#29 Postby Josephine96 » Tue Apr 20, 2004 1:33 pm
Here's another article I found.. it came from the Denver Post...
Resilience
Five years ago today, two killers at Columbine High School left a teacher and 12 students dead and two dozen wounded. The survivors are recovering day by day, allowing the tragedy to shape them but not define them.
By Kevin Simpson
Denver Post Staff Writers
Post / Helen Richardson
Jennifer Doyle, shot three times at Columbine, said she mended quickly emotionally with help from her ‘amazing’ parents and friends.
The better part of a semester passes before her physiology lab partner even notices, or feels comfortable enough to ask. With the cap of his pen, he gently traces the thin, jagged scar that meanders from Jennifer Doyle’s right wrist to the back of her hand.
"What happened here?"
"Columbine."
With a single word, the conversation collapses onto itself.
People often aren't sure what to say next, says Doyle, now a 22-year-old student at the University of Colorado. Five years ago, she was one of those injured in the nation's bloodiest school shooting.
For Doyle, such encounters simply bring to the surface - with no discernible ill effect - the experience of a 17-year-old girl who huddled beneath a library table as someone pulled back a chair, thrust the muzzle of a gun at four frightened students and fired.
Doyle and the rest of the two dozen injured that day - whether outside the building, amid the hysteria in the hallways or part of the gruesome scene in the school library - all were tagged with with an indelible label.
Survivors.
Their mantra: Columbine is a part of me, but it will not define me.
Columbine has flowed swiftly through the media pipeline to pool in a more permanent place - academic journals, textbooks and the annals of American culture.
Sean Graves, partly paralyzed by the gunfire, later fielded e-mails from strangers researching assignments for their own high school classes. One question showed up again and again: What did it feel like to get shot?
"To them," Graves says, "it's history. To us, it was life."
From beneath the library table, Jen Doyle heard a voice tell one student to leave and then saw two pairs of boots approach.
She thought the cops had arrived.
But a few harrowing minutes later, the killers - having already left several students dead or dying in the room - stood by her table and fired. Three of the bullets ripped into her right hand, one nearly severing the ring finger.
At first, she didn't even realize she was screaming. Moments later, she rested her head against the boy lying next to her and played dead.
Oddly, Doyle recalls, her hand didn't hurt as much as she would have figured. And now, five years removed from the tragedy, she has so effectively forged ahead with her life that others wonder if some dark, emotional reaction waits to emerge from beneath her shiny, happy surface.
"I don't feel like I handled it normally," says Doyle, almost apologetically.
She returned to Columbine for her senior year, left for the University of Colorado at Boulder, pledged a sorority and churned through academia toward a degree in psychology.
Along the way, she underwent three surgeries, including one to graft bone from her hip to the knuckle in the damaged finger and insert a metal plate and 10 screws. The finger still curls slightly even when she straightens the others, and it sometimes aches when the weather turns cold.
Emotionally, she mended quickly - a development she attributes mostly to friends and parents she describes simply as "amazing." She recalls only slight pangs of guilt, despite an unfathomable randomness that left her alive but killed Corey DePooter - the classmate huddled next to her.
"There were four of us under the table," Doyle says. "It could have been any of us."
She sought counseling only once, when she had trouble focusing in class during her senior year at Columbine. But the shooting has stayed with her in other ways.
Her freshman year at CU, Doyle camped in the law library to study for a psychology test. Back in her room a short while later, she realized she hadn't absorbed a thing. Just being in a library proved distracting.
For Doyle, there's a strange symmetry to this anniversary. Just as she's reflecting on the five years since the shootings, she's trying to map out the next five years of her life. She will graduate from CU in May with a degree in psychology and a background in pre-nursing.
.
Tribute to the victims of the Columbine tragedy, April 20, 1999. The song played on the tribute is called "Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World" and is by a Hawaiian singer named Israel Kamakawiwoole. It can be found on the album "Facing Future."
A few weeks ago, she sat down to some assigned psychology reading on violence and video games. It began: "On April 20, 1999 ..." Another time, one of her teachers invoked the school shooting while lecturing the class about post-traumatic stress symptoms.
"It doesn't really bring back memories," Doyle says, "but I realize what a huge thing it is. You read about it, or you hear a teacher in a lecture, where I'm one of 80 people, and she says, 'It's like the Columbine incident.' She has no idea I'm sitting in her class."
