Youth Development/Afterschool/Violence-Responses to Littleton-White House

In Littleton, 1/2 Shattered Memories and I think, That's my house!" said Small- wood, 33, who lives on the other side of the By DALE RUSSAKOFF. our children in a very scary world." street. "It's the exact same house, the same AMY GOLDSTEIN And what if her chilling conclusion is right, windows, same driveway, same trim, every- too? thing except the color. I lie in bed thinking: and JOEL ACHENBACH "We are all one bullet and one pipe bomb 200 feet from my bedroom is where this guy Washington Post Staff Writers away," she wrote, "from the agony of Wayne conceived this idea to destroy everything we LITTLETON, Colo., May 1-Vicki and Kathy Harris." thought we had. Everything you thought you knew about your neighborhood, your DeHoff has a picture in her head: the pudgy, happy face of a sweet little boy, schools, your churches-all just shattered. Dylan Klebold, age 6. Her daughter's The Columbine tragedy has assumed na- Vaporized. We feel like we're at ground zero." playmate. tional dimensions in part because it happened Every night, as he goes to bed, he looks out She can also see Sue Klebold, Dylan's in such an archetypal suburb-with all the at the Harris home, to a window on the mom, arriving every summer morning at some superstores, franchise restaurants, of- second floor-possibly Eric's room, he the neighborhood pool. She can see Sue fice parks, curving streets, swing sets, privacy thinks-and he sees that the lights are still playing with the boys, being affectionate, fences and factory-sized public schools found on, a ceaseless, creepy beacon shining across getting down on the floor with them, in metropolitan areas all over America. The the neighborhood. ranchlands southwest of Denver have been "When I found out he lived right behind us, acting silly. She can hear a conversation: Isn't it funny, Vicki tells Sue, that in your converted to subdivisions and malls with an I was just shaking," says Charlene Conner, house you have all these boy toys, while apparently unwavering obeisance to the cor- expecting a baby in June. Her husband, in my house I have only girl toys. porate blueprints. No deviations allowed. Kerry, said they only knew the people who And Sue answers: "Boy toys, but no Like so many suburbs, almost everyone lived on either side of them, not the people over the back fence. toyguns." here is a transplant. Conoco moved Tom That's how DeHoff remembers Sue Klebold, a 36-year-old geophysicist, and his Residents wonder what else they don't see, and her husband Tom-as good people, family here from Oklahoma City in 1980. what other virus may be hiding under the serious about parenting. Dylan and his Wayne Harris retired from the Army at age manicured surface. Life cannot return to brother wouldn't even make guns out of 46 in 1993, moving here so he could work for normal. Normal is now suspicious. sticks. a defense contractor. "Today I was thinking, was my son A few blocks away, Linda Pollack has The families chose the Littleton mailing involved? What's he got in his backpack?" her own series of snapshots. She's living address for the reason everyone did-it had says Steve Cohn. on West Elmhurst Street, and a new represented the good life since at least 1858, Cohn was being rhetorical, because he when gold was discovered just 2½ miles to knows his son, Aaron, wasn't involved. He family moves in next door, the Harrises. Wayne and Kathy Harris turn out to the north. There aren't many echoes of the was making the point that he now has to be great neighbors. They're always rak- frontier these days. Littleton is now Every- question his assumptions about his relation- ing their leaves, shoveling their side- burb, garnished with a view of the Rockies. ship with the boy. Does he really know him? walk, lending hand in a pinch. And they South Reed Street is a fishhook-shaped "I thought I did, until this." have terrific boys, Kevin and Eric- strip of two-story homes with two-car garag- Aaron, he said, has been acting numb since pleasant, clean-cut, respectful toward es, ending in a cul-de-sac. There are no edges the massacre. "He's just not the same as he their parents. Pollack's own kids, a few here. The houses are linked by identical was before the shooting." To be shellshocked years older, are such troublemakers, six-foot cedar privacy fences, so that, from the is understandable, given that Aaron Cohn drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, center of the cul-de-sac, the outside world has barely escaped with his life, a survivor of the throwing parties when their parents been sealed off. The worst thing that anyone library-"t library" being a supremely chill- aren't home. can remember happening here was the occa- ing phrase for those who know what hap- Pollack says, "I used to imagine sional house getting toilet-papered