Frank Heffernan thought his daughter Megan was in South Korea the place she was working as an English trainer when he heard the information of a devastating terrorist assault on the Indonesian island of Bali on Oct. 12, 2002.
Then the State Division known as.
Megan Heffernan, 28, who was born and raised in Alaska and had a ardour for journey, was among the many 202 individuals who have been killed within the coordinated bombings carried out by an affiliate of Al Qaeda at a pub and nearby club in Bali. She had gone there with buddies on a trip.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” mentioned Mr. Heffernan, mopping his eyes with a tissue at his dwelling in Florida.
Within the random, merciless vogue of terrorism, the bombing killed vacationers and staff from 22 nations who occurred to be in a business district, together with 38 Indonesians. Among the many useless have been Australian and British residents who have been there for a rugby match, People obsessed with browsing — and Megan and two Korean buddies, who have been out sightseeing when the bombs exploded.
Now, 20 years later, a few dozen relations who carry the reminiscence of the largely forgotten assault are heading to a different faraway place, Guantánamo Bay, within the U.S.-controlled portion of Cuba. There they may characterize the useless for a army jury charged with deciding a jail sentence for 2 Malaysian males who pleaded responsible to conspiring within the bombings.
Amongst these making the journey are Mr. Heffernan and his spouse, Bonnie Okay. Corridor, whose personal daughters knew Megan in Anchorage. Megan’s mom, Sandra, died of the coronavirus three years in the past. Mr. Heffernan mentioned he was going to “express to the court the true loss” of his daughter, “a very thoughtful and religious girl who loved to travel.”
He mentioned he trusts the court docket — the decide and the army jury that’s anticipated to be assembled subsequent week — to resolve a good sentence.
“We don’t even know the involvement of those two men,” Ms. Corridor mentioned of the prisoners, who’ve been held by the US since 2003, first by the C.I.A. after which from 2006 at Guantánamo Bay.
In an interview, Mr. Heffernan mentioned he had not dwelled on attempting to know what was behind the assault.
“Whatever the depraved and twisted reasoning behind the bombing, whether it was because of government, religion or national differences, the bombing cost 202 people their lives,” he wrote in his sufferer impression assertion for the court docket.
It has left “eternal heartache to thousands of family members and friends,” he added.
Prosecutors by no means proposed the dying penalty within the three-defendant Bali bombing case, not like in the Sept. 11 case at Guantánamo. Now, with this week’s guilty pleas, solely an Indonesian man referred to as Hambali will face trial because the accused “operational mastermind” of the Jemaah Islamiyah motion, which carried out the bombing. That trial could start next year.
Mr. Heffernan mentioned he turned an opponent of capital punishment years in the past after a go to to Vatican Metropolis, the place he noticed Pope John Paul II. It was an epiphany of kinds, he mentioned, that introduced him according to “the theology against the death penalty.”
“Also, being old, I realize that if you are given enough grace to live that long, you can look back and regret the things that you’ve done,” he added.
Megan’s favourite coloration was purple, and he or she favored a T-shirt whose slogan learn, “Life Is Uncertain. Eat Dessert First,” Mr. Heffernan mentioned. She would have turned 50 final month.
Yearly since she died, Mr. Heffernan has marked Megan’s birthday, Dec. 12, by donating a set of purple vestments for a priest to put on whereas celebrating Mass. Every has a bit of tag commemorating his daughter.
Final 12 months’s donation has already been despatched to Alaska, Ms. Corridor mentioned. “They will travel with a priest from village to village.”
By the point of her dying, Megan Heffernan had skied in Argentina, taken a visit throughout highschool to Greece and visited Eire together with her older brother Michael, youthful sister Maureen and Maureen’s husband. Their father paid for the journey however didn’t tag alongside for worry he would possibly spoil the enjoyable.
“Children born to a Heffernan father are the luckiest kids in the world,” mentioned Ms. Corridor, who recalled how he wrote Megan each week, utilizing a No. 2 pencil and authorized pad, after she moved to Busan, South Korea, to show English to medical doctors, working towards physicians, in a post-doctorate training program. Typically he despatched care packages of Pringles, cookies and different favorites.
She traveled all through Asia, to Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. She went from China to Vietnam on riverboats, down the Mekong and took a bus to Hanoi, her father mentioned. He had visited a few of these locations through the Vietnam Struggle when, in 1967 and 1968, he was an Military helicopter medevac pilot and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for his valor. “She would go somewhere and tell us afterward,” Mr. Heffernan mentioned.
She had loads of concepts of how she needed to spend the remainder of her life. She took photographs with a digicam her father had given her. He thought she would possibly wish to be a photographer. She was fairly sufficient to be a mannequin, he mentioned, and had the grace to maybe be an actress. When she was completed touring, she needed to purchase a lodge in Alaska.
The State Division known as inside a day or so of the bombings. Mr. Heffernan realized his daughter had been on trip in Indonesia. Rescue staff in Bali, 13 time zones away, have been attempting to establish the survivors, the injured and the lacking.
The subsequent name requested for Megan’s dental information. It was then, he mentioned, that he started praying for forgiveness for any faults he had made alongside the way in which in elevating his eldest daughter.
