Amy Biehl gave her life to end apartheid in South Africa.
Born on April 26, 1967, Amy Elizabeth Biehl had the innate ability to relentlessly adhere to her strong beliefs. After meeting the Lone Ranger at a Santa Fe restaurant, Amy would wear a Lone Ranger mask for four straight months. Amy's mother, Linda Biehl, eventually had to coerce her daughter to take off the mask for the forst week of preschool. This was the last tima Amy Biehl would compromise her string beliefs.
As a student, Amy was not considered naturally gifted at any of her activities, but she strove hard to excel at all of them: Amy became an excellent swimmer, gymnast, and bellerina, along with sitting first chair flute, acheiving a consistent 4.0 GPA throughout her educational career, and graduating valedictorian of her class at Stanford. After hearing Nelson Mandela's story, Amy applied her fiery determination to the "Free Mandela" cause, and thus began lifelong passion for human rights in Africa.
In 1992, Amy Biehl received the Fulbright Fellowship to observe the role of women in South Africa. In Capetown, Biehl worked to improve women's voices in politics and even worked with Dullah Omar to create a Bill of Rights. Biehl did not restrict herself to only bettering women's rights, she also worked to end the forty-year-old legally-sanctioned Apartheid. Befriending several South Africans, Amy Biehl semmed to want to adopt South African culture as her own. She was one of the very few white people who strove to learn the Xhosa language instead of asking locals to speak English for her. However, on August 25, 1993, as Amy was driving three black colleagues to Capetown's Guguletu Towship, a group of black youths desperate for an end to Apartheid bgean pelting Biehl's car with stones and pulled her out of it. Amy tried to flee, but the young men hit her with a brick and then began to beat her. During the beating, the three black comrades continually yelled to the young men that Amy was a comrade and a friend to South Africa, but the group did not believe any white person could be on heir side and stabbed Biehl in the heart. Amy was 26 years old at the time of her murder.
The definition of faith is a belief and trust in something or someone. And nobody exemplifies fath more than Amy Biehl. Her complete trust and belief in her morals and ideals shows Biehl's incrredible faith. She stuck to what she believed was the right thing to do (fighting against injustice against women and Apartheid) even in the face of death. After her death, Biehl's parents founded the Amy Behl Foundation in order to perpetuate their daughter's important work and attempt to instill faith in Amy's beliefs in others.