Bailey – On a different day, what happened here Sunday night beside the South Platte River would have just been a simple town picnic.
People chatted and ate cucumber salad. Big kids tossed footballs, while little ones splashed in the river under their parents’ watchful eyes. A mariachi band played a staccato rhythm.
But this was Bailey, four days after a gunman barged into the local high school, took students hostage and killed one before killing himself. And because of that, this picnic couldn’t be just a simple picnic.
In the words of Heidi Bode, one of the organizers, it was “a night of healing.” It was about remembering Emily Keyes, the 16-year-old killed during the standoff Wednesday. It was about helping Bailey feel like Bailey again.
“Look around,” Ken Evans, a pastor who used to live in Bailey and who served as the event’s unofficial emcee, told the crowd. “This is what we do in Bailey. We get together, by a stream, in nature, have some food and enjoy one another. What this night is about is you. This night is taking the opportunity for you to talk, to be together.”
All around the community Sunday, residents and officials moved toward getting back to normal. The Platte Canyon School District announced that classes would resume at the high school and middle school on Thursday. On Wednesday, there will be no school at Deer Creek Elementary, and instead middle schoolers and high schoolers and their parents can go to the elementary school to meet with teachers, pick up their new schedules and room assignments and collect any belongings left behind when the schools were evacuated.
“Our students and staff continue to grieve and heal,” Platte Canyon Superintendent Jim Walpole said in a statement.
At the picnic Sunday evening, Bailey resident Chip Fair and his daughter played a few songs, then Evans opened the microphone for anybody – parents, kids, strangers – to come up and say something. People came forward slowly.
“We have the most awesome protective services; our teachers are great,” resident Connie Griebel said. “We will survive this together.”
Then more and more came forward.
“I think that this has really made us strong,” said Alex Floyd, a senior at Platte Canyon High School. “We’re stronger than we’ll ever be right now. … And I also want to say, if you’re one of these people who has trouble saying, ‘I love you,’ get over it. We need to start saying, ‘I love you,’ to everybody.”
The speakers were old and young, students and parents. One girl used to have Emily as a babysitter. Two of Emily’s uncles spoke.
The messages drifted from topic to topic, some to the point and others a little rambling, in total a sort of stream-of- consciousness of the community. Several people sang songs in quiet voices. Others’ voices, stirred by emotion, echoed off the rock cliff on the opposite riverbank.
“The strength that we find here is not in the beauty of the place we live,” Evans said. “It’s in the people we find here.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
