Activist's Passion Uplifts Mourners

As friends and strangers around the world mourned the death of Tom Fox, the Virginia peace activist who was kidnapped and slain in Iraq, they found comfort -- and hope -- in the writings he left behind.

Isabella Bates, a longtime friend, was among those who gathered yesterday at Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean, the Quaker community where Fox had been a member for many years. Standing in the bright morning sunshine, Bates fought back tears as she read aloud words Fox wrote about his mission in Iraq.

In the page-long statement composed about a year before his kidnapping in November, Fox and another activist implored that no "violent force" be used if they were taken hostage and that no ransom be paid. The activists said they "forgive those who consider us their enemies."

"I can only hope," Bates said, "Tom knew in some measure in his heart that this statement ignited the prayers of literally millions of people."

Fox, 54, the father of two college-age children and a former grocery store assistant manager who left behind the comfort of life in Virginia for the most dangerous areas in Iraq, captured the support and sympathy of people worldwide after he and three colleagues with a North America-based peace group were abducted Nov. 26 in Baghdad.

Iraqi police said they found Fox's body Thursday on trash-strewn ground along railroad tracks in west Baghdad's Dawoodi neighborhood, a middle-class neighborhood whose residents are a mix of Sunnis and Shiites. He had been shot several times, and his hands had been bound. Identification cards on his body identified him as Fox, police said.

The fate of the other hostages -- Norman Kember, 74, of Britain, and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada -- is not known, but Fox's death has increased fear for their safety and that of other kidnapping victims. Among them is Jill Carroll, 28, an American freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted in Baghdad on Jan. 7 by gunmen who killed her interpreter.

News of Fox's death has prompted people from as far away as Australia, New Zealand and England to e-mail letters of sympathy, according to members at Langley Hill Friends. Members planned to meet there last night to remember Fox. The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va., where Fox had been a student, also planned a gathering last night at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore in the District, to honor Fox.

Jana Horr, who is studying at the justice center and planned to attend the memorial, never met Fox. But Horr, who grew up in Iraq and now lives in the District, said she followed a blog Fox wrote chronicling his work and life http://-- www.waitinginthelight.blogspot.com -- so closely that she felt connected to him. Her professors, she said, also often shared e-mails Fox had written.

"I feel like I knew him," Horr said. "We all said we all lived with him, lived through his work. He gave me hope."

David Boynton, a member of Langley Hill Friends Meeting, said that Fox, a soft-spoken man who liked to play with the children at Quaker events, was so unassuming that he probably would have been surprised by the outpouring of sympathy.

Boynton said Fox was never the most charismatic speaker in the meeting house and was "just a quiet guy." But the passion he had for peace and the people of Iraq was inspiring, he said. "He was a man who listened to what God said and did it," he said. "And that means any of us can do that."