I am proud that my parents, John and Kathryn Muirhead, will help bring potable water to the 108 families

of Cantn Quival, Santa Cruz del Quich. I thank Sister Jan Gregorcich and my brother Richard, both of the group Global Partners: Running Waters of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Jorge Luis Castro of Las Critas del Quich for enabling my folks to accomplish the greatest single gift of their lives, after their deaths. My parents were part of a remarkable generation of American farmers, simple and humble like the people of Quival. These farmers didnt have much. They struggled to feed, clothe, and educate their families, and, with the little they had left, to help members of their communities even less fortunate than they were. They believed in living correctly and in treating each other with respect. They spoke neither Spanish nor Quich but, in almost every other way, resembled more the people of Quival than they did modern-day Americans. John Muirhead was born August 3rd 1913 in Plato Center, Illinois, a mid-west American farm town about the size of Quival. The population of Plato was spread thinly across the countryside, as in Quival. John didnt excel in school. He was raised to be a farmer. He lived 96 years in the house in which he was born, on the road named for our family, where he farmed virtually every day from early childhood until his death. Corn and cattle were his life; and his skill at raising both, his greatest source of pride. I feel my fathers presence as I walk the pathways of rural Guatemala through milpa and fields of vegetables verdant and lush, passing cattle, pigs, chickens, barking dogs, and people gathering firewood, or cultivating, planting, or harvesting their crops. The natural splendor of highland Guatemala would have excited my father. The wide variety and exceptional quality of your corn, vegetables, and fruits would have amazed him. My mother, Kathryn Thomas, was born August 29th 1914. She grew up near our family farm In South Burlington, Illinois, a settlement to this day smaller than Quival. Mom also lived on a farm on a road named for her family. She not only excelled in school, she was a genius. In those days that destined her to become a teacher. Kathryn taught in a one-room schoolhouse similar to the smallest rural schools of Guatemala today. When she married, she retired from full-time teaching to be a farm wife and raise a family, four boys and a girl. At a much higher level, though, she remained the communitys great teacher. Kathryn Thomas expressed strong anti-racist and antimilitarist views that changed the moral conscience of our community forever and rubbed off on neighboring towns as well. It was said of my mother that she would never meet a stranger, that every man, woman, and child was her friend on contact. Indeed her expansive heart contained room for all. She would have loved the people of Quival, along with their custom, color, ceremony, and fine textile tradition. Quival would have loved her too.

In 1988 at age 73, Kathryn succumbed to the crippling arthritis which had plagued her body much of her adult life. Today her spirit and that of her husband John are aglow with the knowledge that their gift will help people so much like themselves in a place as special and beautiful as Quival.