THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 12, 1995 TAG: 9506120048
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARA STANLEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
Common sense suggests that Sharon Trenkle and Patricia Ann Sill should be bitter enemies. After all, one's son killed the other's daughter.
Yet, as they rose from the painful depths of that tragedy, the two mothers have lent each other support and understanding, forging between them a deep bond.
There is no rancor between Sill, 49, and Trenkle, 48. Instead, they call themselves ``best friends.''
Together, the women keep Amy and Jamie alive.
Two and a half years ago, Trenkle's son, Herman James Klassen III, 20, entered the Aragona Boulevard house of his former girlfriend armed with a rifle. He riddled the house with bullets, shot and killed Amy Elizabeth Sill, 16, and wounded her mother, Patricia Ann Sill.
Jamie, with tears streaming down his cheeks, said, ``I'm sorry'' to Amy's mother. Moments later he was dead, too - from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
``I forgive Jamie,'' says Sill, who also lost parts of two fingers as a result of a stray bullet. ``I loved this boy like he was my child.''
It was his depression over Amy's breakup of their three-year relationship that drove Jamie to murder and suicide. Most parents probably could not bear to be in contact with the families of the person responsible for their child's death.
Not so with Sill and Trenkle.
Together they have dealt with the grief and the pain by leaning on each other.
``There is one other person who understands how I feel,'' Sill says.
Trenkle smiles and nods in agreement. ``It's been hard. Very hard,'' she says.
After that fateful evening, Dec. 2, 1992, both mothers were driven to depression. Trenkle's was so bad she says she tried to kill herself a year ago by taking every pill she could find, including the ones prescribed for Jamie's depression. While she was in a coma and on life support for a week, Sill was at her bedside coaxing her to wake up and move on.
``I joked, `How could you go without taking me?' '' Sill says.
Trenkle has been there for Sill, too, listening and understanding. Although she witnessed the murder and suicide, Sill could not remember what happened for almost a year.
Because they have been through it, Trenkle and Sill both say they understand Jamie's depression. Both have forgiven him.
``It really does help,'' says Sill, who still lives in the one-story house where the event occurred. ``Depression really is a terrible thing.''
Both also have forgiven Amy for breaking up with Jamie.
``Amy was super. You couldn't have asked for a better girl for my son,'' Trenkle says. ``I loved both of them. I want them both back.''
Amy, an honor-roll student at Bayside High School, loved gymnastics, teddy bears and computers. Jamie, a computer technician who had built a reputation for expertise in computer communication, often bought Amy teddy bears and worked on a computer with her. They had met while both students at Bayside Junior High and were inseparable, even after Amy told Jamie she needed some space.
During the two months after their breakup, family members knew Jamie was distraught. He had checked into a psychiatric hospital for help in dealing with the crazy thoughts he was having.
But by the time Jamie had bought arifle by mail order, Trenkle believed he was better.
When he drove past Amy's house on his way to practice shooting, he must have ``snapped,'' Trenkle and Sill say. They do not believe he intended to kill her.
Trenkle says she cannot forgive herself, however, for not telling Sill that Jamie had bought the gun.
``I should have called her that night. I should have let her know,'' Trenkle says.
The two are dealing with that hurdle, too.
The mothers placed their children's graves close to each other at Rosewood Memorial Park Cemetery in Virginia Beach. Sometimes they go there three or four times a day. Both mothers always visit both graves.
``Each time I go I give them both a kiss,'' Trenkle says. ``I know they are with me.''
Pictures of Jamie and Amy hang in both homes. They were the youngest children of both Trenkle, whose daughters are 28 and 26, and Sill, who has a 32-year-old daughter..
Both mothers have preserved their children's rooms, belongings and clothing just as they left them. The Harley Davidson black denim vest and black sneakers Jamie wore that night now hang where he would have left them in Trenkle's Norfolk home.
And there is Amy's homework assignment for that night: an essay entitled ``What I would do if I only had 24 hours to live.'' It is carefully filed in an orange binder that Sill opens often.
Recently Trenkle and Sill have lobbied in Richmond and Washington, D.C., for gun control. Last month they participated in a Mother's Day march for handgun control in Washington, D.C.
The two women try to talk or see each other at least once a day.
``God has a reason for everything,'' says Sill as she grasps the locket around her neck that features a picture of Amy as a baby with one hand and squeezes Trenkle's hand with the other.
``I couldn't ask for better,'' Trenkle says of Sill. ``She's always been there.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN
Sharon Trenkle, left, and Patricia Ann Sill walk away from the grave
of Herman James Klassen III. They visit both graves at least once a
day.
Patricia Ann Sill, left, and Sharon Trenkle buried Amy Sill, and
Trenkle's son near each other in Rosewood Memorial Park Cemetery in
Virginia Beach. Together the parents have dealt with the grief and
pain.<
KEYWORDS: MURDER SUICIDE by CNB