The Victims: Never Again

PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY STEVE LISS
LANCE KIRKLIN: He took four shots from Klebold and one from Harris that mangled his jaw. But he hasn't given up shooting with his dad

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PHOTOGRAPH FOR TIME BY STEVE LISS

RICHARD CASTALDO: After seven operations and four months in the hospital, Richard still doesn't have the finger coordination to master the saxophone, his true love. Yet he's back playing with the school band, now on percussion. "There's nothing to be angry at now," he says. "But I do want to get better"

Families that kept their dead children's rooms locked up since April 20 have finally begun to open the doors: Dee Fleming goes inside her daughter Kelly's room with Kelly's friends, listens to stories about her daughter and invites the girls to take home special keepsakes. The Mausers had always slept with their son Daniel's door closed, but since summer they've kept it open. Patricia Depooter takes comfort in going into her son's room, gazing at his clothes and shoes as he left them that April morning, and even taking an occasional whiff of his cologne.

It's still hard for Linda Sanders to talk about her husband Dave, the much loved teacher and coach who died while heralding kids to safety, without welling up with tears. By the end of November, she still had not gone back to the campus. Every time she had been inside the school, she was walking with Dave or going to pick him up or watch him coach. Returning, she feared, would destroy all those positive memories. But last week was the opening game for the girls' basketball team, which Dave had coached. The girls from the team have regularly stopped by Linda's house with gifts or just to talk and keep her company. So Linda decided to support the girls on opening night. "It was definitely a big step for me," she says. "But I know I wasn't alone. I was with Dave every step of the way." The girls went out and won handily, for Linda and for coach Sanders.

The families at the potluck gathering were putting together laundry baskets for the needy. They filled 40 baskets--donated by the Denver Foundation--with clothing, food, soap and lotions, and drove them to shelters and charities. "This is a club nobody wants to join," says Bob Curnow, whose 14-year-old son Steven was killed, "but now we need to be role models, to create something positive out of all that's happened."

And they are. Patricia DePooter, whose son Corey had always wanted to be a Marine, helps the Corps collect toys and other gifts for impoverished kids. Linda Sanders, who says all the support from across the nation "has restored my faith in humanity," has written 1,700 thank-you cards, but she's worried she's missed some people. Next fall the Mausers plan to adopt a baby girl from China.

And together, many of the victims' families have formed the HOPE (Healing of People Everywhere) library fund. Last week the families announced hope's campaign to raise at least $3.1 million to build a new library adjacent to the school and to tear away the floor of the existing library to create a stunning two-story atrium with a view of the Rockies. "The library is a kind of sanctuary. It was the heart and soul of the school," says Don Fleming. "How could you go in and concentrate, knowing that 10 kids were murdered there?"

In early November, several of the victims' families came together under different circumstances to testify at the sentencing hearing of Mark Manes, the 22-year-old acquaintance of Klebold's and Harris' who bought Dylan's semiautomatic Tec-9. With their suicide pact, Harris and Klebold had cheated their victims of a day in court, so this hearing might be the only chance for the families to describe in a court of law what they've been through. Representatives from nine families spoke, and the stories of suffering were so wrenching that several people had to leave the courtroom and a clerk had to get three extra boxes of tissues. When Manes was finally escorted out of the courtroom in handcuffs, sentenced to six years in prison, the families clapped. It wasn't much, but it was the first sense of justice they had got since April.

At the hearing, Tom Mauser was the only speaker who did not focus on the loss of his son. Instead, Mauser talked about guns. "I want you to consider," he told the courtroom, "that we lose an average of 13 young lives every day to gunshots. Every day. Every day."

Two weeks before the shootings, Daniel Mauser came home from school and asked his parents if they knew about the loopholes in the Brady Bill. Looking back, says Mauser, "that was a sign." His fight against gun violence is his way of honoring Daniel's memory. Mauser protested the n.r.a. convention held in Denver two weeks after the shootings; he picketed the offices of Colorado's U.S. Senators Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell after they voted to keep background checks at gun shows voluntary; and he's joined the Bell Campaign, a group that lobbies against gun violence. "There's something wrong with a country when a kid can get a gun so easily and shoot that gun into the face of another kid, like my child," says Mauser. "Unfortunately it looks like it's going to take a lot more of these tragedies for real change to occur."