    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 20, 1999]
    [Pages 820-823]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Columbine High School Community in Littleton
    May 20, 1999

        The President. Thank you very much. Do that cheer for me one more
    time.
        Audience members. We are Columbine! We are Columbine! We are
    Columbine!
        The President. Thank you.
        Dr. Hammond; Mr. DeAngelis; President DeStefano and the
    State legislators, county commissioners; Attorney General
    Salazar; especially Governor Owens, thank you for being here. To all the officials who are
    here; most especially to the students of Columbine and the students who
    are here from Chatfield and Dakota Ridge. And Heather Dinkel, thank you for standing up here in front of this big
    crowd and making a fine talk. Weren't you proud of her? She did a good
    job representing you today. [Applause]
        I want to say a special word of thanks to the families who met with
    Hillary and me before we came over
    here, for telling us the stories and showing us the booklets
    commemorating the lives of their very special children. I also want to
    thank the fine young people who still are hospitalized with whom I spoke
    by telephone yesterday--two of them, Patrick Ireland and Sean Graves, are here
    today. They left the hospital to be here.
        I know there are some other people here who are also still injured
    who have come. I thank all of you for coming. This has been a long, hard
    month for all of you, and as Hillary said, it's been a hard month for
    America.
        You heard her say that part of our job in these last 6 years, more
    than we ever could have imagined when we moved to Washington after the
    election in 1992, has been to be with grieving people, after the
    Oklahoma City building was blown up and the Embassies were blown up and
    our airmen were killed in the

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    bombing in Saudi Arabia and so many other occasions--and last year
    several times--after violence in schools. But something profound has
    happened to your country because of this. I want you all to understand
    that. I'm not even sure I can explain it to you.
        One of the incidents of school killing last year occurred in my home
    State. It's a small State. I was Governor there 12 years. I knew the
    people involved; it was heartbreaking. One of the mothers of one of the
    children who was killed still works with us for safer schools and safer
    childhoods. And all America grieved. But I think they thought, ``Oh,
    this is terrible; I wish somebody would do something about this.''
        But somehow, when this happened here--maybe because of the scope of
    it, and I think mostly because of you, how you reacted, all of you, the
    relief workers, the law enforcement people, the family members who were
    brave enough to speak--there was a different reaction. People thought,
    ``This has happened in my neighborhood; what can I do?'' I say that
    because you have a unique chance--a chance--to make sure that the
    children of Columbine are never forgotten.
        But first, you have to deal with you and your lives. You're all left
    with searing memories and scars and unanswered questions. There has to
    be healing. There has to be answers. And for those things that will not
    heal or cannot be answered, you have to learn to go on with your lives.
        I hope you have been comforted by the caring not only of your
    neighbors but of your country and people from all around the world. All
    America has looked and listened with shared grief and enormous affection
    and admiration for you. We have been learning, along with you, a lot
    about ourselves and our responsibilities as parents and citizens.
        When America looks at Jefferson County, many of us see a community
    not very different from our own. We know if this can happen here, it can
    happen anywhere. And we see with admiration the fundamentally strong
    values and character of the people here, from the students to the school
    officials, to the community leaders, to the parents.
        I think most Americans have looked at you and thought, among other
    things, that--God forbid--if something like this should ever happen to
    us, I hope we would behave as well. I hope we would also hold on to our
    faith as well.
        I am impressed that you are moving forward. Most of the children
    have returned to school, even returned to sports and other activities. I
    am proud of all of you who are, in your own way, going back to living
    your lives, looking toward the future, to commencement or college or a
    summer job or just getting back to the ordinary business of life, which
    takes an extraordinary effort now. But I have to say, I think what's
    impressed me most is the way, in the midst of this, you have held on to
    your faith.
        One of the greatest moments of grief in my life occurred 15 years
    ago, when Hillary and I had to go to the memorial service for a young
    man who was a senior at Yale University, a Rhodes Scholar, on the
    football team, the editor of the newspaper, the leader of his class
    academically. This young man happened to come from an African-American
    family in our hometown and a poor family at that. His father was a
    minister in a very small church. And we had the service in the high
    school auditorium.
        His father was lame, and he walked with a pronounced limp. And he
    gave his son's eulogy, walking down in front of us with his limp,
    saying, ``His mother and I do not understand this, but we believe in a
    God too kind ever to be cruel, too wise ever to do wrong, so we know we
    will come to understand it by and by.''
        In the Scriptures, Saint Paul says that all of us in this life see
    through a glass darkly. So we must walk by faith, not by sight. We
    cannot lean on our own wisdom. None of this can be fully, satisfactorily
    explained to any of you. But you cannot lose your faith.
        The only other thing I really want to say to you is that throughout
    all your grief and mourning and even in your cheers and your renewal and
    your determination to get on with your life and get this school back
    together and show people what you are, there is something else you can
    do, and something I believe that you should do for yourselves and your
    friends, to make sure they will be remembered. Every special one of
    them.
        Your tragedy, though it is unique in its magnitude, is, as you know
    so well, not an isolated event. Hillary mentioned there was another
    school shooting in Atlanta today. Thankfully, the injuries to the
    students don't seem to be life threatening. But there were several last
    year which did claim lives.
        We know somehow that what happened to you has pierced the soul of
    America. And it

