Diocese of Evansville
Speaker recalls chaotic times following Columbine massacre
FORT BRANCH— They were having a romping, stomping good time at Holy Cross Church in Fort Branch in the Evansville Diocese on Aug. 29 until Steve Angrisano started talking about one of the grimmest times of the 1990s: the massacre at Columbine High School.
He’s a nationally known singer, songwriter and storyteller, and he was in Fort Branch for a youth mission.
He started his program with a playful version of “Simon Says,” and soon he had everyone in the church rocking with his version of “Jesus Loves Me.”
He prayed with his audience, saying, “I don’t know why you are here, but I think we have a God who knew 2,000 years ago that you would be here.”
Angrisano lives in Colorado, and his home is about three miles away from Columbine High School.
There were students in the Holy Cross audience who didn’t have a memory of those tragic events back in 1999, so he told them what had happened. On an April day, two students entered Columbine High School and killed 12 students and a teacher. They wounded 24 others before committing suicide.
“I could never describe for you what happened,” he said, because it was “chaotic.”
He remembers being in a group of about 30 people, waiting for news. Someone’s cell phone rang, and she told the group, “Val died.”
“I know what wailing looks like,” Angrisano said, “as 30 people crashed to the ground.”
Val was a young girl from his parish.
Fortunately, the news was incorrect. She was critically wounded, but she did survive.
A few years later, at a Mass for graduates at their parish, Val spoke about her experience in the high school library that day.
She told parishioners that she just did the best she could to stay alive. She tried to “be small” in a corner of the room, but one of the gunmen walked up to her, put a gun to her head, and asked, “Do you believe in God?”
Realizing that her answer might be her last words on earth, she said, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
He asked, “Why?”
And she responded, “Because that’s what my parents taught me, and now I believe it for myself.”
He shot her 12 times.
“She was bleeding to death,” Angrisano said. “She tied a sweatshirt around her waist, and when they weren’t looking she crawled out of the school.
“We saw a lot of miracles that day.”
(Go to the website of the Diocese of Evansville) †