‘He loved to laugh’

LITTLETON - The Chevy truck isn’t much to look at: it’s a color somewhere between pumpkin and mustard, rust is eating spots on the front bumper and hauling anything in it would be impossible because it has no bed. But Thursday it was beautiful, parked in the lot at Clement Park where its owner had left it Tuesday morning. It was repainted with a fluffy layer of wet snow onto which mourners has placed bouquets of flowers and notes expressing their thoughts and prayers.

The truck belonged to John Tomlin, 16, a Columbine High School sophomore who was one of 12 students murdered Tuesday by Columbine seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

John had parked his truck in that lot Tuesday morning before school. He left his Green Bay Packers jacket on the seat because it was a warm morning and a mostly empty bottle of Kwenchers kiwi-strawberry flavored water. If they didn’t melt in the sun, the half-eaten bag of peanut M & Ms he left on the seat by the water would have tided him over until he got to his job at Arapahoe Acres.

The bag of barbecue sunflower seeds on the floor of the passenger side wasn’t for him, though - he’d bought them Monday afternoon for his girlfriend of seven months, Michelle Oetter, 17, in honor of her starting on a new slow-pitch softball team. The sunflower seeds were by his Bible, a symbol of how "he was really confident in his faith in Christ," said his father, John.

So Thursday the ugly Chevy with no bed was beautiful, but it was every day to its owner. "You have to understand," said Brandon Sokol, 18, John’s best friend, "there is no John without that truck."

He babied it and abused it and had big plans for it.

"Every time I talked to him there was something new he wanted for it," Michelle laughed. "He wanted 38 inch super swamper tires, an eight inch lift, a 350 big block engine, Dana 60 axles and - I had to learn all this - a Ramsey winch."

He also wanted to paint it green and yellow in honor of the Green Bay Packers - his team - and proudly drive through the heart of Bronco territory. Because the Tomlins moved here four and a half years ago from Kenosha, Wis., John still considered Wisconsin his true home and missed it a lot - there’s nothing he wouldn’t eat cheese with, Michelle said.

At some point he knew he’d move back there, but he wasn’t sure if it would be right after high school to open his own 4 X 4 lift shop, or after a stint in the U.S. Army, where he wanted to learn to fly Apache helicopters.

But in the meantime, he had his truck - a Chevy, of course. The worst F-word in John’s vocabulary was Ford. In their free time, he and Brandon drove around to Chevy dealerships looking at trucks and Cameros, whistling and hooting after Chevys they passed on the street like some men whistle at women. He loved Corvettes.

John’s brother, Patrick, 14, remembered how John deliberately drove fast approaching bumps in the street to see how high he could make the tires leave the ground, "and our heads always hit the ceiling," Patrick said.

Sometimes John, Michelle, Brandon and Brandon’s girlfriend, Laura Staples, 18, sped through the mud behind Arapahoe Acres for fun. Other times they just went bowling.

He was very shy and quiet when people first met him. He didn’t have tons of friends, but the ones he had were friends for life. Brandon met him at work "and because he was so quiet I at first thought he was strange or slow," Brandon laughed. "But now I know he definitely wasn’t. And then he just grew on me."

Michelle met him through their youth group at Riverside Baptist Church South. Jacob Youngblood, the youth pastor’s son, told Michelle that someone liked her and she pestered him until he told her it was John, "but I didn’t believe it. He was too shy to tell me," she said, laughing.

So the next Wednesday after youth group they went to Pizza Hut and Jacob made a very obvious exit to leave John and Michelle alone.

"Do you want to go to a (something mumbled that sounded like movie)?" he asked, blushing to the roots of his buzzed blonde hair.

"What?" Michelle said.

Taking a deep breath and squinting his blue eyes in concentration he asked again, "Do you want to go to a movie sometime?"

She said yes.

Seven months later she knew enough about his quirks and foibles to laugh at and love them: how he ended every evening together by stopping at the Conoco on the corner of Lincoln and Jordan to buy gas, a Coke and peanut M & Ms. How he always ordered a cheeseburger no matter where they ate. How their ping-pong games usually ended up in chaos. How he loved a Wisconsin-made CD called "Da Turdy Point Buck."

How he always held the door open for any woman, how he always kept his word, how he knew when to be strong and when to be sensitive.

"He was really strong," said his sister, Ashley, 11. "He used to pick me up and lift me over his head so I almost touched the ceiling." Whenever he and Patrick wrestled, Patrick usually ended up squashed beneath his brother on the floor.

At the recreation center a few weeks ago he bench pressed 335 pounds - "I think I can lift the bar," Patrick laughed - and subsequently endured the awe of the other guys in the youth group, who jokingly wanted to feel his pecs. Michelle bought him an assault whistle as a joke and he hung it from the rear view mirror in his truck.

"He thought it was so funny," Michelle said. "He loved to laugh and he’d do anything to make me laugh," including letting her drive his truck as he tried to teach her how to make donuts in the snow.

And that’s what she thought about as she spent Thursday at the Tomlin’s house, watching the snow fall and receiving hugs from the stream of family and friends who came to the modest gray Littleton home. In the afternoon, John’s grandfather, John Tomlin, who had flown in from Kenosha, stepped outside for a smoke and remembered his grandson.

"He was a very responsible, loving Christian kid," he said, and his clear blue eyes - John’s eyes - filled with tears. "This is hard. He’s my first grandson. And he’s the third John: I’m John Francis, his dad is John Michael and he’s John Robert."

Patrick, Ashley, Brandon, Michelle and Laura sat on a couch in the basement, away from the adults, talking about John and telling funny stories. John’s parents, John and Doreen, stood upstairs and hugged each other so close, crying and whispering to each other about their baby.

Then at the end of the afternoon his friends went to sit in John’s truck and remember.

Because he loved that truck.

Rachel Sauer has been with The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, CO since November 1997, first as the education reporter and later as a feature writer. She graduated from Brigham Young University in August 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She worked for the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, AR for more than a year before joining The Daily Sentinel.