Father and Son Quietly Buried : Funeral: About 300 attend service to remember Steven and Christopher Golly in happier days.

A minister told mourners who gathered Tuesday for the funeral of Christopher Golly that the Northridge teen-ager should not be remembered solely for “the last chapter” of his life--the shooting rampage in which he killed his father, a policewoman and himself.

“A person’s life cannot be summed up in the events of one day,” Rev. Craige Le Breton told about 300 people crowded into a chapel for the private funeral for Christopher and his father, Steven, at Conejo Mountain Memorial Park.

“We remember not simply the last chapter. We remember all the chapters that came before.”

The quiet ceremony was in stark contrast with one attended Monday by thousands of mourners--including 3,500 police officers, Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Richard Riordan--for Los Angeles Police Officer Christy Hamilton. Golly killed Hamilton with one rifle shot after he slew his father and then lured police to the Golly home with a 911 call, before committing suicide.

While Hamilton was honored with a 21-gun salute and was remembered as a brave woman who had recently achieved her long-held dream of becoming a police officer, the eulogy for Christopher Golly, 17, concentrated on his promising preteen years, before he developed emotional problems and became a heavy user of Methedrine, or “speed.”

Le Breton referred to Christopher Even Golly as a “Bicentennial baby,” born in 1976 and coincidently the 1,976th baby born at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. He said Christopher was an honor student at Pinecrest School.

“He was a quiet person,” the pastor said. “He was creative in writing. He wrote poetry.”

Family friends have said in interviews that Christopher began to change four years ago when his mother died of a cocaine overdose. He became lax in his schoolwork, was eventually put in a special program for troubled students and was convicted of marijuana possession.

Steven Ray Golly, 47, was remembered by Le Breton as a native of Los Angeles who began his successful career in the electrical supply business after a brief stint in the Marines.

(Although friends earlier described Golly as a Vietnam veteran, service records obtained by the Times showed that Golly was discharged before completing boot camp.)

Le Breton noted that Steven was known to his friends as hospitable and a great cook, but also as a man who had “strong opinions.”

“Perhaps, we might sum it up by saying that he was a man who expected much of himself and of many others,” the pastor said.

The relationship between father and son deteriorated in recent years, friends say, with Christopher threatening his father. The one recreation they enjoyed together was target practice in Angeles National Forest with the guns in Steven’s collection.

Christopher used a semiautomatic rifle his father had given him to kill both Steven and Hamilton.

The only other speaker at the half-hour service was Christopher’s friend, James Gates, who said in a voice cracking with emotion that “no matter what I was up against,” he could count on Christopher for support.

Family members at the funeral included Steven’s mother, Eleanor, who lives in Camarillo, and his sister, Karen Wharton, who lives in La Crescenta. Also attending were the other three people in the house when the rampage began--Susan Bever, Steven’s girlfriend for the past three years; her son, Aaron Bever, and Aaron’s girlfriend, Connie McGovern.

Steven and Christopher were laid to rest in identical caskets in adjoining graves.

Christopher’s pallbearers included several of his close friends, including Alon Karpovsky of Granada Hills. “I was keeping myself from thinking of the memories we shared because I would most likely cry,” said Karpovsky, 16, after the ceremony.

“I was thinking, ‘I am carrying Chris in my hand.’ ”

Shortly after the ceremony, several of Christopher’s friends climbed into a van in front of the chapel to change from their dark, comparatively formal outfits into shorts and T-shirts, then cranked up rap music on the stereo and headed for the beach.

As they left, Karpovsky considered what he would say to Christopher if his friend was still alive. “I’d say, ‘Dude, keep on fighting, don’t quit,’ ” Karpovsky said.

“ ‘There is a lot of partying we still have to do.’ ”