Amy Biehl's Last Home

A Bright Life, a Tragic Death, and a Journey of Reconciliation in South Africa

Steven D. Gish

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780821423219
• eBook ISBN: 9780821446348
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

In 1993, white American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl was killed in a racially motivated attack near Cape Town, after spending months working to promote democracy and women's rights in South Africa. The ironic circumstances of her death generated enormous international publicity and yielded one of South Africa's most heralded stories of postapartheid reconciliation. Amy's parents not only established a humanitarian foundation to serve the black township where she was killed, but supported amnesty for her killers and hired two of the young men to work for the Amy Biehl Foundation. The Biehls were hailed as heroes by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and many others in South Africa and the United States—but their path toward healing was neither quick nor easy.

Granted unrestricted access to the Biehl family's papers, Steven Gish brings Amy and the Foundation to life in ways that have eluded previous authors. He is the first to place Biehl's story in its full historical context, while also presenting a gripping portrait of this remarkable young woman and the aftermath of her death across two continents.

Part I

1

Complete Determination

“YOU WANT to raise your children so you can enjoy them as adults,” the child psychology professor told the class. Linda Shewalter had been listening intently. She and her boyfriend Peter Biehl intended to marry and start a family together as soon as they could. Born in 1943, both Linda and Peter had grown up in Geneva, Illinois, a small town about an hour west of Chicago. They met each other at the local Congregational Church and became high-school sweethearts. Peter, the son of a prominent businessman, played football in high school, and Linda did some modeling. The two remained close even after Peter’s parents sent him to Choate, the famous New England prep school. Later Peter entered Whittier College in California; Linda enrolled at Stephens College in Missouri and then Lake Forest College in Illinois. After the two were married in 1964, Linda transferred to Whittier so that she and Peter could be together. Peter’s two passions in college were acting and playing football, while Linda’s was art history. Both graduated from Whittier with BAs in history in 1965. Then they moved back to the Midwest, this time to Chicago, where Peter began working for his father at Fry Consultants, Inc. Peter’s 32-year career in consulting and corporate management was about to take off.

Children arrived in short order. Kim was the first, born in Chicago in late 1965. The next spring, Peter transferred to Fry’s Los Angeles office, and so he, Linda, and the baby moved to Santa Monica, where two more daughters were born in the next few years. Amy Elizabeth Biehl was born at Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on April 26, 1967; Molly came along in 1970. Peter’s job required frequent travel. Linda was equally busy raising the children, though she did find time to volunteer in a local art museum. In the child psychology lingo of the day, the Biehls’ parenting style was neither authoritarian nor permissive. Linda consciously tried to raise the girls with a balance of openness, responsibility, and respect. “The children were curious, verbal, and responsive,” Linda recalled. “I had fun with them. We loved taking them out to help them see the world. We expected them to behave and they did.”

Linda remembers Amy as “extra-challenging—highly motivated almost from birth. Even in the womb, Amy kicked and rolled constantly.” So began a high-energy life. When she was barely able to walk, Amy would climb to the top of the high slide at the beach. When she was one and a half, she fell climbing out of her crib and broke her collarbone. When older sister Kim was learning to read at age four, Amy taught herself to read at age three. When the family moved to Palo Alto for a year in 1970, Amy went to preschool on the campus of Stanford University and played with the professors’ children. Three-year-old Amy made up her mind that when it was time to go to college, she would attend Stanford. She was her parents’ most demanding child. “Amy was very much a tomboy—challenging and active. She had a competitive spirit,” Linda recalled. At age four, Amy met the Lone Ranger during an event at a California restaurant. She then became obsessed with cowboys and insisted on going to preschool dressed as the Lone Ranger for four months straight, with a mask as part of the ensemble. It became “a battle of wills” between Amy and her mother. Exasperated, Linda finally made a deal with Amy—she could dress as a cowboy on most days as long she wore a dress (and no mask) on Wednesdays. Amy agreed. As Kim put it, “Amy was completely determined to do what she wanted to do. Complete determination, from the youngest age.”

