The widow of a man who died during the Sept. 11th attacks spoke Wednesday evening at Brandeis about the charity bike ride she organized to honor her late husband.Susan Retik addressed over a dozen people at the Women's Studies Research Center for "Cycling Forward to Afghanistan: A Sept. 11th Widow Speaks."

The event was co-sponsored by the cycling club and the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life's series, "9/11: Brandeis Reflections Five Years Later."

In 2003, Retik and another 9/11 widow, Patti Quigley, founded "Beyond the 11th," a group that helps widows affected by acts of war and terrorism. Its primary focus is an annual 275-mile bike ride, "Cycling Forward," from Ground Zero in New York to Boston Common.

The ride and fundraising campaign have so far raised $450,000 for the widows over the last three years.

Retik said the plight of the Afghan widows and her own experience led her to create her charitable organization.

"I never chose to be widowed on Sept. 11," she said. "These women in Afghanistan didn't choose to play the role of widow. They don't have a voice, so I can choose to use mine for them."

Retik began her talk by recounting the fateful morning her husband David died aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which departed from Boston and later crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Her voice shook as she spoke about the way her husband had left cards for their children on the table before embarking on an early morning business trip and how she learned about the fate of him and the others on the Los Angeles-bound plane.

Retik said she was impressed by the outpouring of sympathy and support she received in the following weeks. She became deeply troubled after learning about the condition of the Afghan women while watching the Oprah Winfrey show shortly before the US invasion of Afghanistan.

"If it was so terrible to be a woman in Afghanistan, what must it be like to be a widow?" she said.

Retik presented an 18-minute trailer for "Beyond the 11th," a documentary directed by Beth Murphy and Principle Pictures. The clip showed the public and private obstacles Retik and Quigley faced in organizing "Cycling Forward." During filming, their close friend, Clementina Cantoni, an aid worker for Care International, was abducted and held at gunpoint in Afghanistan, though she was later released.

Retik displayed a brief slideshow of her trip with Quigley to Kabul in May, followed by a reading of a poem written by Marci McPhee, associate director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. Jennie El-Far '07 and Iman Hedar '07 read the work, entitled "The Alchemist," which paid tribute to Retik and Quigley's efforts to improve the lives of Afghan widows.

In response to why she was helping women in Afghanistan instead of working domestically, Retik said, "The terrorists that killed our husbands on 9/11 were trained in Afghanistan, but [women] were already being terrorized in Afghanistan by many of these same kinds of people . so I feel like we are all connected.