Students Shakily Return to Classes After Killings

Lance Kirkland couldn’t make it. He was still in the hospital, with parts of his face blown off and bullet holes in both legs and in his chest.

Valeen Schnurr was out of the hospital, but had to see the doctor about the four 9-millimeter slugs still lodged in her belly.

Most of the students of Columbine High, however, returned to class Monday for the first time since the April 20 massacre. So Monday was a school day--but only in the loosest sense.

It wasn’t their school that Columbine teens attended, it was their archrivals’. Many arrived carrying identical backpacks, identical calculators, pencils, binders. It might have been a corny show of school unity if not for the awful truth: Their school supplies, as well as their car keys, their gym shoes, are still in the sealed-off crime scene that is Columbine.

The Jefferson County School District had given them the matching back-to-school kits.

Still, most who were able to come back did. And they were grateful. And they were scared.

“I’m very nervous,” said 17-year-old junior Andrea Elsner an hour before her first class. “But I’m ready for some routine back in my life. I haven’t had much lately.”

The first school day since 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and then themselves was marked throughout by the confluence of grief and giving, great suffering and small sacrifices.

Everyone, it seemed, wanted to help the teens with their first attempt to resume a normal teen life. They wanted to make it all go away, knew they couldn’t and tried anyway.

Students at Chatfield, Columbine’s chief rival for 27 years, set their alarms early Monday, for 5:30 or 6, since classes for them will now begin at 7.

Under a schedule that will continue until the school year ends May 27, they took no lunch break--grabbing snacks instead from cafeteria tables during five-minute gaps between classes. Then they turned their school over to Columbine students and teachers just before 1 p.m.

Chatfield students and teachers draped the school with welcoming banners, painted in both Chatfield Charger burgundy and Columbine Rebel navy blue. Some parked nearly a mile away in a supermarket lot so their visitors could park at the school.

And when the Columbine students arrived for classes, each received a T-shirt symbolizing friendship between the two schools.

“They’ve been really nice, very supportive,” said 17-year-old Columbine junior Breanna Cook. “I didn’t think they would want us here.”

Textbook publishers are rushing out free copies of books left in Columbine, many of them destroyed by a sprinkler system that gushed for hours because of the bomb blasts and gunfire, others soaked in blood.

Athletic stores provided uniforms, baseball gloves, soccer shoes to the school’s teams, which once again have begun to practice and play.

Despite all efforts, however, Monday was not just another day at school.

The first thing Columbine students did was gather for an assembly, both to learn the logistics of their new school and to mourn together once again. When they made their way to the classrooms, they found a mental health counselor in every one, and were given a chance to express their feelings again.

For those who didn’t want to speak in class, or couldn’t, there were “safe rooms” where they could meet with counselors one-on-one.

Besides the wounded and the dead, another group of Columbine students was conspicuously absent Monday--a handful of friends and acquaintances of Harris and Klebold.

Over the weekend, district officials called the homes of about 10 friends of the killers, several of them associated with the so-called Trench Coat Mafia group to which Harris and Klebold belonged.

“We offered them alternatives to returning to school for the rest of the year, such as home-based schooling,” said district spokesman Rick Kaufman. “Four or five took the offer. Some said they wanted to return to school, and some are thinking about it.

The offer, Kaufman said, was packaged with a strong suggestion that the teens take it. “With emotions running so high, we thought it would be prudent to give them the opportunity to complete the school year elsewhere.”

School officials also banned students from wearing black trench coats to class.

Amid the memorials and funerals and calls for an end to violence, emotions were still running high, with many in Littleton struggling to find a way to mourn the dead and comfort the wounded--and at the same time acknowledge the tragic desperation of Harris and Klebold.

Last week, the anguished father of one boy slain at school went to the hill where 15 crosses stood--one for every person who died--and tore down those for Harris and Klebold.

On Sunday, the Illinois carpenter who made the crosses in his shop drove 14 hours to Littleton. Troubled that his monuments had become a source of controversy, he removed the remaining ones and drove back home.

But the victims’ families on Monday asked him to bring the crosses back. So he plans to return, and put 13 crosses on one hill and two on another.

Researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this story.

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FIRST SHOOTING ARREST

A 22-year-old man was booked on suspicion of supplying a handgun to a minor. A22