Tag: Tom Klebold

Father & Son

Father & Son
Getting ready for the prom aka “the best night of his life”. It would be the last time Dylan washed his hair, no doubt – damp hair and wet curls framing his face. A half annoyed half amused expression for his momma proudly, gleefully, snapping candid shots of her ‘handsome boy’ while dad wrestles with the bow tie and buttons all business-like. *sigh*
I think he’d be pretty dang mortified by his mom releasing this full-length photo revealing his boxers and bare legs. Oh well.. the cat was out of the bag long ago when his private writings were made very public. Nothing is sacred when you have chosen such a path – all is fodder for a mother’s 20/20 hindsight musing and dissective scrutiny.

“He stood patiently while Tom awkwardly twisted tiny pieces of metal and plastic through the many buttonholes. The bow tie stumped Tom, and Dylan wrestled it away to try it himself; together, the two consummate problem-solvers figured it out. I sat on the bed to keep them company and told Dylan he looked like Lee Marvin getting outfitted in Western finery in Cat Ballou, one of our family’s favorites. Both he and Tom laughed.

I had the camera, and Dylan tolerated a few shots before becoming self-conscious and
annoyed as usual. I tried to catch one of his reflection in the mirror without him noticing, but he grabbed a towel and flicked it to block the shot. I developed the roll a few months after his death, using an assumed name so the press wouldn’t get ahold of the pictures. In that photo, only a fragment of his face is visible behind the towel—a mischievous grin under tired eyes.

We’d spent that year begging Dylan to get a haircut, to no avail, but I convinced him to tie his hair back into a ponytail with one of my own elastics for the prom. He put his prescription glasses in his pocket and donned a pair of small-framed sunglasses. We thought he looked very handsome.”

— Sue Klebold, A Mother’s Reckoning

Second Suspension

About one month after the van break-in (February ‘98), Dylan scratched something into another student’s locker. Peter Horvath, the dean, doesn’t know why Dylan chose the locker and doesn’t recall the student’s name, only that the student felt threatened when he saw Dylan scratching with a paper clip. Because Dylan didn’t finish, the design he was scratching was unclear, Horvath says.Dylan was detained and Horvath was with him for about forty minutes while they waited for Tom Klebold to arrive and deal with the incident. “Dylan became very agitated,” according to a summary of Horvath’s interview with police. Horvath tried to calm him down, and Dylan cussed at him, although it wasn’t personal. Dylan was “very upset with the school system and the way CHS handled people, to include the people that picked on him and others,” according to the police interview. Horvath thought Dylan was a “pretty angry kid” who also had anger issues with his dad and was upset with “stuff at home,” the police report continued.

Yet in an interview with me, Horvath doesn’t recall Dylan being upset with his father, but at “being suspended for what he felt was a pretty minor incident.” Dylan, Horvath adds, “understands the politics of how, like, a school system works. He was smart around that. And he was angry at the system; not angry at me, but angry at the system; that the system would be established that it would allow for what he did to be a suspendable offense if that makes any sense to you. He was mad at the world because he was being suspended, but he was mad at the system because the system that was designed was allowing him to be suspended.”

“Talking to Dylan was like talking to a very intellectual person. He wasn’t a stupid kid. He’s not a thug kid that’s getting suspended. He’s a smart, intelligent kid. I just remember the conversation being at a level; that would, you know, you’d sit there and you’d think, ‘Wow, this is a pretty high-level conversation for a kid like this.’ 

You could just tell his feelings around, I’m going to use the word politics again but again, he was too intelligent sometimes I felt for his age. You know, he knew too much about certain things and he spoke too eloquently about knowing the law and why he was being suspended and knowing, just, you know, speaking about how society is this way towards people.”

Tom Klebold, whom Horvath thought of as an “Einstein,” eventually arrived. With his glasses and salt and pepper hair, he was proper, eloquent, and astute. He also had serious problems with this second suspension and asked Dylan to leave the room—an unusual move in Horvath’s experience. “He [Tom] felt as though it was too severe for what had happened,” Horvath said of the standard, three-day suspension for essentially a vandalism charge.

–Peter Horovath, Dean of Columbine High
Columbine: A True Crime Story by Jeff Kass

Not long after the call from Judy, Tom got another call from the school. Four months after his suspension for hacking the locker combinations, Dylan had deliberately scratched the face of someone’s locker with a key. He was given an in-school suspension for a day and owed the school seventy dollars to pay for a new door. Tom went over to write the check. He asked the dean about the freshmen, certain that Dylan would not have lashed out without being provoked.

