Mumbai attacks hit home

FABER — A Nelson County man and his 13-year-old daughter were among at least four Americans killed in a series of orchestrated terrorist attacks on luxury hotels and other sites in Mumbai, India, that left 145 people dead, officials said Friday.

Alan and Naomi Scherr were eating a nighttime snack at a café inside the Oberoi Hotel when gunmen burst in and started firing automatic weapons. Alan Scherr, 58, was shot in the head. Naomi was also killed by gunfire.

The Scherrs had traveled to India on Nov. 14 to attend a two-week meditation retreat that featured lectures by Charles Cannon, spiritual director of the Synchronicity Foundation in Nelson County. Scherr, himself a meditation teacher and Vedic astrologer, and his daughter had lived alongside a dozen monks and 35 others at the foundation’s 450-acre complex in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the past 13 years.

“There will be much grieving,” said Bobbie Garvey, vice president and business manager of Synchronicity. “I don’t think this community has fully experienced the impact of this event.”

Six other area residents were also attending the retreat but were not injured in the terrorists’ assault on the Oberoi Hotel.

Some 25 followers of the Synchronicity Foundation were at the retreat. Of these, four were wounded in the gunfire. Rudrani Devi and Linda Ragsdale, both of Nashville, Tenn., were both shot and underwent surgery. Helen Connolly, of Toronto, was grazed by a bullet. And Michael Rudder, of Montreal, was shot three times and remains in intensive care.

Many of the foundation’s followers hid inside their hotel rooms, barricading the door with mattresses and other furniture. For nearly two days, they could hear grenades exploding and gunfire reverberating throughout the hotel’s corridors. Some had trouble breathing, as there was so much smoke from fires burning elsewhere in the Oberoi.

“They didn’t know if at any time the door was going to open and it’d be someone to save them or take them out,” Garvey said. “It was a truly terrifying experience.”

Cannon, known to his disciples as “Master Charles,” was among the Synchronicity members holed up in the hotel during the fighting. After he was rescued at around 5 a.m. Friday, Cannon went down to the hotel café and identified the bodies of Alan and Naomi Scherr. He called Garvey and asked her to notify Kia Scherr, Alan’s wife and Naomi’s mother, about the deaths of her family members.

“She is in mourning,” Garvey said. “She goes in and out of periods of speaking and not speaking. She is a mother and a wife.”

Alan Scherr had made numerous trips to India over the years, often accompanying Cannon. He was a vice president of the Synchronicity Foundation and served as the religious collective’s spokesman. He moved to Synchronicity when his daughter was two months old.

“He was a very warm person,” recalled neighbor and friend Tanya Anisimova, who played cello as reporters arrived at the Synchronicity Foundation’s chapel for a news conference. “He was one of those rare people.”

The pilgrimage to Mumbai was Naomi’s first time traveling to India, having heard stories about the country from her father all her life. She planned to write an essay about her experiences there to submit as part of an application to a girls’ boarding school for high school.

“Naomi was like a little light — a sparkle,” Anisimova said. “She was lively, smart. She was such a joy.”

Naomi was remembered as an exceptionally bright young person. She could often be seen hanging around the foundation’s nine-building complex, listening to audio books.

“She was passionate, if not a little mischievous, and will be fondly remembered by many of us for colorful hair styles and radiant energy,” said a statement posted on the foundation’s Web site Friday morning.

The Synchronicity Foundation aims to teach its followers how to experience the world through inner peace. They practice “high-tech meditation,” which involves listening to soothing music while meditating. According to the foundation, its meditation soundtracks help balance the brain and encourage a feeling of wholeness within oneself.

Cannon, who formed the foundation in the mid-1980s, has said that he has had visions of a female presence called the “Divine Mother,” “Blessed Mother” or “Divine Feminine” since he was around 3 years old. Other followers reported being visited by the apparition in 2006 and 2007.

Anisimova said it was a cruel irony that followers of a religious practice that emphasizes peace would be gunned down in such a brutal fashion.

“This is about peace. This whole place is about peace, which starts within one’s self,” she said. “It’s like an irony of fate for them to be killed by these extremists.”

Garvey said she is feeling a sense of sadness and loss over the deaths of the Scherrs. Yet she does not condemn the terrorists.

“Anger is not an emotion I’m experiencing right now,” she said.

The other American casualties of this week’s attacks in Mumbai were Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who moved to India from Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2003. They were killed when the terrorists took hostages at a Jewish outreach center that Holtzberg managed. The couple’s 2-year-old son, Moshe, escaped with a nanny roughly 12 hours into the siege, according to a report in the New York Times.

President Bush issued a statement Friday after learning of the deaths of the Scherrs.

“Laura and I are deeply saddened that at least two Americans were killed and others injured in Wednesday’s horrific attack in Mumbai,” he said. “We also mourn the great loss of life suffered by so many people from several other countries, and we have the wounded in our thoughts and prayers.”

U.S. Rep.-elect Tom Perriello, who will represent Nelson County if a recount holds up, issued a statement calling the Mumbai terrorist attacks “cowardly.”

“I am shocked and saddened by this tragic news from across the globe and from right here in our community,” he said. “My prayers are with the Scherr family and members of their spiritual community during this painful time. Acts of terrorism, wherever committed, are crimes against our common humanity, and we have been reminded that conflicts abroad reverberate back home.”

Brian McNeill is a staff writer for the Daily Progress in Charlottesville.

Previous reporting on Synchronicity

More information on Synchronicity

Help us learn more