NOTE: Topeka native Leland Andres, a 1957 Highland Park graduate and a former state state pole vault champion, was inducted Saturday into the school's Sports Wall of Honor along with former wrestling and track and field standout and current Scots coach Freddy Maisberger III, while entrepreneurs Judith (Shepard) Meggitt and David Chavez were inducted into Highland Park's Hall of Fame.

Andres, who participated in football, basketball, baseball and track at Highland Park, went on to earn a bachelor's degree in music from Washburn before embarking on a 40-year career as a choir teacher in Colorado. Andres spent the bulk of that time at Columbine High School in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colo.

Andres was teaching at the school during the 1999 shooting spree that left 12 students and one teacher dead and more than 20 wounded. Andres and his son, Lee, also a choir teacher, were credited with helping keep about 90 students safe as they hid in the choir office and school auditorium. Leland Andres discussed his memories of that day and the aftermath in a Saturday interview with The Capital-Journal.

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Like everyone else who had even the slightest connection to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., Topeka native Leland Andres was deeply affected by April 20, 1999, but Andres refused to let that day define him.

Andres continued to teach at Columbine — at the time the site of the deadliest school shooting in United States history — until his retirement in 2002 and continued to return to the school for more than a decade to assist his son, Lee, who took over his teaching duties.

Now 79 years old, Leland Andres still lives four blocks from Columbine.

"I just had the ability to shovel it off — 'Go away, don't bother me,' '' Andres said about dealing with the shooting. "Once in a while a kid will come by who went through it and will want to talk about it, but not very much anymore.''

While Andres has moved past that day, the memories remain vivid.

"Two kids came running in and said, 'Mr. Andres, there's gunfire out there,' " said Andres, who had been teaching a choir class of 106 students. "I thought, 'Surely not,' and the next thing I knew I was hearing gunfire.''

The two teenage gunmen, 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold, had planted explosive devices in the school cafeteria, but when the bombs didn't detonate they began their shooting spree, first outside the school before continuing after entering the school.

In the chaos that followed, Leland said he and Lee and others went about the task of trying to get students to safety.

"We went and pulled kids out of the hall," Andres said. "We put them in the auditorium and we told them, 'Lie on the floor so they can't see you.' ''

Andres recalls getting cut off from his classroom, but found out later that many of his students had huddled in the choir office and were unharmed, as were the students that were taken to the auditorium.

"I started to go back and check my kids and that's when (the shooters) went down the hallway and killed Dave Sanders,'' Andres said. "He was the only teacher that was killed. He was also a girls softball coach and a girls basketball coach. A good man.

"Sixty (students) were in my 8 (foot)-by-14 office — they were stacked in there like cord wood — but I did not know that at the time. I thought most of my room had been cleared and it just hadn't and I couldn't get there because of the gunfire to check it.''

Looking back, Andres feels thankful that more lives weren't lost.

"If those guys had just randomly shot straight ahead down the hall they'd killed half a dozen kids,'' he said. "We were lucky. People say, 'You weren't lucky at all,' but yes, in some ways we were. It could have been worse.''

Harris and Klebold eventually turned the guns on themselves and committed suicide, ending the shooting spree and starting the long recovery that for many continues today.

"The kids had more trouble with it than I did,'' Andres said. "I think the older the kid the harder it was on them. That's a guess, but that was my impression.''

Many teachers chose to leave Columbine after the mass shooting, but Leland Andres chose to stay at the school, as did Lee.

"We finished the year at a neighboring high school called Chatfield and went back in September,'' Leland Andres said. "I was just more angry than anything else, that they would have the gall to do something stupid like that.

"I knew Dylan very well. He ran the lighting system for us during our musicals. I didn't even know Eric. I looked in the yearbook and didn't even remember seeing that kid. Eric was the ringleader. Dylan was just a follower.''

Andres admits going through a range of emotions, but knew he wanted to continue teaching.

"I liked my job so much I wanted to get back and teach," he said. "I had told our freshmen I would stay until they graduated after (the shootings) happened. By the time those freshmen became seniors things had really settled down quite a bit. There were a few of them who still struggled with it, but it wasn't nearly as bad.''

Sadly, many other school shootings have occurred in recent years, bringing back memories of Columbine and other mass shootings.

"I say, 'Oh no, not again,' " Andres said. "That's generally my response, and fear and sympathy for the people having to go through it because I know what it was like.''

As for Andres, he has no complaints about how his life has turned out.

"If everybody was as happy as I was there would be no problems,'' he said. "Sometimes bad things happen and you just have to live through it, but that was an incredibly bad thing.

"That was not easy to live through, but I chose not to let that affect my career. I refused.''