Indelible images

Lutheran, The, Jun 1999 by Miller, David L

Littleton Lutherans learn to live with what they've seen and heard

"How's it going, Elizabeth?" asks a man in the narthex of St. Philip Lutheran Church, Littleton, Colo. "OK," shrugs the 15-year-old as she walks off. But her eyes are blank and glassy. She looks inward at a scene she wishes she could erase from memory. But she can't.

And it's clear she doesn't want to talk about what she saw at Columbine High School on April 20, when 12 students and a teacher were killed by two youths who then committed suicide.

Elizabeth is one of 69 high school students from four ELCA congregations who were at Columbine that day.

"Their sense of loss is devastating. Kids were in that violence, that terror, for three and four hours," says Rick Barger, a pastor of Abiding Hope Lutheran Church, Littleton, which has 24 students at Columbine.

Barger was inside the police perimeter as students fled the school. He handed them his cell phone to call their parents. He also walked one student, Amber, to a library where parents awaited news of their children. He entered and called for her mother, who approached him shaking with terror. Barger gave her the good news.

"I'll never again read the story of the father welcoming home the Prodigal Son without seeing this reunion," he says. "I saw what it means to wait and pace and then not care about what anyone thinks as you hold the one you feared was lost."

John Conrad, pastor of Joy Lutheran Church, Parker, Colo., waited with the mother of Corey DePooter, 17, at nearby Leawood Elementary, where survivors were united with their parents. As the crowd dwindled the news came: The school had been cleared.

Conrad stayed with her as she completed a coroner's form listing Corey's physical characteristics so they could identify him. "I'll never forget," Conrad says. He presided at the funeral for DePooter, whose grandparents are ELCA members.

Terrifying images

Pastors and counselors sent to ELCA churches by Lutheran Family Services of Colorado met with students terrorized by images that reduced Vietnam veteran police and paramedics to sobs.

Lutheran youth had seen friends splattered by bullets. Some had guns pointed at them before the killers adjusted their aim and shot the person next to them. One was lying between Cassie Bernall, who confessed her faith in God before being killed, and Isaiah Shoels, who was killed, in part, because he was African American.

All 69 escaped the bullets except Anne Marie Hochhalter, 17, of Christ Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colo. She was shot twice. One bullet struck her spine. It is too early to tell the extent of her permanent injuries.

"For Anne Marie's family everything that's happened since the shooting is a miracle," says their pastor, David Jensen. "The paramedics were under fire when they took her. At triage, she was first because she was the worst. She was within moments of bleeding to death. They had to begin the surgery right in the emergency room. Everything has gone her way. If not, she wouldn't have made it."

"Angels dance in her eyes," a hospital staff member said of Hochhalter. But dancing angels aren't what Barger saw in the eyes of the 32 youth he took on retreat 10 days after the shootings.

"I've never seen a group so wounded," he says. "These are kids with soccer shirts and pimples whose daily conversation is about death and security. They talk about crawling over bodies and about going to Chatfield (the high school where Columbine students will finish the semester) and not knowing where the exits are so they know how to get out if someone starts shooting.

"There's an 'aha' moment when they realize that nobody is safe-no matter how many police, how many monitors, how many metal detectors they put in they aren't safe anymore."

Abiding Hope opens its doors daily to Columbine students, who drop in before attending Chatfield.

What now?

Right after the shooting, all affected ELCA congregations held prayer services, some nightly. For Sunday and Wednesday gatherings, they divided members into age groups to discuss their feelings with LFS counselors. Lutheran Disaster Response gave an initial $10,000 grant to help coordinate LFS response.

But this ministry grows confusing. "I don't know what to do next," Barger says. "There's no textbook for this. We need to be with them, sing with them, laugh with them, act goofy with them and always be ready to listen."

Don Marxhausen, pastor of St. Philip, which has 40 Columbine students, has criticized some funerals and community services that deny people's pain, saying that "with Jesus all is fine."

"It won't be wonderful," he says. "It will be horrible. The permanence of absence is an evolving process that creates great pain. It's lousy now, and it's going to get worse. But it's when things are horrible that God comes. I'm so thankful for Lutheran theology that gives us an honest word of hope."

Marxhausen sees one wonderful reality-the support he and area ELCA churches have received. St. Philip received 150 calls a day for several weeks after the shooting.