Community grapples with deaths of Nelson County residents in Mumbai attacks

By Scott Marshall

Published: November 27, 2008

ADIAL — Members of the close-knit Synchronicity Foundation spiritual community are delving into their own way of life to grasp that two of their own from Nelson County are dead and four others wounded in terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

“Anger is not an emotion that I’m experiencing right now, but sadness, loss, grieving,“ said Bobbie Garvey, vice president of the nonprofit foundation, Friday.

Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter, Naomi Scherr, 13, were with a group from the organization at the Oberoi Hotel in Mumbai when it was attacked.

Garvey met with reporters at one of the foundation’s facilities, which include a monastery and fellowship hall off Virginia 151 in northern Nelson County. The U.S. flag was at half-staff at the facility.

Garvey said she told Scherr’s wife, Kia, at 5 a.m., that her husband and daughter were dead. “It’s better than coming from the State Department,“ she said. “I’m sure on some level, she knew, as we all did.“

Scherr’s wife is with her mother and two older sons (Naomi’s half brothers) in Florida. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Scherr had expressed a preference that he be cremated, possibly with ashes to be strewn in the Ganges River, but family discussions are continuing.

“He was an extremely valued member of Sychronicity,“ Garvey said of Scherr, formerly a professor at the University of Maryland. He was a spokesman for the group and edited its books.

“Alan was probably one of the most beloved persons here. He will be greatly missed,“ Garvey said.

Scherr came to the organization in 1996 when his daughter was just two months old. She was home-schooled, finished the eighth grade a year early, scored 92 percent on her SSAT and had planned to apply to the Emma Willard Academy in Troy, N.Y., to attend high school.

“She was a shining star, absolutely brilliant,“ and sociable, Garvey said.

In India, Naomi had been working on an essay to accompany her application to the boarding school, had gotten her nose pierced, obtained shawls and Indian garb, scheduled some massages and was enjoying her pilgrimage, Garvey said.

The victims were among a group of four Canadians, seven Australians, and 16 Americans, (including seven from Nelson County) on a trip to India that began Nov. 14. They were due back Monday.

“This was like a pilgrimage,“ Garvey said. The group was taking day trips from Mumbai, meditating, and visiting ashrams.

Other Synchronicity members in Faber found out what was happening while surfing the Internet “and saw Mumbai was being bombed and then saw the Oberoi was being bombed,“ Garvey said.

Another member who was hospitalized reported Scherr had been shot in the head. Members did not know exactly how Naomi died, although she was found near her father, Garvey said.

Synchronicity’s spiritual leader, Master Charles Cannon, had finished a program at about 10 p.m. in Mumbai and the group had returned to the hotel. Several were hungry and stopped for a snack in the Oberoi’s Leopold Café.

According to a Washington Post story, the cafe is a 137-year-old establishment that attracts backpackers and other travelers who often stay for hours, sharing stories about India.

Besides Scherr and his daughter, four others were in the café when gunmen entered “and just started shooting,“ Garvey said.

In a second news conference Friday, Garvey said two Canadians (a man from Montreal and a woman from Toronto), were wounded. The man was shot three times and likely faced more surgery because a bullet remained in his abdomen. He remains in intensive care. The woman was grazed and not seriously hurt.

Two other Synchronicity victims were from Nashville. One underwent surgery for gunshots to an arm and leg, and her husband has arrived in Mumbai to take her home. The other underwent surgery for a back wound and was en route back to the United States on Friday.

Three women had just left the café and were in a hallway when they heard gunshots and fled to their rooms.

Cannon stayed in touch with Garvey by cell phone with a satellite card, and another member e-mailed her sister via laptop. Another realized during the ordeal that her cell phone worked, and she began texting Garvey back in Nelson County.

The group members were told to stay in their rooms, where they remained for 45 hours, at one point breaking windows to let in fresh air and let out smoke, hiding behind mattresses and bureaus, with no food. “It was that intense,“ Garvey said.

Cannon identified the Scherrs as he and others were released from the Oberoi in a group at 5 a.m. Friday.

The survivors are staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, where they are regrouping, Garvey said.

Not all are ready to return to their home countries so soon after their ordeal.

“It’s like, how could this happen to us, these wonderful people who were on a pilgrimage, and not come back,“ she said.

Their spiritual faith holds that nothing in life is an accident. Life “is all one energy, with many diversities in the energy,“ Garvey said.

Referring to the assailants, Garvey said, “They’re walking where their feet are.

“Like 95 percent of the people walking the earth, they are fragmented or in denial, so to speak.“

Support for the victims has come from around the world. Cannon “told me that this has been, in his lifetime, the biggest outpouring of love he has ever experienced,“ Garvey said.

Tanya Anisimova, 42, who said she was a concert cellist and composer from the Moscow Conservatory as well as a Synchronicity member and a native of Chechnya, appeared in the atrium between Friday’s news conferences.

She grieved, her voice catching as she described Scherr’s influence on Synchronicity in the best way she knew how —playing the cello.

“We need to pray, and I need to make this cello sound,“ she said.

“This is about peace, the whole place is about peace.“

Scherr “was an indispensable person,“ she said. Of his daughter, she was always engaged in life, “like she knew she didn’t have much time,“ Anisimova said.

Marshall is editor of The Nelson County Times.