Nahima Salamy Farha

is honored with a Medium Bench from the family of Nahima Salamy Farha.

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among her followers, gives not of her wisdom but rather of her faith and her lovingness…... The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Ask any of Nahima Salamy Farha's 28 grandchildren to describe their "Sitti," their grandmother, and their words will reveal her spirit: A kind and gentle matriarch. A graceful peacemaker. A woman who gained respect by giving respect. Her most cherished possessions were her faith and her family. A mother who expected her five sons and three daughters to be honest, loving, courageous, and generous. And she taught her children their values by living them herself. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.....You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

In 1920 the specter of World War I came to Nahima's tiny Lebanese village, as the Turkish army ravaged the countryside searching for supplies and young recruits. Nahima Salamy Farha was a recent widow with eight children, the youngest being less than one year old. With only a few hours advance warning, Nahima gathered her courage, her faith, and her children and fled her home in Merjayoun, Lebanon.

They ran at night and hid during the days, finally making their way to Beirut. Nahima had brothers in New York who had sent money for their ship passage to America. However, the ticket agent lied to them and they later found themselves stranded for 40 days in Paris. Eventually, they made contact with family and were able to complete their journey. Arriving at Ellis Island, they stayed in New York only a short time before leaving for Wichita, Kansas. Though Nahima's husband had died in the old country, the custom was to go to your husband's family. Her oldest child, Nellie, had come to Wichita with her father a few years earlier, and remained there with an uncle's family.

Nahima Farha valued America's freedoms as only an immigrant can. "God bless America" was a common expression in her home. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom to build a life for her family.

If you asked a newspaper reporter to list the achievements of the years that followed, you might hear about the businesses that her children and grandchildren built, F&E Wholesale Groceries, or the community leadership roles they achieved.

But if you asked Nahima Farha's family about her personal achievements, they would tell how in good and bad times, she kept her family together, supporting each other. A struggling young immigrant, her grace and compassion were balanced with tremendous courage.

She believed that out of every bad, some good will come. "God will give." And out of the turmoil that was Lebanon during World War I, she emerged, applying her principles to a new life in America and raising her family based on those principles. God gave her grace and God gave us her, our Sitti, our loving leader, our faith-filled friend.

Note: For purposes of this essay, the quote from The Prophet was edited from masculine to feminine gender.

July 22, 1998