Boy soldier’s mother tells of struggles
Storyteller Laura Simms, adoptive mother of UK’s 2014-2015 Common Reading Experience author Ishmael Beah, tells the story of how she met Beah at Memorial Hall on Tuesday, February 24, 2015 in Lexington, Ky. Photo by Adam Pennavaria
February 25, 2015
By Tabassum Ali
The adoptive mother of ex-child soldier and Common Reading Experience author Ishmael Beah came to campus Tuesday to talk to students about the value of human life and storytelling.
Laura Simms met Beah in November of 1996, when he was 15. Simms spoke about the obstacles she faced to bring him to New York and how she did not think that she would be the one adopting him.
“I had no idea that this very thin, almost bald young man in the lobby of UNICEF, wearing cotton pants and a shirt in the first snow storm of the season, would become my son,” Simms said.
Through her work with the United Nations, she met Beah and another boy from Sierra Leone during the Children’s Voices conference.
“They were incredible, gentle, respectful and shy boys,” Simms said.
After Beah’s eight-minute speech to the UN General Assembly, Simms decided that somebody should save him, saying that he deserved an education and somebody should put his mind to work for the world.
“It was a storytelling that you did not want to leave,” Simms said.
Beah left for Sierra Leone, but he and Simms stayed in touch and discussed the possibility of bringing Beah to New York.
“I asked him to write an auto-biography because I didn’t really know him that well,” Simms said.
To begin, she asked about his family and how it felt when he was pressured into killing someone for the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel army in Sierra Leone.
Child soldiers were given two weeks’ training in the RUF on how to use an AK-47 before being drugged and put on the front line, Simms said.
Beah’s work, “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” was published in 2007.
Beah eventually arrived in New York, and with that he and Simms started their life as a family.
Beah is now 34 and a proud father.
“(Simms) showed how much she cherishes people’s stories and how people are worth investing in,” social work freshman Ashley Magoffin said.
Annie Kelly, the assistant director for New Student and Parent Programs, planned the event with the support of other organizations.
Kelly said she hoped people left with an appreciation of stories and felt empowered to share and listen to them.
Hispanic studies graduate student Adriana Rivera said she was fascinated by Simms’ story.
“It sounded like it was an impossible thing for him to come to the U.S.,” Rivera said. “Together, they managed to turn it into something beautiful.”
