American-Israeli educator Richard Lakin, 76, who died on Tuesday of wounds sustained in a terrorist attack on a bus in Jerusalem two weeks ago, marched for civil rights in the 1960s and advocated coexistence between Muslims and Jews ever since he moved to Israel in 1984. Lakin was seriously wounded when two Arab terrorists boarded a bus in the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers. Two other passengers were killed on the spot, and numerous others were injured in the attack, which was one of the bloodiest incidents in the ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism that has killed 11 Israelis since Rosh Hashanah. Lakin, from Newton, Massachusetts, was a longtime principal in Glastonbury, Connecticut. His Facebook page displayed an image of Israeli and Arab children hugging under the word "coexist." Lakin's son, Micha, said his father was a beloved educator and author of a book on teaching. He was an elementary school principal in the U.S. and taught English in mixed classes of Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem after moving to Israel. In the 1960s, Lakin was active in the American civil rights movement, marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and bringing students from Boston to the southern U.S. for sit-ins, Micha said. "He was a big believer in people and in peace and in being kind and he never hurt a soul in his life," said Lakin's son. He said thousands of people from around the world had contacted him to express their shock and condolences after his father's death. Suzanne Hertel of West Hartford, Connecticut, taught under Lakin at the Hopewell School in Glastonbury, where he was principal. He championed an effort to bring students from inner-city Hartford to Glastonbury under a program called Project Concern, she said. Rabbi Richard Plavin of Beth Shalom Bnai Israel in Manchester, Connecticut, which Lakin attended before moving to Israel, said Lakin was a passionate man who pursued peace and justice. He said Lakin was a Freedom Rider in the 1960s, working to desegregate the South. "He was really a peacenik. He believed deeply in a two-state solution and wanted to see Arabs and Jews living together in peace," he said. Lakin was on the bus returning from a doctor's appointment for minor back pain when "he was brutalized by two Arabs from east Jerusalem who got on a bus, shot him in the head, then stabbed him in the face, then stabbed him in the head" and continued stabbing him multiple times in the body, his son said. Micha said his father's legacy "would be for people to take their energy and use it to do kind things. My mother describes it as random acts of kindness."
