From swim schools to eye clinics: how families of 7/7 victims used heartbreak to help others | 7 July London attacks

In the city of Bhubaneswar, the capital of the state of northeast of Odisha India, there is an eye clinic that has transformed the lives of thousands of children.

Before the creation of the unit in 2008, according to its vice-president, there was no eye care center for children dedicated throughout the eastern part of India, a country that houses 20% of blind children in the world. The clinic now sees around 3,000 children per month and performs 350 eye surgeries – a significant proportion of them at no cost for often very poor families who need them.

It is one of the inheritances of Miriam Hyman, a 31 -year -old image researcher, an amateur artist and passionate dancer who was murdered in the bombing of London on July 7, 2005, alongside 51 other shuttlers.

Miriam was “a very visual person”, explains his older sister, Esther, and after his death, his family was determined that the good would come from the terrible act of violence which returned his life. With their compensation in money and public donations, they financed the equipment necessary to set up the children’s eye care center Miriam Hyman in Bhubaneswar. Thanks to his work, among other achievements, doctors have made important measures to eliminate a form of infant blindness, the retinopathy of prematurity, in the surroundings.

“It makes our hearts happy to know that she is commemorated in this way,” explains Esther Hyman. “The center is Miriam’s living memorial. It is a place that benefits people, and it is quite the kind of person that Miriam was. ”

Twenty years after the attacks, the families of those who died are preparing to come together on Monday to cry and remember those who were killed in the four suicide bombings on 7/7, three on the underground trains of London and the fourth on a doubledecker bus.

In addition to their deep sadness, however, many family members will also be able to indicate acts of great positivity and hope, large and small, who have followed the death of their loved ones.

Among these small rays of light, scattered around the world, there is a project in Belize which learned to swim thousands of children. It was created after 7/7 by the family of Fiona Stevenson, a lawyer from Cheshire who was killed in the explosion of Aldgate.

Described by her family as a whirlwind of positivity and enthusiasm that liked to travel, Stevenson had recently returned from a work trip to the country of Central America, where she had proudly acquired her diving qualifications, but also learned that many children in the country died by drowning because little was lucky to learn to swim.

The charitable organization has been set up “to try to find a certain positivity of such a horrible moment for us,” explains his sister Andrea Watson. “It gave us something to focus on, and we remembered the quantity of Fiona loved Belize when she worked. Although the rupture in our hearts is never repaired, it has brought comfort that those who have acquired a skill for life won it on behalf. ”

The program also formed hundreds of young adults as rescuers and swimming instructors. Next to a pool in Belize City is a plaque and a photo explaining more the life of the woman whose calm heritage could have prevented countless children for children.

On the other side of the world, on the other hand, a fund set up in memory of Michael Matsushita, who died in Russell Square, distributed funds between five orphanages for children in Cambodia and Vietnam. Matsushita, a New Yorker, was born in Vietnam and had recently moved to London to join his girlfriend, who, like him, worked as a guide for the Intrepid Travel company.

Other commemorative projects are closer to their home. On attack day, the large children’s hospital in Ormond Street treated adult victims for the first time since the Second World War; It was only later that those of the hospital learned that two of their own employees – Behnaz Mozakka, biomedical officer, and Mala Trivadi, radiographer – were one of the dead. We now remember him in a garden of the hospital where the staff can find a refuge of their charged work quarters and long -term patients experience fresh air and tranquility.

A substantial donation from the family and employers of Helen Jones, an accountant from Lockerbie, helped finance the opening of a children’s unit at the Eden Valley hospice in Cumbria, who has since supported families of several hundred babies and sick children. In memory of Benedetta Ciaccia, commercial analyst of Italian origin who worked in Publishing, Birkbeck, annual London University scholarships to students who study it, the course of which Ciaccia had recently graduated.

For all manifest goods that these commemorative projects do it, they did not come to the family members who have treated intensely personal losses. The first decade after Miriam’s death was “very efficient”, explains Esther Hyman, by establishing both the eye clinic and an educational resource, called Miriam’s vision, to help teachers explore reconciliation issues.

“I realize now that during the first 10 years, I was not facing my emotions, I removed my sorrow by channeling it in constructive efforts,” she said. After this stage, she felt exhausted and had to step back for a while, spending several years abroad. “I couldn’t live the rest of my life in the light of my sister’s death. I had to find other channels, other ways of being that did not concern the death of MIM. ”

The government examining the national program, Esther and its mother, Mavis, focus on the campaign so that the theme of social cohesion explicitly included. “It is a pity that this is falling towards those who have been affected by a lack of social cohesion to talk about social cohesion, but I think it is understandable. We don’t want someone else to go through what we have experienced, ”she says.

Once this review is ended, and with the well-established clinic, they can reluctantly conclude that it is time to finish the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust “with regret, and perhaps with a certain relief”, explains Esther. “We have done everything we can within our arms. So there is a feeling of satisfaction. ”

However, other programs continue. The family and employers of Philip Russell, 28, a financial director who died in the bus bombardment, financed a travel scholarship in his memory at the University of Kingston, intended to allow students to make a difference in projects abroad.

Gabriel Oyewole recently used a scholarship to go to Ghana where he worked as a mentor to students and developed his skills as a physiotherapist. The Russell family, he says, “could have put money in everything they wanted, probably easier companies, but they chose to help students who needed help, career and personally. They have probably changed, not just mine, but probably a lot of career and personal life of them. ”

Philip’s father, Grahame, who, with Philip’s mother, Veronica, sat the committee which granted the subsidies, died recently. “He was very proud to sit on this advice for 20 years,” said Philip’s sister Caroline Steadman. She will now take her place in the panel, continuing to support young people who look forward to their future, just as her brother was two decades ago.