The dean acknowledged they had a particularly “rowdy” group of freshmen, acting as if they “owned the place,” but assured Tom that the administration was dealing with it. We talked with Dylan that night. Tom was irritated with him for destroying property and irritated with the school for charging so much money to repaint a locker door. Dylan gave Tom the cash he had on hand and promised to work off the rest of the debt by doing extra chores. I told Dylan he couldn’t allow the obnoxious behavior of others to upset him.

I don’t know whose locker Dylan scratched, or if it was simply the one in front of him when the destructive urge hit. I have read in the years since that the scratch read “Fags” —a slur I have also read was frequently leveled against Dylan and Eric in the hallways at Columbine—but we did not hear that from the school.

– Sue Klebold – ‘A Mother’s Reckoning’

I was very bored and looked up Dylan’s house and according to website it was last sold in 2014? It was a reality website, but I was just interested in the pics lol. I was confused because I’d read here that tom still owned the property? Thanks!!!!

The Klebolds do a Quit Claim deed transaction every few years. They regularly sell their house to Tom’s company: Cougar Resources LLC.   I went into detail about this here. My speculation is that Tom is subletting with possibly two tenants in order to afford keeping the home as an investment property to be paid off.  The only thing that is interesting on this Sale History is that Real Estate websites also list a sale date of 4/15/14 for $575,000 – which is not listed in the ‘Sale History’ below.  This may have to do with a specific, savvy sales transaction arrangement that Tom and Sue had done while going through the divorce and separating that would be some sort of loop hole showing that the house was “sold” though literally, for smart tax purposes.

SALE HISTORY
Sale DateSale AmountDeed TypeReception
07-22-1981 0 Other  81075754
Klebold’s Purchased the home:
10-26-1989 250,000 Warranty Deed – Joint Tenancy  89096011
10-05-1990 0 Special Warranty Deed  90007083
Post Columbine:
07-22-1999 0 General Warranty Deed  F0914794
04-08-2002 0 Quit Claim Deed  F1468899
02-16-2012 0 Special Warranty Deed  2012018012
02-06-2015 0 Quit Claim Deed  2015012531

As you can see by the 2015-2016 Property Tax Statement, Tom still owns the house while Sue now lives in a condo in a vicinity nearby suburban Littleton.

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More insight on the Klebolds and Harrises shortly after 4/20

thedogdaysuniverse:

LITTLETON, Colo. – Until their sons launched a bloody rampage on Columbine High School Tuesday, both the Harris and Klebold families appeared to be living their versions of the American dream.
Thomas and Susan Klebold resided in a spacious, glass-and-cedar house nestled into a bluff near Dear Creek Canyon. They drove BMWs, enjoyed challenging careers and were blessed with two bright, healthy sons.
Wayne and Katherine Harris had settled into a comfortable cul-de-sac here three years ago after he retired from a military career that had them travel across the country. They enjoyed working in their yard and were looking forward to the graduation of their younger son, Eric, in just three weeks.
Nothing in their lives seemed to indicate that their sons, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, would soon be responsible for the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
“I never dreamed this could happen, not in the least,” said Bill Konen, who lived next door to the Harrises.
[…]
In his parents, Dylan Klebold appeared to have two strong role models. His father, Thomas, 52, is a self-employed geophysicist in the gas-and-oil field, while his mother, Susan, 50, helps run a program through Colorado Community College that trains disabled persons for employment. The parents also run Fountain Real Estate Mortgage Management, through which they buy and restore properties. They have an older son, Byron.
Ed Berg, a geophysicist who worked in a gas-and-oil exploration partnership with Mr. Klebold for five years, praised him as an intelligent, well-respected member of the professional community and an involved father. “Tom talked about having arguments with his son, but it was the typical father’s frustration with typical teen behaviour,” said Mr. Berg.
He said it would have been typical of Mr. Klebold to support counselling for his son. Dylan underwent anger management and other counselling as part of a juvenile intervention program after an arrest last year for attempted car theft, said authorities.
“This business about, ‘How could he not know about what his son is doing?’ Well, clearly Tom as aware something was wrong and he was trying to do something about it,” said Mr. Berg.
He also described Mr. Klebold as a political liberal who probably supported gun control, although Mr. Berg said he had never asked him his position on the issue.
“He’s a democrat, probably more liberal than I am,” said Mr. Berg. “I would expect he wouldn’t have a gun in his house.”
[…]
[On the Harrises:] Neighbors said both parents worked full time, but were unfamiliar with their careers. Mrs. Harris, 49, was often seen working in their yard, sometimes with their dog, Sparky, and the couple was friendly, if somewhat remote.
“We didn’t see them a whole lot. They kept to themselves, but that’s not unusual around here,” said Mr. Konen. “I’d see Major Harris in the yard, and he seemed very pleasant. He’d give me a big smile and wave.”
Their older son, Kevin, visited home on breaks from college. For the past year, Dylan was a regular at the Harris house, his black BMW a fixture in their driveway.
“Dylan drove pretty fast, but Eric was pretty good,” said neighbour Allison Good, 13. “Dylan would come over a lot – almost every day.”
[…]
Excerpts from “’Ideal’ families spawned the shooting horror”, Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, April 23, 1999

