Posted on 04/15/2006 5:26:23 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
LITTLETON, Colo. -- Just before prom 1999, Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis gave students at an assembly his yearly reminder to make wise choices.
"I said, 'You're a valuable member of Columbine High School, you're a part of this family, and I love you,'" DeAngelis recalled.
Four days later, two students opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 and a teacher before killing themselves. Not long after the April 20, 1999, attack, DeAngelis found himself delivering the same message to teachers and students.
Seven years after the worst school shooting in U.S. history, DeAngelis is still walking the halls of the suburban Denver high school. He and other staff members haven't stopped thinking about those who died. He remembers their faces. And for a while, DeAngelis felt guilty he survived.
"My life was spared. I was given a second chance," he said .
The morning of the massacre, DeAngelis was in his office with a teacher he planned to hire when his secretary ran in, saying there was a shooting. DeAngelis ran to the hallway.
"As soon as I got out of my office, I realized my worst nightmare was occurring," he said.
Gunshots whizzed past him, shattering glass in the doors behind him.
"I felt that this is it, my days are numbered and I'm going to die," he said.
He remembers watching 20 or so students about to walk into the crossfire, forcing him to react; picking out the master key from a ring of 30 keys on the first try to get the students behind the gymnasium's locked doors; his friend and teacher Dave Sanders getting shot because the gunmen focused on him instead of DeAngelis. Sanders died in a classroom with students around him as they waited for help to arrive.
"Something I had to live with was survivors' guilt," DeAngelis said.
The next year, DeAngelis threw himself into school life everyday, thinking it would help him cope. The long hours led to a divorce after 18 years of marriage. Now DeAngelis is engaged, to a high school sweetheart who sent a sympathy card in 1999 that was part of a stack DeAngelis was only able to open in 2002.
He has decorated a wall in his office with messages of support in a display DeAngelis said gives him strength. It holds inspirational quotes and plaques from family and faculty, a student's drawing of Sanders, a Columbine baseball hat with the initials of slain student Kyle Velasquez. DeAngelis made a practice of handing out diplomas to parents of slain students at the time they would have graduated. Kyle's father gave the hat to DeAngelis the day he came to pick up Kyle's diploma.
The latest addition on an adjoining wall is a framed shirt and hat sent to him by school officials from Red Lake, Minn., the scene of a school shooting last year that left 10 people dead.
The Jefferson County sheriff is deciding whether to publicly release videotapes, known as the "basement tapes," made by the two gunmen before the shootings. DeAngelis has seen the tapes and said they would do "so much good" in the hands of a sociologist or psychologist who could study them and recommend how to prevent attacks.
"My biggest fear would be that the basement tapes would end up in the wrong hands," he said, noting a man's posting of one of the gunmen's cars on eBay this year.
No public event is scheduled on the seventh anniversary of the shootings, but DeAngelis canceled classes for the day. At 11:20 a.m., he will read the names of the slain over the public address system. He plans to call their families to let them know they're in his thoughts.
"Life's so short," DeAngelis said. "You don't want to take anything for granted."
At one time they said Southpark was based of the town where Columbine took place but I have not heard that in a while.
DeAngelis was a puke in '79 when he started at Columbine and he's still a puke. He's hanging on until he can retire after 30 years at 75% of his pay and get that PERA compensation package. He is a shining example of why granting tenure is a bad idea.
Urban legend.
Maybe you are right but a quick search suggests one of the Southpark creators Matt Stone went to Columbine High.
No, Littleton is still pretty close to Denver. South Park is based more on the rural areas outside Denver, like Fairplay or even Nederland.
Too bad he wasn't packing that day.
Of course, if he was, then it would have been spun as "having set a bad example." but the kids would be alive.
Stone attended Heritage which is in a different district.
thanks for that info.
The teacher bled to death while the cops cowered in the parking lot.
PING
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