Speaking Personally

The deaths we encounter in our professional lives usually result from disease or an accident. When we consider our personal lives, we tend to think of similar circumstances. The chance that someone in our family will be murdered seems remote: “one in a million.”

On September 11, all Americans were startled as never before into the realization that a deliberate act of violence might result in the murder of any of us. I already knew that. In 1995, my daughter, Melissa, was murdered during a carjacking. Since then, my wife, Lynn, and I have been living every parent’s worst nightmare. In the instant it takes to fire a bullet, a heinous act of unprovoked violence transformed my life from one I thought was perfect into one that will forever be tainted by her death.

The family was preparing to go to St. Louis for Melissa’s May 19 graduation from Washington University when we received that terrible, middle-of-the-night phone call. We were informed that Melissa and a friend had just left a Cinco de Mayo dinner celebration in a very “safe” neighborhood when they were abducted. Both young women were shot through the head. Melissa died. The other woman miraculously survived and recently graduated from law school. She helped convict the assailants.

Three days before her death, Melissa had written, in a final examination, about violent acts against women that “attempt to break the human spirit and destroy the state of mind of those involved. . . In spite of the brutality imposed on them,” she wrote, “women almost always find some source of strength.” Since her death, we have been trying to locate that strength for ourselves.