Nelson County woman recalls day her husband, daughter were killed in terror attacks

One year ago, Kia Scherr’s world collapsed.

Early in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving, she learned that her husband Alan, 58, and daughter Naomi, 13, had died when terrorists attacked the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai, India, where they had been staying while on a spiritual retreat along with 23 other members of the Synchronicity Foundation, a spiritual community based in Nelson County.

“I just kind of crumbled,” Scherr said. “There was nothing else to feel. Everything dissolved.”

The Scherrs had been residents at the Synchronicity Foundation, in Nellysford on Adial Road, for more than a decade. Alan was a spokesman and book editor for the organization and had made a special trip to India six months before the attacks to make arrangements for the trip.

Scherr was visiting her family in Florida at the time the attacks began on Nov. 26, 2008. She got a call from the organization’s vice president and director, Bobbie Garvey, telling her to turn on the news –– the hotel had been attacked and her husband and daughter were among those who had not been accounted for.

“We created hopeful scenarios that they were OK, hiding, barricaded somewhere, something,” Scherr said. “I just wanted to focus on hope at that point.”

Garvey also was the one to inform Scherr of her family’s

confirmed deaths early in the morning on Nov. 28.

Master Charles Cannon, leader of the Foundation, was also on the spiritual retreat in India and survived the terrorist attacks by barricading himself in his hotel room with other members of the organization.

The attacks happened less than a week before the members were scheduled to fly home and that night, he had finished a meditation program and had eaten dinner in his room, as usual, Cannon said.

“I had finished the daily business with Alan, who was coordinating the next day’s activities, and he’d said to me that he was going to be going out to get something to eat,” Cannon said.

It was the last time Cannon would speak with his friend.

Cannon was sitting in his room with friends when they heard the first gunshots. He said that at first, they thought it could have firecrackers until one of the organization’s members left the room to check and saw the gunman. He ran back to tell Cannon and the others.

“We couldn’t believe it. But then the first of the explosions happened,” Cannon said. “Once we experienced that and big gun fire, you know something horrendous is happening.”

For the next 48 hours, Cannon and the others were trapped in the smoke-filled room. They turned on the TV and watched as their hotel erupted into flames. They could stay in contact with other members by phone, for a while, and with others by e-mail.

That was how he learned that Alan and Naomi were unaccounted for, Cannon said.

Now, a year after Alan and Naomi became the American faces of that terrorist attack half a world away, Scherr said her daily routine hasn’t changed much that but her role at the Synchronicity Foundation has.

“I played a very central role in the running of Synchronicity and the day-to-day functioning of the sanctuary,” Scherr said. “And certainly after Mumbai, the state I was in, I couldn’t hold that same kind of role, so I just handed it all over.”

The number of people involved in her life has also changed.

“I had two companions that I was with all day, probably in a way a much closer knit family than most because we had every meal together, we had offices near each other and we were on the same meditative schedule,” Scherr said. “We shared this holistic lifestyle and that was a very intimate way of life.”

“So now my life is becoming more outward directed because we’re meeting more people and we’ll be traveling more and so that’s a huge change,” she said. “I’m feeling much more connected to the rest of the world and everybody after being very reclusive.”

Scherr said that change has felt very natural to her and that “everyone I meet feels like family.” She said she hopes to eventually travel to Mumbai and to meet the people of India.

“I feel very connected to them,” Scherr said. “My family, that’s where they spent their last days and I know their last days were full of joy and delight and I would like to go.”

Cannon is also hoping to return to India.

In the days after the attacks, the Synchronicity Foundation received thousands of calls, e-mails, letters and visitors who expressed their sorrow and sympathy for the organization’s loss. Cannon called it a “tsunami of love” that came back to them.

As a response to that wave and in the process of transformation Scherr was going through, she has helped to create a new nonprofit organization called the One Life Alliance.

The organization will help “continue the conversation” about how life is sacred, a message that has emerged as a response to the terrorist attacks, Scherr said, and the power of forgiveness as a means of inspiring and encouraging peace and unity in the world.

“I was feeling moved and inspired, partly by Master Charles and his response and also by the people that were sending their love,” she said. “They were responding to us and they were showing great value for the sacredness of life ... where before, certainly what we saw with the terrorists attacks, there was no value for life.

“When we experience the opposite of something, it shows what we really do have.”

Cannon and Scherr said they both still forgive the terrorists for what happened that day in Mumbai.

“Terrorists presented us with a choice,” Cannon said. “We could’ve been hateful. We could’ve been vengeful. We could be as violent as they are. Or we could say no, I’m not going to fill myself with that. I’m going to choose love, truth, kindness, compassion and peace. I’m going to fill myself with that.

“In that understanding, the terrorists lose.”

On Thanksgiving Day, the One Life Alliance was to launch its inaugural live Web cast offering the One Life Alliance vision and mission. The Synchronicity Foundation will also be hosting a fundraising Thanksgiving dinner for the One Life Alliance.

A memorial service for the community is also planned at the Synchronicity Foundation that day to remember Alan and Naomi.

Scherr said she thinks about her late husband and daughter always.

“I wake up and they’re always in my awareness,” Scherr said. “We lived here after all, so there is memories. I feel their presence in my heart and all over the place.”

“I’m just getting used to feeling them in another, more subtle way and just being with that,” she said.

“But I still miss them.”