by prank- pened at Columbine on April 20. Cohn was Wayne and Kathy looking over here and sters. studying at a desk when something exploded So maybe Eric Harris, unlike his older in the doorway. He dove to the ground. His telling those boys: Don't you dare grow up to be like those Pollack kids!" brother, didn't come out to the cul-de-sac to friends were getting shot. He sensed some- Eric Harris grew up to be, as the play basketball with Matt Good, who lived one putting a gun to his head. The killers world now knows, a mass murderer. So two doors over. So maybe Eric's pal Dylan were playing God, laughing. did sweet, pacific Dylan Klebold. The Klebold would drive a hair too fast in his Cohn heard one of the killers go up to girl two seniors at Columbine High School, black BMW as he rounded the curve. Certain- who was hiding under a desk. The gunman ly no one ever saw any violence here, and said "Peek-a-boo!" Then he killed her. who seemed to come from excellent families, who had infinite options ahead residents say they don't remember ever He escaped when Klebold and Harris left, of them, chose as their valediction the seeing a police car-until the day the SWAT briefly, to retrieve ammunition. What makes remorseless slaughter of 12 classmates teams showed up, men in black with guns this story all the more eerie is that when and a teacher. They wounded 23, some drawn, creeping up to the Harris house from Aaron Cohn came home that night, still of them disfigured or crippled for life. either side. The whole street was evacuated spattered in blood, he discovered that Eric And they shot themselves. The crime while the cops searched for bombs. Harris lived right behind him, that Eric's was has forced the people who live here to Bobbi Taylor has a mental picture: It's that blue-gray house looming over his back- springtime, a generic sunny day. On the back yard. That one. Right there. FAMILIES, From deck of the house behind her, Wayne Harris That was the night everyone learned who talks with his son, Eric. Or maybe they are their neighbors were. ransack their memories, wondering how they mowing the yard. Or maybe Kathy Harris is could have missed the incubation of so much tending to her garden, planting, weeding. "As evil soon as the sun would come out, she'd go So far the information about the Harris and There are multiple candidates for the cause turn her dirt,' Taylor says. Klebold families that is coming to light is all of the Columbine tragedy. Guns galore, easily Today, no one can ask Kathy Harris how pretty much the same: These were the kind of accessible. Violent media images. Death-ob- her garden grows. The neighbors don't folks you want next door. sessed rock bands. Video games such as expect to see the Harrises ever again. There "Wonderful family. All the positives you Doom and Duke Nuke Em And of course: are four bags of compost sitting around the can imagine," says a friend of the Klebolds, the parents. yard, one of them partly opened. who says she can't give her name because she The parents aren't talking. Their perspec- Gawkers come through day and night, may be called as a character witness in a legal tive comes secondhand. Tom Klebold told a slowly turning around in the cul-de-sac. What proceeding. friend this past week that he blames, in they see is hardly an artifact of evil: a tidy Vicki DeHoff says of the Klebolds, "Tom combination, the availability of guns and the house of brick and blue vinyl siding, indistin- and Sue did not cause that behavior by their "the cult of violence as it comes across videos, guishable from all the others except for its parenting." She views the case through her movies and the Internet," the friend said. colors. Christian faith. "The source of the evil, I Klebold thinks children are the targets of That's precisely what scares Kipp Small- believe, was Satan himself." heavy marketing efforts, and that, as the wood. Randy Brown, a family friend who went to friend put it, "they have no ability to filter "I turn on the news and I see their house, the funeral for Dylan Klebold, said: "They values." But many people have blamed the Klebolds and the Harrises for the crimes of their youngest sons. Surely the boys were neglect- ed, or abused, or at the very least ignored, the reasoning goes. Surely the parents knew or should have recognized a cold-blooded killer in their kitchen, at their supper table, under their noses. The governor threatened prose- cution. Now, another horrifying thought has sur- The Washington Post faced: What if they were good-or good enough-parents? What if Vicki DeHoff and SUNDAY, MAY 2, 1999 Linda Pollack and friends and co-workers saw them as they truly were? What if Carolyn Payne. a close friend of the Harrises, was right when she wrote in the Plattsburgh (N.Y.) Press Republican: "They, like the rest of us are doing the best we know how to raise