When My English Teacher's Daughter Was Abducted In Iraq

When Jill Carroll was first abducted in January of 2006, I was struck speechless.  As a freshman in college, the Iraq War hardly touched my life--though I knew these billions of dollars were being wasted on the other side of the world, though I knew there was unimaginable suffering, though I knew brave men and women, not all that different from you or I, were dying daily, it was all something that could be turned off with the pressing of a computer or telivision button.  When Jill Carroll was abducted in Iraq, I was snapped out of that world, and the pain and suffering of the American people involved was brought to the forefront of my mind.  My senior year Honors Humanities teacher, Mary Beth Carroll, was the mother of this young woman who'd been taken by the terrorists, and to have such a momentous event strike so close to home made all the difference in the world.

It is not common in a lifetime that one sees a person that they know on national television.  When I saw Mrs. Carroll on television, she seemed exactly the same as she had when I was in her class.  The same soft-spoken, brilliant, and thoughtful spirit that had given us lectures on Japanese woodblock prints and the baroque methodology of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, now telling CNN about what had happened to her daughter, and making her case to the terrorists that had taken her captive.

Honors Humanities was a course that was all-encompassing, beginning with primitive ancient art and advancing all the way through to post-modernism.  It covered virtually every outpouring of the human spirit in history, and from it I felt more personally enriched than from any class I have taken before or since.  Mrs. Carroll was an inspiring and motivating figure, who pushed her students to live up to their potential.  I was one of her last students; she retired after the 2004-05 academic school year.  I am proud to have said she was my teacher, and when I heard the news, I was mortified.

A lot has changed since January of 2006.  When I first heard about Jill's kidnapping, I made a diary; however, a faculty member of my former high school requested that I remove it, as the Carrolls were attempting to keep Jill's abduction as low-key as possible in an effort to deprive the terrorists of their goals.  Jill is now safely back on American soil, and is telling her story to the American press.

And yet, so little has changed.  Those in Iraq remain in danger on a daily basis.  The pain that struck the Carrolls could strike any family, could strike anyone.  Jill Carroll's abduction touched me in a way that I had never felt before.  For the first time, I felt the twinge of the intense visceral fear and pain that families with loved ones in Iraq feel every day.  I learned that no one is really "safe" from this war, that the electronic devices we use to keep up are really not the only thing connecting us to Iraq.  Whether we know it or not, everyone has a connection to what's going on there, and that connection is continually at risk to cause emotional suffering for someone we care about.

Mary Beth Carroll is an inspiring teacher, a wonderful and intelligent woman, and someone who I look up to tremendously as a future educator.  The fact that the Iraq war impacted her life in such a way makes me hurt, not only for the Carrolls, but for every single person who is connected to the international travesty that is the Iraq Debacle.  For every American soldier that dies or is wounded, for every Iraqi citizen that is killed or maimed, there are hundreds of people who feel the same way that I did about Jill and Mary Beth Carroll.  An emotionally invaluable string, perpetually in danger of being plucked by fate, exists in all of our lives.  Jill Carroll's abduction was, for me, a sobering and growing experience, and if all Americans developed the same understanding for the scope of suffering caused by the war, there is no way in Hell that Bush would be "Staying the Course".