In Memoriam: John Robert Tomlin

From aColumbineSite:

Born September 1, 1982

16 years old

John Tomlin was a sophomore at Columbine when he was killed in the library. A native of Wisconsin, his family moved to Littleton in 1995 when his father, John Michael, got a job there with a heating firm. John found the move difficult at first. He was shy and lonely. But he soon made friends with Jacob Youngblood and Brandon Sokol, both of whom later spoke at his funeral.

John attended the Foothills Bible Church and belonged to the Riverside Baptist Church South youth group where he met his girlfriend of seven months, Michelle Oetter. His sister Ashley said the pair were nearly inseperable.

"He treated me like the queen of the world," Michelle said of John.

He loved church and Chevrolet trucks. He had recently got his driver's license and had just bought an old Chevy pickup that he had been working for since he was 14. He enjoyed off-roading Rocky Mountains. He once drove all the way to Mexico to help build a house for a poor family. He enjoyed four-wheeling in his truck and lifting weights.

He was gentle and kind. Family and friends remember his energy and the warmth of his smile. "He had such a sense of humor. He was always making goofy faces," his mother said.

He worked after school and on weekends at Arapahoe Acres Nursery hauling trees and driving tractors 30 hours a week. According to friends, he always wore the same thing to work: Carpenter pants, mud-caked boots, a blue cap, and a jacket featuring his favorite team, the Green Bay Packers. He planned to join the army when he graduated.

His truck, like Rachel Scott's car, became a standing memorial in the parking lot. Thursday following the shootings, his family gathered around the truck despite the fact that it was raining. His bible was still sitting on the dashboard, where he always left it in the hope that someone would see something there that would bring them closer to God. His grandfather, John Francis, his father, and other family members took turns sitting in the truck.

"He was as close to a perfect son as you could get," his father, John Michael Tomlin, said. "He was just good. You'd ask him to wash a car, and he'd wash both cars."

John spent his lunch hour in the library every day, studying. He was there when the gunmen stormed the school. Hiding under a table, he welcomed a girl he didn't know (victim Nicole Nowlen) into his hiding place when she grew scared where she was hiding. He held her hand to comfort her when the killers started shooting people in the library. When he heard Dylan Klebold harassing Valeen Schnurr after she'd been shot, John confronted the gunman. Eric Harris opened fire on John and Nicole, injuring them both with blasts from his shotgun. Then Klebold came around the table and shot John at point-blank range in the head, killing him almost instantly.

The first of the funerals for the victims killed at Columbine, his was held at Foothills Bible Church where he had attended church. He was buried in his hometown of Waterford, Wisconsin, in Saint Peters Cemetery. He was buried in a satin-lined coffin of green and gold, the colors of his favorite team, embroidered with Chevy trucks.

In Memoriam: Steven Robert Curnow

From aColumbineSite:

Born August 28, 1984

14 years old

Steve Curnow was a freshman at Columbine who dreamed of being a Navy top gun pilot and was very close with his mom Susan and father Robert (Bob) despite the fact that they were divorced. Weeks before the shooting, he told his father that he forgave him for the mistakes made that led to the breakup. Steve loved soccer. When he discovered his soccer skills weren't strong enough to make the team at Columbine, he continued to referee part-time and play on the team dad Bob coached, the Colorado Rush. Steve liked the color green, because it was the color of the field.

His favorite classes were Spanish, technology, and gym because he got to play sports. He dreamed of becoming an aviator after discovering the joy of flight during a family vacation to England.

Remembered as a huge fan of the Star Wars series, he watched the films so many times, he could recite the dialogue along with the actors. Science fiction fans nationwide put together a "Go to Star Wars" memorial day in his honor when Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace premiered in theaters May 19th, 1999. He had been anxiously awaiting its release.

Steve was hiding under one of the small computer tables in the library, near surviving victim Kacey Ruegsegger, when the shooting began. Eric Harris shot Steve in neck with a sawed-off shotgun. Steve died in the library. At 14 years old, he was the youngest victim of the Columbine massacre.

