COLUMBINE MEMORIAL DEDICATION

Brian Rohrbough is nothing if not provocative.

Today is likely to be no different, when the memorial to the victims of the Columbine tragedy is unveiled and people see the words Rohrbough wrote in memory of his murdered son, Dan.

The inscription has already caused controversy.

The committee that planned and built the memorial asked Rohrbough to consider changing his words, but he refused and made it clear he would take the battle to a courtroom. Ultimately, he was allowed to write what he wanted.

Rohrbough said he expects his inscription to spark conversation.

"I think people are going to think about what the words say," he said. "For eight years, I've listened to people asking why did this happen.

"No one wants to talk about the core values in this country that changed. No one wants to talk about all the wicked things that have happened. . . . It's because we have abandoned respect for the innocent.

"I think people are going to think about what the words mean, and of course, some will agree, some will disagree, and for some it will have no impact at all."
When the planning for the memorial began, each family was given the same number of characters, totaling about 200 words, to write something that would be engraved in stone.
Rohrbough and his former wife, Sue Petrone, and other family members worked together to come up with the language for their remembrance. Petrone wrote the first section and Rohrbough wrote the second.

Rohrbough shared his inscription with the Rocky Mountain News on the condition that it would not reveal the passage to anyone ahead of publishing a story about it.
The inscription is based on a conversation between Rohrbough and his son - part real, part imagined.

It opens with Dan's words:

"Dad, I have a question." Why?

It was the same question Dan asked his father on March 24, 1998, the day two boys opened fire at a school in Jonesboro, Ark., killing a teacher and four students and wounding several others.

The inscription then turns to an imagined conversation, and the answer Rohrbough would give his son if he could explain why Columbine happened.

My son in a Nation that legalized the killing of innocent children in the womb; in a County where authorities would lie and cover up what they knew and what they did; in a Godless school system your life was taken . . . Dan I'm sorry.

"There is no peace," says the Lord, "for the wicked." Isaiah 48:22

Rohrbough said his answer to the imagined question from his son about why Columbine happened encompasses his belief about what created an atmosphere where two teenage killers murdered a dozen students and a teacher and wounded more than 20 others before killing themselves.
Rohrbough, who is president of Colorado Right to Life, said he concluded that legalized abortion signifies an erosion of ideals in America - "that our nation has turned to a culture of death and no longer values children, no longer values human life."

The actions of county and school officials also contributed, he said.

He pointed out that a grand jury investigation concluded that Jefferson County sheriff's officials shredded documents and plotted in a secret meeting to keep a draft search warrant for the home of killer Eric Harris - written a year before Columbine - from being made public.

Jefferson County officials have argued they did nothing wrong and that it is unfair to contend that if they had followed up on reports about Harris and fellow gunman Dylan Klebold in 1997 and 1998 they would have prevented Columbine.

Finally, Rohrbough said he believes a public school system that has "no respect for a creator" is also an ingredient in the tragedy. He noted that he fought in court - unsuccessfully - to be able to include religious symbols on memorial tiles at Columbine that his family painted in Dan's honor.

School district officials argued that allowing the religious symbols would turn the school into a memorial and potentially harm the mental health of students.

Rohrbough said his apology to his son toward the end of the passage was based on his belief that if Dan had been in a private school "he'd be alive today. So the responsibility lies with me."