Archbishop presides over solemn service for 2 shooting victims

By James B. Meadow
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

He was the All-American Boy and she was the Girl Next Door.

And family and friends who once held their breath in anticipation of what they would someday accomplish could only sigh and weep over two lives gone forever.

Kelly Ann Fleming, 16, and Daniel Conner Mauser, 15, two of the 12 students who fell prey to the madness at Columbine High School, shared a funeral Sunday as 1,800 mourners -- 500 of them standing -- filled St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church.

They knelt, wept, prayed and tried to make sense of the senseless, listening as Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called out to God, "May they live radiant and forever young in the happiness of your kingdom."

Chaput's presence as principal celebrant of the Mass of Christian Burial was requested by Ken Leone and Jerry Rohr, pastors of the Cabrini and Light of the World parishes, where the Mausers and Flemings worshipped, respectively.

In fact, under other circumstances, Daniel would have been attending the weekly Mass where he had been confirmed and where he belonged to a teen group.

Instead, the boy who ran cross country, belonged to the debate team and would rake leaves for neighbors just to be nice lay in a brown coffin, dressed in a jacket and tie, eyeglasses on his face. Next to him, in a slate-blue coffin, lay Kelly, two teddy bears in her arms.

Before the service, as the nine-piece Life Teen Band played Spirit Breathe On Me, mourners walked heavily past the open coffins. Suits, dresses, jeans, letter jackets, sweatshirts, police uniforms -- it didn't matter what they wore -- everyone had the same wet-eyed look.

Here was flaxen-haired Daniel, utterly boyish, with a megawatt smile. In one photograph, he and his father wore Groucho Marx masks as they sat on the couch. There was Kelly, a shy girl, mouth turned into that crooked smile, eyes intense. As if she were peering into a future she couldn't quite see yet.

"She was really quiet; she didn't like to answer questions in algebra class," said Regina Evans, a classmate. "But everyone liked her. There was just no reason not to."

Chaput noted that Kelly liked to write short stories that "started with sorrow and depression but moved on to happiness and safety." He paused and then said, "This last chapter of her life began with sorrow and depression, but we hope that the story ends with safety and happiness."

Although there were no eulogies offered, Daniel's mother and Kelly's godfather each read from the gospel. And during his homily, Chaput noted, "We were all cut to the heart by what happened."

"Ours is a culture permeated by violence. We need to be cut to the heart so that we might work for changes in our society. ... We are not powerless. We can convert the structures of our society."

Chaput told the families: "Tuesday was your descent into hell. I don't know how else we can describe it as any less than that."

"How could an all-loving God allow your daughter and son to die this way? We don't have an answer. But we have a response. God didn't hold his only begotten son from suffering on the cross. God has experienced what you have experienced. This is not an answer, but it tells us God is with us ... he has walked this way and walks this way again with us."

Punctuating the reading from the Scriptures and Chaput's remarks was the music of the Life Teen Band, which tinged hymns and contemporary music with devotion and joy that seemed to lift the mourners spirits.

Particularly moving was the performance of Israel, a Tennessee-based contemporary Christian singer who flew in for the funeral and sang an original song with this stanza: "Sometimes I think that heaven was way too anxious / Because you were gone way before your time."

After communion, many in the audience hugged fiercely, seeking, it seemed, to both give and draw strength.

As the funeral came to an end, sunlight poured through the window and lighted the room in an eerie incandescence as Chaput said, "Daniel and Kelly, may the angels lead you into paradise and may the martyrs come to welcome you."

Then, slowly, the mourners began filing out into the dusk with the hope that Daniel and Kelly were on their way to a new dawn.