Honor Role for the Kyle Strang Memorial Fund

It is still hard for me to believe how many people contributed to make our trip to Israel and Palestine possible. Here is the complete list of all those who donated money. It is a staggering list. I've been meaning to post it for months. Today seems like a good day. Thanks to all of you. Kyle would be so proud.

Kyle Harty Strang Memorial Fund Donors

Foundations, Organizations & Businesses

The College of Exploration

East Bay Family Practice Medical Group

East Bay Jewish Federation

Inverness Research, Inc.

Lutsko Associates Landscape

National Marine Educators Association

Olive School Student Council

Samuel Rubin Foundation

Singer-Vines Family Foundation

Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation

Truitt & White Lumber

Individuals

Regina M. Acebo & Thomas Morse

Anne Alcott & Barry Fike

Anita Amirrezvani

Barbara Ando & Jerry Booth

Anonymous (X2)

Rasool Anooshehpoor

Emily Arnold

Maren Aukerman

Lisa Haderlie Baker & David Baker

Jacquey Barber & Steve Sutcher

John & Kathy Barber

Jessica A. Barksdale

Kathy & Reg Barrett

Christine Bartlett & Mark Janer

Kevin Beals

Kimberly Beeson, Rebecca Abravanel

John Beiers

Keith & Christine Beury

Ellen Blinderman

Joanne Bowsman

Rachel Brodie

Sheila & Richard Brossman

Verna Brown

Charles & Yvonne Cannon

Laurie Cannon

Nancy & Louis Caputo

Mary Carleton & Lloyd B. Ferris

Ian Carmichael

Diane & Alfred Carnahan

Kevin P. Carroll

Paul Cerami, Debbi Green & Family

Teddy, Bunny & Brenda Chang

Bernadette Chi & Raymond Sheen

Jerry Chin

Barbara Choppin de Janvry

Susan & Clayton Cook

Patricia & Christopher Cooper

Ann Frannie Coopersmith

Terry Cort

Claire Crews

Tim & Sarah Crews

Robert Cullin

Louise Daum

Rita Davies & Barbara Phillips

Elizabeth Day-Miller

Roberta Dean & Bruce Stewart

The Degoff Family

Linda DeLucchi

Rebecca Deutscher & Chris Bishop

Kathryn DiRanna

Diane M. Doe

Patricia Donnelly & Devah DeFusco

Rena Dorph & Peter Wahrhaftig

Sally Douglas & Francisco Arce

Ania Driscoll-Lind & Jan Ostman-Lind

Mary Duchene

Emma Duran Forbes & Gary Forbes

Maurice Ensellem & Amanda Berger

Timothy Ereneta & Deirdre Nurre

Vikki Essert

JoAnn Evangelista

John & Shirley Farrington

Tara Fatemi & Jeff Walker

John & Kate Faust

Estrella Fichter & David Freeman

Steven & Helene Fisher

Jennifer Flood

Robin Fragner

Dolores Franco

Kerry & Dale Freeman

Toni Garrett

Maryl Gearhart & Geoffery Saxe

Laura Gerdsen-Widman

Justine Glynn

Julie Golde

David Goldstein

Alan Gould & Diane Tokugawa

Solange Gould & Russell Bayba

Neil Gozan & Gale Antokal

Carrie & Oliver Graham

Kathy Graham

Edward Grant

Ina & Alfred Green

Robert Green

Amy Grisby

Stuart Gustafson

Dennis Hall & Carolyn Dobson

Ringo Hallinan & Anne Bernstein

Catherine Halversen & Brian Gibeson

Tissapeh Hami

Bill & Theda Hastie

Christen Herren

Lauretta Higgins

Judith Hirabayashi

Emily & David Hoffer

Nancy Hopkins & Stuart Cuttriss

John Hornung

Kimi Hosoume

Sherry Hsi & Per Peterson

Clinton Huey

Debra Hunter

Janet & James Hustler

Robert Iezman

Alireza Javaheri

David Jacobs-Pontecorvo

Mary & Marc Jacobs

Grace Jenner

Meriwether Jones

Rosie Kaplan & Harvey Goldenburg

Evelyne Karim

Felix Karim & Libby Craig

Zander Karim & Laura Harter

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Christopher J. Keller

Peter Kfoury

Daniel & Christopher Killian

Gordon Kingsley & Laura Wheeler

William Klitz

Robert Knapp & Muriel Sutcher Knapp

Miho Komai

Jaine Kopp & Alan Goodfried

