Biehl Family Considers Endowment : Memorial: Parents of slain woman and Stanford professor discuss a program that could involve student exchanges.

To perpetuate their daughter’s legacy, the parents of Amy Elizabeth Biehl are discussing with Stanford University officials the possibility of setting up an endowment or scholarship fund to recognize her dedication to the cause of southern Africa.

In her adult years, the 26-year-old Biehl devoted her life to advancing democracy in South Africa and the countries around it that are also struggling for majority rule.

Biehl was a Stanford graduate and was studying in South Africa as a Fulbright scholar when she was killed Wednesday by a mob in Guguletu, a township in Cape Town. She was preparing to return to the United States Friday to attend Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Her family does not want to dwell on her tragic death. Rather, Peter and Linda Biehl said Friday, they want something positive to come of their daughter’s work.

“Our daughter was very active, very prolific in her work with the South Africans,” her father, Peter Biehl, said in an interview at his Newport Beach home. “We want to establish a living memorial, an endowment or fellowship that would not only bear her name, but could help other students to carry on her work.”

Linda Biehl added: “Her work must go on; it has to be the essence of change she wanted to be a part of.”

The Biehls and one of her professors at Stanford University are discussing the possibility of endowing an already existing program at the university. The program could involve the mutual exchange of students between Stanford and a South African university, said Larry Diamond, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford and Biehl’s former professor.

“Amy had many friends and admirers here at Stanford, and we have a strong resolve to do something to remember her in a constructive way,” Diamond said. “We feel that she certainly has symbolized and evoked the powerful aspiration that Americans have for the achievement of non-racial democracy in South Africa.”

“We’d like to develop something befitting to her memory,” Diamond added. “We want to show that somehow, her commitment can continue to make a difference.”

Peter and Linda Biehl said they are also entertaining the possibility of establishing a memorial library that would contain their daughter’s many written reports and research on South Africa and other countries in the region.

Amy Biehl had just completed her research at the University of the Western Cape on the role women have in the political transition to majority rule in South Africa. She was to have delivered her paper, titled “Women in a Democratic South Africa,” Sept. 14 at Western Cape.

“There are many ironies in Amy’s death,” Peter Biehl said. “She fought for the rights of the people in South Africa to end apartheid, have majority rule; she died because she was white. She recognized a long time ago that the current of change would come about in South Africa; she didn’t live to see (the country’s) first democratic election” to be held next year.

The Biehls said they want to some day go to South Africa to get to know the country and people that their daughter loved.

“We’ve been so taken and are so impressed with the quality and care of the people who knew Amy that we feel we want to meet them,” said Peter Biehl. “We’d like to know them; we’d like to know more about our daughter.”