Memory is tricky. It's slippery. It's changeable.
When the memories go back a few decades, the confusion grows.
I was reminded of this just this week when I compared two interviews I did with people who I asked about the 1999 Columbine shootings. First, I spoke on the phone with a man who was a senior at Highlands Ranch HS that year. A couple days later, I spoke with the father of a woman who was a 14-year-old freshman at Columbine back then.
The connection there was that I am researching the St. Luke's church history and have lately been exploring just how much of an effect Columbine had on the St. Luke's clergy, the congregation, and the youth, in particular. The school and the church are about 8 miles apart, and a 15-minute drive. But in 1999, the southern suburbs of Denver were not fully built out and there were many who drove quite a way to find a church that fit their needs.
St. Luke's was known as a progressive outpost and drew people from all over the area.
At Highlands Ranch HS, the office got a bomb threat call the morning of April 20, part of a diversionary effort, apparently. The bomb squad was called in when someone spotted a "suspicious device." They blew it up but it was not a bomb, after all.
Everyone was herded into the gym during this lock down. Think about that. It's easy to forget that schools did not practice for "active shooters" in those days, and those days are only 27 years ago.
Say, that makes me think that seniors in 1999 would now be about 45. A lot has happened since then, that's for sure. One thing we now know is that we don't make it easier on the mass murderers.
But here's the two memories, briefly, that started this post.
The guy was a senior then now lives on the west coast and is an attorney. He told me about one young women, a freshman at Columbine in 1999, and how much it haunted him to see her traumatized after the massacre when he saw her during a church youth group meeting a few days later.
He said he thought she had suffered a lot, saying she had been in the library, hiding under a table, and that she had likely seen others killed. He said he had a picture in his mind of a blond, bubbly, cheerleader type.
That's quite a story!
Two days later I talked to that young woman's father about what he knew about her experience. Turns out she was in the cafeteria, not the library, and that she had been sitting near the duffel bags filled with explosives that the killers had planned to detonate. Thank heaven that didn't work.
A teacher named Dave Sanders ran into the cafeteria and yelled that everyone should run, and she did. She left behind her lacrosse gear... not a cheerleader. She was the last student out of the cafeteria, closely followed by Sanders. At some point, Sanders stopped and went back. Another teacher urged her to get out of the building, and she did.
Dave Sanders later died of gunshot wounds.
That freshman girl ran across the street, knocked on the door of a house, and used a landline to call her mother. She caught a ride from someone to her nearby house. Her dad estimated that she was home within 30 minutes.
She had no close friends hurt or killed. She saw no one being shot. No bullets whizzed by her head. She did suffer PTSD and needed extensive counseling before returning to her former self... and perhaps she never did really "get over it."
So, those are two very different tales. Which is true? My guess is that her father is closest to accurate, but it would be difficult to be 100 percent certain.
The then-senior's story was quite dramatic, though filled with holes, and the storyteller in me had vague hopes it might be true. But, like many such memories, his had morphed, likely incorporating some other stories over time. He had created a myth, of sorts, and I am not sure I will let him know that. People cling to their myths.
The now 40-ish woman would rather not be interviewed about it all, which I completely understand. But I do wonder if she would provide a third perspective that could take the story in a whole new direction.
Truth turns out to be nearly as slippery as memory.
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