Students turn to peace

The U2 song “One” echoed through the gym of Corona del Mar High School as kids filed into the bleachers dressed in designer jeans and their new back-to-school shoes. The helium balloons tied to the bleacher guard rails were red, white and blue, but there were few references to 9/11 at Corona del Mar High School’s assembly Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Student organizers opted to hold a “Unity Assembly” to mark 9/11, instead of a more traditional remembrance of the 2,974 people who died in the attacks. The event focused on world peace and forgiveness.

“We didn’t want to do the classic 9/11 assembly,” said 16-year-old junior Monique Danser, a member of the school’s Human Relation’s Council, which organized the event. “We didn’t want the candlelight vigil.”

Most of the students at Corona del Mar were in grade school Sept. 11, 2001, and have attended an annual 9/11 remembrance assembly every school year since, Danser said.

“We wanted to talk about the lessons we could learn from 9/11 like forgiveness and peace, so it doesn’t happen again,” said 16-year-old Corona del Mar junior Maddie Todd, also a member of the Human Relations Council.

Corona del Mar gym teacher Gary Mahieson, a U.S. Air Force Reserves officer who served in Afghanistan, led the school in a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims, but spoke only briefly on 9/11 and terrorism.

“When we think of 9/11 a lot of things flash through our minds and memories,” Mahieson said. “We think of people who died and also of the some 3,500 people who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

In keeping with the theme of tolerance and forgiveness, Anti-Defamation League spokeswoman Darcy Fehringer presented the school with a banner declaring Corona del Mar “No Place for Hate.”

Corona del Mar students also invited Newport Beach resident Linda Beihl to talk at the assembly about the African concept of “ubuntu,” or, respect and understanding for individuals and community. Beihl’s daughter, Amy Beihl, was killed in South Africa in 1993 because she was white, although she was working to register black South Africans to vote.

“How many of you remember 9/11?” asked Beihl, standing in the center of the gym. “Do you all realize what a tragedy it was? Do you remember that our whole world was affected by that?”

Nearly every student at the sixth- through 12th-grade school slowly raised their hand.

“How old were you when it happened?” she asked.

“Nine? Eight?”

“Six,” some of the students shouted as their replies.

Beihl went on to tell the story of her daughter, Amy, a 26-year-old political activist and former captain of the Stanford diving team who was helping to register black voters in South Africa when she was stoned and stabbed to death by four black men.

“They saw her white face, she was the enemy, so they stoned and stabbed her to death,” Beihl said. “And within 30 minutes, the newspeople pulled up in a satellite trucks in front of our house on Irvine Avenue in Newport Beach and that was very hard for our family.”

The Beihl family traveled to South Africa after Amy’s death, and founded the Amy Beihl Foundation and Amy Beihl Foundation Trust, which provides education and anti-violence programs in South Africa.

The Beihls accepted their daughter’s killer’s legal application for amnesty in 1997.

“People ask why we went to South Africa, why we forgave those men but we would not have had peace in our hearts and joy in our lives if we hadn’t,” Beihl told the high school students. “Those men wouldn’t have done what they did if they had the opportunities you have. Education is the only way there won’t be anymore 9/11s.”