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    gives you a chance to be heard in a way no one else can be heard, by the
    President and by ordinary people in every community in this country. You
    can help us to build a better future for all our children: a future
    where hatred and distrust no longer distort the mind or harden the
    heart; a future where what we have in common is far more important than
    what divides us; a future where parents and children are more fully
    involved in each other's lives, in which they share hopes and dreams,
    love and respect, a strong sense of right and wrong; a future where
    students respect each other even if they all belong to different groups,
    or come from different faiths or races or backgrounds; a future where
    schools and houses of worship and communities are literally connected to
    all our children; a future where society guards our children better
    against violent influences and weapons that can break the dam of decency
    and humanity in the most vulnerable of children.
        One thing I would like to share with you that I personally believe
    very much: These dark forces that take over people and make them murder
    are the extreme manifestation of fear and rage with which every human
    being has to do combat. The older you get, the more you'll know that a
    great deal of life is the struggle against every person's own smallness
    and fear and anger and a continuing effort not to blame other people for
    our own shortcomings or our fears.
        We cannot do what we need to do in America unless every person is
    committed to doing something better and different in every walk of life,
    beginning with parents and students and going all the way to the White
    House. For the struggle to be human is something that must be a daily
    source of joy to you, so you can get rid of your fears and let go of
    your rage and minimize the chance that something like this will happen
    again.
        Because of what you have endured, you can help us build that kind of
    future, as virtually no one else can. You can reach across all the
    political and religious and racial and cultural lines that divide us.
    You have already touched our hearts. You have provoked Hillary and me
    and the Vice President and Mrs. Gore to reach out across America to
    launch a national grassroots campaign against violence directed against
    young people. You can be a part of that.
        You can give us a culture of values instead of a culture of
    violence. You can help us to keep guns out of the wrong hands. You can
    help us to make sure kids who are in trouble--and there will always be
    some--are identified early and reached and helped. You can help us do
    this.
        Two days from now, you're going to have your commencement. It will
    be bittersweet. It will certainly be different for those of you who are
    graduating than you thought it was going to be when you were freshmen.
    But as I understand it, there will be some compensations. Even your
    archrivals at Chatfield will be cheering you on. When you hear those
    people cheer for you, I want you to hear the voice of America, because
    America will be cheering you on. And remember that a commencement is not
    an end. It is a beginning.
        You've got to help us here. Take care of yourselves and your
    families first. Take care of the school next. But remember, you can help
    America heal, and in so doing you will speed the process of healing for
    yourselves.
        This is a very great country. It is embodied in this very great
    community, in this very great school, with these wonderful teachers and
    children and parents. But the problem which came to the awful conclusion
    you faced here is a demon we have to do more to fight. And what I want
    to tell you is, we can--together.
        I close here with this story. My wife and I and our daughter have
    been blessed to know many magnificent people because the American people
    gave us a chance to serve in the White House. But I think the person
    who's had the biggest influence on me is the man who is about to retire
    as the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela.
        He is 80 years old; he served 27 years in prison. For 14 years he
    never had a bed to sleep on. He spent most of his years breaking rocks
    every day. And he told me once about his experience. And I asked him:
    ``How did you let go of your hatred? How did you learn to influence
    other people? How did you embrace all the differences in, literally, the
    centuries of oppression and discord in your country and let a lot of it
    go away? How did you get over that in prison? Didn't you really hate
    them?''
        And he said, ``I did hate them for quite a long while. After all,
    look what they took from me--27 years of my life. I was abused
    physically and emotionally. They separated me from my

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    wife, and it eventually destroyed my marriage. They took me away from my
    children, and I could not even see them grow up. And I was full of
    hatred and anger.'' And he said, ``One day I was breaking rocks, and I
    realized they had taken so much. And they could take everything from me
    except my mind and my heart. Those things I would have to give away. I
    decided not to give them away.''
        I see here today that you have decided not to give your mind and
    your heart away. I ask you now to share it with all your fellow
    Americans. We love you, and we need you.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:37 p.m. in the gymnasium at Dakota Ridge
    High School. In his remarks, he referred to Jane Hammond,
    superintendent, Jefferson County Schools; Frank DeAngelis, principal,
    Columbine High School; Jon DeStefano, president, Jefferson County School
    Board; State Attorney General Ken Salazar and Gov. Bill F. Owens of
    Colorado; and Columbine High School students Heather Dinkel, student
    body president, and Patrick Ireland and Sean Graves, students wounded in
    the April 20 attack. The transcript released by the Office of the Press
    Secretary also included the remarks of the First Lady.