The Spontaneous Memorial

One of the most touching events after the Columbine tragedy were the spontaneous memorials that popped up in Clement Park.  Clement is a large, multi-purpose park directly adjacent to and north and northwest of Columbine High School.  It quickly became an impromptu, makeshift memorial where people could express their feelings and pay their respects. 

Some Columbine students park in a Clement lot to the north of the school. A red Acura Legend and a brown Chevy pickup became an early magnet for people coming to the park.  They were vehicles driven to the parking lot on April 20th by victims Rachel Scott and John Tomlin.  Their vehicles became instant shrines, overflowing with memorial items—flowers, signs, cards, teddy bears, hearts, crosses and other religious items, hand-written notes and posters, candles, poems, and countless other objects. 

As the crowds grew, their vehicles became overwhelmed.

The spontaneous memorial then grew beyond the parking lot. A burgeoning number of people began coming to the park. At first, items were placed around trees and other objects.  Then the commemoration became more organized, with people bringing in display tents, most with tables placed inside, where items could be stacked and protected from the elements. 

Walking around the park, you couldn’t help but smell the sweet aroma of the hundreds of flower arrangements.  You could learn about the victims from the crosses in the ground, where people had strung newspaper clippings and personal stories.  On the fences surrounding the park’s tennis courts were strung bed sheets and huge poster paper displays with words of condolence from schools and organizations all over the nation.  

I returned to the makeshift memorials in Clement Park on a number of occasions—usually by myself, because Linda found it too sad to visit.  It was heartening to see thousands of people paying their respects to the victims, knowing that many of them did not know the victims personally. I was overwhelmed by the amount of reverence shown by the crowd.  There was no laughing, no trivial chitchat, no loud talking.  Mostly I heard whispered conversations, crying and sobbing, and somber silence. 

It was a moving experience to overhear students talking about the victims and watch them cry for the victims.  Daniel was shy and not a popular student, so hearing someone say something about him moved me to tears. 

There were different sets of crosses placed in the park, but the most prominent were those built and planted by Greg Zanis, a carpenter from Illinois. Most notable were his crosses on Rebel Hill, which is a bit away from where most of the spontaneous memorial was, in the far northeast corner of the park. The Rebel Hill crosses became controversial, because Zanis placed fifteen crosses, including for the two killers. Some of the victims’ parents were upset and took those two crosses out.

Early on, the crosses weren’t a huge draw, and the path to the top was pretty navigable.

But as word got around, there was often a long line of people trying to get up the hill. Linda and I decided to visit the celebrated crosses.  It was a cool, damp Sunday, as were so many of the days after the massacre.  As we entered the park, we found ourselves near the base of Rebel Hill, close to the front of the line rather than the end of it.  We saw hundreds of people snaking their way through the park in a line so long we couldn’t see the end. 

We thought of leaving rather than enduring a long, painful wait. But we asked ourselves whether we as parents of a victim should have to endure such a wait.  We spoke to an elderly pair of women who were in line near the base of the hill, explaining who we were and asking if we could join them.  They graciously agreed to let us “jump line,” and they comforted us.  We all trudged slowly along up the steep, muddy hill.  It certainly wasn’t an easy trek under those conditions, especially for the two women, one of whom was 81 years old.  Neither of them knew any of the victims, but had driven from miles away to pay their respects. How could you not be touched by that?

Eventually, the park was overrun with the large crowds and rain. Sod was worn off in places and replaced with mud, so straw was put down. With the damage being done to the park, the memorial was eventually shut down. Some of the materials were sent to storage as a remembrance.