Westmont Magazine Sixteen Years of Survival

Megan Harter ’97 is a survivor. During the 1989 Potter’s Clay trip to Mexico, she and Patty Hallock Crosby ’92 were critically injured in an auto accident that killed three of their friends, Lisa Bebout, Alan Voorman and Garth Weedman. The women recovered and returned to Westmont the next semester.

But Megan interrupted her education to pursue opportunities for ministry and didn’t graduate until 1997. That year she returned to Ensenada for Potter’s Clay and spoke to about 2,000 people.

“Several women came up to me afterwards weeping and telling me they had been praying for me since the accident,” she says. “One of them prayed that God would let her feel whatever pain I was feeling so that she would know how to pray for me. I went back to the accident site; I felt clearly that God was saying to me, ‘I was with you then and I am here with you now.’ I was able to meet Alan Voorman’s brother who looks just like him. I had often struggled with why Alan and the others, who were incredible people, had died. Why was I one of the two still living?”

“I’m grateful I had my eyes opened to the value of life at a young age,” she continues. “I realize I’ve been given a chance my dear friends did not have. I have sought to honor them, their families, my family, my friends, the Westmont community and our Mexican family and community by living life to the fullest whenever possible.”

Over the years she has held a variety of positions: junior high youth coordinator at Carmel Presbyterian Church; intern with the Chi Alpha ministry at CSU Chico (where she started an international student fellowship); volunteer for the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education; dental assistant; personal shopper at Nordstrom’s and Saks Fifth Avenue; and nanny.

“To make a lasting impact in this country, I decided to commit myself to building long-term relationships with young children, with whom real change takes place,” Megan says. She earned a teaching credential and a master’s degree in education at Antioch University Seattle, a school that focuses on social justice issues and multiculturalism. She taught for two years at Zion Preparatory Academy, a Christian, African-American school in Seattle before transferring to an all-girls school in Berkeley, Calif., with an ethnically and economically diverse student body.

“I know that the prayers of a great number of people have affected my life in fantastic ways,” Megan says. “I am and will always be grateful to everyone for their love and support through the letters they sent and the prayers they prayed.”