Where Were the Grandfathers?

Spring of my son's senior year in high school a very strange and shocking thing happened.
On April 20, 1999 Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people at Columbine High School before taking their own lives. I was glued to the set that day- in disbelief. But someone in my household took it harder than me- my son Mark. Maybe because he was the same age as Klebold and Harris, or maybe because he could picture it happening in his own high school. I don't know, exactly.

The media almost immediately turned to the question of what type of environment existed at Columbine and speculation about the Trench Coat Mafia's claims that they were harassed by the athletes dissolved into questions about their families.

“Dylan (Klebold) did not do this because of the way he was raised,” Susan Klebold told columnist David Brooks in Saturday’s editions of The New York Times. “He did it in contradiction to the way he was raised.”

As the weeks passed, my son and I had further discussions about the massacre and what it all meant. We talked about how the boys had been planning and maneuvering to set up the attack for some time. One one occasion I remember him making an arresting comment, "Where were their grandfathers?"

I've thought about that statement quite a bit over the years and it makes a good point. Where was the extended family, the community-- the grandfathers? Even if the parents and teachers and administrators were unaware of what was happening in the lives of these young men, where was the "back-up"?

Mark was thinking of his own grandfathers and the positive and constructive role they had played in his development. I think he was imagining one or both of his grandfathers asking him a hard question or confronting him on a hard issue, setting him straight. I think he was picturing BigDaddy or Pappap, and wondering what they would have done if they had seen him slipping into a Klebold or Harris.

Prov 15:31
31 He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. (NIV)