Hundreds gather at high school to mourn Aurora shooting victim

AURORA, Colo. -- Several hundred people – most of them teenage members of the “Gateway High School family” – gathered Saturday night on the football field of the Aurora campus to pray, to console and to aspire to better times in this grieving city.

Many of them were friends of Alexander Boik, 18, who was among the 12 people shot to death in a movie theater here early Friday. They arrived clutching bouquets of flowers, and many of them held 12 purple balloons, honoring Boik’s favorite color. Others held candles and recalled Boik as a warm and loving friend who dreamed of teaching art.

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As Boik’s closest friends and relatives crowded shoulder to shoulder, many others circulated a poem written by a fellow student, Barbara Barocio:

You’re one of the reasons why

Almost all of our days remain bright.

Thank you, you are one of our most

Special friends.

You will always have the softest

Parts in our hearts.

Stay and be with us A.J. Boik, may

God bless you and your loved ones.

Angela Dollar, 18, stared up at the overcast skies, her eyes welling with tears. It reminded her of one of Boik’s favorite pastimes. He liked to sketch people in romantic scenes: couples kissing and holding hands, walking under clouds that formed the words “I love you.”

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John Richard, a vocal-music teacher at Gateway, smiled and remembered, “I had him for one year in my piano class. He was a good kid, a good student, and he loved to play violin. But his favorite thing was ceramics. If he wasn’t playing music, he was making pottery.”

He graduated from Gateway this past spring and planned to attend classes in the fall at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in nearby Lakewood, Colo.

Teenagers who attended the school or graduated from it poured onto the football field for the vigil. They felt ties with Boik as well as the other victims and the suffering of the entire community.

Alex Lopez, 17, put it this way: “We’re gathered in memory of A.J., but we’re also trying to honor everyone.”

The memorial began at 7 p.m., when nearly everyone on the football field moved about 200 feet away. Their backs were turned to about two dozen member of the media.

As the crowd moved away from prying news camera lenses and microphones, Principal William Hedges said, “This gathering is driven – mostly impromptu – by students communicating on Facebook and so on. There was no one organizer.”

Admiring the group, he added, “I believe it’s a good reflection of the Gateway family.”

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