Goodbye Kentucky. Hello Colorado.

April 20, 1999 was the day I left Kentucky to embark on a new adventure, nay, a new life. I had no idea what I was getting into, what lie before me, and what to expect. I simply surrendered to the journey. I've yet to decide if I was fully conscious to what I was doing or on some intuitive auto-pilot during this time.

Before leaving Kentucky, I worked for Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs as marketing director for the Lexington and Frankfort offices. Upon announcing my resignation and the reason why, many co-workers marveled at what I was about to do. One called me brave. I didn't really see myself as brave at that point, but today I understand why someone may say that. I knew no one in Colorado, my cousins having long since moved on to other states. I'd later meet a couple of people while out for an interview before I actually make the move. Even “braver” I'm told going without having secured a job first. Brave or crazy, I'm not sure, but the good news was I landed a job offer two days before I left Kentucky. Life was falling into place.

I headed out early that April morning, giving my worried mom reassurance with one last hug that I would be fine. By the time I landed for the night in Kansas, I'd learn in a phone call home letting mom and dad know I was okay that tragedy struck in Littleton, the very community where I shopped for my apartment. Columbine. It wouldn't be until I arrive the next day that I would fully grasp the severity of what actually happened. Honestly, I don't think anyone at the time understood what had happened. I've shared in previous blog posts about this experience and how Columbine would instantly hook me into the Littleton community.

After arriving to Denver, I lived in a La Quinta Inn for almost two weeks while I sorted out the final arrangements on my apartment which was across the street and park from Columbine High School. I had only that which I could carry in my Toyota Tercel when I headed West, and given it was a small car, that wasn't much. I moved into my new place with nothing but the clothes I brought with me. The first night in my apartment I slept on the floor; two hours into a sleepless night, I decided to go to Walmart to get an air mattress. They were closed! The Walmart in Kentucky stayed open 24 hours! How can it be closed!?!  No, Toto, I don't think we're in Kentucky anymore.

It would be another two weeks before I'd start my new job with Grant Thornton LLP as marketing director for both the Denver and Colorado Springs offices. I spent time getting affairs often associated with a move in order: Colorado driver's license, license plates, banking accounts, change of address cards completed, etc. I also visited the Columbine memorial that developed across the street in Clement Park. The amount of people that came through there was overwhelming.  So many in fact that the once lush sodded grass was reduced to grass-less mud thanks to April snow showers. I had to show my ID in order to get into my apartment complex. Media trucks were everywhere. This madness would last at least a month.

I hung out with a gal I met only the week before at a legal marketing conference – Aleisha. She was a godsend of an angel who reached out to me with empathy having herself transplanted there from Texas knowing no one. Our friendship developed as we got to know each other and she showed me around the area.

I learned a lot in the first few weeks in Colorado. You can't drink as much in the higher altitude as you would at sea level; you get plastered faster if you do. The higher altitude will take your breath away, literally, even from climbing a simple flight of stairs. It took several months before my lungs adjusted to the thinner air. Colorado has no humidity, which means the air is drier, which means drier skin. I had to drink more water and lather with lotion more then I've ever in my life. They have these lanes called HOV lanes; high occupancy vehicles meaning no cars unless there are more than one person in it could expressly travel through traffic.

In the time before starting my job, the reality of this major change in my life hit me and homesickness set in. I didn't know but a couple of people. I missed my dogs which were in my parents' safekeeping until they brought my furniture out the next month. I missed my family. I missed familiarity.

Yet, here I was.  Despite the tears and the fears that crept up, I dealt with the realization that life as I had known it in Kentucky was no more. A new life in Colorado, unknown, uncertain, and for reasons still unclear to me, had begun.

We Are All Columbine

Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 20 will mark the 12th anniversary of the Columbine shooting. This date is forever etched into my memory as a young woman arriving fresh from Kentucky into a stunned and grieving community, but not as deeply and painfully burned into memory of those who were in the building that day.

On Wednesday, April 20, 1999, I left Kentucky for a new life in Colorado. Earlier in the month, while in Denver for a job interview, I connected with a coworker’s brother who lived in a beautiful apartment complex called The Fairways at Raccoon Creek where I obtained rental information for my return later in the month. The apartments were in Littleton, Colorado across the road from Clement Park, across Clement Park from Columbine High School. On my first day’s drive, I stopped in Kansas for the night, calling home to let my folks know I was safe. It was then that I learned about a school shooting. I continued west the next morning towards my new life, arriving in Denver later than evening, arriving at my temporary home, a LaQuinta Inn just outside of downtown Denver. Tired from the drive and hungry, I got a bite and went right to bed. It wasn’t until the next morning that the reality of what happened two days earlier sunk in, not only for me but for the rest of the city, state, and world, as more details unfolded. You couldn’t miss it; it was on every local and national news station: scenes replayed from helicopter vantage points; ground footage of bloody teenagers running for their lives; interviews with students, their parents, faculty, law enforcement, anyone who was in the vicinity at the time of the incident. I sat in my motel room watching for hours, sobbing uncontrollably.