Charles Kress & Arisa Tono

Molly Lambert

Becky Lange

Kai Langenberg

Callie Lapidus

Cary & Denise Lapidus & Family

Nancy Larson

Mary Law

Lawrence Hall of Science PSC Staff

Shirley & Taeku Lee

Judith & Angel Lemus

Paul Leonard

Marla Lev

Mark & Peachy Levy

Kathy Long

Suzanna Loper & Andreas Schmid

Eleanor Lovinfosse

Laurie & Billy Lowery

Rosa Luevano

Vanessa Lujan & Kevin Sanders

Tami Lunsford & John Carter

Sandi & Ron Lutsko

Chris Lutz

Claudia Maiero

Lawrence & Sheila Malone

Mojdeh Marashi & Ali Ebtekar

Charles Marston

Hossein Massoudi

Claudia & Roger Martin

Kathleen Martin

Paolo Martin
Ingrid & Octavio Martinez

George & Kirsten Matsumoto

Moira McChin

Jacob & Kimberly McCoy Wade

Janice & Lawrence McDonnell

Bill McGregor

Michael Meeks & Rosa Barbara-Meeks

Margie Mendez

Dzovag Minassian

Hasmig Minassian

Heather Mitchell

Marie Monrad

Meneejeh Moradian

Dana Moran

Joseph & Carol Moran

Michael Moran

Sanjiv More

Mary Kate Morris & Dan Werthimer

Stephen Mungovan

Barbara & John Nagle

Scott Nelson Windels

Irma Newman

Phyllis Norris

Nancy Oken

Ellen Osmundson & John Allenberg

Paula Pardini

Leslie Parker

Mikel, Victoria & David Parraga-Wills

Chris Parsons

Adina Paytan & Ron Caspi

Cheryl Peach & Neal Driscoll

Anne Peacock

P. David Pearson

Colleen & Matthew Peterson

Lisa Piccione

Ina Potter

Sherry Potter

Kevin Powell & Melanie Goldfield

Caitlin Blair Pratt

Michael & Kristina Radke

Iraj Isaac Rahmim

Sanaz Raji

Flori Ramos & David Allen

Lynn Rankin & Robert Semper

Connie & Michael Real

Edward Reiner

Gladys Reverditto

Robert Rice & Esther Railton-Rice

Sydney Ridgway

Selma & Harold Riskin

Edward & Jeanette Roach

Veronique Robigou & Bruce Nelson

Bob Rocha & Kristen Leotti

Barbara Roesner

Ann Rojas-Cheatham

Elizabeth Rom

Melissa Roman & John Alexander

Lenore Ross

Karen Rothblatt & Mary Lynn Morales

Luba Rothblatt

Fran Rozoff

Laura Ruberto

Laura Rutherford

Vicki and Gary Salzman

Beebe Sanders & Dawn Finch

Sarah Schoedinger & Kurt Heckel

Bethany Schoenfeld

Sarah Elizabeth Schroeder

Peter Schwartz & Audrey Jaffe

Pasquale Scuderi

Julie Searle

Kim Seashore & Jeff Hobson

Karen Seideman

Jeff & Patricia Self

Susan Shillinglaw & Bill Gilly

Barbara Shulgold & Richard Albert

Jordan Smith & Xochitl Oseguera

Thad & Lucy Smith

Jed Somit

Lundie Spence

Carole Springsteen

Tamara Springsteen & Michael Brown

Elizabeth K. Stage & Henry Telfeian

Sandra Stier

Craig Strang & Persis Karim

Gary Strang & Gayle Tsern

Sharon Strang

Nancy & David Stork

Carrie Strohl

Sarah Sullivan

Janis Sutcher

Vernon Sutcher

Joan Tal & David Lerner

Drew & Theresa Talley

Pamela Tambe

Lenny & Linda Thal

Sam Thal

Stephen & Britt Thal

Jennifer Lee Tilson

Lucas Tobin

Robert Trachtenberg

Jerry Travis

Tracy Trumbly & Jim Nielsen

Rebecca & John Tsern

Peter Tuddenham & Kristina Bishop

Carole Ungvarsky

Elizabeth Valoma

Soo & Raj Venkatesan

Maureen & Robert Vieth

Chaghig Walker

Sharon & Bill Walker

Lilly & Jack Warnick

Mark Warnick

Rene Weilmann & Frank Lawrence

Danny Weiss & Anne Stewart

Janet & Ronald Weiss

Ingrid Hougen Welti & Doug Welti

Jenny Wenk

Maia Werner

Jenny White

Lynn Whitley & Richard Hoops

Alice Wilkens

Carolyn & Dwight Willard

Eugene & Linda Williamson

Lisa Wilson

Bruce & Margaret Winkelman

Dennis Wirzig

Risa Wolfson

Clarice Yentsch

Barbara Young

Honorary Gifts

In Honor of Alex Flood-Bryzman

Eric & Anne Carlson

Audrey D’Andrea

East Bay Family Practice Medical Group

Jennifer Flood

Adele Rosh Bryzman

In Honor of Ben Cerami

