Photo by Musadeq Sadeq / Associated Press / April 20, 2005I was driving in my car today with my three children listening to NPR when we heard the story of Sally Goodrich, a tale that moved me to tears. As a memorial to this extraordinary woman and her cherished son Peter, I would like to share their story here today in my own words.
Their lives... and deaths... seem to hold many powerful lessons about the meaning of human existence and interconnectedness.
On September 10, 2001 Sally Goodrich was a remedial reading teacher and program coordinator for at-risk children in the North Adams, Vermont schools. She was also the proud mother of three children - Peter, Foster and Kim, and loving wife to husband Donald.
Yet by the end of the following day, Sally's world had changed even more profoundly than most Americans affected by September 11th. Her beloved son Peter, 33, had been aboard United Airlines Flight 175 when it crashed into the World Trade Center. Peter, a bright and talented software developer, would never hug his mother again.
Torn apart by grief over her son's murder, Sally began to drink. Three months later, she learned that she had ovarian cancer. Overwhelmed, she contemplated suicide. "Everything was destroyed," she says. "My life, my faith, my ability to live. I had nothing left," she shared in a 2007 Readers Digest interview. Struggling through her chemotherapy, Sally and Don grieved.
Then one day, they received an email from Major Rush Filson, a Marine and old friend of Peter's. In it he told of the extreme poverty and illiteracy he saw in his Afghan work, and asked if the Goodriches would be willing to gather school supplies for children in a village southeast of Kabul.
Sally later confided in a Boston Globe interview, “That was the beginning. I call it the moment of grace. I knew Peter would have responded to that e-mail; I knew I had to in his name. For the first time, I felt Peter’s spirit back in my life.”
Together Sally and Donald Goodrich formed the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation, which over the coming years worked tirelessly in Afghanistan to build a school for 500 girls in Logar Province, provide assistance to two additional schools in Wardak Province and also support a local orphanage. The foundation also helps Afghan exchange students attend New England schools, some of whom have eventually earned scholarships to eastern colleges including Bates, Mount Holyoke and Williams.
As they worked to help Afghan children, Sally and Don made many trips to Afghanistan to see how their school was doing. At times the news was not encouraging. On one particular visit, they learned that the families of students were being threatened with death by the Taliban through hundreds of 'night letters'. One student had been shot and another wounded. Although warned not to travel outside of Kabul to visit the school, Sally Goodrich insisted upon going. She stated quite firmly that the girls had to take great risks to go to school every day and so she was going to take the risk to go there and be with them.
She described visiting the campus where kindergartners through eighth graders gathered to learn how to read and write in Dari (a local language) and English, along with other subjects. The girls, dressed in uniforms of white head scarves and black smocks, would cluster around her and beg to show her all of the things happening in the school. As a teacher, Sally felt right at home. She loved the girls and expressed her joy in learning to them. As she said to Reader's Digest, "Helping these children gave us our lives back. I don't know how to thank them."
In 2009, the Goodriches learned that a Taliban resurgence in the village where their school was located had made it unsafe for them to return and that some of the school leaders had chosen to work with the Taliban.
Although saddened by this news, they were able to reflect on the circumstances that made this possible. Said Sally in a VPR interview, "I know that suffering is the universal language that prepares us for greater insight and understanding. We have seen the rugged beauty of a country never valued for itself, and met noble generous people who helped us understand the circumstances that laid the ground for 9-11."
Sally Goodrich mourned the loss of her son Peter until her death last week from ovarian cancer on December 18th, 2010. Yet through giving back to children in the very territory where plans for Peter's death where created, Sally regained her faith. As she told World News tonight in April 2005, “I have regained my sense of trust and hope, and I have seen the best of human nature. I’ve been the most unfortunate of women, but I am now the most fortunate of women.”
As the mother of three children myself, two boys and a girl, I feel very close today to Sally Goodrich. I never knew her personally or even knew of Peter's story until this afternoon. However thanks to her loving heart and amazing compassion, the legacy of both of their lives will continue forward.
Tonight I will be praying not just for Peter and Sally and their family, but also for the Afghan families who bravely sent their daughters to the Western-style school southeast of Kabul against the orders of the Taliban. I imagine that those families and daughters, now once again under Taliban rule, have also suffered terribly.
All families in this story, Goodriches and Afghans alike, are connected through great pain and hardship. Yet I believe, in a more spiritual way, they are also connected by love, forgiveness and heightened understanding.
In the end, we are all one. Rest in peace, Sally Goodrich. I pray that in some way you are now reunited with the child you loved so much.
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