Photo: Boston Globe
Al Filipov died on Sept. 11. He was on the plane from Boston.
After September 11, 2001, good works sprouted around the country, launched by people from all walks of life who were determined that goodness should have the last say. The Huffington Post collected a bunch of these initiatives for one anniversary of the tragedy, here, but you can find examples in nearly every community.
In Concord, Al Filipov, who was on one of the planes, is honored in several ways, including by the Filipov Peace and Justice Forum.
Al’s son, Boston Globe reporter David Filipov, once recalled his father as “engineer, inventor, sailor, deacon, coach, husband, dad, raconteur.” The Filipov forum website adds that he was a painter and a human rights activist, noting,
“He sought out the best in people and cared passionately about the world in its beauty and pain. He earnestly believed in the power of an individual to make a difference in the world.”
The 2016 Al Filipov Peace & Justice Forum will take place on September 25 at the Trinity Congregational Church on Walden Street in Concord. Representatives from the Parents Circle-Families Forum are the featured guests. The Parents Circle is made up of bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families that have come together to support “peace, reconciliation and tolerance.”
As one member says in the video below, people from different sides of a conflict need to get to know one another as individuals and share commonalities in order to let go of “being right” all the time instead of creating peace. Otherwise any future agreement is just a cease fire.
The presentation will be from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Oh, thanks so much for this lovely piece about Al Filipov, and the Al Filipov forum for Peace and Justice. Al and I were both members of the Concord Interfaith Forum in the 1990’s (maybe earlier). He was such a kind, interesting guy, and so passionate about supporting interfaith work. It was crushingly sad, of course, when he died, and especially ironic, in view of his passion for intercultural understanding. You may like to know that he had learned to say “Is there a Chinese restaurant nearby” in maybe 50 different languages! 🙂
That is a great memory! Chinese food has certainly become a kind of international language. Maybe some blog reader who travels a lot will pick up on Al Filipov’s idea.