Devastated by the loss of her son on 9/11, Sally Goodrich found new life helping the children of Afghanistan. By Charles M. Sennott From Reader's Digest
April 2008
In His Honor
Consumed by sorrow after their son Peter died in the second plane to hit the World Trade Center, Sally and Donald Goodrich of Bennington, Vermont, fell into lives of silent despair. Sally began to drink; then, diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she contemplated taking her own life. "Everything was destroyed," she says. "My life, my faith, my ability to live. I had nothing left."In August 2004 an e-mail from U.S. Marine Maj. Rush Filson, one of Peter's childhood friends, awakened the Goodriches to hope. He told them about the dire need for school supplies in Afghanistan, where he was serving. "That was the beginning," says Sally. "I call it the moment of grace. For the first time, I felt Peter's spirit back in my life."
The Goodriches began to dedicate their lives to responding to terrorism the way they believe Peter, a software developer who was 33 when he died, would have wanted -- with a sense of justice and sensitivity to other cultures and faiths. "I know Peter would have responded to that e-mail," says Sally. "I knew I had to in his name."
At first, Sally and Don simply raised money for supplies and sent them to Filson. Then Sally, 61, a coordinator of academic-achievement programs for the disadvantaged in the North Adams, Massachusetts, school district, began to think about building a school in Afghanistan for girls. The family created the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation and, in 2006, dedicated a two-story building big enough for 500 girls in Logar Province, about an hour south of Kabul.
Last April, Sally made a trip to Afghanistan -- her fifth in three years -- to see how the school was faring.
The Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers, had begun a new offensive, embarking on a spate of suicide bombings and other attacks in the south. One schoolgirl had been shot to death and another wounded. The rebels delivered hundreds of "night letters" -- tacking them on houses, slipping them under doors, even delivering them in person. They threatened death to the families who allowed their daughters to attend school.
Risk Worth Taking
Sally's most trusted advisors encouraged her to rethink her trip from Kabul to the school. But she insisted on seeing the faces of the girls: "These students take risks every day just to go to school," she said, "so I am going to take a risk to be there with them."The day after she arrived in Kabul, two vehicles with armed guards set out for the school. The convoy made its way past military checkpoints and into the farming valley of Logar, surrounded by the snowcapped peaks of the Paghman Range.
After an hour, Sally's SUV turned a corner into lush fields that led up to the two-story school perched on a bluff. As it pulled in, Sally heard the sound of girls playing in the courtyard. A cluster of them, from kindergarteners through eighth graders, surrounded her. The girls wore uniforms of black smocks and white head scarves that framed their smiling faces.
The principal, a woman named Shama, stood on the front steps to greet her. Sally and Shama hugged, then Sally was taken away by the students, who wanted to show her all that was going on inside.
A fourth-grade class was reciting lessons in Dari, one of the two official languages spoken in Afghanistan. In another room, students were learning English. And down the hall, girls were furiously practicing handwriting on a blackboard, chalk dust flying.
Sally and Shama walked arm in arm along the school's echoing corridors. Through a translator, Sally asked questions about study plans and class sizes. As an educator, she was in her element. In a quieter moment, a few of the more studious and mature girls were brought to her for a discussion about the school and any worries they had about their safety.
Pashtana, a 14-year-old with a bright face and a quick smile, was old enough to remember when the Taliban was firmly in control and forbade girls to attend school. "It was so boring," she said. "I was angry -- but we were not allowed to be angry. Our parents were afraid for us that the Taliban would beat us or put us in jail."
As Sally prepared to say goodbye, Pashtana and two other laughing girls pulled her into a classroom and painted her hands with henna.
At the front door of the school, an old rusted part from a Soviet tank, which served as a school bell, hung by a frayed rope. The guard, an elderly man with a beard and a face as weathered as his antique Kalashnikov rifle, banged a stone against the hollow metal. The clanging started a thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and a squall of schoolgirls poured out.
The students surrounded Sally, shouting in English, "Goodbye, Miss Sally! Thank you!" One of the girls playfully sneaked up behind her and pulled a blue silk burka over her head. Sally walked among the students in the garment, enjoying her last moments before heading back to Kabul. The girls laughed as she spun in a circle; the sky-blue burka billowed out in the breeze like wings -- exactly what she'd hoped her efforts would give these girls.
When Sally Goodrich returned from Afghanistan, she underwent surgery and chemotherapy for a recurrence of her ovarian cancer. But that, she says, has just made her focus more urgently on her work. "Helping these children gave us our lives back," she says. "I don't know how to thank them."