His funeral was held at Trinity Christian Center, the fourth funeral of a Columbine victim held there in five days. Members of his soccer team were among the mourners at his funeral. "Every time we'd play, he'd have a huge smile on his face," Justin Norman said at the funeral, a former teammate who was among a dozen friends who offered eulogies for Steve.

His sister Nancy said at the funeral that she was going to miss fighting with Steve over whose turn it was to take out the garbage, and whose turn it was to use the computer. She wondered who would tell stories to her own children about what she was like growing up. She'd been counting on her little brother for that.

His mom wrote a note to Steve that was read at his funeral: "Thank you for that special moment two weeks ago when you said, 'Mom, I bet there aren't many guys who can discuss things with their moms like we do.'"

Steve was buried in Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

Photo of the Week: Queen of the Garden

 

Photo of the Week: Ford Model A

 Pictures from July 25th:

Photo of the Week: Fire Flower

 

Updated book list #10

 Completed:

• The 9/11 Commission Report
• Columbine by Dave Cullen
• Caught in the Revolution: Witnesses to the Fall of Imperial Russia by Helen Rappaport
• World War I: The Definitive Visual History
• World War II: The Definitive Visual History
• The Romanovs 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History
• The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra by Helen Rappaport
• The Race to Save the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
• The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
• What If? and What If? 2 - A series of essays by historians on what might have been.
• Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
• America Before by Graham Hancock
• All the Gallant Men by Donald Stratton
• Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard
• The Cay by Theodore Taylor
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
• Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen
• When Zachary Beaver Came to Town by Kimberly Willis Holt
• 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley
• Creature by John Saul
• The Civil War: A Visual History
• The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff
• War and Peace (abridged) by Leo Tolstoy
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen E. Ambrose
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Bleachers by John Grisham
• The American Revolution: A Visual History
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• Wilderness Tales: Forty Stories of the North American Wild edited by Diana Fuss
• Natural Selection by Dave Freedman
• Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

In progress:

• Monster by Frank Peretti
• The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
• The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

On the docket:

• The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot (A book I bought between 8th and 9th grades in July 2003 but never actually read.)
• Dark History of Russia by Michael Kerrigan
• The Fields by Erin Young

Photo of the week: Little Blue Flower

 

Cynoglossum amabile

Bonus butterfly

In Memoriam: Rachel Joy Scott

 From aColumbineSite:

Born August 5, 1981

17 years old

Rachel Scott was a vibrant and straight-forward individual. A junior at Columbine, she wasn't afraid to stand up for what she believed in, no matter what. She played the lead in a student-written school play, The Smoke in the Room (co-starring friends Nick Baumgart, Lauren Beachem, and others), and was writing a play for her senior year. She also liked photography and was active in the Celebration Christian Fellowship church. She was "made for the camera," according to her father, Darrell, and was an aspiring writer and actress. "There's nothing I can add or take away from what she gave us," her mom, Beth Nimmo, said. "In those short 17 years, it was complete."

She quit smoking at the request of friend Nick Baumgart who later took her to the prom. If she hadn't quit, it's quite possible she would've been at "Smoker's Pit" during lunch instead of in the line of fire. As it was, she was eating lunch on the grass with friend Richard Castaldo when the shooters opened fire on the west entrance near where she was seated on the grass. According to witnesses, she was hit and fell to the ground where, moments later, one of the shooters (Eric Harris) came down the hill and shot her at point-blank range when she tried to get up. She died from gunshot wounds to the head, chest, arm and leg, and was one of the first victims of what would soon become one of the nation's most deadly mass shootings.

One of the shooters, Dylan Klebold, had known Rachel since kindergarten and had even been the sound tech for a talent show she performed in, in 1998. Ironically, when the sound broke down, it was Dylan who saved the performance by hooking up a reserve tape deck. Rachel had been performing a mime dance Watch the Lamb which portrayed Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus' cross along part of the Via Dolorosa. That same mime dance was later performed behind her coffin during her funeral.

