I opened my Annual Benefit presentation by saying, “There is an old joke that never gets old to me: A man goes to the doctor and cries out, ‘Doctor, doctor, am I dying?’ The doctor calmly replies, ‘We are all dying. But you are not dying today.’” When we were deciding whether to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the 1980 martyrs, we wondered if we should wait until the nice, round number of 50. (We had been thwarted from celebrating the 40th by the pandemic.) Yet, how many of us, the family and friends of Jean and Sr. Dorothy, would still be here at the 50th?

We have had the luxury of growing old and watching our loved ones grow up. So, we chose to follow the examples of our martyrs: make your life count now. In the immortal words of Jean Donovan, quoted by her cousin, Meg Donovan Kearney McGarry:

“Several times I have decided to leave El Salvador. I almost could, except for the children, the poor, bruised victims of this insanity. Who would care for them? Whose heart could be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”

Thanks for being Jean’s living legacy.

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Valeria’s story of growing up at COAR (pgs. 1-3) reminded me of the many stories I’ve heard through the years of the kids’ loss of their parents. They lose them in many ways: to drugs, emigration, prison, and ultimately, too often, to death. This is the life of the very poor in every country. The legacy of the civil war that began with the martyrdoms of 1980 didn’t end with the peace accords of 1992. It lives on in the continued poverty, the violence that it spawns, and the mass incarceration program trying to counter it in El Salvador. I grieve for those parents who have never known their COAR kids. Their kids are healthy, funny, smart, and they have made a family of their friends. Thank you for working with us to create this future, this alternative to prisons, for children whose parents cannot create a hopeful future for them.