[Source]

Do you think Dylan would go bald? I mean his hair was quite thick and plentiful but his dad was bald though. An interesting thing I HEARD (idk if its true) though is that the gene for male balding actually is determined by a guys maternal grandfather. Do YOU think he would go bald? I couldn’t imagine it lol

I’d say it’s a genetic given that Dylan would have premature baldness in his thirties and at the very least, a severe receding hairline. You can already see that he has a high forward and his front hairline is set back a ways. Of course, I”m not really basing any of this off material grandfather genetics but just for the sheer fact that Byron in his mid thirties (in the top/right pic below) is definitely following in his father’s footsteps with the male pattern balding. So, given that, it’s highly likely that Dylan would be too. As for Dyl having thick hair, I don’t think that was the case. It was curly so it’d would fluff up but I don’t think he had a lot of hair. 

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I’m interested to know, if anything, what the Klebolds said about what they thought/felt about Eric? As he went round their house and they must have known who he was! Your blog is great by the way, and I love your answers – so well thought out and written! :)

Here’s some of the things the Klebold’s have said regarding their perceptions of Eric.  If I find anything else they’ve said, I’ll add it as an update to this post reply. (Pretty sure there is too).  Glad you enjoy my answers –  thank you! 🙂

—-

On Saturday, the Klebolds filed a notice of intent to sue the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for its “reckless” failure to act on a March 1998 report about Eric Harris’ violent tendencies. [Source]

He hung out with friends, slept late when he could, spent time in his room, talked on the phone, and played video games on a computer he built. In his junior year, he stunned us by hacking into the school’s computer system with a friend (a violation for which he was expelled), but the low point of that year was his arrest. After the arrest, we kept him away from Eric for several weeks, and as time passed he seemed to distance himself from Eric of his own accord. I took this as a good sign. [Source]

….And that he’d spent much of the past few days with Eric Harris—who hadn’t been to our house for months but who’d suddenly stayed over one night that weekend. If Eric was missing now, too, then I couldn’t deny that the two of them might be involved in something bad together. More than a year earlier, they had broken into a van parked on a country road near our house. They’d been arrested and had completed a juvenile diversion program that involved counseling, community service, and classes. Their theft had shown that under each other’s influence they could be impulsive and unscrupulous. Could they also—no matter how unbelievable it seemed—be violent?

Sue sees a terrible confluence of circumstances including depression, a school environment that caused rage, and an influential friend who had severe problems. “Dylan felt a little afraid of Eric, a little protective of him, and a little controlled by him,” she said. “He was caught in something I don’t understand that made him do this horrible thing. But I don’t, can’t, believe that that is who he was. Yes, he made a conscious choice and did this horrible thing, but what had happened to his consciousness that he would make such a choice? Something in him got broken. The same pathology that killed and hurt all the others also killed my son.”

“I imagined Eric telling him, ‘If you don’t do this, I will come and kill your parents,’” Tom later said. “But Dylan’s willingness to participate is inescapable.” Sue believes that Dylan would have been able to foil pressure from Eric if that had been the pivotal factor. She has wondered whether he might have endured some precipitating trauma, even if he’d been raped by someone, but has never found any evidence to that effect. In writings that go back to his sophomore year, she said, “He talks like a thoughtful, introspective, depressed kid, mostly about how he has a crush on somebody, and she doesn’t know he’s alive. Three months before the tragedy he’s talking about how he wants to die, and he says, ‘I might do an NBK with Eric.’” She learned that NBK stood for Natural Born Killers. “So as late as January, Dylan hadn’t really decided that he was going to do this. He just wanted to die. But why blow up the school? I get in my car on a Monday morning, and I start thinking about Dylan, and I just cry all the way to work. I talk to him, or I sing songs. You have to be in touch with that sorrow.”