Jenny Chatman & Russell Barnett

Marianne Burkhead

Catherine & Oren Cheyette

Terry & Lenore Doran

Joanne Feinberg

Laurel Fletcher & Jeffrey Selbin

Jane Sari Friedman

Ina & Alfred Green

Dayna Grubb & Terry Stotz

Mary Hill

Joel Ben Izzy

Betsy Lieberman

Robin Rene Louise

Megan Leah MacMillan

Berous Parish & Wendi Morin

Gary Parsons

Michael Pollan & Judith Belzer

Laura Raboff & Barry Gordon

Timothy Roemer

Michael Ross

Lynn Signorelli & Tomas Schoenberg

Jerry Sontag

In Honor of Callie Lapidus

Wendy Bartlett

Donald & Jill Birnbaum

Loren Corotto

Linda Druschel & Bruce Brody

Anita Goldfeld

Craig & Linda Griffin

DY & KF Matsubara

Jean & Kiyo Matsubara

Ray & June Matsubara

Tammy & Dale Matsubara

Earl & Cynthia Nakahara

Mary & Daniel Nakahara

Janet Omoto

Kazaharu & Lillie Omoto

Nadine & Jerry Penick

Mary & Edward Ralston

Mark Sass

Robert & Carol Setoguchi

In Honor of Eli Schwartz

Israeli & Judith Jaffe

In Honor of Gracie Mungovan

Stephen Mungovan

In Honor of Hasmig Minassian

Lori Berlin & Michael Stephens

Andrew Budker

Shara Cohen

Marissa Dennis

Jennifer & Daniel Firepine

Sheryl Fishman

Andrew Gordon-Kirsch

Charles & Susan Halpern

Rachel Hamburg

Lisa Jacobs-Pontecorvo

Silva Katchiguian

Erin Miller

Noel Morrison

Deborah Nicholas

John True & Claudia Wilken

Raffi & Carol Veghiayan

In Honor of Leib Sutcher

Carol Barber

Ben Fajen

Edward Matsuishi

Wendy Morrison

Burton Wolfman

Pamela Woodbridge & Elliot Davis

In Honor of Marina Franco

Rosa Monroy

In Honor of Siena Meeks

Pamela & David Bluhm

Carol & Thomas Borst

Lisa Cohen

Christine Essex

Richard Gelber

Leslie Gould & Howard Varinsky

Janice Meeks-Boriss

Daniel & Caryn Newbrun

Carol Piccione

Matthew & Jennifer Plunkett

Paul Rice & Marisol Aguilar

Julia Schachter

In addition to those listed above, approximately 275 people contributed cash at the Bungee Jumping Cows concert, the screening of the film, My So Called Enemy, and the Valentine’s Day Raffle at Berkeley High School.

Reflection By Hasmig

I have this photograph from the night after Kyle died of all of his friends hovered on my couch eagerly looking through pictures of him. Gone only 24 hours, they were searching for some signs of his life, desperately grasping memories that they worried would slip away as quickly as he did. Similarly, I started ransacking my own brain for memories that, like a vivid dream, disappear as I try to describe them. But my last interaction with Kyle is fortunately fully in tact for the re-telling.

It was the Friday before Spring Break and students were in the computer lab getting help with next year’s schedule on line while I was writing passes to the counselor so they could set up their initial “college talk” appointment. I wrote one out for Kyle and he rejected it. “I’m not going to college,” he stated bluntly. And then proceeded to orate his well-rehearsed spiel about his calling toward the Israeli army. I retorted with my now-broken record lecture about politics, options, and his safety, both physical and emotional. I knew he’d be forced to make decisions that were counter intuitive to his sensitivity and deep loyalties to fairness. Born in the sign of Cancer, Kyle is a water baby: emotional, committed, and loyal to his cause. “I’d be safer there than I am here,” he said to me. Born in the sign of the Taurus, I am stubborn. “Take the pass,” I said to him with stern eyes, as I shoved it towards his chest. He grinned and shook his head sideways at me, stuffed it in his pocket, and walked away.

