Sympathy, empathy a great comfort to kin of the dead and injured

By Holly Kurtz
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Rick Townsend came home one day soon after his daughter, Lauren, was killed to find someone had mowed his overgrown lawn.

Columbine shooting victims Anne Marie Hochhalter and Lance Kirklin come home each day to homes purchased with help from the Colorado Association of Realtors.

Since the devastation and loss of last year's school massacre, the Columbine commmunity has experienced a near universal outpouring of generosity and love — from the $4 million plus raised by the Healing Fund to the fields of flowers, cards and other gifts harvested from Clement Park.

Many victim families, school faculty and others report being overwhelmed by acts of kindness.

However, it has also been like having Christmas every day — gratifying but exhausting.

And the sense of identifying with the victims that inspired many gifts has also made some members of the public feel entitled to judge the recipients' reactions, not only to the giving but to the grieving process.

Denver victim services consultant Robin Finegan has worked with survivors of the Oklahoma City and Columbine tragedies. She traces the huge response in money and gifts to Columbine victims to the growing popularity of 24-hour TV cable news coverage.

"People are drawn to that coverage and see these pictures over and over again," she said. "You generate real empathy. That creates a vicarious trauma. That vicarious trauma is what really creates that outpouring of generosity."

Yvette and George Gargaro felt a special empathy for the Fleming family after reading that murdered Columbine student Kelly Fleming loved black Corvettes.

This week they offered the Flemings, who they have never met, use of their black Corvette on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy Thursday.

"I have something to offer them even if it's just for the day," Yvette Gargaro said. "The anniversary is going to be so hard anyway."

The Gargaros sought no publicity for their act. They did it without being asked.

The same was true of the hundreds of donors who have called the Colorado Organization for Victims' Assistance in the past year.

Donors who threw a middle school graduation party for one injured victim's sibling so she wouldn't feel forgotten in the post-April 20 shuffle. Donors who paid for another injured victim and his date to attend Columbine's prom last weekend — and even provided a corsage. Donors who retouched the puffy eyes of a victim who feared she had ruined her 1999 graduation pictures by crying. Donors who made funerals go more smoothly by picking up out-of-town relatives from the airport, lending them their rollaway beds, then offering to watch their children while they grieved.

"It was just so heartwarming," said Kay Kintgen, whose son, Mark, was shot April 20. "It restored my faith."

Kevin Oltjenbruns, a human development and family studies professor who teaches a class on grieving at Colorado State University, says such sympathy can be a great comfort.

"The social support is very important," Oltjenbruns said. "What it does is say, 'You are not forgotten. Your loved one is not forgotten. Though I can't make the pain go away, I care about you."'

The generosity can also take its toll.

It took Kay Kintgen until October to carefully pack away and preserve the gifts and cards that filled her living room.

"It was overwelming for me," she said. "Stuff just got mixed up and you weren't sure where it came from."

Some Columbine students and staff have made media pleas for the public to donate to charity on the one-year anniversary rather than carpeting Clement Park once again with makeshift memorials. Some families of those murdered or injured April 20 have asked the public to respect their privacy this week.

"Some people begin to feel at some point that they need to begin to take ownership of their tragedy, that it is a private grief," said Finegan, the victim services consultant.

Don Fleming has wondered what it would have been like to grieve without the cushion of cards and calls.

"We don't know how to compare our loss to the loss of somebody that loses a child and doesn't have all the hype surrounding it," he said. "I don't know if it's easier or harder to deal with."

Everyone is different, but in some ways it can be harder when tragedy is so publicized, Finegan says.

The same public that is moved to donate money and send flowers also feels the right to judge, Finegan said. Suddenly the private and not always pretty grief of someone who never asked for the limelight is being discussed over morning coffee along with whether taxpayers should pitch in for a new Broncos stadium.

Finegan says public discussion surrounding Columbine has included a conflict over money and donations that was relatively uncommon after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

"In Oklahoma City there was less conflict because it had never been done before," she said. "There wasn't a right way or a wrong way to do that."

Though the 2,000 people present in the school on April 20, 1999, are often lumped together during public discussions, they have widely divergent opinions.

Some questioned donating more than $1 million of the Healing Fund to community programs designed to curb violence. Others have questioned Healing of People Everywhere's fund-raising drive to raise more than $3 million to replace the Columbine library, where 12 died. Why not donate that money to programs to curb youth violence, they asked?

While most donations, including those made to the Healing Fund, were not solicited by the Columbine community, some families of injured or murdered students have filed lawsuits seeking money for damages, or have asked President Clinton for federal disaster funds.

This has drawn fire from within and without the Columbine community.

Still, for the most part, the world's generosity in the wake of the tragedy has been a blessing.

"They have helped us more than they will ever know," Don Fleming said.

Contact Holly Kurtz at (303) 892-5082 or kurtzh@RockyMountainNews.com.