Sue asked the people in the diversion program whether Dylan needed counseling, and they administered standardized psychological tests and found no indication that he was suicidal, homicidal, or depressed. “If I could say something to a roomful of parents right now, I would say, ‘Never trust what you see,’” Sue said. “Was he nice? Was he thoughtful? I was taking a walk not long before he died, and I’d asked him, ‘Come and pick me up if it rains.’ And he did. He was there for you, and he was the best listener I ever met. I realize now that that was because he didn’t want to talk, and he was hiding. He and Eric worked together at the pizza parlor. A couple of weeks before Columbine, Eric’s beloved dog was sick, and it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, and so Dylan worked Eric’s shift as well as his own so that Eric could have the time with his dog.”
[Source]

The killers’ bodies are taken from the school. There’s nothing left now but aftermath. The snow begins to fall as they’re hauled away. Big, locust flakes, blown by an east wind, banishing the earth, unbelievable except for the fact that they’re real and cling to everyone—the camera crews jockeying for tears, the governor’s entourage, which has just arrived to inspect the decimated building, and the kids, wearing tranquilized masks, who gather to mourn at makeshift memorials, held up by one another, their hair covered in veils of white.

On the night of the massacre, the minister, Don Marxhausen, calls an impromptu service at his church. “The body of Christ,” he murmurs again and again, and near the end of Communion a female parishioner approaches, answering not with “Amen” but “Klebold.”

“The body of Christ,” he says again, confused, but again the answer: “Klebold.”

“Don’t forget them in their hour of need,” she says.

Shortly after, Reverend Don gets a phone call from Tom Klebold, the father of Dylan. “I need your help,” he says, “but it has to be confidential.”

Reverend Don doesn’t shy from complicated spiritual transactions. He goes where he’s most needed, reaches out to those who most need lifting. He carries his 240 pounds as if he could still do a little damage in hell if he had to. Among the conservative evangelicals who dominate this place, he’s a liberal misfit. If you can’t laugh, even in the worst times, he says, if you can’t find some smiling note in the dirge—or, at least, forgiveness—then you may as well forget about salvation. So he agrees to do the memorial service for Dylan Klebold because the boy is a misfit, too, and still one of God’s children.

When he arrives for the service, Sue Klebold, the mother, embraces him. He can feel her trembling, and she leads him to an open casket in which her son Dylan—the killer formerly known as V—has been laid to rest. The image of him sleeping here, coiffed for good-bye, is startling: He’s surrounded by Beanie Babies, a ring of them that runs from one ear to the other.

How does one commend this sweet boy, a mass murderer, to heaven? Reverend Don doesn’t even try. “Do you mind if we just talk for a while,” he says, “and then we’ll worship.” And so they do. One couple says that the Klebolds are great parents. And another couple agrees and chimes in, “He was like our son!”

Then Tom Klebold speaks: We don’t believe in guns. We’ve never had any in our house.

And Sue: I don’t understand the anti-Semitism. I’m his mother, and I’m Jewish.

It goes like this for forty-five minutes—this confusion and disbelief suffusing everything, though they really try to remember him for the funny, sensitive kid he was. Only Dylan’s older brother remains silent. Nothing negative is said, though the enormity of what has brought them here crushes down on everything. How do you reach these parents who have not only lost a son but whose son set out, it seems, to kill an entire town?

Reverend Don tells a story about how, in the Bible, David, the king of Israel, once had a son named Absalom, a beautiful boy who was a fierce rabble-rouser, inciting civil war against his father. In the end, David’s loyal general, Joab, was forced to kill Absalom in order to restore the kingdom, and yet David, when confronted by his son’s body, was so overcome by grief, he broke down. “Would God I had died for thee,” he wailed, “O Absalom, my son, my son!”

It is the perfect parable about the purity and endlessness of a father’s love, no matter what the situation. And the Klebolds cling to it. After a few blessings, they’re done. Dylan is later cremated—for fear that a grave site would be defiled—and when the minister asks one of the Klebolds’ legal representatives what to do in case the media come calling, Reverend Don is mildly surprised when the man says, “Just tell them what you’ve seen here tonight.”

And so he does. He agrees to two nationally televised interviews. To America, he describes the Klebolds as a family in deep, unimaginable pain. About the service, he says he saw two innocent parents “questioning where their son came from.” He stays in touch with Tom and Sue, visits occasionally. Tom, a former geophysicist, rarely leaves his house. The driveway has two gates on it, and he sits up in his office, cloistered from the world. Sue has a position with a local college, working with the disabled. She pens letters to the victims’ families, expressing her grief. She has so many questions now about her son. She invites a small group over to watch the prom-night video they took of Dylan. He wore a tux and went with a friend, Robyn, a girl who also secretly bought guns for Reb and V. But in the video, they’re merely high school seniors, pinning each other with corsages, giggling embarrassedly, then getting into the limo on one of the biggest nights of their young lives. Sue Klebold scours the television screen for clues. There are no clues.

