Hundreds Gather To Open Columbine Memorial

Dedication Comes After An 8 Year Struggle To Raise Money For the Project

(AP)  Hundreds of people gathered under blue autumn skies Friday to dedicate an expansive hillside memorial to the Columbine High School massacre victims, after more than eight years of money struggles and occasional disputes.

The placid, stone-walled oval nestled in Clement Park is next to the suburban Denver school where two student gunmen killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves on April 20, 1999, plunging the community into mourning and disbelief. During the ceremony, 213 doves were released and flew over the park.

Dawn Anna, whose daughter Lauren Townsend was killed at Columbine, said people troubled by the massacre have turned to Columbine as they sought "solace and healing" but she said the school itself wasn't meant to handle such a large burden. She said the memorial would help return Columbine to being a school again and give people a place to remember the lives lost that day.

"Remember how their impish smiles could light up a room. Close your eyes, close your eyes. Feel the breeze against your face, they're here. Kissing you, reminding you that they're always near with everything you do, reminding you of their inner strength," said Anna, who was chosen to speak for the victims' families.

Patrick Ireland, who was shot twice in the head and hung out of a library window while the tragedy unfolded live on national television spoke, offered words of hope. He had to relearn how to speak and walk. But the most difficult he went through after the shooting was relearning how to read.

"The world is inherently good...Columbine shouldn't be a word associated with something bad, with what happened. It should be associated with hope," he said.

The memorial consists of a broad oval sunken into the rolling park terrain, sheltered from the breeze that usually blows down from the high mountains on the horizon. The outer wall is called the Ring of Healing. A smaller interior circle formed by a lower wall is called the Ring of Remembrance. Both are built of red stone.

"It's its own place," said Paul Rufien, a memorial committee member. "It gets quieter once you get in there."

Messages from the 13 victims' immediate families are inscribed in the inner wall. One, by Brian Rohrbough in memory of his son Daniel, ties the 1999 shootings to abortion and moral decline, and accuses public officials of lies and cover-ups.

The memorial committee asked Rohrbough to soften the tone of his words, but he refused, and the organizers eventually accepted them as written.

"It was the way he wanted to remember his son," Rufien said. "So yes, that's the place for it, and that's where it will be."

Rufien said the memorial is meant to nurture memories.

"We're going out of our way to avoid the word closure, because closure sounds like we mean forgetting. This place is about remembrance," he said.

Two impromptu memorials sprang up in Clement Park immediately after the shootings. At one - where the permanent memorial now stands - 13 wooden crosses bore the names of the victims.

At another, well-wishers left mounds flowers, books, teddy bears and other keepsakes. Some of those items are archived in museums, Rufien said.

Planning for a permanent memorial started two months after the shooting.

Organizers originally envisioned a $2.5 million project, but fundraising was slow and much of the community's energy was focused on more immediate needs, including rebuilding the school library where many victims were shot.

The task of raising money was also made more difficult by an economic downturn and by the 2001 terrorist attacks, a southeast Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other tragedies that dominated potential donors' attention.

Fundraisers scaled back their goal to $1.5 million and finally reached it in April of this year. They got a boost from former President Clinton, who came to Colorado twice to raise money and chipped in $50,000 himself.

The final cost was about $2 million, including $400,000 worth of donated materials and in-kind services.

[voteronpaul3]

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[michellem99-2009]

I like crzmeat''s idea. There were school mates that died and they did so in the car at the high school I attended and for the dumbest things. Teens. I alway felt something useful that all could benefit and an honour to all. A wall built in a useful buliding that their names are in as part of that building. A park where all can enjoy on the idea of city park. Juse my say.

[Krazcarl]

I''m troubled when I was in high school lost friends in a tragic insident they put a makker by the football field in there memory the majority were teamates of mine. If your going to put up a memorial why not something the students could use a library inproved sports center scholerships not a knockoff to the Vietnam wall in DC.. That way the students would be remembered with gratitude and appriciation.

[missygurl1]

I cant believe it has been 8 years already. At that time my kids were not in school yet, but now that they are it scares me. I work with videos and transcripts and every thing is not always clearly heard espically when there is screaming and shooting going on. Even on the best quality tapes this is not always possible so no one can say for sure if the question of being a christian was heard and transcribed or not.

[michellem99-2009]

I saw this on CNN as it happened 8 years ago. I could not understand it. I am im my 50s. Why would pupils kill their school mates as it made no sense to me. Yes I was made fun of for handicaps I bear since birth. Sure the bullying hurt. It was uncalled for. Just as this was. I also feel school uniforms in the public schools should be in place for this nation as that is needed in America.. More fights break out over clothes, school clubs that bar others,hate systems allowed to grow..The heros are the ones that lived tho the awful stuff they remember.

[jacksteen1]

The Police Department has the tapes from the high school''s video surveillance system from that fateful day - every move of both the shooters and every kill is recorded (and is online, by the way).

No where in any of the scenes or transcripts of the events did such an exchange happen: "Are you a Christian?" A nice story, told by evangelicals as a sort of reverse-boogeyman story to shore up lagging faith in slacker high schoolers, I guess...but not a shred of truth.

Don''t believe everything Pat Robertson or his fat, roast-in-Hell pal Jerry Falwell said about the killings.

[sblake63]

Biggest hero of Columbine High School was the girl who had a gun in her face and one of the killers pointed a gun in her face and asked her "are you a Christian"? Knowing her answer would get her killed if she said yes - didn''t stop her from saying she was a Christian. I feel sorry for the unsaved who lost their lives there that day. They went to school that day thinking they had many years left, now they are lost in HELL

You never know when your last moment will be - Get saved now! That girl was the ONLY hero of that tragedy !!!