Players See Why Tears Are Falling
As the team bus pulled up to Columbine High School, a hush fell over the men inside, all conversation stopped by three words on a signpost.
“Library is Closed.”
The San Jose Sharks, represented by eight players and three team officials, went to Columbine on Thursday to deliver a banner of support. It turned out to be the hardest trip they ever will make.
As Sharks forward Dave Lowry said after the 90-minute visit: “Just imagine the emotions this community must feel when you come here as an outsider and you can feel it, you’re rocked.”
It is here, amid memorials to the dead, that the tragedy comes alive. You shudder not from the cold mountain wind but from the horror, the grief, the chilling reality of it all.
“God,” defenseman Jeff Norton said, walking away from the makeshift shrine to a girl named Rachel, “this is so awful.”
There is no preparing for the scene you find here. You can read all about it, watch it on TV, glued to the set for hours. After 10 minutes here, you want to turn and run away.
The Sharks came with their banner, 5 feet high by 50 feet long and barely a space to add their names. Norton; Lowry; Ron Sutter; Tony Granato; Stephane Matteau; Bill Houlder; Mike Rathje; and Joe Murphy.
Others were said to be coming later, on their own. But these eight - all parents - were on the 11 a.m. bus to heartbreak.
“You can only cry alone for so long,” Granato had said late Wednesday night, after the Sharks’ playoff victory over the Colorado Avalanche. “There comes a time when you’ve got to go out and share the people’s pain.”
There is no shortage of pain. Hundreds of people walk the grounds of this sprawling campus, and they all carry the same ashen look. Every step brings a new heartache; a boy, maybe 15, stands alone, holding a forlorn bunch of flowers at his side, tears streaming down his face.
The shrines are devastating, and beautiful.
“Put me in Coach; I’m ready to play,” reads a hand-sewn banner at the memorial to Dave Sanders, the teacher and coach who died while protecting his students. He had four kids of his own and hundreds more at the school.
“Thank you,” reads another message to Sanders. “Without your strength many more could have been lost. Rest in peace, my friend.”
“You almost feel like you knew these people,” Granato said. This one played the cello. This one loved trucks. This one here, she was brilliant. Theirs are lives captured in collage, lives cut short incomprehensibly. There are no misfits here now, no outcasts. The farmer in his overalls, the officer in uniform, the woman pulling her toddler in a wagon, the millionaire athletes - they are one and the same here.
The Sharks hang their banner without fanfare, a handful of people looking on only because they happen to be there.
“It’s a wonderful gesture,” says Dodie Simmons, a Denver resident and Avalanche season-ticket holder. “It warms the heart.”
They unfurl the banner and affix it to the cyclone fence that borders the tennis courts. Ten days ago, there was one sign here. It read: “Tennis Only. No rollerblades or skateboards.”
Once upon a time 10 days ago these were the type of problems facing Columbine High.
You think how peaceful and privileged this place was 10 days ago, right before the first gunshots rang out. The tennis courts are two-tone tartan surface. There are three baseball diamonds, all immaculately kept. A football field, a soccer pitch, a running track, beach volleyball courts. It happened here.
“This banner shows the support of the fans and community in San Jose,” Murphy said. “It shows we’re all in this together, no matter the distance.”
Minutes, Murphy had been alone, off by himself on the hill. Rebel Hill, it is called, after the Columbine Rebels. Once legendary for testing the physical endurance of Columbine’s best athletes, the hill now tests the emotional endurance of even the toughest men.
It is here on the hilltop that 15 large crosses have been erected. Each bears the name of the deceased, all but three accompanied by this message stenciled across the horizontal beam: “Sleep Baby Sleep.”
The exceptions are for Sanders, the coach, and the two gunmen. The presence of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris on the hill is a point of controversy reflected in the writings on their crosses.
“No one is to blame,” reads one on Harris’ cross.
Just alongside of it: “You will never be forgiven.”
On the back side, somebody named Brittany has written the truth. “Your lives were lost long before this ever happened. Shame to all of us for never noticing.”
Yes, some good has come of this. That is the thing to say now, and it is not completely false. But not enough good has come of it. None ever could.
“Remember me not through tears and sorrow,” reads a sign at a 16-year-old’s shrine. “But remember me through sunshine and laughter. For that is how I shall remember you.”
As the team bus pulled away from Columbine High School, there was only silence.