RPCV Fern Holland left her comfortable life in Oklahoma to pursue human rights for the oppressed in Iraq, but ultimately her dedication cost her her life
Fearless Fern
She left her comfortable life in Oklahoma to pursue human rights for the oppressed in Iraq, but ultimately her dedication cost her her life.
Fern Holland loved riding horses around Tulsa just as she loved working in the courtroom. Five years ago, her law career was taking off.
"Once she got her eye on the goal, she didn't quit until she got there. She was very dogged in her efforts," friend Jim Green said.
Fern Holland's sister says her passion had nothing to do with a lucrative law career.
"She believed all people deserved basic human rights and that one person can really make a difference in the life of others," Fern's sister Vi Holland said.
To prove that, she quit the law firm and joined the Peace Corps posted to West Africa. But a year after the coalition invaded Iraq, Holland volunteered for a new assignment trying to heal a shattered country.
"She saw there was a need where oppressed people and oppressed women and she went where there was a need," Fern's brother James Holland said.
For Fern Holland, the experience was a personal journey into the darkest recesses of Saddam Hussein's regime. Investigating war crimes, she discovered mass graves in southern Iraq. Holland interviewed three men who survived the executions, she wrote in a report, by digging themselves out of their graves.
"It was like a modern-day Auschwitz to her. It deeply moved her. Hearing stories of people losing their small children, people being tied up around tires and burnt and then pushed into mass graves with bulldozers," James said.
Holland had seen enough. She unleashed the passion and talents that earned her the nickname, Fearless Fern. She traveled around the Iraqi countryside often with minimal security.
"Out in the communities, organizing women, organizing democracy groups, human rights groups, tribal groups. Getting people prepared for elections. Getting people educated about democracy," Vi said.
In Fern Holland's videotape collection, you can see one of the women's centers she helped establish. You see women working on computers, sharing ideas.
"You can't kill ideas, and that's what Fern's mission was all about, instilling those ideas of freedom," Green said.
After nine months in Iraq, Fearless Fern told her friends she sensed change. She saw it in two women who approached her for help. The women wanted to evict a man described as one of Saddam Hussein's thugs who was squatting on their farmland. She got the women a court order.
"She told the Iraqi police they had to serve it. They said you don't know who you're dealing with and apparently they didn't know who they were dealing with," Green said.
Since Iraqi authorities wouldn't help. Fern Holland had an idea. She simply had the man's house bulldozed.
"When I heard the story, I thought that was so typical Fern. It goes back to her moral compass. She wasn't afraid of anything or anybody, but Fern had a way of doing it," James said.
While she made countless friends, Fern Holland also made enemies. Last March 9, she was driving with an Iraqi colleague and another American when they approached a highway checkpoint. It was a trap. A group of men opened fire killing all three in the car. American investigators told Holland's family she was the target.
"Here was a person who was over there not fighting a war with guns, but fighting with courage and love. She was trying to help people, and she was murdered for it," Green said.
Fern Holland's family finds comfort in the e-mails from the Iraqi women who promise to be courageous and carry on Fern's memory.
"We take great pride in knowing that Fern was part of their history. Women there will enjoy freedoms and rights for generations to come," Vi said.
Fern Holland was 33-years-old. She's buried in a small cemetery in her hometown of Bluejacket, Oklahoma.
Just days before she was killed, she wrote a friend and said, "If I die, know that I'm doing what I want to be doing. We're doing all we can. Wish us luck. Wish the Iraqis luck."
