“If you had one wish in the world what would it be?”
Luma Mufleh’s grandmother used to ask her this when she was a child. Mufleh’s response was usually a new toy or soccer cleats. Then she would ask the same of her grandmother. “Her answer was always the same,” said Mufleh. “’I wish everyone in the world would have clean drinking water.’”
Speaking in the third annual Sara Wattles Perry ’77 Lecture, Mufleh told the story of her privileged childhood growing up in Amman, Jordan; hitting rock bottom twice after her parents cut her off financially; and how a wrong turn led to the first private school in America dedicated to the education of refugee children.
“I made a wrong turn.”
On what seemed like a normal day in Clarkston, Georgia, Mufleh made a wrong turn and encountered five boys playing soccer in a parking lot. She watched them and remembered the pickup games she had played with her brothers in Jordan.
As they stroll around the park, taking in the sights and sounds of the holiday season, visitors to Fenway Park on November 30 might also perk their ears at renditions of Williston Northampton favorites, “O Williston” and “Sammy.”
