Spotlight: Hope Personified.
Author documents life and legacy of the late Frances Maschal Landers
El Dorado humanitarian Frances Maschal Landers thought she would visit Haiti one time, but after visiting a village riddled with poverty and illiteracy, nothing was the same. Her legacy lives on through the Haiti Education Foundation, as well as a book by a friend who she shared her stories with.
At 60 years old, Landers took her first mission trip to Haiti with her husband, Dr. Gardner Landers, and her son, Jim Landers, ophthalmologists, who performed several cataract surgeries on blind patients.
“She went along on that first trip in 1977 … They thought they were going to Haiti once and of course it didn’t work that way. The need was so great for Gardner and Jim’s services,” author Martha Abbey Miller said. “They wound up doing 12 years of trips twice a year. In that process she met the priest Father Jean-Wilfrid
Albert.”
The priest “impressed upon” Landers, a retired teacher, after a tour of the Mercery village and explained the immense need for education in villages like it, Miller said. After Father Albert wrote to Landers pleading for a school, her conviction inspired her to raise funds through the First Presbyterian Church of El Dorado for a teacher’s salary.
“With the funds, Pere Albert hired a teacher and built benches for the chapel. Enfolded in the loving care of Haiti’s Episcopal Church and shepherded by Pere Albert, the chapel schoolroom opened in early October 1980. Children crowded onto each bench to learn to read,” Miller wrote.
During a 1981 visit, Landers saw Albert reject a young girl because there was no room in the schoolroom, according to the book. "I took the picture of the little girl. I went to the mission committee at our church and asked for money to build a school,” Landers said.
First Presbyterian started the “Haiti Fund” and with that an eight-room primary school with a guesthouse for Dr. Landers’ medical teams were built. By 1982, four of the classrooms were finished. “In three years, Mercery’s educational system evolved from nothing to a concrete building that overflowed with … learning,” Miller wrote. “In 1986, when Mercery’s school graduated its first class of students with a sixth grade education, Frances was the guest of honor.”
According to the book, the Haiti Fund built schools and provided scholarships for 18 years, but Landers wanted to expand her ministry through a nonprofit organization she later renamed Haiti Education Foundation, commonly known as HEF. Her son, Mike, helped her file for nonprofit status through the IRS. “Well, I finally did it. The IRS documents scared me to death, but I had to do it to assure the future of the schools,” Landers said. The author said that she learned of Landers’ mission shortly after a trip in 1999, and corresponded through letters, where Landers detailed her triumphs and trials she faced in the small villages.
In 30 years time, Father Albert, the Landers family, her “absolute best friends,” First Presbyterian Church, HEF, Haitian teachers and missionaries collaborated to build over 50 schools in 45 impoverished Haitian villages, dismantling illiteracy one mountainside at a time. “My husband and I took our first trip to Haiti in 1999 and shortly after that I learned about Frances and her work. I took a lot of photographs for fundraising for scholarships for the children,” Miller said. “I sent my photos to her — some prints — and she wrote me. The first letter she wrote me was in May of 1999 so like many people, I began my friendship with her through the mail because she was such a powerful, consummate letter writer.”
In the first letter Landers sent dated May 17, 1999, she wrote, “Dear Martha, the pictures you sent are the best I have ever had from Haiti. They arrived 30 minutes ago and I
In three years, Mercery’s educational system evolved from nothing to a concrete building that overflowed with … learning. — Author Martha Abbey Miller
have quickly gone through them. They brought tears.”
Landers and Miller met three years later while the fiery fundraiser was giving a speech about her mission at the writer’s church in California, but their friendship “began right away.” They have never been in Haiti at the same time, she said.
“I knew her for the first few years just by letter and telephone calls,” Miller said. “Frances has the knack to make everybody feel absolutely indispensable to her work and I remember when I got that first letter from her. I thought ‘Oh my gosh. What a wonderful thing I did by sending these photos that she can actually use.’ That was one of her gifts.”
During their correspondence, Landers said, “No one is writing the story of Pere Albert and this miracle in Haiti. It would be wonderful if you could do this, Martha. You know the work from so many angles.”
According to a passage in the book, Landers started writing her own “small, untitled memoir” in 2004. The author has about 40 letters that Landers sent to her over the years. She started accumulating “an immense gift in source material” to write “Hope Personified: Frances Maschal Landers” in 2013,” the author said.
“Her biography was based not only on my letters. I have about 600 letters of Frances’ that she wrote to different people, including two of her closest friends,” Miller said. “I have their complete correspondence, newsletters, audio tapes, video tapes, slides, other people’s letters and trip journals … It was such a joy to put it all together in place for many supporters and others to read.”
The humanitarian took her last trip, her 43rd, at 91 years old. Frances Lucile Maschal Landers died on September 14, 2010 at the age of 93. Today would’ve been her 100th birthday.
Writing “Hope Personified” has helped Miller cope with Landers’ death as well as document the extraordinary woman’s journey, she said.
Due to the devastating effects of Hurricane Matthew, schools that Father Albert and Landers worked to build are damaged. Miller is pledging 10 percent of the book’s proceeds toward a donation to HEF to help rebuild the schools.
In the three-part book, the author wrote, “Perhaps we are called to leave the first footprint on a new mountainside of opportunity. Perhaps we are asked to enlarge the footsteps of others. Either way, we can take one step at a time. Little by little … Always personifying hope.”