Metrowest Daily News

Emily the Cow featured in book
by David Riley/Daily News staff
Wed Sep 19, 2007

Sherborn -  The lives of American cows grace the pages of menus more often than biographies.

The few that make bovine history are not always treated favorably. Consider the maligned heifer that, as popular legend would have it, kicked over a lantern and started the great Chicago fire in 1871.

But Emily the Cow - who escaped a Hopkinton slaughterhouse and became a national symbol for compassion toward animals - was not average livestock. Her life story is the subject of a new book compiled by Lewis and Meg Randa, who took the cow in at their Peace Abbey in Sherborn.

Just released by publisher AuthorHouse, "The Story of Emily the Cow: Bovine Bodhisattva" collects 288 pages of local and national news coverage on Emily from her 1995 bid for freedom to her death from cancer in 2004. "It's so incredible it almost sounds like it has to be fiction," Meg Randa said yesterday.

"It will provide opportunities for her to live on through examples of how her life was documented." Hoping to plan signings at bookshops and pet supply stores in the near future, Randa said she and her husband plan to truck along a mobile memorial to Emily.

Lado Goudjabidze, a sculptor who crafted a 2,300-pound statue for a memorial to Emily at the Peace Abbey, recently gave the Randas the Fiberglas cast he used to make the bronze figure. Now on display at the abbey, the figure is portable, Randa said.

"We'd really like to do it as a field trip outing with our students so they can be part of it, too," she said.

The book comes as the Peace Abbey, known for promoting nonviolence and social justice, faces an uncertain future because of debt and limited funds. An anonymous donor recently paid off debt remaining from building Emily's memorial, which generously bought some time, Lewis Randa said. However, the abbey still needs until mid-October to see where it stands, he said. "At the moment, we're still waiting," he said.

Meg Randa said she hopes the book might encourage readers to visit the abbey. But overall, she and her husband do not want that to be the focus of their book.

It is more important, Randa said, to keep the cow's memory and message of compassion alive. As much as anything, the book is a personal tribute to the cow, she said.

"Unfortunately, she didn't live a full life, but she made such an impact in the eight years she was with us," she said.

After jumping a fence to escape, 2-year-old Emily was on the run for 40 days before non-meat-eating Peace Abbey members tracked her down. The slaughterhouse let the abbey buy her for $1, and she lived the rest of her life comfortably in Sherborn, visiting with guests.

"Being a herd animal, she sought to bond," Lewis Randa said. "There weren't any cows around, so lo and behold, she bonded with human beings."

For a year and a half, Meg Randa said she, her husband and volunteers have been organizing their collection of more than 80 news stories on Emily, from this newspaper to People magazine.

Over the years, many people asked for copies, so it just made sense to stop making Xeroxes and start putting together a collection, Lewis Randa said.

The book also includes more than 90 photos, taken by anyone from abbey volunteers to professional photographers.

The story has been flying off the shelf at the abbey's gift shop, Meg Randa said. It also will be available at Barnes & Noble, Borders Books and is already online at Amazon.com, where it is listed for $20.

Proceeds will go to maintain Emily's memorial, where the bronze statue sits over her grave, and to care for other animals that have found sanctuary at the Peace Abbey, Meg Randa said. "She was really something extraordinary," she said. "She certainly did put a face on the packaged hamburger meat in the grocery store."