Dear Mr. Benson: September 29, 2008
Life in the “Big City” has taken some interesting and exciting turns for me during the last calendar year. Shortly after my daughter was born, I became more and more interested in what happened to my parents. I knew that someday my little girl would ask about her grandparents and I wanted to have the right answers. So I hired a private investigator to look into the case. He immediately informed me that my father’s death sentence had been commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. For me, this was a startling revelation. I wanted to know why he killed my mother, so I got his address and wrote him a letter. He wrote back immediately and asked whether I would come to see him in the prison visiting room. He promised that if I’d come, he’d tell me everything.
I only had a few memories of my father, but they were all good ones. He’d never been mean to me or my mother in any way. In fact, I couldn’t even recall one spanking. The only thing I really remember was us playing games together and him reading bedtime stories to me. I didn’t like the idea of going into a prison, but I had to find out how someone who was so loving could turn so violent.
The day of the visit was absolutely nerve-wracking. The process of getting into the visiting area took two hours, and the guards were nasty. They made the experience far more unpleasant than it had to be. As soon as I got there, my father told me that he was innocent. He said that he loved me and my mother more than the air he breathed. I’d never seen such conviction in a person’s eyes. I had a flashback to a moment in my childhood when he’d made the exact same passionate statement. In that instant, I was certain he was telling me the truth. I can’t really explain it, but it was just something that I instinctively knew, like the intuitive intelligence you often spoke about. We spent the entire day together just talking and sharing stories from our lives. When it was time to leave, he gave me a bear hug that I hoped would last forever. Even though I’m a grown woman, it felt wonderful being in my father’s arms. I didn’t want to let go of him, and I hated having to leave him in that horrible place.
Knowing that my father was alive and innocent changed everything. Talk about something giving my life purpose. I wasn’t going to rest until I found a way to prove his innocence and get him out of prison. The private investigator and I went through every piece of evidence presented at his trial. It was shocking for me to see how someone could be given the death penalty when there was absolutely no direct evidence against them. There was some circumstantial evidence, but even that was flimsy given that the victim was his wife.
The prosecution’s case focused on two separate bloodstains found at the scene of the crime. One was my mother’s, and the fact that the other matched my father’s blood type led to the conviction. That was prior to DNA testing. My father’s appeals lawyer later had a DNA test on the blood, but it came back inconclusive. The private investigator said there wasn’t much to go on. All he could think of was comparing the blood sample to a new national DNA database of convicted felons. He said that it was a long shot and very expensive. Joe and I took a second mortgage against our home to pay for it, and a conclusive match was made on a man who was already serving a life sentence for killing someone else. My father really was innocent. The killer confessed when the district attorney agreed not to pursue the death penalty, and my father was set free.
I’ve enclosed a plane ticket. I’d like you to come to New York to meet my dad, and also because I have a very special surprise for you. Hope to see you soon.
Love,
Grace
After reading the final letter, Daniel told his new students that he traveled to New York and was certainly surprised to discover that Grace’s father, Max Gilmore, was one of the young boys he had taught to sail during that summer long ago aboard the Awakening Grace. Max told Daniel that while he was in prison, he had cried himself to sleep many nights. He prayed and asked God to give him an opportunity to someday teach his daughter the principles of the medicine men. Daniel became the answer to that prayer, and Max thanked him for playing such a significant role in his daughter’s development.
Daniel responded by telling Max that it was he, Daniel, who should be giving thanks. He said that the letters that Grace wrote to him over the years became a powerful source of inspiration. More than anyone, she had given meaning to his life’s work. Daniel recounted the night that Grace’s name motivated him to tap into his intuitive intelligence and how she was the driving force that enabled him to reconnect with his own purpose in life. Max said that the Awakening Grace had inspired his daughter’s name, and the two men marveled at the interconnectedness of all things.
Max also informed Daniel that Free Spirit wrote to him at least once a month during his incarceration. The wise old medicine man continued to teach the Principles of Grace to at-risk kids right up until his death. The Captain went through his entire fortune and had to take a lien against his ship to keep the Last Chance program afloat. When he died, a bank repossessed the Awakening Grace. Fortunately, the government for the State of California paid Max twenty million dollars — one million for every year of his wrongful incarceration.
Max used some of the money to buy the Awakening Grace and reestablish the program. His plans are to live out his life exactly as Free Spirit had, by taking small groups of troubled youths on sailing adventures and teaching them the Principles of Grace. Max told Daniel that he could use a teacher with Daniel’s skills and asked if he would like to join him.
For Daniel, the offer was truly unbelievable. The opportunity to combine his two greatest passions, teaching and sailing, was the answer to a dream he had never even imagined. Daniel accepted Max’s offer, and together they caught a flight back to California. They were eager to begin a new, exciting life of service to others.
The Last Chance program that Free Sprit originally developed with a juvenile court judge was quickly re-established. The boys with whom Daniel and Max worked that summer were all from the inner city, gang members who had their own deeply entrenched principles. They lived in a dog-eat-dog world, where drive-by shootings were a way of life. In their neighborhoods crack was sold on the street corners, and the local drug dealer was the most prominent model of economic success. Many children had situations so chaotic, if not horrific; they could not manage to get to school some days.44
Teaching the youngsters an entirely new set of values was difficult at first, but Max knew how to motivate them. After spending twenty years in the “Big House,” he spoke their language. Each of the boys knew someone from his neighborhood who had been sent to prison, and Max was aware that deep down the boys all feared that they too would end up there some day. It was a way of life, a mindset that he felt could be changed through the Principles of Grace.
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