Columbine: Eleven Years Later and Memorial Photos

When this time of year rolls around, I always find myself thinking ‘I can’t believe it’s been so long since it happened.’

But it has.  This year will mark the 11th anniversary of the infamous Columbine High School shootings – but it seems like just a year ago this happened in our community.

You can read my post about COLUMBINE – that I wrote this time last year.  Sort of an ‘insiders’ point of view.  Not that I was a major insider, but living in Littleton  just a few blocks from the school and knowing students involved and affected by this tragedy – is just different than watching a segment with Katie Couric.  It all of a sudden becomes personal.

I wanted to post photos of all the make shift memorials that were made at Clement Park and Columbine High School in the weeks following the shootings.

The photos don’t do it justice.  You cannot experience the magnitude of what this area of our city looked like.  Memorials stretched across the park, piled all over the tennis courts at the school, covering the parking lots, the hundreds and hundreds of people that were there daily.  Yep.  You don’t see that in the photos. But you will get a glimpse of what it looked like.

These were taken with a point and shoot 35mm then scanned, so I apologize if they aren’t the best quality. 

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There were several ‘wreaths’ throughout the park and parking lot.  People would just add their stuff to these memorials.  Cards, flowers, photo collages, stuffed animals, personal notes and letters.  It was amazing.

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This part stretches across the whole photo, but since it’s far away, it’s hard to see.  A few days after all this happened it started raining and some local business came and put up these tents to cover the memorials.

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There were two sets of large crosses at the park – this is one of them.  They had the names of the victims on them and people laid gifts at the base.

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This is the second set.  They lined one of the major streets in Littleton.  I drove by this daily as part of my normal routine since I lived in the area and it was always breathtaking to see all these crosses lined up with lines and lines of people walking by and looking at them.

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This is another view of the above photo.

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This cross has Matthew Kechter’s name on it. Matt was my cousin’s best friend and my cousin was in the library with Matt when the shootings occurred.  When a teacher ran in the library and yelled for all the students to get under the tables because someone had a gun, Matt got under the table and my cousin jumped over the check out counter and hid in the closet – and later escaped with some other kids and ran home.  He waited all day to get a phone call from Matt that day.  Sadly, he never got that call.  (I talk more about this in my COLUMBINE post.)

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This was a section under a tent that had smaller crosses.  Matt’s is in the center.

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The gifts overflowed.

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This is Rachel Scott's car.  She lived two houses down from us at the time of the shootings.

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Another view of Rachel’s car.

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After all the memorials came down, the cars they had turned into memorials stayed a little bit longer.  This is when this photo was taken.  When her mom and step dad brought her car home, they didn’t wash anything off the car and it sat in front of their house like that for the longest time.  We lived in a cul-de-sac, so I saw the car every time I left and came back.  It was always very sad to see it sitting there post-memorial.  It felt empty.

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This is John Tomlin’s truck.  If you look to the right, you’ll notice they even brought in bathrooms since there were so many people coming through this park on a daily basis.  They even added a permanent cross walk from the park into the neighborhood across the street from all the foot traffic of people parking there and walking over to the park.

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When you looked inside his truck, you saw his Bible laying on top of the dashboard.  His family and friends said he always carried it in his truck.

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This is my cousin, Ryan, who was attending Columbine at the time and who was in the library with Matt Kechter on the day of the shootings.  This photo was taken in July or August of 1999.  I love the look on Jerry’s face!!!  Jerry was only 1 year old at the time.
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These photos were taken in June 1999.  This is my mom and Craig Scott, Rachel Scott’s brother.  He came up one night and we ordered pizza and played board games.  We laughed most the night and just had a great time.  No matter how he was portrayed on Dateline or any other magazine TV show – Craig was a wonderful kid.  He just went through a hard time with the death of his sister and being in the library, himself, witnessing some of the murders.  That’s a lot for someone to go through.

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Craig and sitting next to Craig is skinny Jerry Bean!
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This is Craig and my bro.ski playing Scattegories.  My mom and I saw Craig and his mom a couple years ago.  There was that excitement you get when you see people you haven’t seen in a while.  It was fun to see him ‘all grown up’!

So, there you have it.  I wish I would have taken more photos of the memorial, but there was so much – to the point of being overwhelming.  I also remember when we were walking around that I cried a lot and would just stand in silence and look at all these acts of love and compassion towards the victims.  I couldn’t even talk – and I’m a talker.  It was very humbling in a sense.

I will never forget that day and the weeks that followed.  The emotions were so strong that going through these and reading my COLUMBINE post – I can actually physically feel those emotions again.

I am hoping that today will be an easy day for the families as they acknowledge the 11 year anniversary of the Columbine Tragedy.  My heart still goes out to those families and students who lived through this. Their lives will never be the same.  May the lives of the victims- the children, father, friend, student, teacher – may their lives always be remembered, honored and cherished. 

Thanks for stopping in today!

remember to:
live.laugh.love.and.celebrate.life.

“At the end of the day, love and compassion will win.”

Terry Waite