In 1971, the family moved again, this time to Tucson, Arizona. Peter eventually became president and CEO of AAC Corporation, an electronics manufacturer. He also became active in Arizona’s Republican Party. He became the party’s state financial chairman and chaired the “Trunk ’n Tusk Club,” the party’s organization in Tucson. In this capacity he met George H. W. Bush and Barry Goldwater, and he and Linda hosted cocktail parties for Gerald Ford and Bob Dole. The Biehls were moderate Republicans and considered themselves “middle of the road” politically. They believed in civic engagement. Besides being a board member of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Peter was also on the board of the Tucson branches of the NAACP and the Urban League. The family attended the Casas Adobes (Congregational) Church in Tucson, where the girls participated in Sunday school and performed in the bell choir. Although not unduly religious, Peter and Linda were people of faith who believed in an ethical life. Linda led the life of a busy housewife, helping with a Brownie troop, carpooling the girls and their friends to their swimming and ballet lessons, and volunteering at church, the Tucson Museum of Art, and the Junior League. She became even busier when their son, Zach, was born in 1977.

Although all of the Biehl children were active, Amy embodied “human energy in its purest form,” her uncle Dale Shewalter observed. Her parents couldn’t simply tell her to go out and play; she demanded much more than that. Years later, Amy even admitted that during her childhood, she was “hell on wheels.” Athletics became an outlet for some of Amy’s excess energy. She and her sisters began swimming, gymnastics, and ballet in elementary school, and Amy began to accumulate a roomful of first- and second-place ribbons and trophies for her abilities. When Kim and Amy swam together in Tucson, they had to switch teams after Amy had an argument with the coach. “Amy always kind of ran the family,” Kim later admitted with a smile. Unlike her sisters, Amy insisted that her parents get her the best coaches, buy her the best sports clothing and equipment, and take her to the clubs with the best facilities. She was determined to excel in more than just sports. In fifth grade Amy started playing the flute seriously and would always be among the best in her school; she also received recognition for her skills in ballet. And she had not forgotten her dream of attending Stanford. She worked hard academically, earned all As during elementary school, and was often chosen as class president. But she had higher aspirations. In a speech contest in sixth grade, Amy announced her intention of becoming the first female president of the United States.

In 1979, when Amy was 12, the Biehls moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There Peter and Linda opened the Los Llanos Gallery of Contemporary Art, which showcased works by Native American artists. While Linda ran the gallery, Peter worked with several different industries as an independent consultant. The family attended the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, where they made many close friends.

Amy loved the natural beauty of Santa Fe, with its unique adobe houses, surrounding mountains, and deep blue skies. Adjusting to a new school proved to be difficult, however. The majority of students were Hispanic, and white students—sometimes labeled “Anglos”—felt greatly outnumbered. Amy was determined to win the acceptance of her Hispanic classmates, but such acceptance was not automatic. As challenging as the school environment was for Amy initially, it prompted her to think about issues of race and ethnicity that would so interest her in the future.

In the fall of her junior year, Amy wrote something in her journal that her mother later found significant. Amy commented that in class discussions, some of her fellow students paid lip service to helping the less fortunate but had no real intention of doing so. Amy was troubled by what she perceived as a lack of sincerity. There was nothing wrong with making such virtuous statements, Amy wrote, but only if people really meant what they said. She admitted that while helping others made her feel good, it wasn’t always her first priority. To 16-year-old Amy, honesty was more important than false idealism. “There is nothing wrong with having such wonderful intentions,” she wrote, “but our class needs to have a little more honesty—I think. From now on I’m going to do my best to be myself. I want to let other people know who I really am, a normal kid, not some phony overly mature adult.”

Amy’s drive to be the best was on full display in high school. She originally planned to become a doctor, and so she took the most challenging courses the school offered—chemistry, trigonometry, calculus, French, advanced English—and would accept nothing less than As. Her younger brother Zach remembers Amy as “driven, demanding, and difficult. She was determined. She would freak out if she got a B on a test.” Often Amy wouldn’t start her homework until nine in the evening because of all the extracurricular activities she was involved in. But she would stay up all night if it meant getting an A for a chemistry test. Her work ethic paid dividends. She earned all As in high school and was inducted into the national honor society of secondary students when she was 16. As Linda saw it, Amy earned the stellar GPA not because she was the smartest, but because she worked the hardest.

