When I was in college I dated a girl from a suburb of Denver, Englewood, Colorado. It wasn't far from the city. In fact, when I visited, we drove into the Italian district and ate probably the best dinner in that genre that I've ever had. It was far from the airport and the inner parts of the city, a classic suburb.

Just a few minutes from her house in Greenwood Village, essentially a gated community, was the Denver Tech Center (DTC), a business village populated only by tall office buildings and hotels. I stayed in a beautiful Hilton for $60 a night, if I recall correctly.

The girl, who spent her entire childhood in the area, went to a sprawling suburban "public" school called Cherry Creek High School. I put public in quotations because it would be hard to compare it to a real public school. The campus consumed some 80 acres and housed more than 3700 students. It looked like a a very nice community college or small liberal arts school.

For those from the Seattle area, take Eastlake High School and the new Redmond High School, put them together, then double them. Now you have Cherry Creek. It was quite the amazing transformation for a school that barely 50 years before had its one room schoolhouse closed and eventually auctioned. What it speaks to is the amazing growth of American suburbia, a phenomenon that has created a whole new set of problems for those who study adolescence.

Cherry Creek is a powerhouse. Former star MLB closer Brad Lidge can be counted among its alumni. He donated a significant amount of money to make the baseball diamond look like a Triple-A level field. Current Seattle Mariners closer David Aardsma is an alum as well. The school boasts more than 160 state championships, including several in football. John Elway was once the quarterbacks coach in the program, while his son Jack was playing. Sports Illustrated named it the 5th best athletic school in the country a few years ago.

It was named a Blue Ribbon School by the Department of Education and sent an astonishing 95 percent of its 2007 graduating class to college.

All of it is nestled in a quiet, mostly well-to-do area just outside of Denver. Often I would here stories of classic high school life - Friday night football games, drinking, hookups in in the parking lots of empty office buildings and so on. Groups of kids, most with money, who had very few cares, giving them opportunities to both enjoy themselves and be extremely successful at whatever their hobby happened to be. Either way, their lives were largely shielded from critique and, in a school with 3700 kids, some people could obviously fall through the cracks. Even those who don't could certainly hide something fairly easily.

So, why do I tell you this story?

Cherry Creek is just 12 miles from Columbine High School.

In the exact same kind of a community, with the exact same type of kids, at the exact same model of school. Eleven years ago today, things in this country changed forever.

I was sitting in an art class. A sixth grader at Whitman Middle School, one of the "elective" classes we were forced to take was art. I hated every minute of it, but I did it anyway, often with the hopes that the teacher would just flip on Channel 1 and we could watch some kid-focused news for 50 minutes. This was really before everyone had a cellphone for quick conversation. No one sent text messages. The school barely had the internet. Nowadays if something like Columbine happened the switchboards would be jammed up as every parent in the country tried to call their child.

That day, I just happened to need to use the computer for a minute. As I opened the page to whatever site it was we used in those days - maybe AOL - (I think that was before most news organizations even had sites - the internet was run by Drudge Report), I noted a headline scrolling across the bottom: "Shooting at Colorado High School." Obviously being curious, I asked the teacher to turn on the news.

And there we sat as a class, for the first time in years - probably since the entire country watched the Challenger take off and blow up before their eyes, we watched a life-altering situation unfold on live television. This was not the O.J. Simpson car chase. This was a public high school taken hostage by two students.

After the failed bombing of the cafeteria, the two students began their rampage. Starting outside their building, working their way through the school and concluding in the library, the two killed 12 students, one teacher and themselves. Part of the police response was slowed due to the presence of the many bombs left throughout the building.

We watched this on live television. Initial estimates were 25 dead, a number that ended up being closer the amount wounded. Weeks would go by with reason after reason and theory after theory. Nothing could explain why two students would do this (warning: the description of the shooting is detailed and graphic). The following is an excerpt from the scene in the library, where the deadliest part of the shooting occurred.

Next, Klebold proceeded toward another set of tables, discovering Isaiah Shoels, Matthew Kechter, and Craig Scott, Rachel Scott's brother, hiding under one. All were popular athletes at the school. He attempted to pull Isaiah out from underneath the table, but was unsuccessful. He then called to Harris, who left Bree Pasquale and joined him. Klebold and Harris taunted Shoels for a few seconds and made derogatory racial comments towards him. Harris then knelt down and shot him in the chest at close range, killing him. Klebold also knelt down and opened fire, hitting and killing Matthew Kechter. Craig Scott remained uninjured as he lay in the blood of his friends, pretending to be dead.

Schools across America would install metal detectors, at least for the short term (including mine), as all-of-the-sudden we were thrust into uncharted territory. We would hear things ranging from gun control laws, to video games, to bullying and so on. Michael Moore would make a documentary called Bowling for Columbine, where he would go to the home of Charlton Heston and ask why he so famously supported the NRA.

Said then-Vice President Al Gore: "The young killers of Columbine High School do not stand for the spirit of America...we can rise up and we can say: no more."

Many policies would change, from gun laws, to the way police respond to live shooters with intent to kill and not take hostages. But perhaps the most involved prevention. As I mentioned before, the internet was new at the time. One of the shooters was known to maintain a website full of evidence of his possible intent. In the years following, we have seen the internet heavily policed, leading to some high-profile incidents in which students were prevented from carrying out like acts.

We also saw gun laws changed in schools. The Seattle School District implemented a no-tolerance policy, which was challenged at my middle school, when a student was immediately expelled for bringing a toy gun to school.

Some would say that we live in paranoia now. In my view, a little less privacy is a fair trade for a lot better security. Especially in a place as vulnerable as a school. While it did not save Columbine High School, it may have saved many more. In communities just like that one, or like the one 12 miles away. But also like the one inside the city. Gun violence in our communities is far too common, as it is in our schools as well. We, however, are no longer ignorant to it.

"Joy cometh in the morning," says the Scripture. May not the next day at Columbine. The wounds likely come rushing back each year on this date. But, ""in the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."


There is a really good book by Jodi Picoult, called Nineteen Minutes, that deals very specifically with school shootings. It is a devastating book, but a fabulous read. I've never met a single person who has read it that has been able to put it down. Adam used to come over to my house just to read it.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a positive note to the day: Happy Birthday to an old middle school friend, Kevin Hickenbottom, who I am guessing is out in the middle of the woods right now, enjoying every second of his life with that Yale degree.