Molly Hightower:
In her name, take the baton
By Steve Duin | For The Oregonian/OregonLive Follow on Twitter
on January 16, 2010 at 10:00 AM, updated January 16, 2010 at 10:38 AM
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Molly Mackenzie Hightower died doing what she loved and serving where she was needed. While that may inspire those who never met her, it hardly consoles those who loved her beyond measure.
But if you want to change that
equation -- and several others -- in the years to come, there is something you
can do:
Pick up her baton.
Try -- knowing full well you will
fail -- to finish what she started.
The blog
posts, photographs and YouTube videos the 22-year-old University of Portland
grad left behind testify to the challenges she embraced in Haiti and the ones
that remain for her survivors.
Hightower traveled to Haiti with Friends of
the Orphans because she could not find a place in more desperate
need of repair.
"She wanted to be where people
needed her the most," says Carrie Young, who studied with Hightower in
Paris in the summer of 2007.
She wanted to be with Jacques,
the 7-year-old abandoned by his mother on the steps of the American embassy
("I've never encountered an abandoned child who is so aware of his
situation, or one who feels the pain so freshly," she writes in her last
post.)
She gave herself to Yvonne, Clotaire
and Watner:
"You'll look down," she
wrote, "and see the burns someone put on Yvonne's legs, maybe in an
attempt to burn the seizures she often has out of her. Clotaire will get so
excited from singing to us and have an epileptic fit. And then Watner, who was
found burning in a pile of garbage as an infant, wanders over from the
kindergarten looking for a treat. He only has half his fingers and scalp."
Yes, Hightower occasionally got
discouraged during her seven months in Haiti. When she came home -- to Port
Orchard, Wash., and UP -- for a week in December, she told Young what she was
dealing with at the orphanage and hospital: "She had to bury kids each
day. It was heartbreaking."
But when you hear the voice or study
the face Hightower brought to each child, you realize she is blessed with hope
that eludes those who remain buried in their own misery.
"She absolutely loved –
and I'm underestimating how deeply she felt that when I say 'love' -- being
with these children who had been abandoned because they have special
needs," Young says.
Haiti had special needs long before
that magnitude-7 quake leveled Port-au-Prince and brought down the Fr. Wasson Center, which served as a day school
for those kids.
Hightower's body was pulled from the
rubble Friday morning. Her legacy? That has yet to be identified.
On Christmas Eve, she notes on her
blog, there was a mass and pinata party at the orphanage. The volunteers had
hot dogs and wine and exchanged gifts. "We made our wishes for each other
for the coming year," Hightower writes, "and I think everyone's for
me started with, 'Molly, you're so young.'"
She was lucky. She figured things
out early. She realized she had a heart for others and didn't waste a moment
that was given to her.
And she left so much undone.
So lift a prayer and light a candle.
But if you are determined to celebrate the life of this amazing woman, it can't
end there.
You must take up her baton. You must
pick up where she left off.
And someday, on the record of the
race you leave behind, write this, if only for the sake of those who still
can't imagine life without her:
"I am in Haiti (or Afghanistan
or Darfur) because Molly Mackenzie Hightower showed me the way."
Then close your eyes and, for the
thousandth time, thank her.
(Molly was a distant cousin whom I never had the privilege of meeting. She passed away 6 years ago this month while serving the orphans of Haiti)
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