As for Reverend Don, when he twice defends the killer’s family on national television, when word leaks out that he led Dylan’s memorial service, well, something turns and hooks in his parish, and they begin to hate. There are forty-six families here who had kids inside Columbine High School that day, and suddenly he’s Absalom.

On the first-year anniversary of the massacre, even as the reverend addresses thousands in Clement Park, his church council unanimously votes for his firing. Within three months, he sells his house, packs and is banished from Littleton, Colorado, for good.

[Source for this entire beautifully written 2004 article –Columbine Never Sleeps]

crimeandcolumbine:

NATHAN DYKEMAN Well, I’d called first just, you know—I was concerned, I was calling all my friends, trying to make sure that they got out and they were OK. And Dylan’s parents I called last, because I—I called them with the hope that he was there and be OK and everything, and it basically eased up to me telling them that I think that he was involved in it, and I think he could possibly be in the school.

CHARLES GIBSON You were talking to Mr. Klebold?

NATHAN DYKEMAN Yes, I was the one that broke the news to Mr. Klebold.

CHARLES GIBSON Who you know very well, having spent so much time at their house?

NATHAN DYKEMAN Yes, yes.

CHARLES GIBSON And what did he say when you said Dylan might be one of the shooters?

NATHAN DYKEMAN He was just in shock. He was speechless. And I also thought he was going to, like, drop the phone. He just could not believe that this could possibly be happening, and his son was involved in this. And he said just, “Please keep me informed on whatever you hear.” And he got off the phone with me to contact the authorities.

https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/everlasting-contrast/114146547445/tumblr_n4cmxykgpS1sr6k1e?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
https://everlasting-contrast.tumblr.com/post/114146547445/audio_player_iframe/everlasting-contrast/tumblr_n4cmxykgpS1sr6k1e?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Feverlasting-contrast%2F114146547445%2Ftumblr_n4cmxykgpS1sr6k1e

mydarkcorner11:

Tom Klebold calling JeffCo 4/20/1999

everlasting-contrast:
Sounding annoyed and entitled.  And yeah, sure, he’s in the midst of an unfathomable crisis but just sayin’, he certainly doesn’t win any brownie points with 911 and such with this demeanor.  I suspect he had this snooty attitude about him in general though… 

“I’d ask him what the hell he was thinking and what the hell he thought he was doing!”

— Tom Klebold, Far from the Tree

Like Father, like Son

The week after the shooting, Tom Klebold was filled with rage. ”He was angry about being detained at his home when he wanted to go intervene at the high school,” said Edgar Berg, a former colleague.  “He was angry about the availability of guns. He was angry about the access to weird images and videos. 

He was angry because he’d lost what he described as his best friend.”

===========================================================

Michelle Hartsough described Dylan as a difficult person who was often rude. Hartsough said Dylan did not get along well with his father.

[Source]

===========================================================

Mr. Klebold indicated that he and his son were very close and he is very upset with the way that the media has portrayed him.
Mr. Klebold said that he has no idea what happened or why and indicated that Dylan was his best friend and that they spent a lot of time together.

Mr. Klebold said that he believed that his son had a personality that was very similar to his….

Marxhausen, one of the clergymen who conducted a private funeral for Klebold on Saturday, said the young man’s father told him he "felt Dylan was his soul mate, and felt that he knew what was going on all the time.” The pastor said Klebold had told him, ” ‘I thought I was ready to let him go — he was a finished product.’ “

Dylan’s father, Thomas Klebold, 52, a former geophysicist who runs a mortgage business from his house, told the pastor he had detected “this slight tension” in his son a few days before the attack.  Klebold made a mental note of it and thought he would get back to it, the pastor said.

[Source]

============================================================

Tom, like Dylan, had been painfully shy in high school and felt that because of their similarities he knew Dylan instinctively; he can identify with how Dylan may have felt, but not with what he did.

[Source]

By third grade, when Dylan entered a gifted program at school, he had become his father’s most devoted chess partner. 

[Source]

===========================================================

As a senior, Dylan was out of class by 1 p.m. He often came straight home and spent time with his dad, who worked out of the house. Tom treasured that time. He thought he and Dylan had grown extremely close.

[Source]

============================================================

About a month after the van break-in, Dylan scratched something into another student’s locker. Peter Horvath, the dean, doesn’t know why Dylan chose the locker, and doesn’t recall the student’s name, only that the student felt threatened when he saw Dylan scratching with a paper clip. Because Dylan didn’t finish, the design he was scratching was unclear, Horvath says.

