Last October, Tennessee teenager Maggie Hickman bought a bus ticket for a long-awaited pilgrimage.
Accompanied by her mother, Hickman endured a 23-hour ride to Denver, hopped into a rental car and headed to the place she envisioned as the culmination of a long, emotional journey.
On the way, she purchased a bouquet of roses.
She arrived at Clement Park, adjacent to Columbine High School, and scanned the area for a memorial to the 12 students and teacher who died April 20, 1999, in the worst school shooting in U.S. history.
To her surprise and disappointment, it didn’t exist.
Signaling the homestretch
On Friday, more than seven years after the attack, former President Clinton will attend the groundbreaking for the memorial Hickman had hoped to see – signaling the homestretch of a process slowed at turns by overwhelming grief, a school renovation, competition for charitable donations and painstaking design.
“There’s no manual on how to do this stuff,” says Bob Easton, who has chaired the memorial committee while running the Foothills Parks and Recreation District. “It’s found its own way and its own time frame.”
The drive for a permanent memorial began within months of the school shooting. But the victims’ families balked – they had another idea.
They chose instead to focus on the more immediate concern of erasing one daunting reminder of the attack – the school library, where 10 students died and several others were injured.
“We weren’t ready for a memorial,” says Don Fleming, whose daughter Kelly died in the library. “We couldn’t get our minds around what it would encompass. April 20, 1999, was still too close.”
Although a three-year break from active fundraising added to the overall challenge, it also proved “good for the process” by offering families time to reflect and work out design issues, Easton says.
Chief among those were questions about how to honor the 13 who died; how to incorporate the rise known as Rebel Hill, a focal point of early, makeshift memorials; and how to recognize first responders, some of whose action – or inaction – sparked controversy.
After two designers, several focus groups and lots of discussion, the committee in 2003 unveiled an ambitious $3 million plan – later revised to $1.5 million to revive stalled fundraising and help organizers move forward.
But the core of the memorial remains intact.
Families of those who died will contribute engraved narratives about their loved ones in a stone Ring of Remembrance. An outer Ring of Healing includes quotations from the injured as well as students, teachers and others from the community.
Nestled between two hills, the area will feature flowing water, trees and native plants, plus a meandering path to the top of Rebel Hill.
“I knew I wanted a reflective place,” says Dee Fleming, Kelly’s mother. “Someplace quiet.”
Sean Graves, who was 15 when gunfire wounded him near the spot where his good friend Dan Rohrbough died, has reviewed the technical drawings and likes them – though he’s not sure how he’ll react when he visits.
“It won’t be until I actually set foot on it before I realize the magnitude of the whole thing and how it will affect everyone,” says Graves. “Including myself.”
“Something huggable”
Last fall, Maggie Hickman left some of her rose bouquet on Rebel Hill and the rest at Olinger Chapel Hill Cemetery, where three of the Columbine victims are buried.
Planning to return to the cemetery to reflect more deeply, she stopped at a discount store to look for “something huggable” that reflected Columbine.
A shopper directed her to a local Dairy Queen, where overseer Ruth Feldman had taken on local fundraising to get the memorial project back on track.
But Hickman made another connection at the DQ – with Dee Fleming, who also happened to stop in to see Feldman. Fleming saw this as more than a chance meeting – she viewed it as divine intervention “putting people where they’re supposed to be.”
They spent two hours talking.
Hickman described how the attack, which occurred when she was in sixth grade, had touched her from the moment she felt a “silent heaviness” in her own classroom upon hearing the news.
Three years later, she threw herself into writing a novel about a student pushed to the brink of violence.
“It shows the hopelessness that drives someone to isolation, but then they pull back and see faith and beauty and love,” says Hickman, 18, who made her Colorado trip after completing the three-year project.
Dee Fleming told Hickman about her daughter’s love of writing, how that love tied the two girls together, and that Hickman should continue to pursue it.
