Slain Muslim students honored at UNC, NCSU memorials
Students and faculty at the UNC School of Dentistry, normally focused on helping others get and stay well, have spent the past year trying to do some healing of their own as they dealt with the violent deaths of two of their own.
Wednesday afternoon, they commemorated their journey of grief with a short memorial service honoring Deah Barakat and his wife, Yusor Abu-Salah. Barakat was a second-year student and Abu-Salah had just been accepted to the dental school when they were shot and killed on Feb. 10, 2015 at their home in Chapel Hill. Abu-Salah’s younger sister, Razan, a design student at N.C. State University, also was killed.
Barakat and Yusor received their undergraduate degrees from N.C. State, and a second memorial was held there on Wednesday night. A few hundred gathered outside the Talley Student Union, braving the cold for a vigil and candlelight call to prayer.
N.C. State Chancellor Randy Woodson said the three students “exemplified the best of the university. They embraced life’s possibilities, they loved learning” and showed by their example, the importance of “diversity, acceptance, inclusion and tolerance.”
Woodson noted that their deaths are now part of an ongoing national conversation about race and tolerance and, on college campuses, “the free and own exchange of ideas while being treated with dignity and respect.”
He also reminded those gathered that all three students contributed to their community and were working with Habitat For Humanity to build a home in Wake County when they were killed.
“I’m so proud to have known them,” he said. “I’m so proud to celebrate the legacy they left.”
Their legacy was also celebrated in Chapel Hill, where at least 200 people gathered in the atrium of the dental school to hear remembrances from family members and friends. Dr. Jane Weintraub, dean of the dental school, remembered Barakat as a generous and energetic force.
“He was a real role mode for everybody,” when he was alive, Weintraub said. “And he continues to be.”
When he died, Barakat was planning a trip to Turkey to help provide dental services to Syrian refugees living there. After his death, word of the effort spread around the world and his fundraising campaign soared far past his original goal. A team of dentists and other medical workers fulfilled the mission last year.
At Wednesday’s event, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, father of the slain girls, recalled that when he first heard his future son-in-law say he was trying to raise $20,000 for the Syria trip he wondered if his daughter was marrying into a family of crazy people.
“But he was tall in his faith,” Abu-Salha said of Barakat, and determined to make a difference in the world.
Abu-Salha asked those who knew the three students or have been inspired by their story to embrace service projects launched in their honor. One is a local interfaith food drive that runs through Feb. 20 at the Islamic Center of Raleigh and will benefit the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.
Another is an effort to establish a $5 million endowment that could provide annual grants for projects like the dental aid mission for Syrian refugees. Abu-Salha said the Our Three Winners Fund, as the slain students are referred to, has raised about $700,000 since it was launched a year ago.
While Wednesday’s event at UNC was mostly upbeat, there were emotional moments.
Amira Bamyeh, the mother of Yusor and Razan Abu-Salah, burst into tears when Weintraub placed two shadow boxes on the dais, each containing a white dental jacket: one embroidered with Barakat’s name, and one with Yusor’s.
Dental students receive their jackets in a ceremony at the end of their first year, to mark the transition from classroom studies to clinical work. Barakat had received his jacket, and his family has that one. These two will be displayed in the school, Weintraub said.
Suzanne Barakat, Deah’s older sister and a graduate of UNC and its medical school, traveled from California where she is in residency at a hospital to attend the memorials.
At UNC, she thanked the dental school for helping to keep the students’ legacy alive and for offering emotional support to the family over the past year. “Sometimes we are at a loss for words,” she told them, but added that the family sees the students as shining stars.
“We are proud of you,” she assured them.
Kaushal Gandhi, a third-year dental student at the school, told the gathering that she misses her friend Barakat every day. In his absence, she and others raised enough money to buy 600 pounds of food for the food drive, and earlier, held a talent show to raise $3,800 for Habitat for Humanity.
Weintraub, the dean, said about 350 students from the school participated in “Deah Day” last September, fanning out across the Triangle to help some 22 community groups. She said the school would like to make Deah Day an annual event, and hopes it will spread to other dental schools across the country.
Martha Quillin: 919-829-8989
This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Slain Muslim students honored at UNC, NCSU memorials."