Rachel's family didn't know for certain that she was dead until Thursday when her name was on the list of confirmed deceased, but they all knew in their hearts that the worst was coming. Their prayers for her to turn up safely went unanswered during those long hours between the shootings and news of her death. Rachel had always been close with her brother Craig (who had been in the library during the shootings and miraculously survived uninjured despite being next to Isaiah Shoels and Matt Kechter were shot and killed) but had experienced difficulty connecting with her father. That last week before her death, Rachel and her dad had a long and bonding discussion, something that left both of them feeling incredibly happy. For Darrell that moment would later give him comfort when dealing with Rachel's death.

Throughout her life Rachel was an incredibly spiritual person who often wrote to God in her diaries about wanting to "reach the unreached". She begged Him for the chance to show others the way, to let her life have some purpose in spreading His word. In 1998 she drew a collage of images that included a rose growing up out of a columbine, with several dark drops spiralling it (you can see this picture on the video Untold Stories Of Columbine). On the morning of the shootings, she doodled a reprise of the picture: a pair of eyes crying thirteen teardrops onto that same rose -- the same number of victims the shooters would kill during the massacre just hours later.

After her death, Rachel's car was turned into a makeshift memorial by her friends where it sat in the parking lot. "In my eyes, she was just one of those kinds of people you know you won't ever meet again," Rachel's friend Lauren Beachem said of her. "She was the kind of person only born once."

Rachel was buried at Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in the Columbine Memorial Garden in Littleton, Colorado.

In Memoriam: Isaiah Eamon Shoels

From aColumbineSite:

Born August 4, 1980

18 years old

Isaiah Shoels was a senior at Columbine. He wanted to be a comedian, dreamed of becoming a music executive. After graduating he wanted to attend an arts college. Friends nicknamed him "Bushwick". Born with a heart defect, his parents said he was a fighter who overcame his disability and went on to play football and wrestle. He had played cornerback the previous year on the football team but his father claimed he quit "possibly because of racial intimidation".

Isaiah also played keyboards and wanted to become a record producer, like his father Michael who was the president of Notorious Records and Ft. Knox Entertainment - a firm Michael started to promote black musicians in the Denver area. After graduation Isaiah had planned to attend the Denver Institute of the Arts.

Isaiah was a popular boy; Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis said his classmates would compete to work on school projects with him. "Isaiah Shoels, thank you for having such a positive impact on our school and on our family. You will be greatly missed, and I love you, my dear child," he said at Isaiah's funeral.

"He's smiling down on us," classmate and friend Nick Foss said. "I know he is."

Isaiah was in the library with his friends Matt Kechter and Craig Scott when the shooters entered the room. The three boys hid under the same table, listening to the sounds of the gunmen destroying the library and shooting other people. Isaiah was a well-known athlete and someone whom the shooters had problems with before. When Dylan Klebold saw him hiding beneath the table, he called Eric Harris over. They flanked the table on either side then Klebold made a racist comment toward Isaiah, and tried to pull him out from under the table. When that failed, Harris opened fire, killing Isaiah. Klebold then shot and killed Matt. Craig was amazingly left uninjured though he played dead, covered in the blood of his dying friends.

Isaiah died from a gunshot wound to the chest. Witness reports of the shooters' racist remarks led Isaiah's parents to later claim that the whole massacre was race-motivated, however Isaiah was the only black person killed during the shootings. In fact, no other black people were even injured during the assault.

His brother Anthony was a freshman at Columbine and was outside with a friend when the shooting started. He was able to get to safety by running through the school and out the other side.

The last of the Columbine victims to be buried, Isaiah was laid to rest in Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, Colorado. Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at Isaiah's funeral at the Heritage Christian Center.

Photo of the Week: Zinnia & Plains Coreopsis

 

Zinnia

Plains Coreopsis