Columbine memorial honours massacre victims

Hundreds of people gathered under blue autumn skies Friday to dedicate an expansive hillside memorial to the Columbine High School massacre victims, after more than eight years of money struggles and occasional disputes.

The placid, stone-walled oval nestled in Clement Park is next to the school in Littleton, Colo.,where two student gunmen killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves on April 20, 1999.

During the ceremony, 213 doves were released and flew over the park.

Patrick Ireland, who was wounded in the attack, offered words of optimism. He was shot twice in the head and hung out of a library window while the tragedy unfolded, and has since had to relearn how to speak, walk and read.

"The world is inherently good. Columbine shouldn't be a word associated with something bad, with what happened. It should be associated with hope," Ireland said.

The memorial consists of a broad oval sunken into the rolling park terrain, sheltered from the breeze that usually blows down from the high mountains on the horizon.

The outer wall is called the Ring of Healing. A smaller interior circle formed by a lower wall is called the Ring of Remembrance. Both are built of red stone.

"It's its own place," said Paul Rufien, a memorial committee member. "It gets quieter once you get in there."

Dawn Anna, whose daughter Lauren Townsend was killed at Columbine, said the memorial would give people a place to remember the lives lost that day.

"Remember how their impish smiles could light up a room. Close your eyes, close your eyes, feel the breeze against your face. They're here, kissing you, reminding you that they're always near with everything you do, reminding you of their inner strength," said Anna, who was chosen to speak for the victims' families.

Messages from the 13 victims' immediate families are inscribed in the inner wall. One, by Brian Rohrbough in memory of his son Daniel, ties the 1999 shootings to abortion and moral decline, and accuses public officials of lies and coverups.

The memorial committee asked Rohrbough to soften the tone of his words, but he refused, and the organizers eventually accepted them as written.

"It was the way he wanted to remember his son," Rufien said. "So yes, that's the place for it and that's where it will be."

Rufien said the memorial is meant to nurture memories.

"We're going out of our way to avoid the word closure, because closure sounds like we mean forgetting. This place is about remembrance," he said.