Amy played flute in the high school concert band, but when it came to marching band, she opted for a different role. She became the drum majorette for the Santa Fe High School Demons marching band in the fall of 1982, her sophomore year. “It is far more fun than being a lowly flute player following some line of people during performance,” Amy wrote in her journal. “As drum majorette I am in command. I get to do a couple of special things, and I really get to perform!” Clearly Amy enjoyed being in the spotlight and preferred to lead, not follow. She was still intent on being an outstanding flute player, but she could not always hold onto first chair. Lamenting the fact that she didn’t have enough time to practice, Amy wrote, “My problem is that I want to be the best at everything, but I do too many things!”

Amy craved challenges and liked to push herself to do what others couldn’t. When she was fourteen or fifteen, she wrote about the high she felt when she transcended her “pain barrier.”

During a particularly hard swim practice the other day, I broke my pain barrier. It is an incredible feeling, one that is very difficult to explain . . .

In order to reach my pain barrier, I have to swim so long and so hard that it feels like I am trying to pull a brick wall behind me. Each time I bring an arm out of the water it feels like lead and each breath I take is a monumental strain on my lungs. I have to keep pushing myself far past the point when I feel like I have reached my limit to where my body starts trembling and I feel nauseous. . . . And then just when I think I am going to drown, a sudden burst of energy works its way from my heart to the tips of my fingers and toes. My lungs loosen up as though I have released a tremendous burden, and my arms feel feather-light. My stroke quickens and I develop a comfortable rhythm that continues until the end of the set.

So many people won’t even try to reach such a point, but I try as often as I can to do so. Ever since I experienced that first broken barrier, I’ve had to reach it again and again. I can’t get enough.

Being so competitive did have a downside. Amy put so much pressure on herself to succeed in academics and sports that she began to have migraine headaches. Some parents quietly dubbed her “Saint Amy” because she was such a high achiever. But younger sister Molly was full of admiration. “Amy was my beacon,” she said. “I wanted to be like her. She motivated me. I didn’t have the natural drive she had. She pushed me, she pushed everybody.”

But Amy was far from being a joyless, single-minded high achiever. She had more admirers than detractors among her peers. She had a busy social life, making friends with her swim teammates and some of the Hispanic girls who had first hassled her. She loved to party and go out dancing with her friends. One of her classmates described Amy as “consistently the happiest, most positive, most enthusiastic person in the room.” He admired her not just because she was so talented in music, sports, and academics, but because she earned the friendship of so many of her fellow students. As her brother Zach observed, “Whatever she did, she did to the nth degree”—including having a good time.

Kim was the first in the family to become interested in Africa. While in high school, she read The Struggle Is My Life, a collection of Nelson Mandela’s speeches and writings, and began listening to African music. She shared the book with Amy, who hadn’t known anything about apartheid in South Africa before. Around the same time, Amy heard the song “Free Nelson Mandela” on the radio, and Mandela became one of her heroes. As the girls got older, they identified with the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party of their parents, with Kim leading the way. These developments didn’t concern Peter or Linda, however. On the contrary, they welcomed their children’s political awakening. They had always encouraged their kids to be interested in other cultures and peoples. In Linda’s words, “When you raise your kids, you raise them to be free.”

Amy’s real passion in high school was diving. Her swim team needed a diver, and she volunteered, despite—or perhaps because of—her fear of heights. As she wrote in her journal, “I love diving because it is an individual sport that requires the ultimate control and timing. It also contains that element of danger which makes it such a thrill. A diver’s highest goal is to achieve perfection, not just beat everyone else, and I really like that. It is graceful, but exciting—so controlled and yet on the brink of disaster.” Amy would sometimes tremble with fear when climbing the platform to dive, but she felt exhilarated when she would make her dive. “There is a high in meeting a challenge and succeeding,” her mother Linda said, describing Amy’s mindset. Amy trained at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, both because it had better facilities than Santa Fe and because the university’s diving coach, Ann Jones, offered to work with her. During swim season, Amy’s day began at 5:30 a.m., when she would wake up and prepare for an hour of swim practice before school (she was both a swimmer and a diver for her team). After school she would drive 60 miles to Albuquerque to practice diving at the University of New Mexico pool. Upon returning home at around 9:00 p.m., she would start her homework. “I would often hear her cursing or crying at midnight when she was exhausted yet determined to get a problem right. Then she’d wake up the next day and start all over,” Molly recalled.