A recent review of physical evidence also hammered home Columbine's reality. Just weeks ago, Doyle visited the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, where a vast array of items from the case was on display for victim families.
"Later that night was tough," Doyle says. "I thought about Corey a lot. There was a white hat collected as evidence, like the hat he was wearing that day. I don't know if it was Corey's or not, but it made me think. That was very real to me.
"Maybe closure."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The house sits on a quiet cul-de-sac, where only weeks after the Columbine attacks, benevolent contractors arrived to refurbish the interior with hardwood floors, wider doors, lower countertops, retrofitted bathrooms and spacious decks.
A wooden ramp leads from the driveway to the front porch, where the doorbell is positioned low - wheelchair level.
But when the door opens, Sean Graves stands tall.
Six bullets tore into him as he and two friends headed outside from the school cafeteria. The wounds left him partly paralyzed below the waist.
Five years later, he towers over the low-slung counters and moves easily around a house whose accessibility features have outlived their purpose.
"The last time I sat in a wheelchair was graduation," says Graves, who was 15 at the time of the shootings. He accepted his diploma on his own terms, on his own two feet. Soon after, he graduated to crutches, then a cane.
He still lacks strength and some sensitivity in his right leg, but Graves has learned to gauge his limits and devise strategies to deal with them. He rides a stationary bike in the basement twice a week, pushing himself toward longer sessions, more resistance.
But only recently has he felt his life regaining traction.
"I do feel behind," says Graves, now 20. "If the shooting had never happened, I'd be moved out of the house. I'd be a good year ahead of where I am now. But I'm happy to be walking. If I don't progress any more, I'll still be happy. If I were still in a wheelchair, I'd be happy to be alive."
At home, in a house his mother filled with images of angels, Graves says he embraced prayer and forgiveness. But he also drew strength from a simple understanding of the killers' motivation and from his own desire to deny them the satisfaction of leaving his life in ruins.
"I healed a lot faster than a lot of people," he explains. "At the time of my last surgery, I thought about how God teaches you to forgive people - so I forgive them for what they did, from a religious standpoint. But my dad had a saying: 'They're in hell watching you on TV, and they don't want you to win."'
Earlier this year, when victims and their families were allowed to examine the huge array of evidence from the case, Graves could think of one reason to go.
"I asked if I could hold the weapon that shot me," he says.
His request was denied because the weapons remain "evidence," he says. He didn't attend.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold "were pointing and shooting," Graves continues, "and I was receiving. I'd just like to know where it all started from, to be in their shoes for a second. My mom was upset at my asking. She didn't understand. But I'm just curious to know what the gun feels like."
To truly defeat his attackers, Graves figures - to make a difference in the future - he must resist the temptation to focus on the past. And so he has grown.
The sheer volume of interview requests made him shed his shyness. The demands of physical rehabilitation revealed an ability to achieve anything he puts his mind to. He's been taking general studies classes at Red Rocks Community College - where he was jarred to see a Columbine reference in his cultural anthropology textbook.
Other changes he has barely noticed. For instance, when he enters a room, he scans it for details - a quick inventory of people, objects.
Exits.
"I don't know if that's paranoia or post- traumatic stress," he says. "I don't even notice it happening. It's just the way I am."
Today, Graves will continue a tradition he began on the first anniversary. He will go to the spot outside the school where he and another classmate were wounded, where good friend Daniel Rohrbough was killed. He'll light a cigar and quietly puff.
Then, he'll leave one for his friend.
"Dan loved cigars," he says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Castaldo shuffles through his CDs until he finds the one he's looking for. He slips it into the tray and punches the play button. An eerie, discordant tone seeps out of his speakers and, at intervals, rises and falls in pitch while a soft, high voice overlays rhythmic, sing-song lyrics.
Tiny Martians all around,
Tiny Martians make no sound ...
It's one of Castaldo's early forays into recorded music - he played the keyboard and sang - and it begs the question of inspiration. What prompted this aspiring musician to compose an odd little tune about extraterrestrials?
He laughs.
"That's the thing," he says. "I don't even know. I don't know if a lot of things make sense most of the time."
