.

Patrick Ireland is alive today.

Shot twice in the head, he's in the intensive care unit at St. Anthony Hospital Central, his right side paralyzed.

Those images shattered the dreams of those who'd seen them before — in their hometowns.

The images reached those in Paducah, in Jonesboro, in Springfield.

Hearts on the mend were crushed again.

Barger says he's heard from fellow pastors in those communities, people who believed others would learn from the tragedies they endured.

"They are suffering to see that now it's happened to us," he says. "It's stripped them of whatever meaning they could put on their event."

The April 14 edition of the Columbine Community Courier, a local weekly newspaper, included an editorial about concealed weapons, criticizing well-publicized efforts by the Legislature to liberalize Colorado's gun laws.

It concluded, "What we are left with is ineffective and divisive legislation, more state and less local control and still more negligence of the real factors that cause people to commit violent crime."

It is bitter irony that the Columbine disaster came at a time when the National Rifle Association asked Coloradans to join it at an annual convention whose highlight is a huge gun show, replete with hunting rifles and assault weapons; at a time when the Legislature engaged in heated debate over liberalizing the state's gun laws.

"They could not have done the damage they did with knives," said a visibly angry Eric Kritzer, a Columbine social studies teacher, waiting at a nearby library Tuesday to learn the fate of those caught in the massacre. "If they were carrying swords they wouldn't have killed that many people. This was an assault. This is a direct result of the fact that gun laws are way too liberal."

Now, there will be no gun expo at next weekend's NRA convention in Denver. Colorado legislation pushed by the NRA is dead.

Still, gun advocates continued to insist that an adult with a concealed weapon could have stopped the carnage — despite the fact that an armed police officer at Columbine who exchanged gunfire with Harris and Klebold failed to quell the two.

That infuriates Barger.

"What is this, we just arm everybody?" he asked angrily last week. "You leave the hospital and you get a rifle?

"There's no vision for the greater good," he adds. "You have to ask the question I think, that of ethics for Immanuel Kant. (He) said don't do anything unless you are willing to accept that everybody has a right to do it."

Friday morning, Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas sounded defeated when reporters asked him for perhaps the 100th time where Harris and Klebold got their weapons.

"It was so simple to get them," Thomas said. "Guns are everywhere."

Thomas said he doesn't have the answer to the questions, either.

How?

Why?

Seventeen-year-old Patrick Ireland and his family are parishioners — and friends — of Lori Hoffner. The Ireland family and their friends reflect the sort of connectedness Hoffner, Barger and others are seeking to build.

"We have a very strong sense of community," Hoffner says. "This is very much evident in the constant stream of people visiting" the Irelands at the hospital.

Hoffner is one of the visitors. She says the family is doing well, considering. They are strong people.

"I'm a mom," Hoffner says. "I know what being a mom is about and the tragedy of having a child and the fear their parents had."

She doesn't have answers to the questions for the Irelands, the rest of her parish or anyone else. She does know what the catastrophe wasn't.

"This was not an act of God. This was not God's will," she says.

Friday, a tired, grief-stricken District Attorney Thomas tried to look ahead, pleading with the media and those listening to join him.

"Join with this community . . . to help solve the problem of human violence against other human beings," Thomas begged. "It must stop. We have to give every amount of energy that we can to solving this problem.

"We're not communicating and we're not taking care of our children as a whole," he said. "We've become a very, very lax society in terms of our values."

Barger says Tuesday's massacre may create more community where little existed.

"We need to be grasped by a bigger story — and a true one," he says. "We're all in this together and life is precious."

Hoffner is ready to work on Project Columbine, planting columbines — the state flower — anywhere and everywhere. She and others want Columbine High School remembered as a symbol of life, not a place of tragedy. She acknowledges it will take "a great deal of healing" to get there.

"We realize our need for connectedness," she says. "I really do believe you'll see a great deal more of that."

Today, Barger will face his congregation of 1,700 — almost half of them young people.

He won't be able to answer the questions.

How?

Why?

No one can answer.

Instead, he'll tell his parishioners that they cannot say to themselves, "Whatever dream we had for this community is shattered and maybe we'll just give it up and go to another community."

That's because, he says, "We'll finally discover there's no place to which we can flee — because there's folks that live there.

"It's too soon to give up. Every kid is all our kids and it's too soon to quit."

Camera Staff Writer Matt Sebastian contributed to this report.