We watched headlines for weeks leading up to March 31, 2011, looking for signs that a surge of violence in Israel/Palestine would postpone our trip. Several times, we were on very close watch, emailing several times a day with our partners in Colorado as news from the region was tenuous. My last conversation with Kyle was never far from my mind as I balanced my concerns for our kids’ emotional safety with my fear that we might accidentally find ourselves in a physical situation I couldn’t get them out of. My adult responsibility suddenly weighed heavily and there were moments when I doubted. “Were we being impulsive?” Once on the ground in the country, there wasn’t this constant dread of attack or anxiety that some of the kids had predicted might exist. We felt safe and protected, not only because we were Americans after all, but also because our hosts had gone to great lengths to plan every moment of the trip with our students’ security in mind.

However on four occasions, mostly in the second half of the trip, we had piercing jolts of adrenaline course through our bodies that reminded us that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, nor Berkeley for that matter. The photograph on page of Leib holding hands with the Bedouin school children is arguably one of the sweetest in the collection. It captures an innocent playfulness that we brought with us in our 14 participants and met all over the country.

Illustrative of the harsh contrasts in this region, not 5 minutes after that photograph was snapped, we witnessed a forcefully loud explosion, close enough to marvel at the mushroom cloud it left in its wake, close enough to have the innocence and playfulness from moments before rapidly replaced by fear, curiosity, and shock. But that was Israel and Palestine. In exactly the same moment, you were looking at both the photograph and its negative.

The entries and photos that follow, chronicle the conclusion of our vivid dream realized on this soil of intrepid beauty married to cruel injustice.

Dreams of Kyle

Leib and I were very clear that we needed to leave one of Jacquey's 16 silver hearts for Kyle at the Western Wall. The first time we came to the Wall was on Saturday, the first full day of our trip, but since it was Shabbat, we couldn't take any photos, and we were committed to documenting each of the locations that we left a heart. So, Leib, Hasmig and I returned today (April 7), cameras in hand. It turns out that each year prior to Passover, all the notes that have been left at the Wall over the course of the year are carefully removed with a special stick dipped in a ceremonial michvah and buried. Many of the notes we had left on our previous visit were now gone. I was disappointed at first that their residence had been so brief, but then felt somehow comforted knowing that our messages couldn’t simply fall out of their crevices and blow through the streets of Jerusalem as litter. They were safely and ceremonially buried away. We left some additional notes from BHS CAS students deep in the recesses of now cleared crevices. I'm certain they will now remain for a year or more.

Leib scoped out a ledge quite a ways up on the Wall, too high, we guess, to ever be removed by those cleaning the wall. Leib tossed the heart up onto the ledge, about 10 feet above our heads. I think it will be there, out of reach, for a very long time. I said Kaddish at the Wall directly underneath the ledge that holds Heart #8. While I stood there, eyes closed and touching the Wall with my hands and head, I had a flash of understanding.

On August 21, 2010, nearly five months after the accident, I had my first dream of Kyle. We were in the desert and he was a toddler but we were talking as if he was sixteen. Gary, my brother, and Niko were there, too. Kyle was in a form that was practically transparent. Sometimes he was more solid than others and then he’d fade a bit. Sometimes when he was further away from me—a few feet—he was more solid and then when I’d try to pull him close to me or when he’d come closer, he would fade. He gave me a hug at first and he was in his 16 year old body and neither of us had on shirts and I could almost feel his skin on mine when our chests met.

Two months later, I had another dream of Kyle on October 31, 2010. I was sitting on a stone bench, a large rectangular slab of stone with legs but no back, facing an old stone wall. It seemed to me to be an old school or some old institutional building, but I didn’t recognize it and I didn't know where I was. Kyle came up behind me, wrapped his arms around me, his left arm around my waste and his right arm around my shoulders and chest and put his right cheek against my left cheek and said, "Can you feel me this time? It's me. It is me. I'm OK." I reached back with my right hand and grabbed the back of his neck. I could feel his course, curly hair, and his neck neatly shaved above the collar the way he liked it. And then he turned into Niko and I could feel Niko's thick, softer black hair and smaller neck. Every night since October 31, 2010, before I go to bed, I close my eyes and visualize, replay, re-live that dream of Kyle hugging me from behind and me being able to feel his embrace and his face against mine. On this day, at the Western Wall, I had a sudden flash of understanding that that dream was here in the Old City of Jerusalem. It might have been right here at the Wall or somewhere else in the Old City, but I'm certain that the ancient stone wall I faced was somewhere here in Jerusalem.

