About 120 people, many with Iranian connections, gathered for a memorial service at the University of Victoria Thursday to remember first-year student Roja Omidbakhsh, who was among the 176 people killed when a jetliner crashed near Tehran shortly after takeoff.
Students, faculty and community members attended the memoiral
Amirali Baniasadi, UVic professor and director of the electrical engineering program, said great tragedies like Wedneday’s plane crash are times for grief. But they are also appropriate times for telling stories about those who have died.
Baniasadi said he personally knew two on board the plane, a former student from another university and the daughter of a family friend and noted human rights worker who ran a Persian library in Montreal and had moved to Toronto.
He urged the listeners to tell stories of anyone they knew who had been on the plane so they can be remembered as living people.
“Remembering is not just repeating their names,” he said. “It is also talking about them, sharing our memories of them, making sure they are more than just names and numbers or pieces of news.”
“I’m sure many of you knew people who have lost their lives,” said Baniasadi. “Share their stories and let’s make sure they are remembered as brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and children.”
UVic faculty member Cheryl Thomas stood to recall the time she taught in Iran, from 2004 to 2012. When the news broke of the crash she spent much of the evening scanning the list of passenger names.
Thomas found the name of one former student and remembered her former student as barely five-foot-tall, feisty, determined and so very proud when she was accepted to study in Canada. “She fought for everything she wanted to get out of life and worked so very hard and accomplished a lot,” said Thomas. “But it was cut short way too soon.”
Mehdi Hashemi, chair of the graduate students association, recalled the panicked time after hearing news of the crash when he searched the list of the passengers looking for the name of a friend who studies in Europe.
Hashemi said he was relieved when his friend’s name didn’t appear. “I was searching that list over and over and over but his name wasn’t there and I was happy,” said Hashemi. “But the next morning I saw the others.”
