ASHLAND, Virginia--The parents of Taylor Anderson, the 24-year-old American teaching assistant who died in the Great East Japan Earthquake, said at a memorial service that they wanted to continue to help victims of the disaster in Japan.
ASHLAND, Virginia--The parents of Taylor Anderson, the 24-year-old American teaching assistant who died in the Great East Japan Earthquake, said at a memorial service that they wanted to continue to help victims of the disaster in Japan.
“What we are doing now and hope to do for years to come is to build on Taylor’s dream to be a bridge between our two countries,” her father, Andy Anderson, said on March 11.
Taylor was killed by the tsunami caused by the quake on March 11 last year in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, where she had been teaching at an elementary school. She had been working on the Japanese government’s Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program since August 2008.
The memorial service was held at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Taylor’s alma mater. Ichiro Fujisaki, Japan’s ambassador to the United States, and about 500 people attended the event.
After her death, the Andersons established Taylor’s Fund to donate English books to seven Japanese educational institutions where Taylor taught English, including elementary and junior high schools. They visited Japan in September to donate books and have also offered scholarships to children affected by the disaster through the fund.
Before the memorial service, Anderson told a news conference that he found it “satisfying” that his family had been able to bond with people in the stricken city through their activities over the past year.
“What it means to us, the most, is just how much has happened over the past year in terms of the connections we’ve made to Japan, and how much they’ve recovered and how much we’ve enjoyed, through Taylor’s Fund, helping over there,” he said.
Jeanne, Taylor’s mother, said: “There is a healing process, and it’s not so severe. I think our hearts or our wounds are kind of closing up now, and looking back isn’t as painful.”