They married in 1921 and moved to Lebanon to run orphanages. She had traveled to Istanbul to study Turkish and to teach. He worked for American Near East Relief in Turkey during the slaughter of countless Armenians (detailed later in his memoir, “The Lions of Marash”). Malcolm Kerr’s parents, Stanley and Elsa Kerr, were American missionaries who met in the Middle East after World War I. The Sadat assassination was in October 1981, just 27 months before Malcolm Kerr was killed. “And then it was only a short time later that Sadat was killed,” he said. He was so excited for that moment because that is what he really hoped for: Middle East peace. It would have been the equivalent of the Dodgers winning the World Series. Zuckerman’s name was Marvin, and my dad said: ‘Marvin, Marvin! Did you see the picture today of Begin and Sadat?’ It was the biggest thing. Zuckerman and David drove me home from baseball practice or something, and we pull up in the driveway and my dad sees us and comes running out. “One of my best friends was a guy named David Zuckerman, a Jewish guy, and his father was an English professor,” Kerr said. He knows, as well as anyone, that players are complicated, molded by background, race, religion and circumstance. They seem to be having more fun than anyone else.īut Kerr also knows that sports are an active ingredient of American culture. championship, were runners-up last season and remain a top team this season. In a sports world that takes itself too seriously, that perspective is part of the appeal of Kerr and the Warriors. Sports are a diversion for most who follow them, “only meaningful to us and our fans,” he said. There are sports fans, maybe the majority of them, who wish athletes and coaches would keep their nonsports opinions to themselves - stand for the anthem, be thankful for your good fortune, express only humility, and provide little but smiles and autographs. Providing commentary on the state of today’s politics and culture is not a prerequisite for Kerr’s job. Life is so much easier if it could be black and white, good and evil.” “We live in this complex world of gray areas. “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and look at it from a bigger perspective,” he said. Kerr, the president of the American University of Beirut, wrote to other family members that day in August 1983.Ī few months later, Malcolm Kerr was shot twice in the back of the head outside his university office. “I’m fearful that all this uncertainty and inconvenience, not to mention even a sense of physical danger, has not done Steve’s image of Beirut much good, and in his present mood he wonders what any of us are doing here,” his father, Malcolm H. Finally, a hired driver took Kerr over the Lebanon Mountains and across the Syrian border to Damascus, then on to Amman, Jordan. A military plane headed to Cairo had an empty seat, but it went to someone else. There was talk of taking a cruise ship to Cyprus, or accompanying an ambassador on a helicopter to Tel Aviv or even crossing into Israel on a bus. The last time Steve Kerr was in Beirut, his birthplace, with the bombs pounding the runway and the assassination of his father six months away, he left by car.
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