With the eyes of the nation riveted in Virginia now, Columbine has been invoked in the news coverage as something that seems like only a footnote to the latest massacre.
People have noted it happened eight years ago this week on April 20. This is a bad time of year for evil: Columbine, Oklamoma City, Waco, Hitler's birthday and now Virginia Tech.
Here's what Time looked like in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine tragedy. The cover article was called, "... In Sorrow and Disbelief." As you can see, the cover itself called the killers "The Monsters Next Door" and asked "What Made Them Do It?"
I think it's a sad cover, seeing the two demented killers featured in full color and their victims all in smaller photos in black-and-white. There's something about the choice that sits wrong with me, even though I know journalistically that the news value is on trying to understand how violent killers can live among us. Still...
There is a chilling passage in the first few paragraphs of this article. It is simply awful to contemplate:
A girl was asked by the gunman if she believed in God, knowing full well the safe answer. "There is a God," she said quietly, "and you need to follow along God's path." The shooter looked down at her. "There is no God," he said, and he shot her in the head.
That young girl's heroism still makes me cry. Here's something that makes you scared.
Some members of Harris' and Klebold's clique, tagged in derision a few years before as the Trench Coat Mafia, had embraced enough Nazi mythology to spook their classmates. They reportedly wore swastikas on black shirts, spoke German in the halls, re-enacted World War II battles, played the most vicious video games, talked about whom they hated, whom they would like to kill. Harris and Klebold liked to bowl: when Harris made a good shot, he would throw his arm up, "Heil Hitler!"
What lessons can be learned? Well, we can debate gun control again, or argue for better reaction times among school officials. But there is a universal lesson that the close survivors of Columbine and of Virginia Tech can teach us.
Her friends began writing notes to their parents, saying that they loved them, that they thought they were going to die. Everyone was praying. "In a world where there are so many religions," says Lexis, "everyone was praying the same way." One friend made a vow. "If I ever get out, I'm going to be nice to my little brother."
Take a moment after you've read this, think about the people you care about, maybe about how you haven't hugged them or held them or just told them you care. Then do it. Just because.
Otherwise, lessons are probably going to continue to be as hard to come by now as they were then.
The hardest thing about the search for an explanation was the growing fear there might not be one. There would be lots of talk about the venomous culture that these boys soaked in--but many kids drink those waters without turning into mass murderers. There would be talk of deep family dysfunction, something in their past or their present, but nothing in the first days of archaeology turned up anything tidy that explained something so massively wrong. These were parents who came to all the Little League and soccer games. They even came to practices.
My wife is working with a trio of filmmakers on a documentary about the aftermath of Columbine. It's called "13 Families" and deals with those who were left behind and how they have dealt with the death of their loved ones. It does not include the two Columbine shooters in the documentary at all. They have had enough publicity.
Our hearts go out now to the new victims in Virginia.
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