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A Long Journey Toward Peace -- Terror Victim's Father Visits Afghanistan
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
By Anastasia Hendrix
Chronicle Staff Writer

Derrill Bodley was greeted with a hug at SFO by his wife, Nancy Bodley, brother Walt Bodley and sister-in-law Sandra Bodley.
Photo Credit: Lacy Atkins -- Chronicle.

There were ravaged buildings and ruined lives at every turn, Bodley said. The trip's impact has given new direction to his grief.

With the pink paper flower on his lapel only slightly rumpled after a 72- hour trip from Afghanistan, Derrill Bodley arrived at San Francisco International Airport yesterday with a new perspective on post-Sept. 11 suffering and new ideas for promoting peace.

The 56-year-old music professor from Stockton was one of four Americans who spent the past week in Afghanistan meeting families who had lost loved ones in the U.S. bombing campaign.

Two members of the contingent are still in Kabul. Yesterday they submitted a petition to the U.S. Embassy there, asking that compensation be given to Afghan families whose relatives were killed or had property destroyed by the air strikes.

Bodley shared a painful bond with those he met: He lost his only child, Deora, when hijackers crashed United's Flight 93 into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11. He gave each person he encountered a small photograph of his daughter, a 20-year-old junior at Santa Clara University, with a message of peace inscribed in Arabic on the back. In all, he handed out more than 100 photocopies.

Everybody he met expressed sorrow for the death of his daughter, he said, and he was touched deeply by hearing their stories -- especially a family whose 5-year-old daughter was killed.
(More: The San Francisco Chronicle News Source)
2002 © The San Francisco Chronicle.

Dan