Endings

Buses played a role in the life and death of Richard Lakin. As a student at Boston University, he and his girlfriend (soon to be his wife) Karen Gordon rode in the South on Freedom Rider buses to protest segregation. Some of the buses were firebombed. Later, as a school principal in Glastonbury, Connecticut, he initiated the busing of black kids from deprived neighborhoods to his mostly white school. In his adopted home of Jerusalem, where he and Karen became star English teachers with highly motivated Jewish and Arab students, he preferred to walk rather than take the bus. But on October 13, 2015, a so-called "wave of terrorism" was rolling over Jerusalem, and he thought it unwise to walk on the Talpiot Promenade for a routine doctor's appointment. He took a No. 78 bus.

So relates Karen Gordon Lakin at the Hadassah National Convention in Atlanta, where the Freedom Rides and the busing are documented nearby in the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. Richard and Karen started Camp King after King's assassination in 1968 at age 39.

Sharing the stage with her is Dr. Abed Khalaileh, a surgeon who grew up in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber.

I am the moderator.

Usually at Hadassah conventions we present more straightforward stories. Indeed, this year's programs have included the cases of Tahel, a toddler firebombed in her car seat; of Dekel, a jazz...