It made no sense that a 17-year-old boy having lunch in the grass outside Columbine High School's west doors would be riddled with so many entrance and exit wounds that doctors could not determine exactly how many bullets struck him. The gunshots punctured lungs, fractured vertebrae, ripped through nerves in his left arm, caused kidney and spleen damage. He still carries one of his assailants' bullets with him - lodged in a large abdominal muscle and sealed by scar tissue.
But music has given him an outlet, a platform for making sense of his life, or at least a means of making a difference by broadcasting his concerns.
The small house's second bedroom has been taken over by a drum set, amplifiers, guitars - evidence that it has now become the temporary practice space for the rock band in which Castaldo has signed on. He happened to meet up with the members of Danger Girl when they were between bass guitar players. They hit it off, and one of the musicians offered to give Castaldo lessons on the bass.
Music has always been there for Castaldo, but has taken on ever-increasing prominence. He maneuvers his manual wheelchair past the television and leans forward to reach a rectangular case on the floor.
He pulls back the lid to reveal a shimmering bass guitar - autographed by rock legend Sting. TV talk show host Montel Williams bought it at a celebrity auction. He gave it to Castaldo after learning of his rock-band aspirations while taping a segment of his show.
It's no piece of memorabilia for Castaldo - he plays it in weekly lessons and practice sessions with Danger Girl. Hard rock energizes him, taps into a rebellious spirit that wants to change the world.
But music isn't the only thing that drives him now. He's taking classes at Metropolitan State College of Denver toward a business degree, appeared in the controversial Michael Moore film "Bowling for Columbine" and remains active in the international anti-violence youth group PeaceJam. He wrote three songs for the group's documentary film.
Among other national media outlets, MTV - which featured Castaldo in earlier post-Columbine coverage - decided to catch up with him to see how he's doing on the fifth anniversary. The timing couldn't have been better.
"It works out good for me," Castaldo laughs. "Good thing I have a band."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The questions come all the time now, from family and friends and teachers: What are your plans? Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?
They suggest a new beginning, but in some ways Val Schnurr is back where she was five years ago. Finishing her senior year - this time in college. Preparing to graduate. Thinking about a career in counseling or psychology.
But unlike April 1999, today when she answers questions about her future, the word "maybe" creeps into the conversation.
"Nowadays I more so just go with the flow because things can change at any time," she says. "I try not to plan too far ahead."
Columbine again.
It tore like a tornado through her life - choosing her at random, touching and changing so many things while leaving others remarkably intact.
She is different now, she says. She's more confident, more outgoing, more able to help people. Yet, she is still the same, still religious, still mature beyond her 23 years.
Columbine made her carve out a new normal. A new self.
"It's not all of me now," Schnurr says. "When it first happened, it hurt so deep and I was in so much pain and all that trauma. ... It runs your life. And I've gotten to that point where it doesn't run me anymore, but it's a part of me."
Five years ago, Schnurr was studying in Columbine's library with her childhood friend Lauren Townsend and three other classmates. She saw boots and heard voices and weapons firing. She hid under a table and prayed until a shotgun blast knocked her into the open.
Seeing Townsend lying wounded, Schnurr tried to wake her with a touch of her cheek - but got no response. Schnurr suffered 34 wounds in the arms and chest from shrapnel and buckshot, requiring two years of surgeries. Her physical wounds have mostly healed.
"But I look at myself in the mirror every day, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it," she adds.
Bleak months followed the shooting. Schnurr felt guilty for surviving and still has trouble concentrating on her school work sometimes.
She spent a year and a half at the University of Northern Colorado but kept meeting people who had seen her picture.
"Don't I know you?"
Always quiet and reserved before the shooting, Schnurr discovered something soon afterward that helped her cope: talking to others.
She transferred to the University of Arizona, where, amid welcome anonymity, Schnurr discovered she could share her experience on her own terms.
Now, she speaks regularly to a variety of groups - to schoolchildren about acceptance, to church gatherings about forgiveness, to mental health groups about trauma and tragedy.
On this anniversary, the first in three years that finds her back in Colorado, she recognizes the fine line between media hype and solemn remembrance. She wants to honor the memory, minimize the hype.
It's a question of balance - much like her own life in Columbine's aftermath.
"I'm more now at peace with what happened," she says. "I'm happier. I'm moving on. You never forget. It still hurts. But it doesn't have so much weight on who I am."
0 likes
I always seem to get confused about which 1 of the 2 girls it actually was who died that way.