Dylan was detained, and Horvath was with him for about forty minutes while they waited for Tom Klebold to arrive and deal with the incident. “Dylan became very agitated” waiting for his father to come to school to discuss the situation with Peter, and began pacing around the room, according to a summary of Horvath’s interview with police. 


Horvath tried to calm him down, and Dylan cussed at him, although it wasn’t personal. **********Dylan was “very upset with the school system and the way CHS handled people, to include the people that picked on him and others,” according to the police interview.

Horvath thought Dylan was a “pretty angry kid” who also had the impression that he had anger issues with his dad and was upset with “stuff at home,” the police report continued. 

Tom Klebold, who Horvath thought of as an “Einstein” eventually arrived. With his glasses, and salt and pepper hair, he was proper, eloquent, and astute. He also had serious problems with this second suspension, and asked Dylan to leave the room—an unusual move in Horvath’s experience. “He [Tom] felt as though it was too severe for what had happened,” Horvath said of the standard, three-day suspension for essentially a vandalism charge. “Can’t we do anything else? Can’t he [Dylan] just do, you know, twenty-five hours of community service, thirty hours of community service?” Tom Klebold asked. Nope. Horvath didn’t budge. Peter sensed that Dylan had some anger issues with his father.
  

[Excerpt from Columbine: A True Crime Story by Jeff Kass]

============================================================

Tom stepped in with his 1950s dress code standards and asked Dylan not to wear the hat to the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Dylan argued that we were on vacation, and it couldn’t possibly make a difference to anyone if he wore the hat. I shot Tom a “don’t sweat the small stuff” look, but didn’t want to sabotage his authority, so I gathered up a suitcase. “I’ll go down to the car and wait while you two work this out.” I’d forgotten the car key, though, so I leaned against the hood in the cold morning air, remembering how Tom would insist the boys tuck in their shirts and polish their shoes for church while the minister’s own kids wore T-shirts and jeans. I was angry at him for harping on the hat. I guess I still am.

Eventually, Dylan came down to the car alone, his head bare. I wanted to say I agreed with him, and that it was okay with me if he wore the hat, but I did not. I only said, “I’m sorry the morning started out like this. I see you decided not to wear the hat.” Dylan sounded tired but determined to brush it off. “It’s not worth fighting about; it’s just not a big deal.”

I was frankly surprised. I’d expected a little more sputtering and complaining from a seventeen-year-old. “Wow, Dyl. I’m impressed,” I said, mistaking his willingness to withdraw from the conflict for maturity. I praised him for controlling his anger but I wish now he had stomped and screamed, giving me a glimpse of the rage burning inside him. Now I wonder if he had stopped caring about anything at all.

[Excerpt from A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold]

=====================================

The Klebolds also are struggling, as is their eldest son Byron, Brown said.”When I talk to Sue, we always make a pact not to talk about ‘it’ but that’s impossible, and soon we’re deep into it,” she said. “She didn’t see this side of her son. She wishes she had answers for the victims’ families, but she does not. 

“And Tom, poor Tom. He and Dylan were closer than ever. He misses his son every second of the day.”  

============================================================

Like Father, like Son

Given all the accounts mentioned above it becomes easy to piece together that Dylan and his father, Tom, were very similar in personality and temperament. They mirrored back at one another to the point where a Dylan in his late teens began to harbor a deep-seated resentment towards his father.

Tom Klebold had mentioned that he was painfully shy in school exactly like
Dylan.   Dylan was an intelligent, quick learning child
and was categorized as a ‘gifted’ student.
Tom gave off the intimidating impression of an astute ‘Einstein’ type to
others.  It’s a likely possibility that
Tom was a gifted child too. However, back in his day, there were probably few scholastic
programs to define and hone advanced children as such.  

Dylan suppressed his emotions, his
upsets until his temper reached a boiling point and the rage, including some of his childhood temper tantrums, boiled over like a raging volcano.  Tom Klebold appeared to also have a raging
temper as evinced in the snippets above which demonstrate how his anger and
frustration seemed to be the easily most accessible, second-nature way of handling the tragedy
immediately after it occurred.  Sixteen
years on, and he appears to still be somewhat stuck in a residual anger stage
of the grieving process.  When asked what
he would say to his son all these years later, his immediate knee-jerk response
back was in the form of a rhetorically posed question of a parent’s berating indignation:

“I’d ask him what the hell he was thinking and what the hell he
was doing!”

It’s as if Tom’s upset was left on ‘pause’ to resume exactly where it left off should his son Dylan suddenly be transformed alive again.  