I later returned to the Fairways to secure my apartment. Getting into the area required credentials and was like getting into a war zone. On the road's edge of Clement Park, a makeshift memorial developed in memory of those who lost their lives that day; for all except the two that spearheaded the rampage. My heart was immediately anchored in the community of Littleton. I had a stake in all that this community was going through, the grief, the anger, and the confusion of how such a thing could happen in such a charming community. I met families who were impacted by the shooting; parents who knew nothing of the safety of their children for hours afterwards, teens who witnessed their friends injured or killed.

Littleton united to mourn the losses, honor those lost, and to begin a healing process that would take many, many years for this community to even begin to experience. Media trucks took up residence everywhere throughout Clement Park for a month and a half. Memorabilia of stuffed animals, candles, notes, flowers, trinkets, letters, signs, and other such items collected throughout the park’s sidewalks with designated areas for each of those whose life was lost that dark day. People from the metro-Denver area, as well as surrounding metro communities, towns, even out of state, came to pay their respects, in the hopes of walking away with a better understanding of what happened, how it happened, why it happened. Many left only shaking their heads and in tears. Someone raised fifteen crosses for the dead; outrage broke when two of those crosses were raised for the two young killers. Two of the crosses were taken down amidst division of anger and forgiveness. While the effort was noble, no one at this time felt themselves in a forgiving mood.

Thousands of lives were changed that day. Everyone in the metro-Denver area questioned how such violence could be felt or created by two young teenagers. Those in surrounding neighborhoods questioned a sense of safety for themselves and their children. Those in school that day, freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, and all faculty and staff who lost peers, students, and colleagues suffered post-traumatic stress, haunted by nightmares. For months afterwards, customer service reps or business connections asked me how “we” were doing, and let me know that “we’d” been in their prayers.

The following fall, Clement Park was again its lush green landscape that for months was trampled into dirt by mourners visiting the makeshift memorial. Much debate around who was at fault, how to better secure schools, and sorting out all the details of what actually transpired that fateful morning was still a loud murmur in the aftermath. On the first year anniversary, and second, third, and fourth, media returned to “pick the scab” of a community desperately trying to heal the wounds that would forever leave a scar. And for several years afterwards, to the chagrin of many Littleton community members, myself included, Columbine became a tourist spot, as people would sit on or by the Columbine High School sign for photo ops. One weekend in late October, a stranger approached a friend and me asking us where the Columbine Memorial was located. After explaining it had since been gathered and stored several months earlier, the stranger’s responded with irritation: “Well, I drove a long way to come see it!”

I mourned the senseless loss of life, and I quietly grieved for the two young men who felt their only option was to act out rather than ask for help. I cheered on support for more proactive education against bullying and I cringed when everyone blamed each other. I silently believed that we ALL were responsible for Columbine in some small and indirect way: by allowing violence into video games, and our young people access to this desensitizing entertainment; by allowing children unmonitored access to the Internet and website development sites; by “respecting” teens’ privacy by not entering bedrooms; by not more closely monitoring and being aware of who our kids are hanging out with, where they are, and what they’re doing; by not talking to our children about bullying, and by not teaching children to not judge others by appearances, to respect differences, and unique personalities; by condoning in-school intimidation and arrogance by school athletes, and allowing students easier access on and off school campuses for lunch breaks; by not insisting enforcement authorities do more to investigate red flags of violence; by allowing kids to “pretend” to shoot guns at other people; by not insisting on stricter regulations for gun purchases in the name of “right to bear arms” and for making “how to make a bomb” information more easily available on the Worldwide Web. I could keep going but you get the point. We all contribute to the development of our youth’s well-being of body, mind and spirit. It takes a village. . . . .

Positive things came out of the experience as we learned some valuable lessons – law enforcement is better equipped to work more collaboratively in handling such an overwhelming experience, video games now have age appropriate ratings, and we as adults take more seriously verbal threats, real or unreal, spoken in anger by children. I hope you’ll join me for a moment of silence Wednesday, April 20 at 11:17 a.m. as I do every year to honor the memory of those lives lost so that we may remember and learn.