April 20, 1999 -- Imagine a crowded high school cafeteria. Students everywhere are eating their lunches, studying for tests and spending time with their friends. As they did so, two seniors calmly walked into their school at the peak of lunch hour armed with guns and opened fire on their classmates.
This was Columbine.
I've recently finished David Cullen's book entitled "Columbine". "In this remarkable account of the Columbine High School shooting, Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen?
After reading this book, it would be easy for me to say that I read it completely objectively without taking sides, without coming to my own conclusions. If I were to say that, I would be lying. This book leaves me angry. It leaves me angry at the killers, the subversive culture of the media in this country, and it leaves me angry at those that had to lose their lives in this terrible tragedy. It makes me appreciate my own high school experience even more.
Most of all, it makes me think of wasted opportunities.
All 13 of the people who were murdered at Columbine had opportunities. Opportunities that were wasted by two thoughtless mass murderers. Some students, like Patrick Ireland, would eventually recover. 13 others weren't so lucky. how often do we take our opportunities for granted? How often do we settle for less then the best because we're scared to take a chance? When I come across a new opportunity, I think of the 13 that lost their lives at Columbine.
In 2000, The Columbine High School Band premiered a work called "An American Elegy", which was written by a composer friend of mine, Frank Ticheli. Upon hearing that their school had no alma mater, he wrote them one. Both "An American Elegy" and the Columbine Alma Mater have stuck with me for years. After reading this book, I re-listened to these pieces of music, and I'm not afraid to admit that I openly wept. David Cullen's book may have provoked a response from me, but it took genuine, emotional music to make me really feel the dramatic scope of that terrible day. The words to the Columbine Alma Mater are something that everyone can draw strength from, not just students there:
"Mountains rising to the sun,
Towering o'er the plains;
Heads held high we stand as one,
And proudly we proclaim:
We are Columbine,
We all are Columbine!"
Even though I wasn't involved, and am in no way connected to the school, city, county or even state, I feel like a part of me belongs to those that now walk or have walked the halls at Columbine High School.
We ALL are Columbine.
Listen to a Recording of "An American Elegy"
2 comments:
I've been urging everyone who has read Cullen's book to please give three other books on the same subject a try. And that's mostly because I fear that the people who have read Cullen's "Columbine" will think that what Cullen wrote is the absolute truth, that he had all the facts and wrote them down as such. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Columbine" isn't a horrible book but it is flawed and inaccurate and should not be accepted as the "definitive" book on the subject because it's anything but.
There are three other books that have been written about Columbine and while they're not perfect either, in my opinion they give a more accurate depiction of the events surrounding the attack on Columbine High School. The books are "Comprehending Columbine" by Ralph Larkin, "Columbine: A True Crime Story" by Jeff Kass (a staff writer for Denver's Rocky Mountain News who has covered the Columbine story since the very beginning) and "No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death At Columbine" by Brooks Brown. The latter is more of a memoir by one of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's classmate and friend. The first two books take a much more in-depth and accurate look than Cullen's book at what happened at Columbine and why. Larkin's book in particular makes a very strong case for the fact that indeed Harris and Klebold were bullied during their four years at Columbine and that this was probably a strong factor in why they attacked their school. Cullen would have you believe otherwise because it (the two boys being bullied) doesn't fit in with his preferred profile of them. So he's conveniently ignored evidence and recounts of their being bullied by eyewitnesses and simply leaves it out of his book. Larkin and Kass include these facts in their books, and more that Cullen doesn't.
It's my hope that anyone who has read or is contemplating reading Cullen's book will go on to read the three books that I've mentioned. The books will give them a better and more accurate look at what happened at Columbine.
Lisa,
I agree completely with your assessment of Cullen's book. I've read the book by Brooks Brown and also the one by Jeff Kass. I found both of those books to be a more accurate depiction of what actually took place, and I also found some spots in Cullen's story that didn't match up with the other material I've read on Columbine. Thanks for your comment, I appreciate the feedback.
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