Is it any wonder
why Dylan paced nervously while
waiting for his father to arrive to speak to the Dean at Columbine for his
transgression of passive-aggressively scratching something on the locker of
someone that pissed him off?   Then, only to have his father dismiss him from the room so that dad could
address the Dean one-on-one.  There is
almost an air of imperiousness of the manner in which Dylan was automatically disqualified
from being present in the room as his father hard-ball negotiated and bargained for a lighter punishment.  Did this type of controlling
behavior in which is father automatically dismissed him like a child cause
Dylan to silently stew?  Dylan paced a good 40 minutes before his father arrived.  How did Dylan’s father
handle his son by the time they got home?

 I
would speculate that when an argument ensued between Dylan and his father, Tom
was typically remote and coolly superior most of the time in that level-headed, intellectual
upper-hand sort of manner. The usual punishment was silent but effectively reinforced
in a manner in which Dylan would simply have no control or say. When he’d done
something wrong at school, his computer keyboard would literally be unplugged and  taken away the CPU. So, the natural consequences of that particular transgression meant his life was miserable and isolated without gaming with friends or surfing the net for however long his parent’s deemed necessary.   But, I speculate that like Dylan, his father at times, became unpredictably explosive having reached a boiling point of
no-return in his one-sided lecture, escalating it with resounding boom and having the
last word over a very nervous, frustrated Dylan.  Unlike Dylan’s mother, I
speculate that the ‘resolution’ of an argument with his dad rarely if ever
included open, receptive discussion or a later addressing of the situation that might allow for healing communication.  Instead,
when dad reached that ..point.., he let his temper just blow with an explosive berating lecture.  Meanwhile, Dylan took on the resentment in spades and he internalized it, learning to
automatically shut down by going to his room and slamming the door behind him.  Peace at last in self-reliance.

“Some god I am…. All people I ever might have loved have abandoned me, my parents piss
me off & hate me … want me to have fuckin ambition!! How can I when I get screwed &
destroyed by everything??!!! “

Tom/2 / Dylan 0. End Game.  Having been bested in a spat with dad, Dylan would then defeatedly stomp up to his bedroom and finish off the night with several rousing, repetitive mindless bloody battle sessions of shooting up zombies and simultaneously nursing a Screwdriver which would allow him to to swallow his pain having
been bested by dad and yet another lousy day at school.  

Tom mentioned that he felt very close to Dylan, that his son was so like
himself that Dylan was his ‘best friend’ or ‘soul mate’ even.   Since Dylan was a small child, the two
played chess, played sports together, hiked together and like his father, Dylan
got into competitive Go-Kart racing.  Once
Bryon, the oldest son left home, it was just Tom promoting bonding
activities with his youngest boy, the easy-to-raise one, his ‘golden child’
with the smarts.    Dylan
would get home from school early in his Senior year, and Tom probably snagged Dylan
to do stuff which he probably didn’t care to do all that much but would do so anyway for his dad.   From
Tom’s perspective, the two of them enjoyed mechanics and the fixing up his old
cars.  When Tom needed to tend to his
rental properties, he dragged along a very reluctant Dylan who hated it.  It’s not that all of these activities were a
bad thing, it’s just maybe that to Dylan, his father was forcing ‘the bonding’,
to get his son to do mostly the types of things he himself loved and enjoyed to which were not necessarily what Dylan found interesting or fun to do.  Dylan
did not protest much though he probably whined a bit and dragged his heels looking
forward to the moment he could go upstairs to at last, the privacy and serenity of his bedroom sanctuary.  

The two had a fair amount of mutual bonding
over sports until Tom was afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis and could
no longer actively engage in sports activities with his son the way he once
used to do.  That must have been a big blow for Dylan and it was likely the last time he engaged in sports in a physical way. From there on out it was Fantasy Baseball trades which was entirely an intellectual stimulating challenge not a physical one.  But I do wonder if Tom ever wanted
to share in some of the things that Dylan personally had an interested in
doing. For example, did his father ever consider
knocking on Dylan’s bedroom door and learning to use the opposing game controller and Doom or Quake
death matching with his son?  Tom thought
he knew Dylan as he knew himself and that they shared a very close
connection while  in actually, Dylan was
dutiful doing stuff by his dad’s side yet not really connecting and engaging in the way that his father perceived
them to be.   Dylan also had very mixed
feelings; he still harbored unexpressed resentments towards his father which never had been openly discussed and aired properly. It seemed that just as Tom had dismissively excluded Dylan from the Dean’s office, Dylan was likely unable to fully
articulate and verbally express in conflicting confrontation because he
realized he was not warranted being heard or having equally footing.  Arguments with his dad, the publicly perceived
‘Einstein’, was rarely if ever up for debate.   Tom saw his own personality and intelligence
in Dylan and felt they were kindred, of the same ilk. He took pride in feeling accomplished in raising a near perfect son who
would go on to exceed himself in future successes.  Conversely, Dylan was resentful of his father
because of their similar shared emotionally stunted outburst-like temperaments
which caused him to disconnect and distance in response to his father’s
unpredictable volcanic wrath.   The two having such strong, paralleling similarities in personality and intellect ended up with dad appreciating his younger self through Dylan and Dylan rejecting his mirror image through his dad’s inept emotional stunt unavailability and unpredictable volatility. 


