alumni today
HEALTH CARE
Saving Young Mothers in Africa
After graduation, Phillip Massey ’06 flew Niger, where nearly half of girls
to Niger to teach French to children of the are married and have had their
Muslim staff at the Southern Baptist Mission. first child by 16, these fistulas are
Looking for a job that would put him closer common. Pain and complications
to a career in public health, he linked up with such as incontinence make it
a surgeon in the fistula wing at the National impossible for women to work
Hospital in Niamey, the capital. and often lead to isolation and
Massey soon learned that problems easily shame. Women are discarded by
treated or nearly nonexistent in the U.S. are their husbands, blocked from
the source of suffering in other areas. For places of worship and even forced
example, obstetric fistulas — holes that to live as outcasts.
develop in the vagina, bladder or rectum For two months, Massey worked side by
when the blood supply is cut off during side with the surgeon on rounds and became
prolonged, obstructed labor — are rare in a passionate advocate for the effort to end this
the U.S. They can be prevented with prenatal suffering. Massey has set off on a second trip
care and by avoiding adolescent pregnancies; to Africa — nine months in French Guiana
when they occur, they can be repaired. But in — but says his long-term plans are to return
COURTESY PHILLIP MASSE Y ’06
to the U.S. to attend graduate school in public health,
where he will gain the professional skills he needs to
join the effort to help the
women he met in Niger.
After graduation,
Phillip Massey ’06
spent two months
helping young
mothers in Niger.
VIOLENCE IN SCHOOLS
Calm in a Crisis
As airports, public buildings and schools
step up security measures, people across the
U.S. are thinking more about violence. While
most of us can’t say for sure what we would do
if faced with a loaded gun, Lisa Kukla ’ 92
found out for herself.
A civics teacher at East Chapel Hill High
School, Kukla grew up in West Virginia, the
daughter of a minister in a home where
nobody kept a gun. On April 24, 2006, Kukla
was working with a student, Chelsea Slegal, in
her classroom after school when, Kukla says, a
teenager came into the room and drew from
his backpack an air gun, a real gun and a
hunting knife.
“My first thought was that this is it. I’m
going to die,” Kukla recalls. “Then, after I got
over the shock of seeing the gun, I went into
survival mode. I told myself, I have to stay
calm. I’m going to talk my way out of this.”
Slegal also stayed calm, and for an hour
and 15 minutes they
talked to the young man,
whom neither knew
before the incident. Kukla
remembers drawing on
teaching wisdom, keeping
her requests positive. “I
kept talking about our
family, my baby, my husband, Chelsea’s mom. I
kept it personal, and I
kept him on task, telling him what to do,
telling him to put down the gun and let us go.”
Kukla said the young man said he wanted
to shoot the gun, so Kukla told him to shoot
out the window. She said he did shoot and
then he fled, and police said he went home. In
late January, William Foster, 17, pleaded both
not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity
to multiple charges. He was being held at
Dorothea Dix hospital in lieu of $40,000 bail.
DTH /MAGGIE SARTIN
Lisa Kukla ’ 92, an East Chapel Hill High School teacher who was held at gunpoint on
school grounds, was recognized in January for helping avoid a tragedy.
The North Carolinians Against Gun
Violence Education Fund honored Kukla in
January with its Citizen of the Year Award.
Kukla says that even though she still feels
afraid, she would never have a gun in her
home. She continues to struggle with the
issue of violence in the school and has organized a petition signed by more than 85 teachers urging the school to work to prevent
future violence.
