American Spirit

by Taya Kyle

  The connection between the university and the United States goes far beyond one of style. Money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) helped launch the institution in 2005. The grant was announced by then First Lady Laura Bush during a visit to Kabul.

  The Bush connection was important to the university in another way, for it led to Leslie Schweitzer’s involvement.

  Her role in business and national politics had introduced Leslie to the Bush family; she was friends with Laura as well as with George W. Bush. But that friendship didn’t prepare her for the phone call she got in 2006.

  “The president called me and said, ‘Congratulations. You’ve been elected to the board of trustees of the American University of Afghanistan,’” says Leslie.

  Afghanistan would not have made the top ten list of anyone’s peaceful getaways at the time. Leslie’s first thoughts were along the lines of:

  Afghanistan? You’ve got to be kidding!

  She didn’t say that—that was the president on the line, after all. But she certainly thought it. More to the point, she had no hint that such an appointment was in the works, nor did she want one. Or as she puts it, “It wasn’t on my bucket list.”

  Leslie had never been to Kabul—or anywhere else in Afghanistan—and was undoubtedly looking for a graceful way to avoid going when a group of board members took her to lunch. By the time they waved off dessert, Leslie was thoroughly impressed by the school and its mission.

  The pictures of its buildings were stunning as well. Her curiosity piqued, she went to Kabul to see the place for herself—only to find that the photos were actually an artist’s rendering of what the university would look like when it was finished.

  Hopefully. For at that point, the only thing on the undeveloped property were land mines, which had to be safely removed before anything else could happen there.

  “Forty Russian mines,” she recalls. “I was conned. Totally conned.”

  But she was also hooked. Not far away, students were already attending classes, and their smiles and determination convinced her that she just had to help.

  “The difficulty that some of these young people have been through and how they persevere—it’s simply inspiring,” says Leslie.

  Leslie became chairwoman of the building committee and then started the Friends of the American University of Afghanistan. Besides getting funds for the building, the group began raising money to defray students’ costs, especially for women. Not only are college costs an unreachable luxury for many Afghans, even well-off families balk at paying for a daughter to attend school.

  The Department of Defense gave a grant that made possible the construction of a sixty-thousand-square-foot building on the new campus dedicated to women’s economic empowerment—in effect, a business school for women. The building and its marble façade are a stunning statement about the importance of women’s education.

  Then came housing for professors, a women’s dormitory, another dorm, a technology building, a cafeteria . . . all in addition to the original buildings across the street.

  The U.S. funds are well spent. Empowering a more balanced system is a great way to help build a democracy where once a terrorist regime held the land and people hostage. It has to be the best sort of defense—shining more light through darkness.

  “We’re still dependent on USAID and the State Department,” says Leslie, but the Friends of the American University of Afghanistan are making inroads raising private money, knowing that eventually that funding source may dry up. It’s a challenge.

  “Americans don’t hear the good stories about Afghanistan,” admits Leslie, and that hurts fund-raising. “They don’t hear about the progress that is being made. But we continue to have strong supporters.”

  From its name to its mission, the university is a target for any radical wishing to destroy the country’s progress. Unfortunately, that proved all too true in August 2016, when the campus was attacked by a small band of terrorists.

  Some seven hundred students were on campus around 7:00 p.m. that night attending evening sessions when a truck drove up against the wall of the campus. After it exploded with a thundering flash, two gunmen ran onto the grounds and began shooting everyone in sight. The gunmen holed up in a building as guards, police, and the Afghan army responded. Students trapped in the buildings barricaded doors with whatever furniture they could find, waiting for salvation.

  Rampaging through the building, one of the terrorists came upon a girl with polio and a leg brace on the floor of a classroom. He shot her in her good leg, leaving her to bleed out. Five hours later, as the battle continued to rage, he returned and shot her again.

  Dozens of others were shot; yet others were injured trying to escape. Two freshmen on their second day of class were killed, including a musician who had performed at the Kennedy Center. A professor who had studied at Stanford, and was loved by his students, was killed after successfully evacuating his kids from his class. He died as he lived—a hero for his students who trusted him. All told, eight students were killed, and more than fifty others were injured. Two professors, three security officers, and three Afghan policemen were also killed.

  For six and a half hours, the two men held off the authorities, trapping about two hundred students in the process. The assault ended only after elite units from the Afghan army, the U.S., and Norway were able to fight their way in and kill the assailants. While the Taliban was suspected of being behind the attack, no group claimed responsibility.

  Leslie wasn’t there during the attacks, but she went afterward. Security improvements were immediately put in place, including the hiring of a private security force, ordinarily something not allowed under Afghan law. T-walls—large, modular concrete barriers that offer some protection against attacks—were installed.

  Fourteen thousand of them, in fact, each about eighteen feet high.