I Hope We Did It Big Enough

Our last moments in Israel, we spent on the beach in Tel Aviv. It was a beautiful, clear, crisp, sunny day, just barely warm enough for a couple of bathing suits to appear, a couple of t-shirts to come off. For the first couple hours we relaxed in the sand, played a little but not too vigorously, talked, and ate a picnic lunch of all our now-favorite Israeli/Palestinian treats. Bamba. Lots of Bamba. It was perhaps our first un-rushed moment, a happy, fulfilled moment, but also thick with the underlying seriousness and anticipation of the moment ahead. We were there to reflect on what this trip has meant to us, to commemorate the ending of this profound experience that has changed us, that w

e will never forget. We were there to perform the third and final Memorial for Kyle. The first, The Funeral at Tem

ple Emanu-El in San Francisco, filled with shock and love and chaos and a bleeding, raging, crying sky, represented Kyle’s past, his brief timeline, his Jewish heritage. The second, The CAS Memorial in the Little Theater at Berkeley High, fille

d with poignant, open-hearted narratives from friends, teachers and family, painted a portrait of the present that Kyle was living, of all that was important to him, at the moment of his death. The third, The Tel Aviv Memorial, private, intimate, naked, unsc

ripted would be the proxy for the future that Kyle didn’t get, the piece of his future that these amazing, loving, loyal young people chose to live for him.

We dug a hole in the beach, a meter deep, one handful at a time. We gath

ered a few steps away at our picnic site, and sat in a circle under our little wood gazebo on the beach. Out of backpacks and bags came small treasures that each person had brought to leave here for Kyle. Hasmig brought out the bracelets she designed and had made by the Armenian jeweler in Jerusalem. We each cut off the yarn appreciation bracelets we had wrapped and tied around each other’s wrists months ago at the closing ceremony of our first retreat with Stephen and Jamie. That day had ended with me engulfed at the center of a long, spiraling group hug that renewed my courage and strength. On the beach, we helped each other to solemnly fastened onto our wrists the new silver clasp on the leather thong adorned with silver Hebrew letters for Chai or “life,” the root word of Kyle’s Hebrew name, Chaim.

The circle grew quiet. Sarah from the CAS Class of 2010, now living in Tel Aviv had joined us. She and Max spoke for a few minutes about their experiences in Israel over the last year. Quiet again. At that first retreat, each person had brought an artifact to share that represented why we had chosen to participate in this program. It had been a long evening, filled up with tears, stories, anguish and hope that together we could soften some of the

pain. On the beach in Tel Aviv, we went around our circle again. Each person described what they brought to leave for Kyle:

a rose from Beebe

the baseball that he hit for his first homerun from Leib

a DVD with the film she made for Kyle from Siena

a batting practice baseball he had pitched many times to Kyle from Craig

a wallet from Ben

a coin and a wish of peace for both Kyle and Craig from Alex

a glass heart given to her by Kyle’s aunt from Hasmig

a friendship bracelet from Callie

a stone from the spot where her father's ashes are spread from Gemma

a poem composed and bravely read from Marina

a baseball card given to him by Kyle from Evan

a tear-stained handwritten note from Gracie

spoken tributes from Eli and Nick

Each person spoke a little about what the trip meant to them, what they want to bring home from it, and something about Kyle. Then we each said an appreciation for someone in the group. When everyone had finished, we got up and re-circled our Memorial Pit. We tossed in our yarn bracelets. One at a time, we each tossed our offering into that hole. We lit some ceremonial cigars in honor of Kyle’s experiments with contraband, tossed them in, too, and then together, we used our bare feet to gently push sand to the center, covering the hole. We hugged on top of it, and wondered, would tide ever reach this high.

On the bruised baseball of Kyle’s that I left in that hole, Ben wrote:

Dear Kyle,

I hope we did it big enough for you.

Much love,

Ben