‘There Has to Be Healing,’ Clinton Tells Littleton Crowd

President Clinton sought to console and inspire this grief-stricken community Thursday, exactly one month after a pair of Columbine High School students shot to death 12 classmates and a teacher.

“You’re all left with searing memories and scars and unanswered questions. There has to be healing; there have to be answers. And for those things that will not heal or cannot be answered, you have to learn to go on with your lives,” the president said two days before the school’s commencement ceremonies.

Nearly 2,000 people filled the gymnasium of Dakota Ridge High School to hear the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who were preceded to the podium by Heather Dinkel, Columbine’s student body president; Frank DeAngelis, Columbine’s principal; and Jane Hammond, superintendent of Jefferson County schools. Columbine High has been closed since the shootings.

Before he began his address, he asked Columbine’s students to give their school cheer, and they responded with great emotion, repeating the refrain: “We are . . . Columbine!”

“Something profound has happened to our country because of this. . . . I’m not even sure I can explain it to you,” Clinton said, adding that the way the community pulled together after the tragedy--which left 15 people dead, including the two gunmen--resonated across the nation.

“All America has looked and listened with shared grief and enormous affection and admiration for you,” Clinton said. “I am proud of all of you.”

The president told Columbine’s students that the massacre has “pierced the soul of America, and it gives you a chance to be heard in a way no one else can be heard. . . . You can help America heal. . . . We love you and we need you.”

Mrs. Clinton told the gathering: “What happened here at Columbine has so deeply affected the rest of our country that we are all Columbine. We have suffered and wept and prayed and hoped and yet cheered, as lives have been mourned, as those who are injured have healed, as parents and citizens have come together to ask, ‘Where do we go from here?’ ”

Before their joint public appearance, the Clintons met in private with about 75 family members of those slain. The session was at Light of the World Catholic Church, about three miles from Columbine High and the site where counselors worked with survivors after the shooting.

The families were arrayed at 14 tables in the church sanctuary, and the Clintons moved quietly from table to table.

“There was some laughter, some sadness,” said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

He described the meeting as “a more personal session rather than a sort of policy session” and said that the president wanted to “articulate how the country shares the grief of the Littleton students and the Littleton community.”

From the White House on Wednesday night, Clinton telephoned the five shooting victims who are still in hospitals. Two of them, Sean Graves and Patrick Ireland, made special arrangements and were able to attend Thursday’s gathering. Ireland is the student whose image was widely broadcast during the rampage as he broke through a window at Columbine and fell to safety into the arms of two SWAT team members.

Before leaving for Colorado Thursday, Clinton spoke briefly in the White House Rose Garden, urging Congress to tighten gun controls and asking all Americans to “come together in the face of these events to protect our children from violence.”

Clinton said that the latest school shooting, in which six students were injured Thursday when a classmate opened fire in suburban Atlanta, is “deeply troubling to me, as it is to all Americans. . . . This incident, again, should underscore how profoundly important it is that all Americans come together in the face of these events to protect our children from violence.”

Vickie Abel, 15, a freshman at Columbine, said that the Clintons’ visit “really meant a lot to us. It’s going to make us stronger.”