  There are also guard towers and other security posts and improvements.

  “There were moments when we didn’t think we would open again,” says Leslie. “The trauma was beyond belief.”

  Funding, consoling families, the wounded—it was an enormous undertaking. But most of the incredibly courageous students insisted that the school reopen. It did, in March 2017.

  Enrollment was actually higher after the attack. Students were defiant, some declaring that they were willing to die to get an education. Their actions proved it.

  “They are sacrificing to get an education,” says Leslie, who calls the day the university reopened one of the best of her life. “That’s why we do what we do.”

  Social media is accelerating change, not just at the school but throughout Afghanistan. People accept progress and differences more readily. Women are more likely to be accepted as full members of society.

  Leslie notes a “mushroom” effect—students at the university influence their families, their villages, and their tribes, encouraging education and attitudes that accept other Afghans who are not of their tribe or particular branch of Islam. Students encourage family members to apply; friends and other acquaintances follow.

  I had the privilege of meeting Onaba Payab during one of the organization’s fund-raising event in 2018. This quiet, unassuming young woman has extraordinary strength. She was the first female valedictorian of the university—a triumph over the tragedy of the terrorist attacks. Among the dead were very close friends and a professor who had inspired her to take chances. Onaba may not have anticipated all that she has faced since attending school, but her brave pursuit holds much promise not just for her but for her country. I listened in awe as she expertly moderated a talk between Laura Bush and Michelle Obama; she set a perfect, understated tone that some of our media people would do well to emulate.

  She’s respectful of her heritage and yet is finding her own way—surely the way progress is made.

  Leslie’s husband passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. After that, her two adult sons got together and “grounded” her, tellin
g her she could not go back to Afghanistan. “We can’t afford to lose you, too.”

  She listened to them . . . for a while. After a few months, they had to concede—their mom was too energetic and independent to be tied down. She travels now with their blessing, or at least without overt objection.

  Support for the school crosses lines of gender, religion, and politics. First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama joined forces recently to help raise money at a gala—you can’t beat bipartisanship for a good cause.

  As for Leslie, she has many more things she wants to accomplish, both with the school and her professional life. And she has a bucket list.

  Near the top is skydiving in eight countries.

  She’d done two when we started working on this book. I haven’t checked back, but I’m sure she’s done the rest by now. Pioneer women in the nineteenth century harnessed themselves to plows to turn up the fields; nowadays, they hitch themselves to parachutes and turn up wherever they’re needed and least expected.

  Ten

  CKFF

  My Motto and Goal

  Do More

  The foundation of the American Spirit is the idea that community and independence are important. To build that community, we need to help others. We help others find their own independence so they can truly be free and ideally go out and help their neighbor. Sometimes in big ways: building a college for them. Sometimes in small ways: holding a door for someone. Whether saving a life or smiling when it’s least expected, there’s a ripple effect that helps make our communities a better place.

  That’s all very well and good, Taya, you’re thinking. But what have you done? What tangible thing are you doing besides cheerleading the rest of us?

  Fair questions.

  Even before American Sniper was published, Chris and I had discussed different ways of using whatever money we got—we weren’t expecting much—to help others, specifically the families of the two men who had died while serving with him in Iraq.

  Events overtook those plans. You can read some of the details in American Wife; suffice it to say that it’s harder to give away money than you or at least I would have thought. Some didn’t want it, and some thought whatever we could give wasn’t enough. In any event, Chris was murdered before we could work out the mechanisms. That and other complications presented me with a need to do what Chris and I had already decided—find a way to help more families; find a way to give a hand up to those who were in the action or transitioning out of it and who needed the help the most.

  We didn’t know how we would do it, but the idea of setting up some sort of foundation or nonprofit had been planted in our discussions. Chris’s last comment on the subject came about two weeks before he was killed. We sat with a financial planner, and Chris told him, “If something happens to me, then my family is now the family of the fallen and every penny goes to them.” I balked at what he was saying, insisting nothing would happen to him, urging that we stay on the course we had started. The seed, after all, had already started to grow roots in my heart.

  As I recovered from the shock of his death and thought about different ways to carry out the wishes we’d had, I wanted to do something that wasn’t being done already. I knew from my own experience of loving the marriage we had achieved and the many, many times it was threatened by a life of service that this was the need being unmet: supporting the marriages of those who serve. I knew from our life together and the lives of our friends, that military and first-responder marriages were similarly under attack, and the high divorce rates solidified the need.

  While I knew Chris would have liked the idea of a permanent organization to help others, I also knew that establishing a foundation to do it was way beyond what I alone was capable of, especially in the midst of legal battles, grief, and finishing the projects Chris had been working on.

