Dan Chanen, DSHA Latin & English teacher, hesitated in the doorway to the school office; a bill for $500 in his hand from a Colorado limousine company.
Not your typical expense reimbursement request at an all-girls Catholic school founded by Sisters of Charity. The bill was destined for the desk of Sister Virginia Honish, DSHA’s longtime principal. How to explain this one to her? But then, of course, this was not the typical school trip either.
The date was April 20th, 1999. The girls rugby team, just a few years old, was busy planning a rugby tour to play matches out of state. Games were hard to come by, as they were the first and only girls team in the state at the time.
As I drove home from my own classes that Monday night, I listened to the radio in horror at the unfolding news of a mass school shooting. The name Columbine sounded familiar, but it did not immediately register.
As a future teacher, and like so many other students and teachers, I couldn’t help but think “what would I have done?” as I listened to the news unfold: The details were a nightmare: two armed boys in trench coats asking terrified students if they believed in God; the answer determining one’s fate. The numbers killed (13) and seriously wounded (21) were staggering.
The location didn’t register until I heard the broadcaster add in “Colorado” as the epicenter of the nightly news. Then, it hit me: that’s the team our girls rugby team is scheduled to play Friday afternoon.
Thoughts raced through my mind: Should we immediately cancel the trip? How can we go there with our girls? What do we do there if we do get on that plane?
Chanen does not recall any talk of canceling: “We were going. It was more a question of what would we do? Our purpose was changing.”
Airborne with 25 high school girls: it’s spring time and school concerns are mostly in the rearview mirror. Normally this would be a giddy scene. Instead, the packed flight is somber. No one knows what to expect. The coaching staff wasn’t even sure what our itinerary looked like. Erin Voelz, DSHA winger, recalled that the plan was for all the DSHA players to billet over night with their Columbine host families. No one knew what we were going to do.
The staff at the time included two other young assistant coaches besides myself who would play a pivotal role in DSHA culture for years to come. John “Chin” Klein, MUHS ‘93 and Joel Plant ‘95, along with head coach Chanen. Chin would of course take over as head coach a few years later, leading them to numerous state and national championships.
Finally, after landing and getting our rental vanes, it was captain Allison Urbanski who said, “Let’s just go down there. We’re here. What else can we do?”
In two white vans and without the aid of GPS phones to narrate our way, we found our path to the now infamous suburban school grounds.
AP File Photo
With no clear purpose, we parked the vans, mostly silent in thought and prayer.
All around us stood hundreds of people, satellite news vans, and a hot dog vendor. That image will always stay with me: Some guy selling hot dogs on the sidewalk.
I questioned my own purpose in being there. Were we just gawking? Is it better to look away or to stand witness to horror?
“I’ll never forget the silence as we made our way into the school grounds. It was raining. We parked in mud with many, many people trying to visit” recalled Coach Plant.
Walking along the sidewalk next to the student parking lot, we began to realize what had enfolded in the days and hours before we’d arrived: makeshift memorials. A long evening of travel and a slow morning had kept us away from the evening news reports of this.
In the student lot, we found the cars of the victims piled high with flowers, cards, candles, and other gifts.
“There was a palpable desire for somebody to say something. But no one had words,” Plant recalled. “It was a deafening silence.”
Today we might be accustomed to seeing makeshift memorials on the side of the highway commemorating lives lost in fatal car crashes, but at the time we’d never seen anything like it. The Columbine memorials were stacked like papers on my classroom desk: overflowing, makeshift, messy.
“It simultaneously felt like we were doing the right thing by being there and like we had no business being there,” thought Plant.
Sadly twenty-five years later, we’re used to seeing school shootings on the nightly news. But at the time, no one had seen anything like it. How heart-breaking to see reruns like this today.
Now, lockdown drills largely replace tornado drills in schools.
Back to that Friday afternoon: The Columbine student body appeared to be all around the grounds, milling about. None of them sure what else to do.
With all the coaches short on words and ideas, the girls began to say hello to students as we walked.
Our girls then began to hug kids in trench coats, kids in tears, and kids still in shock.
What else could anyone do, I thought?
I watched as a circle started to form. Urbanski the keystone. Then Colleen Brennan held her hand. Teens from Wisconsin and Colorado began reaching out, holding hands. A circle formed, and Allison started a prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
No one I talked to remembered the score of the games played later that weekend.
Urbanski later summed it up by saying “it really felt like we were meant to be there at that time and that place. God works in mysterious ways.”
“I think about that day all the time,” Urbanski says now.
Years later Plant noted that “I reconciled with my conscience that the point was to show that this heinous, nonsensical event wasn’t acceptable. We were willing to come and express both outrage and support.”
And the expense request? Urbanski would later suffer a serious hip injury in the final match on tour. John Elway’s personal doctor came in to take care of her, but she had to stay overnight and needed to be moved carefully. Coach Chanen and Coach Plant extended their stay until Urbanski was cleared to fly. In trying to get transportation to the airport they discovered that a limousine cost less than the planned ambulance service. Easy decision they thought.
For the record, Chanen’s expense reimbursement was approved.
Wally
DSHA Coach 1996-2004