Dylan had so much bottled up, unresolved animosity
toward his dad that by April 20th 1999, he casually omits his dad and only chooses to
address his mom in his last Basement Tape goodbye: 

“Hey mom. Gotta go. It’s about a half an hour before our little judgment day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate as far as [inaudible] orsomething. Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much and I know I’ll be happy wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. Good-bye. Reb . ..”

Although his parents harbor some anger at the Klebolds and Harrises, Brooks Brown himself seems not to. In fact, six months after the killings, he says, Brown drove up to the Klebold home, in the wooded foothills outside Littleton. Dylan’s parents were there. Sue Klebold served Brown some strawberry shortcake. “I was chilling with Tom and Sue, and we talked about all the different lies the sheriff was telling, and Tom said, ‘You know who would be great to get out here? Michael Moore. Go on his Web site — it has his e-mail. I can’t do this because our lawyer won’t let us. But that would be awesome.’ I sent Michael Moore an e-mail and said, ‘I’m this kid from Columbine, you might have seen me on the news. I’d really like to talk to you for a couple of minutes and see if you’d want to come out and do a movie on Columbine.’ So Tom Klebold’s the reason ‘Bowling for Columbine’ happened.”

5 Year Anniversary Salon article

dk-triscuitknife:

A quick Happy Fathers Day to Tom Klebold who I’m sure is spending time with Byron and Sue today. I know that in his heart he is imagining Dylan being there with his family. Spending time. I wish I could tell Tom how amazing he is, how he made and raised 2 beautiful sons that are and were meant for so much in life. I know that he too, blamed himself for the things that Dylan did, even though he outwardly said he hadn’t. Mr.Klebold, you are amazing, caring and worth more than just the bad memories you have. You are a very strong man, and I know that deep down Dylan wishes he could still be here with you on this day. It’s a day for dads and their children, and it’s just wrong that you have one that is no longer here. We love you sir, Happy Fathers Day 

Father and son comparison

People often times described Dylan as ‘goofy looking’ and I thiiiiink he inherited a bit of the “goofy’ characteristic from dear old dad. 😉 While his mom’s features are sharper and more refined, Tom has more clunky, rounder features than Sue. Tom’s nose is broad at the base which is why Dylan’s nose looks so wide from front on. Unlike Tom’s nose where you can see a bit of nostril definition, Dylan’s nose slopes downward in favor of his mom. Both his mom and dad have very strong crease lines running from the base of the nose to the mouth. Dylan, even as just a teen, already inherited both of these deep crease lines like both his parents; it’s easy to see why some girls at CHS described Dylan as if ‘he was always sneering.’ Both Tom and Dylan have the exact same fine/defined eyebrow line shape which extends almost upward, softly fading out – in contrast to the half moon eyelid shape which slopes downward. Tom has a broader chin than Sue but his jawline is sharp. It’s a no brainer to see how Dylan and Bryon inherited dominant chins and sharp jawlines from both parents! Dylan has a longer chin than his father because of his mom which is an interesting characteristic to inherit from female genetics. Lastly, Dylan and Tom share the same ear size/positioning. But alas, it would be great to see more current pics of Tom to make more comparisons!

Credits for the Tom yearbook photos goes to empathyisvital.

empathyisvital:

everlasting-contrast:

empathyisvital:

Tom Klebold, Dylan’s father.
1964 and 1965

Cool find! Definitely can see the resemblance in the eyes, nose and ears. Though, I think Dylan favors his mom’s looks more particularly her strong chin.

Personally I think he looks more like his dad in these particular photos, especially the second one. You’re right about his mum’s chin though, and he also has her hair.

The more I look at it, I can see the line of the eye shape and eyebrows too. I do see a lot of Bryon’s features as well. Time for a side-by-side photo of mother-dylan-father for comparison. Thanks for posting this! Would love to see a more current, closeup photo of Tom other than that one floating around where he has the beard.