  Then, like a miracle, helpers started appearing. The first was my brother-in-law Stewart, my sister’s husband, who along with my sister and the rest of my family was a rock in the midst of the swirling chaos that was my life at the time. He not only recognized that I had the opportunity to do something positive, but he was full of gentle encouragement and advice to help me get going.

  Everywhere I went, I seemed to run into people with expertise in the different areas of nonprofits and their intricacies. I truly believe a higher power was putting people in my way to help—but of course, God works on earth through people, and I was lucky to find a collection of talented and selfless helpers.

  We officially started the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation in 2014 and have managed to grow since.

  Today, we have ten full-timers, with some outside contractors to fill in the gaps. And volunteers—Stewart especially. (As the head of the foundation, I am also an unpaid volunteer.) My payment is knowing that families who could have been broken are living out the life Chris and I worked hard for in our own family. We learned and achieved so much in our marriage, against all odds. This is a way of saying the dream doesn’t die; it just plays out differently with different characters, different families.

  At CKFF, we also acknowledge that the landscape is ever-changing; we try to change and adapt with it. We’re diving into job connections for transitioning service members, as well as addressing mental health issues in a holistic approach to marriage and family wellness. As I’m writing this, we have a number of programs based on things I know worked with Chris and me, as well as for our friends. They’re a combination of things we learned and things I wish we would have known so much earlier in our marriage.

  Date Night Out is just what it sounds like—paid-for dates centered around simple activities. The premise came from a friend who told me during some of our difficult times, “The time you want a date the least is the time you need it the most.”

  This proved to be so true. There are a thousand reasons why it may seem impossible or difficult to take a few hours off, but a simple date night out reminds couples that their marriage comes first. The little bit of effort can make all the difference for couples who are hanging on by a thread.

  We make the plans, sometimes organizing a group event and sometimes doing an individual experience for just the couple. The goal is always the same: remind them how good time together can be. Shared, joyful experiences are an essential component in healthy marriages.

  The group experience also lets couples meet others and share those “me too!” stories, discovering they are not alone when it comes to dealing with the unique challenges of service life.

  Our Revitalization Retreats are a little longer and more intense. These are, well, usually weekends, where a couple spends time reacquainting themselves with why they married in the first place. We facilitate the weekends in different ways, catering to individual needs. We take care of everything from child care to selfie sticks, depending on the couple’s personalities and needs. We also do two to five coaching sessions before the weekend. This coaching alone has been credited with saving more than a few marriages before they even left for the retreat. And we pay the expenses for what in some cases may be the first vacation or even honeymoon they ever had. Our goal is to alleviate all the stress, including financial and planning, providing opportunities for these couples to connect.

  Corie Weathers runs our programs and does most of the sessions. She wrote the book Sacred Spaces, which is amazing. I wish wish wish her book was around when Chris was deploying. She is amazing.

  Our Empowered Spouses Retreats represent a dream come true for me. The spouses in a service marriage are very often beyond depleted. They are constantly on; the non-service spouse generally carries the majority of the load at home for both spouses. While one is saving the world, the other one is saving the family. One is with a team; the other is often isolated. Our Empowered Spouses Retreat takes spouses to a remote area where they have no cell phones or internet (aside from emergency communications). That’s a real leap of faith and a hard adjustment for many of the women, who are used to being the family member always in co
ntact with everyone else.

  During the retreat, the women do things they may never have had a chance to do back home—things like skeet shooting, archery, hiking, yoga, or fly-fishing. We also encourage them to take time for self-care, helping them understand that the family will not only survive but thrive when Mama takes care of herself.

  There are group coaching sessions starting early in the morning and going until after dinner. The women bond quickly, forming friendships much like kids at summer camp who take that intense emotional bonding into lifelong friendships. There’s a lot of informal sharing about different challenges military and first-responder spouses face in marriage. Currently, we’re doing two of these a year and hope to expand each year, depending on funding.

  Presently, we’re concentrating on women, though we hope to branch out to a men’s program. I look at it like triage—right now the women seem to be the ones who, when helped, flip the dynamic and put the family on a whole different trajectory.

  If you look at our programs as a progression—and we encourage people to do that—then Mastering Your Marriage is the pinnacle. Working with the Baylor University Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, the program combines retreats with some intensive but nonintrusive counseling aimed at giving couples the tools to thrive in their marriages. Service marriages are unique, and so is our curriculum, as it directly addresses the specific strains such marriages face that are different from those faced by the civilian community.

  It’s a six-month program. Baylor is developing curriculum with us that we hope to eventually share with outside counselors and others so we can form a network of verified counselors who understand the issues. I have heard so often from couples from the Vietnam War era who sought help only to find the counselor unable to help with their specific issues. When that happens, divorce typically follows. With night shifts, long deployments, and duty stations in different states, this often means the kids lose out on life with one of their parents.