How to help
To learn more about Hands Together, or to make a donation to support college scholarships for graduates of the Becky DeWine School, visit www.handstogether.org.
When top students graduate from American high schools, we marvel that they have survived 5 a.m. swim practices and all-night study sessions.
When Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and his wife, Fran, recently attended the first graduation ceremony of the Becky DeWine School in the Port au Prince slum known as Cite Soleil, they witnessed the true meaning of perseverance.
“It was a very moving experience for us,” Mike DeWine said. “Fran and I talked about what survivors these kids truly are. They have survived an horrendous earthquake, a cholera epidemic, and random violence in the streets. Their classmates have been murdered, and two of their teachers were murdered a year ago. And that doesn’t even take into account the day-to-day life in Cite Soleil, one of the worst slums in the world.”
The DeWines have long supported Hands Together, the charity that runs the Becky DeWine School named in honor of their 22-year-old daughter who died in a car crash in 1993.
Becky’s portrait smiled down on the school’s first graduating class as the 120 graduates in their shining white-and-green robes swayed and sang a prayer of thanksgiving in their native French Creole.
The Becky DeWine School’s eight campuses in Cite Soleil have an enrollment of roughly 5,000 students, serving 9,677 daily meals. “It’s a very emotional fact that school is named for Becky,” DeWine said. “We think of Becky and one of the tough things for any parent who has lost a child is that you wonder what they would have done with their lives. Becky was a caring and compassionate person. She’s not here to do this, so we have tried to do it in her name and in her honor.”
DeWine’s perspective on Haiti has evolved since his early years in the Senate. “At first I thought that what we were doing in the Senate and as individuals could have a dramatic impact on Haiti,” DeWine said. “Now I know we can’t do that. Our mission is not to save Haiti, because that’s beyond us. But we can affect one child at a time. Our goal is to help that child survive and have a meaningful life. By accident of birth these kids were born in Haiti instead of Beavercreek. Some of the kids don’t make it, and some of them drop out, but we provide an opportunity for success.”
The DeWines are working to provide college scholarships for some of the graduates of the Becky DeWine School. “The idea of anybody in Cite Soleil going to college is simply unfathomable,” DeWine said. “They looked so good dressed up in their cap and gowns, and then we walked outside and looked at shanties they came out of. And we wonder, ‘How could that be?’”
The DeWines were joined at the graduation ceremony by their son-in-law, Bill Darling of Worthington, as well as their longtime friend Father Tom Hagan, the Philadelphia priest who has worked for many years in Cite Soleil with Hands Together. Hagan, too, is a survivor, having lived through the earthquake that destroyed his home and killed two seminarians living with him there. His chief of staff and close friend, Nelson Jean Liphete, saved his life by throwing him under a table.
But now Liphete, too, is gone, after surviving the earthquake that killed his wife and child. A marauding gang of teenagers shot Liphete to death in March, 2012, along with another Hands Together employee, Alexander Marcus. Despite the danger, despite the litany of loss, Hagan continues to work with the children of Cite Soleil. One of the ways to earn a scholarship is to work with the homeless children known simply as “The Barefoot Kids.”
“There isn’t a night that we stayed with Father Tom that we didn’t hear gunshots,” DeWine said. “It’s a risky, risky world. He has dealt with the gangs, and he has had people put guns to his head, yet he continues to do this. It’s his calling.”
Yet there is hope. Impromptu shrines have sprung up all over Cite Soleil in memory of Liphete, whose success remains a symbol of hope in spite of his tragic death.
‘You talk to these kids and they have the same dreams as American kids,” DeWine said. “A lot of them want to be doctors, or lawyers or teachers. They all want a better life.”
And they could teach our kids a thing or two about what it means to be a survivor.
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