Bailey – Yellow school buses – filled with students whose breath condensed on the windows – trickled out of the hills on a cool Thursday morning.
It was the Platte Canyon Schools students’ first day back in class since Sept. 27, when gunman Duane Morrison took six girls hostage, killing 16-year-old Emily Keyes before shooting himself.
“We are continuing to heal from last week’s tragedy,” said Bryan Krause, principal of Platte Canyon High School. “The staff and students are thankful to be back into school. We would like to also thank the Bailey community for their support today as well as all the other state agencies that have helped to restore hope.”
Only 10 of 460 Platte Canyon High School students were absent, said Superintendent James Walpole, and at neighboring Fitzsimmons Middle School, only seven of 309 students were absent.
Students started with their third-period classes, the same period when Morrison began the siege. Walpole said mental health experts recommended the setting “so they are feeling comfortable to face where they were.”
Fifty mental health counselors from across the state were on hand.
Some students and parents gathered at the flagpole outside of the high school’s front entrance, holding hands while they prayed.
People in the community handed out handknit “prayer scarves” to each student as they began the trek up the sidewalk from the parking lot.
School bells rang at 7:20 a.m., and students headed off to what Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener called “some sense of normalcy.”
Wegener said allowing students to retrieve their backpacks Wednesday helped them to regain feelings of comfort and security.
“When you’re a teenager and a student, most of your world is in your backpack,” Wegener said.
He said his son, Ben, 16, was worried that two burritos he had left in his backpack had gone bad. (They had.)
The special domestic issues assistant to President Bush, who requested a national meeting next week on school security, called Wegener for advice.
“He wanted to know what worked here and what didn’t work,” Wegener said, adding that what happened in the mountain hamlet of Bailey “may aid the entire nation.”
When school ended at 2:20 p.m., students were offered a teddy bear from the organization Hugs Across America.
Mark Grinnell, 17, a junior, said the day was “rough and smooth at the same time.”
He added: “Every time I walked near the room where it happened, it kind of gave me the cringes.”
He said a special wall had been built to close off the room.
The teacher whose class was taken hostage seemed to be doing well, he said. He didn’t talk to her “because I figured she didn’t want to go there.”
Grinnell said he was glad to be back talking with people.
“I believe the healing will take a long time,” Walpole said. “We’re at the point of knowing we have to move forward.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
