SURVIVORS SEARCH FOR ‘NEW NORMAL’
“I call her and Sean my miracle babies.” Kara Graves Her husband, Sean, survived six gunshot wounds at Columbine
The nightmares come each spring. In the dark of his bedroom a few miles from where it all began, Sean Graves relives the feeling of bullets slamming through his stomach, the odd sensation of something somehow sliding through him. He always worries about shootings, that his wife and daughter will be trapped or threatened by gunmen, that they won’t be able to find a way to escape. As every April approaches, his mind returns to a specific day, a specific memory, when two classmates with trench coats and duffel bags opened fire. He is back at Columbine. Back to being a 15-year-old freshman who loves comic books and MacGyver. Back to lying on the cold concrete and shattered glass. Back to the fire alarm ringing and shots being fired and his blood soaking his thin black jacket.
“I’m in the history books,” Graves says as he watches his 3-year-old daughter, Olivia, play. “I didn’t choose the cards we were dealt. We just have to play them.”
Twenty years ago, Graves was shot six times by his two classmates, fellow teenagers who slaughtered 12 students and a coach before killing themselves.
Olivia doesn’t understand the trauma her father struggles with daily, his nagging injuries from the shooting and the 49 surgeries he had to help reverse his partial paralysis. She doesn’t understand why he asks her to identify exits any time they go someplace new, why he worries about who might present a threat and why he’s obsessed with listening to police radio traffic.
The details of Columbine remain seared into the nation’s consciousness. The shooting forced a conversation about school safety, SWAT tactics, mental health and gun control, and it forever reshaped the simple act of going to school. For many Americans, it was the first time a school was an unsafe place. The nation struggled to dissect what had happened and who had missed what warning signs.
Each subsequent shooting, from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, to Parkland, Florida, to Santa Fe, Texas, left a similar legacy of pain and loss for its survivors, the students and teachers and parents who woke up the next day trying to put their lives back together.
Graves, 35, has tried to help police, school administrators and legislators grapple with changes that could help protect students.
He has watched as shootings continued, each one instantly hauling him back to that fateful day 20 years ago. And he watches his daughter grow up in that world.
“I forget what month we’re in, and then (the nightmares) start, and I’m like, ‘Oh, what’s the date?’ Every year, like clockwork.” Sean Graves Columbine survivor
A different time
Until April 20, 1999, Columbine High School was like most others in the Denver metro area: not particularly rich, not particularly poor, not particularly big or particularly small. Athletics were important, but so were academics at the school of about 2,000 students.
Frank DeAngelis became principal in 1996. He had seen only two classes graduate when the first shots rang out at 11:19 a.m. on what had been a beautiful spring morning. Two students armed with a rifle, handgun, shotguns, knives and bombs began firing at their classmates and teachers.
Like many school administrators that day, DeAnglis ran toward the gunfire, not entirely understanding what was happening. Today, administrators, teachers and students participate in regular “active shooter” training. But 1999 was a different world.
Back then, SWAT tactics generally called for officers to surround a site, form a team and enter. The theory was that rushing a shooter might cause the gunman to kill hostages. Today, in large part because of lessons learned at Columbine, officers are trained to rush toward a shooter, confronting the attacker as quickly as possible.
At Columbine, students, faculty and staff remained on their own for 47 minutes after the first shots were fired.
“Today, that strategy of waiting seems nuts,” DeAngelis said.
DeAngelis chose to remain at the school until every student enrolled that day graduated. He watched “his” kids grow up to have children of their own, helped them feel safe about going to Columbine or any other classroom. He became a consultant who helps manage the fallout of other school shootings.
He wrote a book recounting his experience. In “They Call Me ‘Mr. De’ ” DeAngelis laid out for the first time exactly what happened to him during the shooting and his efforts to heal the community in the following years. Its publication was timed for the 20th anniversary of the shooting.
In the days after the shooting, community members gathered first in candlelight vigils, then in funerals for the 13 victims. Classes eventually resumed at a nearby school building, and graduation took place a few weeks later. Two of the slain had been set to graduate, and the wounds were still fresh.
All summer, contractors remodeled Columbine High School, changing the look and feel, blocking out the library where so many had died and covering up bullet holes.
There were other changes. Fire alarms needed a different sound lest they trigger anew the anxiety of an already frightened student body. The cafeteria banned Chinese food, because the smell of the meal served on that fateful day also could trigger anxiety for survivors. Even camouflage clothes or the sight of police cars parked out front frightened some kids, DeAngelis said.
The principal has his own triggers: The sound of July Fourth fireworks that year at a Colorado Rockies game sent him diving for the ground.
DeAngelis avoids driving in springtime. He has crashed his car six times since the shooting, each time around the anniversary. He relies on Uber and Lyft rides for a few months.
Channeling anger
In addition to the 13 dead, the gunmen shot 21 others, including Graves, then 15. Graves was wounded in his back, foot and stomach. He spent months recuperating from partial paralysis at Craig Hospital, 8 miles from the school. He was angry through a lot of his recovery and credits his work with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation with helping him turn that frustration into constructive assistance to other people who have suffered paralyzing injuries. Graves walked across the stage for graduation in 2002, assisted only by a cane.
His injuries ended his dreams of becoming a police officer or soldier, but his status as a Columbine survivor has given him a platform of a different kind. He works with patients at Craig and speaks to law enforcement groups about the importance of school safety.
Graves and his friends, including 29 children between them all, usually go camping every April 20 to avoid the reminders, which mercifully have grown softer over the years. Guns never bothered Graves – he and his wife go hunting – but the threat from other people remains a concern.
One of his best friends, Daniel Rohrbough, died in the shooting, and the nightmares have started again.
“I call it the gift that keeps on giving,” Graves said. “I forget what month we’re in, and then they start, and I’m like, ‘Oh, what’s the date?’ Every year, like clockwork.”
He and his wife, Kara, try not to let that single event shape their entire lives. “You have to find that new normal,” says Kara, 32. “Out of sight, out of mind doesn’t work.”
For 16 years she has stood with Sean as he has battled nightmares and crank calls and creepy internet conspiracy theorists.
“We always knew we were never going to be like other families,” Kara says. “I never thought it was going to be as hard as it was. You want to be able to console them and realize that sometimes you just can’t, and that’s OK.”
Olivia is a source of joy for the couple, a daughter conceived after six miscarriages and a failed adoption.
“I call her and Sean my miracle babies,” Kara says as she watches them play.