Hickman left with five commemorative Columbine pins, some T-shirts, a CD and a poster of the school atrium. Feldman came away with confirmation that, for people across the country as well as in her own community, the tragedy cried out for a permanent remembrance.
“It seemed that every time we’d get discouraged with our fundraising,” Feldman says, “God would send some encouragement our way.”
Community-led effort
With an appearance by Clinton at a 2004 gala, the memorial fundraising effort swelled by about $300,000. Families pledged more than $300,000 left over from the library project.
Counting in-kind donations and another $60,000 in pledges, the committee has moved ahead with the groundbreaking despite being $300,000 short.
“We’re taking a little step in faith right now,” Easton says.
Fittingly, he adds, fundraising has come full circle to a community-focused effort. The Flemings took a more active role in the past year, largely through Columbine pins that Dee Fleming helped design and sell for $13, with each dollar symbolizing a victim of the attack.
The Flemings spread the word to Feldman. She and print-shop owner Kirsten Kreiling energized the grassroots campaign.
They started with an informational booth at a summer festival that raised only $75 but kept up their presence at other community events. They persevered through the massive Hurricane Katrina relief effort, which heavily tapped charitable giving.
“But we made a conscious decision that even though things like that happen, cancer research is still out there raising money,” Kreiling says. “We had to move forward, too.”
They sold paper columbines, similar to the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s shamrock campaign. They held car washes and golf tournaments, dinners and silent auctions.
An envelope containing $2 and a kid’s crayon-scrawled note became, for Feldman, symbolic of the heartfelt effort that filled collection cups at local businesses.
The payoff could come with a place for remembrance and reflection that serves the community on several levels, supporters say.
The school still draws sightseers. A permanent memorial could alleviate that distraction by engaging curious tourists.
Frank DeAngelis, the school’s principal then and now, notes that many students, staff and community members may find the memorial a comforting way to continue the process of coming to grips with Columbine.
“The Class of ’99 – I worry about them more than anyone,” says DeAngelis. “We had plenty of meltdowns here at school in the years afterward, but we had each other. A lot of those students went right on to college – a month later they were out there on their own.”
Community members still seeking solace, as well as strangers from a thousand miles away – many who stop by the memorial and read the inscriptions about those who died – will walk away with inspiration and hope, Feldman says.
“Visitors will be able to learn more about who they were as people,” she says. “In this way, they’ll continue touching other people’s lives. That’s priceless.”
Ties to Columbine grow
When Hickman returned to Tennessee, she resolved to help the memorial effort.
Going door to door, she raised about $200 and still wants to organize a benefit concert there featuring local bands. Her ties to Columbine continue to grow.
She returned to Colorado in April, for the seventh anniversary of the shootings. She, Fleming and Feldman had lunch together, and Hickman – remembering Fleming’s interest in angels – gave her an angel sculpture she had made.
Hickman can’t make this week’s groundbreaking but plans to visit again next month. And of course, she’ll eventually return to see the permanent memorial.
“What they’re making is a finalization of somebody actually taking notice of the real tragedy of things,” she says, “and recognizing that there needs to be change and remembrance.”
About the event
What: Former President Clinton will participate in the ceremonial groundbreaking for the permanent memorial honoring victims of the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School.
When: 4 p.m. Friday. The ceremony is scheduled for 45 minutes and will include a performance by the Columbine Blue Choir, remarks from a victim’s family member and a 20-minute speech by Clinton. The former president and other dignitaries will then move to the memorial site for the groundbreaking.
Where: Clement Park, 7306 W. Bowles Ave., Jefferson County.
Seating: Two thousand chairs will be provided, with some reserved for victims’ relatives. The public is welcome, and organizers project a crowd of about 5,000.
For more information: See www.columbinememorial.org.
Cash donations can be sent to: Columbine Memorial Fund, c/o the Foothills Foundation, P.O. Box 621788, Littleton, Colo., 80162-1788. Contributions also can be made online at www.columbinememorial.org.
