Liberian Priest's Family Reunited with Help of Local and National Church
Episcopal News Service. February 13, 1997 [97-1693]
(ENS) When the Rev. Dee Bright, an Episcopal priest in Liberia, and his wife, Monyue, parted in April of last year, Bright was about to board an American helicopter with their son, Dee Jr., to flee the re-eruption of violence in their war-torn country.
Monyue and their daughter, Vonti, had to remain behind, hoping to make their way by car to the Ivory Coast.
The decision to part was logical and driven by harsh necessity. Because he was born in the United States, Dee Jr., now eight years old, could be evacuated as a United States citizen, and could take one parent with him. With rampaging gangs of rebel soldiers targeting clergy and other religious leaders, Bright was in far greater danger than his wife.
Still, "it was a painful thing," Bright said months later from his new home in the rectory of St. Christopher's Church in Fort Worth, Texas. "I was looking right into the eyes of my wife and daughter, and (the U.S. officials) could not pick them up. They could just take me and my son."
The family already had barely escaped death when two separate armed groups burst into their home in the middle of the night and threatened to shoot them all if they were not gone by daylight. The evacuation marked the third time that the family had fled from the chaos of Liberia. "Two or three times in 1990 and 1991, I was arrested and nearly killed," Bright said.
Monyue and Vonti, now six years old, did manage to travel past rebel roadblocks to Danane in Ivory Coast where they lived in a refugee community for nearly 10 months. Finally, late on the night of January 28, they stepped off an airplane at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and into the arms of the two Dees.
"We don't seem to end in sharing our experiences -- all they went through and all that we went through," Bright said. "We have been exploding with joy."
"What if we are both in a dream and we woke and were disappointed?" asked Monyue. "It's too good to be real."
There to share the moment of the arrival were members of St. Christopher's Church as well as St. Stephen's Church in Hurst where Bright taught a Bible study. "They all came in a caravan," Bright said. "St. Stephen's brought a banner."
Drawn to Fort Worth by the presence of Monyue's relatives, Bright found a spiritual and literal home in the Diocese of Forth Worth with the congregation of St. Christopher's. Members of the congregation and their rector, the Rev. Irvin "Sherm" Gagnon, helped him develop a ministry as a supply priest for other parishes in the diocese, and worked both to raise funds for the family and to help Bright obtain the visa he needed to work.
But Bright's main goal since his arrival has been to reunite his family. After he contacted Richard Parkins, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), the national immigration and refugee resettlement agency of the Episcopal Church, "EMM made the actual connection," Bright said. "They did the work."
Parkins was able to visit Monyue and Vonti in Danane last fall while on a fact-finding trip to West Africa with heads of other denominational refugee agencies. Working with his counterpart at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Parkins was able to persuade the U.S. State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to interview Monyue and to move quickly on her case.
"It could have been another six months," Parkins said. "Visits by immigration officer to that area are rare. We were able to convince the officer to delay his departure so that Monyue and at least one other family that had been separated could be interviewed." The Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief also assisted with a $4,000 grant through the Refugee Family Reunification Project of the Diocese of Fort Worth.
The Brights plan to return to Liberia eventually, but first will work to "really advance ourselves in the area of our careers," Dee Bright said. Monyue is an educator, and "I plan to pursue my graduate degree in theology to better myself in terms of returning and serving my country with better impact," he said.
Their rented home in Monrovia, where he was principal of the largest Episcopal high school in the country, has been looted of all their possessions, and while the country is safer, church leaders still face danger.
The current lull in the Liberia's fighting is "only a cease fire," he said. "Every time it will end up in a deadlock and the fighting will start again." He added, "I am clergy, and that is one of the risks, but I'm not sure that I'm supposed to impose the risk of my work on my children."
Vonti's name means "child of war" in Bassa, a language spoken in Liberia, but it's time, he said, for her brother and her to experience a little peace.
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