[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 20 (Monday, May 24, 1999)]
[Pages 952-955]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Community of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado

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 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

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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

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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 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

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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 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 made available by the Office of the 
Press Secretary also included the remarks of the First Lady.