A five-foot sympathy card bearing the names of 200 Fayette County High School students was placed among the mountains of flowers, pictures, balloons and love tokens outside Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. last weekend by a former resident of the devastated community, 17-year-old Chris Durr of Fayetteville.

"I put it next to Rachel [Scott's] car. When I put the card down, there was a lot reaction," Durr said from his home Monday. Scott, 17, who was one of the victims of the tragic school shooting, was an acquaintance of Durr's. "I knew Rachel through friends," he explained. A brief item in TIME magazine said she planned to become a missionary in Africa and possessed a "kindly spirit that won her many friends."

The feelings of communal grief permeated the nearby park's fields blanketed with memorials, according to Durr. "It hit me once I got there," he said. "Everybody is still talking about it." But meeting with old friends and discussing the horrific episode helped Durr sort out his feelings. "I'm glad I went," Durr said.

Security around Columbine High is still tight, according to Durr, and police remain a constant presence. "I got within 150 feet of the school," he noted. Fifteen crosses remembering the dead were removed Sunday, Durr observed, after the two crosses in memory of the two young gunmen were mysteriously removed during the weekend.

The general reaction from students concerning the incident and the two perpetrators was genuine surprise, said Durr. "Most of the people had not really heard of them, and did not really know them," he said.

Most significant to Durr was the community's response, with its outward display of concern, grief and support for the survivors and families of the victims. Blue and white ribbons, the colors of Columbine, were everywhere, Durr said.

This week, Columbine students returned to classes at a high school about five miles away from their own school. "One girl told me she really didn't want to go there," Durr reported. "It was their rival school."

Asked how students were coping in the aftermath of the shootings and bombings, Durr said most were trying to deal with it on their own.

Locally, rumors of hit lists and violent threats are last week's news. Schools have tightened up security, at the direction of Fayette County School Superintendent Dr. John DeCotis, by locking exterior doors and adding more supervision in cafeterias, hallways and bus loading areas for the duration of the week.