Out of Tragedy, a Legacy of Forgiveness

Theirs was a personal tragedy with international implications. Their daughter, Amy Biehl, a Stanford graduate and Fulbright scholar working with impoverished blacks in South Africa, was stoned and stabbed to death nine years ago by an angry mob of black youths who’d just left a rally protesting apartheid.

She was just one among thousands slain in that country’s lurching, years-long struggle against apartheid. But the irony of her death--she was beloved by local blacks for her efforts to prepare them to assume power--unleashed an international furor that helped unify South Africans in their push for peace.

And the response by Peter and Linda Biehl to their daughter’s murder left its mark not only on the South African township where Amy died, and but on people around the world, moved by the couple’s commitment to translate their grief into projects to improve the lives of those they might have blamed for the death of their child.

The architect of that commitment, Amy’s father Peter, died last week in Rancho Mirage, one month after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. And just as his daughter’s untimely death left a legacy of hope and peace, Peter’s passing gives us a chance to consider the redemptive possibilities of grief.

As a mother, I cannot imagine being able to summon the grace to forgive anyone who would kill my child. Amy’s parents did that--and more.

Within months of her death in 1993, the Biehls had left their Newport Beach home for South Africa to visit the families that had befriended their daughter. There, they learned to draw on the spirit and strength of a people and culture that Amy, at 26, had come to love.

They also saw firsthand the poverty and hopelessness that had inspired Amy’s efforts. They came to realize that economic deprivation had fueled the anger and desperation that led to her death. And they marveled that South Africa was not a more violent place, given what Linda Biehl called the “insidious, deep-rooted oppression” of the apartheid system black Africans were then forced to live under.

They responded by creating a foundation to sponsor the kinds of projects that Amy had written about in her journals--a shelter for battered women, a bakery to train locals to run their own businesses, after-school programs for impoverished children.

Since then, the Amy Biehl Foundation has spent more than $5 million on community development projects in and around Cape Town. Among its employees are two of the four young men convicted of Amy’s murder and pardoned after five years in prison by an amnesty panel that ruled the killing a political, rather than criminal, act.

Looking back, Linda Biehl says now that she and her husband went to Africa not knowing what they’d find. They simply wanted to feel close to Amy, to understand how and why she’d died.

“But when you shake someone’s hand--even though they might have harmed you--you feel their touch, you look into their eyes. You say you’re a human being, just like me. It melts away the layers and gets to the essence of what we are underneath ... just people, with all the same wants and needs and emotions. Amy’s death put us on a path to realize that.”

It is a noble form of mourning, this practice of establishing a legacy to a loved one by giving back in a way that enriches others. We live with its benefits all around us. The death of a handicapped little boy inspires his parents to build playgrounds adapted for disabled children. A young girl is run down by a drunk driver and her mother’s anguish leads to the creation of MADD--Mothers Against Drunk Driving--to keep drunk drivers off the road. A woman watches her fiance drown in a flood-control channel and campaigns for swift-water rescue training that will save who knows how many lives in storms to come.

Some families go even further, seeking comfort not through retribution but through a process called restorative justice, which aims to make amends by healing the offender and community. Consider Ruett and Rhonda Foster, a Compton couple who began counseling inmates at juvenile halls after their 7-year-old was killed by an errant bullet in a gang shootout at their local park. Their efforts will not bring Evan back, but may help other families avoid their pain by convincing wayward boys to steer clear of crime.

The concept is gaining favor in some countries, though it is not likely to catch on here, in a nation obsessed with three-strikes, life-without-parole and condemning even the mentally ill to die. Still, for Linda and Peter Biehl, serving the community that Amy loved seemed to be the only way to put the broken pieces of their life back together in a way their daughter would recognize.

The Biehl home is filling up with flowers again, just as it did when Amy died. Telephone calls have come in from world leaders like Nelson Mandela, and the fax machine is whirring nonstop with messages of sympathy from around the globe.

“Sometimes,” Linda says, “the sun comes in the window, and I smell the flowers and it takes me back to the days after Amy died. And I think, we can’t go through this again. We’re not up to it. It just brings everything back.”

She and her three children have decided not to have a local funeral, but to hold a memorial service in Washington, D.C., next month. Then Linda will head back to South Africa, where the Biehls maintain a second home.

Just as Amy’s death sent her family down an unconventional path, Linda expects Peter’s death to inspire new initiatives. “I’m scared; my stomach is butterflies,” she admits. “But I feel fortunate; I’m left with a purpose. I know Peter is looking at me to keep it going, because there’s so much still left to be done.” She considers it “amazing” that Easter Sunday was the day that Peter died. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu called to remind her “that Easter stands for resurrection, and resurrection means hope,” she says. “And that’s what, really, this is all about. Giving people hope. Because if you have opportunity, possibilities ... you can deal with almost anything that comes.”

And I consider amazing the compassion she and her husband have shown in the face of the unthinkable, and hope that I am never called upon to be so merciful and strong.

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Sandy Banks’ column is published Tuesday’s and Sundays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].