Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey Depooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18; Kyle Valasquez, 16.
Initially, as a I contemplated what a national memorial might look like, those were the names and ages of the young people I would have hoped to see listed first. If you don’t recognize them you wouldn’t be alone. Most likely few people outside of their community know or remember those kids by name.
They are the students shot to death by classmates at Columbine High School in 1999. Had things gone differently, Isiaiah, the oldest student, would be close to 40 years old this year. But because of what happened that horrible day he — they — will always be kids.
The Columbine victims were not the first children shot to death on a school campus in this country. A quick search online reveals this country’s history is riddled with incidents in which sons and daughters were blasted into oblivion. The Columbine tragedy, however, was the first time the number of student fatalities was in the double digits.
Since then, as we know, there have been dozens of other school shootings, some not nearly as fatal. The grisly exception is the Sandy Hook Elementary School murders in which 20 first graders were slaughtered. Had they survived many of them today would be 16- and 17-year-olds enjoying their final years of high school.
On Memorial Day veterans who were killed serving this country will be honored with various ceremonies. From the laying of wreaths at national cemeteries to the roll calls at Walls of Honor in rural communities, the living pay homage to the military dead. They deserve that gesture.
But with respect to the men and women who joined the military, and their families who suffered their losses, those adults knew when they signed up for that job death was a possibility.
The children who showed up to their classrooms, however, had no such expectation. (Although that seems to have changed recently, judging by what Texas student Paige Curry said after some of her Santa Fe High School classmates were gunned down one week ago:
“It’s been happening everywhere, I always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too,” she said.)
Is this the country the men and women of the military fought and died for? A country in which children gradually come to expect a mass shooting to take place on their campus and where adults offer thoughts and prayers but little else?
I’m not sure what a national memorial to the students killed as a result of gun violence on campus should look like. But I do know that it would have to be large enough to include a never ending addition of names because this country loves its guns as much if not more than it loves its children.
