Cassie Bernall
Witness of Columbine (1981-1999)
by Robert Ellsberg

When random tragedies happen it is only natural that we want to make sense of our losses. Finding meaning helps us through our grief, as can be seen in people’s response to the murder of high-school junior Cassie Bernall, a victim of the Columbine High School rampage.  The story of her being asked by the shooters if she believed in God – and answering “Yes” – became the focus for many people who found solace in her martyrdom.  Was she actually asked that question?  This point has been disputed, but what she said or did not say at the time of her death matters far less than how she lived before that moment.  Her personal transformation from a troubled teenager with violent thoughts of her own to a woman who spiritually awakened to see the gifts around her brings even her death alive with meaning.
– Margaret Wakeley

On the morning of April 20, 1999, two teenage boys from Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado, driven by some nihilistic impulse, entered their school with an arsenal of guns and bombs.  In the ensuing rampage they killed thirteen of their fellow students and teachers and wounded many more, before eventually turning their guns on themselves.  What had provoked this cruelty?  In the following days and weeks there was much speculation about this dark mystery.  But there were other mysteries.

One of them concerned Cassie Bernall, a seventeen-year-old junior, who was among the victims on that bloody day. Students fleeing for shelter under tables in the library clearly heard the exchange between Cassie and her killers.  “Do you believe in God?” one of the boys had asked.  A student recalls:  “She paused, like she didn’t know what she was gong to answer, and then she said yes.  She must have been scared, but her voice didn’t sound shaky.  It was strong.  Then they asked her why, though they didn’t give her a chance to respond.  They just blew her away.”

As this story circulated around the globe, many were left to wonder what could prepare a young girl, confronted in a decisive moment with the ultimate test, to bear such witness to the faith within her.  To her friends and family Cassie’s response was perfectly in character.  But while honoring her courage, they were reluctant to turn her into a stereotypical saint or martyr.  In a touching and honest memoir, her mother described the remarkable journey that had led to her final testimony.

There had been a time, only a few years earlier, when Cassie had traveled a road not far removed from that of her killers.  Her dark and sullen moods might have passed for typical adolescent rebellion, except that her parents came across a cache of letters exchanged with her best friend.  In the girl’s violent fantasies of killing their parents and taking their own lives, her parents discovered how little they really knew about their daughter.  After confronting Cassie about their discovery, they took drastic action. They moved to a new neighborhood, enrolled her in a different school, and tightly monitored her activities – all the while contending with her anger, resentment, and ongoing deceptions.

Cassie was a hard case, and it was not at all clear that she could be rescued.  But in time something began to change.  She consented to attend a weekend youth retreat with a girl she had befriended.  The talks that weekend in 1997 had to do with overcoming the temptations of evil and breaking with selfishness.  As Cassie listened her heart was somehow opened.  Approaching the altar during one worship service, she wept in remorse for her life.  Afterward, the friend who had invited her remarked on the difference:  “There was something new about her.”  Her mother noticed the difference when Cassie greeted her with an uncharacteristic hug and said, “Mom, I’ve changed.  I’ve totally changed.  I know you are not going to believe me, but I’ll prove it to you.”

Her parents were understandably skeptical.  And in fact she did not become overnight a perfect, happily adjusted teenager.  She still had her moods.  She still worried and complained that her parents didn’t understand; she still had her moment of oblivious, teenage selfishness.  But something had indeed changed.

She herself regarded that date, March 8, 1997, as a second birthday, the day she opened her life up to God.  Many of her friends and even her family did not know at the time just how deeply she had been affected.  She didn’t go about in a pious cloud, preaching about Jesus.  The change showed itself in her hopefulness and generosity, her openness to life.  After her death her pastor spoke about Cassie’s daily “dying to self.”  He acknowledged that that might sound morbid and dramatic.   But, as he put it, “It’s not a negative thing, but a way of freeing yourself to live life more fully.  The world looks at Cassie’s ‘yes’ she said day after day, month after month, before giving that final answer.”

She became actively involved with a church youth group – participating avidly in Bible study, worship, and service activities.  But she also liked activities outside of church – snowboarding, photography, and hanging out with her friends.  As one of them said, “People can call Cassie a martyr, but they’re off track if they think she was this righteous, holy person, and that all she did was read her Bible.  Because she wasn’t like that.  She was just as real as anybody.”  Noting all the publicity about her story, her friend continued, “I think she’d be flipping out.  She’s probably in heaven rolling her eyes at it all and going on-my-gosh, because she’d want to tell everyone who admires her so much that she wasn’t really so different from anybody else.”

Like any other teenager, Cassie experienced doubt and depression.  Like anyone, she was uncertain of the road she walked.  “I wonder what God is going to do with my life, “she wrote.  “Like my purpose.  Some people become missionaries and things, but what about me?  What does God have in store for me?  Where do my talents and gifts lie?  For now, I’ll just take it day by day.  I’m confident that I’ll know someday.  Maybe I’ll look back on my life and think, ‘Oh, so that was it!’  Isn’t it amazing this plan we’re a part of?”

On the last morning of her life she was running behind.  She had stayed up late the night before, trying to finish homework.  She ran down the stairs in her black velvet Doc Martens, grabbed her backpack, shouted a last goodbye to her mother, and dashed out the door.  She did not know that she was rushing to the final appointment of her short life.

“Do you believe in God?”  Perhaps a different answer would not have altered her fate.  But for many people desperate to find some glimmer of grace in this senseless tragedy, it made all the difference that she said “Yes.”

Additional Resources
See: Misty Bernall, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall (Farmington, Pa.: Plough Publishing House, 1999).