Diving brought Amy more recognition. She won many competitions, including the first-place trophy at the Rio Grande Invitational in 1985. That year, the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association of America ranked Amy as one of the top high-school divers in the country. Amy was pleased, but disappointed that she didn’t make All-American honors in swimming as well. Her drive to excel was as strong as ever: “I kind of am addicted to exercise and get very bored if I’m not constantly busy. School is very important to me, but being active and well-rounded are necessary for me to be happy. I want to have a 4.0, but I also want to be an award winning drum major, first chair flute, and a state champion diver. As far as I’m concerned, why can’t I?”

Amy’s work ethic continued to pay dividends. Her list of awards went on and on: participant in New Mexico Girls’ State; honors society president; 1984–85 New Mexico Scholar; certificate of outstanding academic achievement; and 1984–85 Presidential Fitness award. She was one of 21 seniors to be recognized as “super scholars” by the Santa Fe superintendent of schools in 1985. She even won an oratorical award from the Optimist organization. Amy graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade point average and was co-valedictorian of her class.

With such a stellar academic record, Amy was a college admissions officer’s dream. In the summer of 1984, after her junior year in high school, Amy and her father visited Stanford, Northwestern, Amherst, Harvard, and Indiana, where they met with admissions counselors and swimming and diving coaches. She was offered diving scholarships at Northwestern and Princeton, but not Stanford, which she had wanted to attend since preschool. Seeing that Stanford was still her top choice, her parents agreed to pay the steep tuition fees there so that Amy could realize her lifelong dream. Whether she would make Stanford’s diving team remained to be seen.

Just about the time Amy headed to Stanford, her family moved again, this time to Newport Beach, California, a wealthy coastal community in Orange County. Peter and Linda were concerned that their art business wasn’t providing enough of an income, especially as they thought about paying their four children’s college expenses. Peter became president of McCormick & Co., a New York–based consulting firm, while Linda worked as a manager at high-end retailers I. Magnin, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus. As of fall 1985, the family’s livelihood would no longer depend on the vagaries of the art world. They settled into a house right across from Newport Harbor High School, less than a mile from the Pacific, in one of the most desirable areas of Orange County. Although newspapers would later refer to Amy as being from Newport Beach, she had spent her formative years elsewhere.

Now she was headed back to Palo Alto, halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, where as a preschooler she had played with the children of Stanford professors and dreamed of attending college. The “Farm,” as Stanford was colloquially known, was one of the most prestigious universities in the country. If Amy had “a fullness of life, a vitality,” as a family friend later remarked, then so did Stanford. While a student there, Amy thrived. She put even more energy into her academics, athletics, and social life than she ever had before and somehow managed to balance all three.

As a freshman, Amy’s first priority was to make the Stanford diving team. Even though diving coach Rick Schavone hadn’t offered her a scholarship, she was determined to earn a spot on the team. During the first week of practice in September 1985, Schavone didn’t view Amy as one of his top prospects, but he believed she did have some talent. “What stood out was how timid she was—a quality not useful in diving and one she worked very hard to overcome,” he said. Sensing Amy’s fear, Schavone initially discouraged Amy from attempting dives from the 10-meter platform, but she insisted on proving she could do it, even though she would be trembling before she dove. Schavone was known as “a yeller” and “grinded on” his divers continuously. The practices were clearly hard on Amy psychologically, but she and her teammates realized that Schavone cared about his divers and wanted to make them better competitors. As Amy became used to Schavone’s gut-wre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index