Calif. Woman Missing After Iran Accident
Family and friends of Kathleen Namphy, an emerita lecturer in English, have been trying since Monday to piece together the story of what happened after Namphy reportedly was injured on a mountain trail while descending the 18,000-foot Mount Damavand in Iran on Sunday.
A major search-and-rescue effort was launched after Namphy disappeared from a spot where she was last seen alive by Kurdish hikers, according to a friend of Namphy's daughter, Lisa Namphy, of Palo Alto.
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The body of an American female hiker has reportedly been found on the mountain, but no official word of the hiker's identity had reached Lisa Namphy on Thursday afternoon. According to Iranian press reports, the body would not be airlifted from the mountain to Tehran until Friday morning.
Namphy, 69, was a lecturer in English and the humanities from 1978 to 1996, beginning teaching here after earning a Ph.D. in English and the humanities in 1978.
Since her retirement, Namphy has continued to be a campus presence, teaching Continuing Studies and Alumni Association classes and participating in peacemaking activities. Namphy lived and taught in the Middle East in the 1960s and had recently made trips to the West Bank, Israel and Iraq to teach and to participate in actions organized by the Christian Peacemakers teams. She had planned to teach a poetry course in Baghdad this fall, Lisa Namphy said.
Namphy, an experienced climber and life-long hiker, scaled the 19,000-foot Mount Kilimanjaro last August, when she raised $10,000 for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
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