Columbine memorial stirs powerful memories

In the days after two boys killed 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School, thousands of mourners made their way to a nearby hill. They brought teddy bears, flowers, notes, prayers, tears.

Last month, 8 1/2 years after the shooting, a memorial to the victims was dedicated on that same hill.

Again, people come.

On a warm October afternoon, a mother pushes a stroller past six fountains that spill water into a red stone basin. Her baby gurgles: “A-ba! A-boy!” A maintenance worker on lunch break, boots caked with mud, bows his head.

Cut into the hillside, the memorial features two curving walls of rough red sandstone. The outer wall is engraved with remarks from the community about that day. The inner wall supports 13 granite slabs, each inscribed with a victim’s name and a message from the family.

It’s a beautiful place. Wind rustles golden trees. Laughter drifts from a nearby playground.

Janice Henke circles the inscriptions, and it is again April 20, 1999 -- she’s leaving a funeral service for a friend’s husband, turning onto Wadsworth Boulevard, and the sound is deafening: sirens and horns, police cars, firetrucks, ambulances flying down the road.

“I didn’t know what was happening. I got home and I was shaking. I turned on the news, and I saw.”

Henke, 63, worked for the school district credit union then and handled donations for the victims’ families. The faces of those who gave come back to her. “Total sadness and emptiness,” she says. “It’s . . . why?”

Henke reads slowly. There is no answer to that why. But she finds an unexpected peace in the remembrances carved in granite.

Cassie Bernall longed to know heaven. Lauren Townsend wrote in her diary: “I am not afraid of death for it is only a transition.” John Tomlin lost his faith for some time, then reconnected, with great joy. Rachel Scott’s killers asked if she believed in God. Her final words: “You know I do!”

“It gives me a lot of comfort,” Henke says.

On a small ledge that juts from the outer wall, a visitor has placed a pink carnation, the crinkled petals browning in the sun. Others caress the carved inscriptions or stand for long minutes.

Tricia Womochil, 59, finds that as she reads, she must pause often to rub away tears. Then she stops in front of the inscription honoring John Tomlin and suddenly, she’s smiling.

“That’s cute,” she says, shaking her head. “He liked the Green Bay Packers.”

The victims of Columbine were regular kids, and that’s how they are honored here. They asked annoying questions, failed to make the soccer team, were obsessed with Chevy trucks -- and the Packers. They struggled with depression. They liked ice cream.

Steven Curnow adored flying so much, even turbulence thrilled him. Daniel Mauser could be your typical maddening adolescent. Kelly Fleming, “a gentle soul,” wrote poetry. Matthew Kechter studied his algebra while watching football -- and still managed a 4.0.

Each family had space for about 200 words, and the inscriptions are all different in tone: funny, tender, angry, hopeful. Isaiah Shoels’ parents quote Scripture. Corey DePooter’s family describes his passion for fly-fishing, his dream of joining the Marines.

Teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death as students pressed their shirts to his wounds, is honored with his final words: “Tell my girls I love them.” In granite, his family responds, “We love you too.”

Phyllis Velasquez wrote the inscription for her son Kyle quickly, in one draft. “I actually feel that Kyle wrote it,” she says. “He still feels very close to us.”

The inscription tells the world that Kyle had developmental delays and “was just beginning to really like who he was.” He taught those around him so much about compassion and forgiveness. He loved going to the library with his mom.

“They were real people,” says Brian Rohrbaugh, who lost his son Daniel. “I don’t think you can leave without realizing the profound loss.”

Talk of a memorial began soon after the last funeral. But families of the victims wanted to focus first on rebuilding the school library, where Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris targeted several classmates, then turned their guns fatally on themselves.

It would be nearly four years before parents, teachers and civic leaders agreed on a memorial design. It took another four years to come up with $1.5 million for construction.

Most of the schools hit by violence over the years have kept memorials to a minimum -- a garden or a modest marker. A few are more elaborate: At Rocori High in Cold Spring, Minn., granite spires honor two teens slain by a classmate in 2003. At Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., a wall of tiles memorializes the two killed and 24 wounded in a 1998 shooting.

Columbine was far from the first school shooting, or the last. But as fear, grief and resilience played out on live TV, it became a national touchstone. So the families wanted the memorial to be a public space. They asked that it include flowing water, a symbol of life, and the words “never forgotten.”

Brian Kerby, 53, a hospital chaplain, looks up from the inscriptions. “Don’t forget to hug your kids,” he says.

He takes a walking path that leads around the memorial to the top of the hill. From there, he can see Columbine. To the west, there’s a sparkling reservoir, and behind that, the Rocky Mountains, deep purple with a dusting of snow.

He sits on the hill a long while, eyes closed.

When he comes down, Kerby says he understands. This place isn’t about mourning the past. It’s about remembering joy, even when it hurts, and it’s about helping one another make it through.

“That’s what Columbine is: It’s the next breath you take,” he says. “That’s how the world changes.”

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stephanie.simon@latimes.com