Vermonters build schools despite threat of violence
Toolbox
By ANDREW McKEEVER Herald Staff - Published: January 6, 2006
BENNINGTON — In a country where militants cut off a teacher's head for educating girls, building schools can be a mission fraught with danger.
A Vermont couple is doing it anyway.
Having helped pave the way for one elementary school to be built in Afghanistan, Sally Donovan Goodrich of Bennington and her husband Donald are embarking on a mission to raise funds for a second one.
Goodrich is giving up her position on the Bennington School Board to pursue that task. She turned in her resignation Monday.
"I'm stepping down reluctantly," she said. "But there is a tremendous need for schools in Afghanistan."
The danger involved in filling that need became clear Tuesday when Islamic militants broke into the home of an Afghan headmaster and beheaded him while his wife and eight children were forced to watch.
The Associated Press reported that the incident took place at a school predominantly for girls — like the school the Goodriches helped to create. Insurgents claim that educating girls is un-Islamic, AP said.
Goodrich said that is out of step with the sentiment of the vast majority of the Afghani population, which favors educational opportunities for women.
But while the Bennington School Board is struggling with how to adapt its four elementary schools to a period of smaller enrollments, Goodrich said she finds her time taken by school issues of a different order.
She has made three trips to Afghanistan during the past year, as she and her husband helped pilot the first school, a 25-room structure large enough for 500 students, toward completion.
Goodrich said the beheading illustrates how important it is to work with and obtain the support of local villagers and officials for a project like a new school.
But for a girls' school in rural Afghanistan, community support must be backed up with safety measures.
The school the Goodriches have just finished has a guardhouse and a security gate, she said, and those measures that will be duplicated at the second school.
"It takes no courage to kill an unarmed schoolteacher," Goodrich said. "What good have they done?"
The curriculum of both schools is a conventional one that would be recognized by Westerners, she said.
There is a sprinkling of teaching about the Koran, the sacred religious texts of Islam, but nothing remotely approaching the religious indoctrination of some schools in the Middle East that have helped spawn hatred of the U.S. and have figured in the war on terrorism.
And terrorism is where the story of the schools has its real beginning.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Goodrich's oldest son, Peter, then 33, boarded United Airlines Flight 175 for a business trip to the West Coast. He was a products manager for MKS Software of Burlington, Mass.
His life ended that morning, along with hundreds of others, when terrorists hijacked the plane and crashed it into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
"You can imagine the effect of Peter's death on us," she said. "The process of building a school has been a real spiritual journey and it was consistent with the way he lived his life."
The Goodriches established a charitable foundation in Peter's memory to benefit educational causes. Then, in August 2004, Maj. Rush Filson, a childhood friend of Peter who was doing a voluntary tour of duty in Afghanistan with the U.S. Marine Corps, wrote to his parents about a school in that country that needed supplies, according to the foundation's Web site.
That led the Goodriches to a site near there, in rural eastern Afghanistan, where they decided with local Afghan officials to build a school.
The foundation raised $110,000, mostly in small donations, toward the eventual price tag of $240,000 for the new building. Other money came from Peter Goodrich's estate, Sally Goodrich said.
That school opened last month, and now the Goodriches are gearing up for a second school, she said.
"This time we're starting with $10,000," she said. "We want to raise all the money before we start."
The second school will also be located in a remote rural part of Afghanistan, where Filson will serve during another tour in Afghanistan, she said.
The new school won't be the only project the foundation is tackling. Also in the works are a hydroponic gardening project to support 35 children and 220 widows, as well as a solar power project for a town of 40,000, she said.
Goodrich's service on the Bennington School Board will be missed, said School Board Chairwoman Peg Lochner.
Goodrich was appointed to the board two years ago, to fill out an unexpired three-year term. She served one year of the term and her resignation will become effective at March town meeting.
"My goal is to live in a way that honors my child and to move Afghanistan forward in a way that respects the plan the Afghani government has for the country," she said.
Contact Andrew McKeever at andrew.mckeever@rutlandherald.com.
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