Out of respect for Libby Little, Dan Swinton waited a year after her husband’s death before approaching her about producing a documentary on his life and work in Afghanistan. But Swinton had no idea that was actually the worst possible moment.
“There were just planning a memorial to honor his life because it’s so dangerous to travel to Afghanistan,” he said.
It was a little more than two years before Libby Little was ready to help make the film come to life for PBS. The title is “The Hard Places,” a nickname many aid workers have for Afghanistan.
“It took me a while to entertain the idea of having the documentary done,” Little said. “We were private people and we kept a low profile. Eventually, I found that it would be balanced and Tom wouldn’t be made out to be a hero.”
Tom Little, an optometrist who kept a home in Delmar, was killed in August of 2010 in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan. The incident has since been dubbed the Badakshan Massacre, and it is viewed as the deadliest attack against aid workers of the Afghanistan War. A total of 10 members of the International Assistance Mission Eye Camp team were killed as they traveled from Nuristan to Kabul.
When Tom Little’s story became national news, Swinton was working at WMHT, the PBS station in Albany. The story had broad interest as far as current events, but also a local, human connection. Swinton said he quickly knew he wanted to produce a project about Little.
“We want to examine his legacy, but this story is also important because in 2014 our troops are scheduled to leave,” he said. “I think the country would like to forget about Afghanistan because we are sick of hearing about it, but there are a lot of humanitarians who poured their life into their work there and are going to stay no mater what. This is a story not just about Tom’s death, but also what his team accomplished.”
Libby and Tom Little met in high school before going to separate universities. They married after graduation, and Tom helped his father, also an optometrist, in his practice. It was in the 1970s that Tom heard about the growing need for eye care in Afghanistan and spoke with his wife about moving there to help out. The couple moved in 1976, raised their family and lived in Afghanistan almost full time for 30 years.
“For the first two years we got our feet wet,” Little said. “Then, once we got involved and it never got better, Tom felt very strongly that you don’t just skip out when things got rough. I believed that, too.”
The Littles lived in Afghanistan through the Russian invasion and occupation, the emergence of the Taliban and the War on Terror. During that time, Little worked to set up clinics and hospitals through IAM’S National Organization for Ophthalmic Rehabilitation (NOOR) and traveled to see patients throughout the country. The program has evolved into a system of hospitals with a training and education centers for locals and mobile eye camps.
“The thought is to train the Afghan people to care for themselves,” said Little. “It’s the only sustainable way to work in a setting like that and it’s the best situation for everyone involved.”
Filming got the documentary has already begun. Swinton said the film will cover Tom’s early life in Claverack and Kinderhook, and then move on to his time in Afghanistan and Delmar. The crew has already collected archival material that is being edited together, and filming has been done at the Little’s home in Delmar.
Currently, the crew is attempting to raise $20,000 to pay for a trip to Afghanistan to film. The money will be used to cover travel costs and salaries. Other money is being found through private donations and grants, but the travel funding has to be gathered up soon. There isn’t a good sense of how safe conditions in the country will be as U.S. troops withdraw, so the crew must go when there is still some security in the area.
The hope is to film at the hospital where Tom Little worked. Libby will travel with the crew and they will speak with some of Tom’s colleagues and patients to get a sense of the work done and what is still needed.
“He’s sort of a legend over there,” said Swinton. “A project like this is important so people don’t forget.”
Little said she thinks her husband would like anything that helped raise awareness for his life’s work.
“This is based on his story, but he wouldn’t agree to a hero thing,” she said. “He didn’t think of himself that way. He was just an ordinary person doing his job somewhere else.”
To help with production of the documentary, people can donate by visiting www.thehardplaces.com. To donate to NOOR, visit www.iam-afghanistan.org/noor.