Service in Cambodia feeds the souls of Seattle couple

John and Kathy Morefield are going to Cambodia this September to spend a year helping to heal wounds in a country that has suffered great tragedies.

Morefield was a highly praised Seattle School District principal for many years and works now at the University of Washington training educators in school leadership.

Kathy counsels and supports people who are on a spiritual journey.

"It will be hard being away from the children," John Morefield says, "but the hardest part will be being away from the grandchildren." They have two now.

John, who's 59, will have to give up his job, too. But for the Morefields, living and working in Cambodia will be anything but a sacrifice. He says it's an opportunity to grow and learn and to do the kind of fulfilling work they've always done.

Morefield told me how this mission to Cambodia came about.

He says their lives changed in 1997 when Kathy was diagnosed with cancer and wasn't given long to live. Every day afterward became not a routine but a gift. They decided to travel to Ireland, where her grandparents are from, and to Greece, France and Italy.

In 1999 their youngest son, Brian, was spending some time in Southeast Asia and invited them to visit.

They flew to Thailand and decided they wanted to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Morefield had never been in a developing country before. Because of the poverty, he says, "It felt very difficult to be a tourist there. You feel like Bill Gates."

They saw people still recovering from years of war and genocide. "We committed to each other that we were going to come back, but not as tourists." They knew they wanted to help, but they didn't yet know how.

Back in Seattle they heard a Maryknoll brother asking for volunteers to work with his mission to Myanmar, the former Burma. (Maryknoll got its start in 1911 as the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. Members perform service work in countries worldwide.)

The Morefields didn't decide to go to Myanmar, but they were impressed with what they heard, particularly the service philosophy that the brothers should go where they are needed but not necessarily wanted and stay until they are wanted but no longer needed.

In February 2001, the Morefields went back to Cambodia and spent a month helping Maryknolls there. They went back last year and again this January.

They worked on several projects, including a rehabilitation program for victims of land mines and polio, and in an orphanage for children whose parents had died of AIDS-related causes or who were themselves HIV positive.

Morefield kept asking questions about education. What he saw and what he heard convinced him that he ought to get involved, that this was how he could do something to benefit Cambodia.

Teachers and school directors are paid $25 a month. There are usually 60 to 70 children in a classroom, and sometimes teachers charge them by the day to attend class because even in Cambodia, $25 a month is not a living wage.

Textbooks are rare, and most educators have little training.

Part of the Khymer Rouge's reign of terror was the destruction of schools and universities and the killing of educated people.

In February, Morefield interviewed 29 school directors in three provinces and found that none had more than a high-school education, and some didn't have even that.

That presented a need that fit his skills.

Morefield will leave his UW job tomorrow. In Cambodia he'll work with 40 principals for a year but doesn't have any illusions about monumental change. "It's just planting seeds," he says.

Kathy will teach English and clerical skills to village girls who hope to get jobs with some of the numerous nongovernmental organizations that have aid programs in Cambodia.

"I think there are a lot of us out there who want to do this kind of work, if we knew it was possible. We're not some heroic self-giving couple from Seattle going off to save the people of Cambodia. We're doing this because we have to. We feel grateful for the opportunity.

"When we were there in February, it was just before our country declared war on Iraq and we were in a country that's in the condition it's in because of war." He recalls the U.S. bombing of Cambodia that helped destabilize the country during the Vietnam War.

"Our country has a profound obligation to bring peace and healing, not just war to the world."

Americans are generous people, he says. "We're just following the lead of hundreds of thousands of people ahead of us. A lot of people think somewhere inside, 'God, I'd like to do something like that.' I urge them to follow their heart." There's a lot to be done in this country and abroad, he says.

Morefield says, "I used to think the Maryknolls were extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, and they're not. They are ordinary people doing ordinary things.

"The call to service is really about people saying, 'I want to do more with my life than take up space.' "

Coming out of the darkness of Kathy's diagnosis in 1997 gave the Morefields a different perspective on life, but they both had already committed themselves to service.

Morefield's father was a career Air Force officer, so the family lived a lot of places around Europe and the United States.

For a while they lived in McLean, Va., near Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and went to the same church with them.

John Kennedy was urging Americans to serve their country, and that resonated with young Morefield.

It was a time of social upheaval. "I was 16 and moved by what I saw on television in Little Rock, Selma, Alabama, and Birmingham." He says he was shocked and galvanized by the treatment of black people in the South.

He went down to Prattville, Ala., to work in the civil-rights movement and says that what he saw "was too ugly for me to ever be the same again."

Kathy Morefield came from a family that was committed to social justice.

The two met at Gonzaga University and in July will have been married 37 years.

"Our life has been a privilege and we're aware of that. We don't take it lightly or for granted.

"Neither Kathy nor I are altruists. This is part of what feeds our souls."

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimescom/columnists.