Foundation Born From 9/11 Tragedy Helps Those Scarred by War

GULU, Uganda, Sept. 9, 2008— -- I met Liz and Steve Alderman and their daughter, Jane, at a party in New York a couple of years ago, through a friend who's the kind of gifted host who puts guests at ease by giving them a tidbit about each other that will likely spark conversation.

In the Aldermans' case, it was that a story they had seen on "Nightline" had prompted them to start a foundation training mental health professionals and opening clinics in former war-torn countries.

The foundation has a tragic beginning: Their 25-year-old son, Peter Craig Alderman, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. He was working for Bloomberg LLC and was attending a conference that morning at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. Sadly, he arrived early for the conference.

Liz and Steve told us about the last messages Peter sent and how his sister, Jane, and other friends were e-mailing, asking, "Are you OK?" and "Where are you, Peter?"

Seven years later, as the Aldermans shared this story at a refugee camp in Northern Uganda, Liz choked up a bit as she related one of his last messages: "I'm stuck. The room is filling with smoke." Liz and Steve finished in unison, "I'm scared."

In a private moment, Liz said she always wondered how parents who lost a child kept living, or even managed to get up every day. She said it's because you have to. They wanted to find a way to honor Peter, to let the world know he lived and was loved. But they couldn't decide how. A vest pocket park? A university chair? All considered and discarded.

A Foundation Born From Tragedy

But one night, about nine months after Peter died, they saw a Bill Blakemore piece on "Nightline" about the "walking wounded" -- people scarred by war, in places where psychiatry is taboo, in short supply, frowned upon. Bill was interviewing Dr. Richard Mollica, a psychiatrist, a professor of medicine and the head of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. From that, the Peter C. Alderman Foundation was born.

With the $1.4 million in victims' compensation they received, the Aldermans endowed the foundation. They fundraise or pay out of their own pockets for the four clinics they have opened so far. Two are in Cambodia, another two in Uganda. By partnering with the host government, it can cost the foundation as little as $35,000 a year to run a clinic.

In July, "Nightline" producer Deborah Apton and I went with Liz, Steve and Jane Alderman to Uganda. We flew to Kampala, Uganda's capital, then boarded a comfortable coach for the five-hour bumpy ride north to Gulu. We were going for the official opening of their second Ugandan clinic.

From Child Soldiers to Sex Slaves

For nearly 20 years, the northern region of Uganda has been in the grip of a particularly vicious war between rebels calling themselves the Lord's Resistance Army and Ugandan government troops.

The LRA is known for stealing children in the night, forcing the boys to become child soldiers and the girls to be sex slaves. Now, with a cease-fire in place, many of the children have been released to return home to villages where they are finding their families dead from war or AIDS, or discovering they are not welcome because of atrocities the rebels forced them to commit to save their own lives.

But nearly 2 million Ugandans have not yet gone home. Instead, they're living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, like the one we visited. The Awach Camp is a loose collection of mud huts and misery, where people feel safe in numbers. The only other place I have ever seen with comparable poverty is in Haiti. Hundreds of people of all ages, wandering aimlessly.

There is a school, but children can't go if their families can't afford the school fees and uniforms. There is a health clinic where mothers with small children line up listlessly all day, waiting to be seen by what amounts to a nurse practitioner or young medical student.

If you have ever wondered where your old, donated clothes have gone, look at the children in the Awach Camp, who often sport Western-style looks. Each child has maybe two outfits, probably only one, and that one is in tatters. Dirty, grimy, ripped to shreds, like something out of Dickensian England. Steve Alderman, a retired oncologist, kept pointing out the children who were sick, the ones whose eyes were runny, or lacked spark.

Grand Opening for Taboo Treatment

Many were transfixed by the big, white Gaagaa bus that arrived, bearing "mzungu" (white) and volunteers (both African and non) who had been part of a four-day conference. (Just for the record, at home I may be black, but in Uganda I was called "Mzungu" more times than I can count.)

The Aldermans, the other adults on this mission, Deb Apton and I became Pied Pipers, with a long trail of laughing children wherever we walked. Liz wore a locket with two tiny photos of Peter. She could be seen encircled by curious children, showing them her pictures of Peter, teaching them to say "Peter."

"I want to take everybody home with me!" she cried at one point.

Deb is a "Nightline" producer, but on this story, she also did an amazing job of shooting the entire piece. We asked before we went to the IDP camp what we could take for the children. Liz and Steve said emphatically NOTHING. They need everything, but there is nothing you can take that you will have enough of to give to them, they said.

Instead, we took pictures of the children and showed them the pictures on our digital cameras. Talk about huge smiles and laughs. Many had never seen themselves before. It was their first look into a "mirror."

It was a blazing-hot day and time for the ribbon cutting at the Peter C. Alderman Clinic in Gulu. It has been open for several months, but this was the official grand opening, with all the government ministers and some of the students the clinic's counselors have been treating.

We were introduced to four students from the Laroo Boarding School for War Affected Children -- Flavia, Dennis, Geoffrey and a boy whose arms were cut off by the rebels.

Hope for Victims Marred by Strife

In our story we focused on Flavia and Geoffrey. Flavia is 14, a beautiful, sweet, somber girl who was kidnapped at age 12, along with her two sisters.

Eight months later, she escaped with another girl when they went to draw water. She has never seen her sisters again. Her parents are dead, most likely from AIDS. Flavia tells her counselors that she can't escape the bad dreams.

The next day, we go home with 17-year-old Geoffrey, who says he saw his father and brother murdered by the rebels, and who says he was forced to kill his friend or be killed himself. His mother, at age 35, is a widow with nine children. Their home is down a series of dirt tracks, through the sunflower crop, on paths so narrow and rutted we have to abandon our vehicle and walk.

Their "village" is really separate groupings of tiny mud huts with thatched roofs; their bathroom a foul latrine; their drinking water a fetid puddle in the bush. Geoffrey's younger brothers and sisters are clad in rags or simply naked. Geoffrey is one of the "lucky" ones to live at the government-run boarding school, even though he says the education he is receiving there is not the best.

Flavia, Geoffrey and other students have been sent to the Peter C. Alderman Clinic because trauma is affecting their lives, hindering learning and progress. There they are treated with talk therapy and medication, if necessary.

"Peter loved life, and if we can help these people come back to a functional life, then there's nothing that would make us feel better than that, " Liz Alderman said. "We seem to be succeeding. We believe we're leaving a profound and indelible mark that Peter existed on this Earth."

Steve added, "While clinical medicine, unfortunately, has to be rendered one patient at a time, one family at a time, what we're doing here in Gulu is going to bring back a whole town, a whole village, to normal function."

From the loss of one, perhaps many will be saved.

For more information, visit the Peter C. Alderman Foundation Web site.