Coming to Terms

It was just a year ago that Britnye Godwin was meeting with friends at the local fast-food chain on Friday nights in Littleton, Colo., to find out who was hosting the weekend party.

As spring--and senior-itis--set in, the teenager prepared for graduation and decided to attend Cal Lutheran University while her younger friends Rachel and Laura talked about spending another year at Columbine High.

But this spring, Godwin, 18, must come to terms with the deaths of her friends, who were among the 13 victims in this week’s shooting rampage.

The energetic freshman waits for daily reports on three other friends who were injured in the most violent school crime in American history, a shooting believed to have been committed by two of their classmates.

“It’s a nightmare,” Godwin said Thursday as she sat in her Cal Lutheran dorm room. “I’m in disbelief, trying to understand why and how this could happen.”

On the eve of flying home to attend her girlfriends’ funerals, Godwin is launching a local effort to raise money for the victims’ families. Cal Lutheran student government leaders agreed Thursday to help Godwin reach out to the campus community and the Conejo Valley over the coming weeks in an attempt to raise $100,000 to send to the United Way office in Denver.

Students began going door-to-door Thursday night, asking classmates for spare change. Local grocery stores will display jars to collect cash contributions. And a savings account has been set up at a local bank to receive donations.

“We want to make this a whole community thing,” she said. “We want to pull together as a community to help another community.”

Freshman Sean Paquette agreed to help Godwin’s cause, saying the mass killing has left him and his classmates shocked.

“We were just in high school,” said Paquette, 19. “When you’re there, you feel like it’s the safest place you can be.”

That is what Godwin thought of Littleton, a community she lived in most of her life. It’s a town where sports are a priority and belonging is essential, she said. It’s a small pocket of suburban America, where everyone knows and likes each other.

“Everyone wants to be in the mainstream,” Godwin said. “It’s like that movie ‘Varsity Blues.’ ”

Columbine is like most American high schools, she said. The social hierarchy was typical: there were the cool kids, most everyone else, and the freaks--the loners who kept to themselves.

And when Godwin was a freshman, she said, a few of the outcasts picked up the name “Trench Coat Mafia,” a title they eventually came to claim for themselves.

Although Godwin attended a private school in Denver, she kept up with the happenings at the local high school two miles from her house.

Sure, she said, there were arguments or fistfights at the school from time to time over someone’s girlfriend or about starting positions on the football team. But not weapons. Not knives. Not guns.

But this week the renegade group that never fit in anywhere sought revenge.

“I think it was the years of being picked on and the torment,” said Godwin, explaining why she thinks the two boys are believed to have stormed the school, killing and injuring her childhood friends and their classmates. “But to do anything like this, you have to be mentally unstable.”

She watched in horror Tuesday as her hometown came to national prominence and family members telephoned constantly to give her reports on who was alive and who had perished.

“It was so sad to sit here and watch it. It was so surreal, like watching a movie,” she said.

This weekend, Godwin will return home for the funerals and visit friends. As hard as being away from home has been, she is just as scared to see firsthand what’s happened to her hometown.

“Part of me is dreading going home,” she said. “When I’m home, I’m just going to be so overwhelmed. Out here, I’m trying to do positive things.”

Godwin said she is optimistic her new neighbors will want to help. She hopes they will see that something like the Littleton tragedy can happen anywhere, even here.

“ ‘It can’t happen here.’ That’s what people are saying,” she said. “But that’s what people in Columbine used to say.”

Donations can be sent to the Columbine Healing Fund, in care of California Federal Bank, Thousand Oaks Branch No 117, 33 N. Moorpark Road, Thousand Oaks 91360.

* MAIN COVERAGE: Police term chances ‘very great’ gunmen in Colorado kilings had help. A1