True Forgiveness For Those Who Humble Themselves

Mark Strand tells of an experience that occurred following his first year of college.  His dad and mom had left for vacation, and Mark wrecked their pickup truck, crumpling the passenger-side door.  Returning home, he parked the truck.  When his dad returned home and saw the damage, Mark acted surprised and denied any knowledge of the accident.  Mr. Strand then asked the hired man about it, and to Mark's delight, the man admitted he was responsible.  He had heard a loud noise while passing the truck with the wings of the cultivator up, and now he assumed he had caused the damage.

But the weeks that followed were torturous as Mark struggled with his guilty conscience.  He repeatedly considered telling the truth, but was afraid.  Finally one day he impulsively blurted it out.

"Dad, there's something I need to tell you."

"Yes?"

"You know that pickup door?  I was the one who did it."

Dad looked at me.  I looked back at him.  For the first time in weeks I was able to look him in the eyes as the topic was broached.  To my utter disbelief, Dad calmly replied, "I know."

Silent seconds, which seemed like hours, passed.  Then dad said, "Let's go eat."  He put his arm around my shoulder, and we walked to the house, not saying another word about it.  Not then, not ever.

- Mark Strand, "I Couldn't Forget That Door," Decision (December 1996)

No Room for Vengeance

Victoria Ruvolo, forty-five, of Lake Ronkonkoma, New York, was driving to her niece’s voice recital when she passed a car driven by Ryan Cushing, nineteen. Cushing was with five other teens and had just used a stolen credit card to go on a spending spree. One of their purchases was a frozen turkey, which Cushing decided to toss into oncoming traffic. The twenty-pound bird smashed through Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing her face.

Ruvolo survived, though it took ten hours of surgery to repair her face and months of painful rehabilitation. The doctors had to put three titanium plate in her left cheek and one in her right cheek and a wire mesh to hold her left eye in place because her eye socket was badly damaged.

On October 17, 2005, Ruvolo attended Cushing’s sentencing and asked his judge for leniency. Part of her statement read, “Despite all the fear and the pain, I have learned from this horrific experience that I have much to be thankful for. Each day when I wake up, I thank God simply because I’m alive. I sincerely hope you have also learned from this awful experience, Ryan. There is no room for vengeance in my life, and I do not believe a long, hard prison term would do you, me, or society any good.”

As soon as the case was over, Cushing started to approach Ruvolo.  Every officer in the courtroom was ready to jump on him.  But as he walked over to where Ruvolo was sitting, she said in her book, "I saw that all he was doing was crying, crying profusely. He looked at me and said, ‘I never meant this to happen to you, I prayed for you every day. I’m so glad you’re doing well.’ Then this motherly instinct just came over me and all I could do was take him and cuddle him like a child and tell him ‘just do something good with your life, take this experience and do something good with your life.’"

Cushing, who wept and expressed remorse for his action, was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation of community service and psychiatric help.  He could have gotten a twenty-five-year prison sentence if Ruvolo had not intervened.

 — Leah Ingram, “Compassionate Victim,” beliefnet.com (December 2005) and Victoria Ruvolo, No Room for Vengeance in Justice and Healing (No Vengence Press, 2011)

Must Forgive

Vivian Malone, a young black woman, enrolled as a student at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1963. Federal troops helped ensure her entrance into the school, but Governor George Wallace tried to block her way. He made a dramatic stand in the school's doorway, physically carrying out his inaugural vow of "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." When he failed, Malone became the first African-American student ever to graduate from the University of Alabama.

Years later, Governor Wallace was taken in his wheelchair to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, where he asked black people to forgive him for his racism, bigotry, and specifically his ill-treatment of Vivian Malone. He asked Malone for forgiveness. Malone said she had forgiven the governor years before.

"He said he did what he felt needed to be done at that point in time, but he would not do that today," she later recalled. "I spoke of forgiveness."

When asked why she had done that, Malone said, “I’m a Christian, and I grew up in the church. I was taught that we are all equal in the eyes of God. I was also taught that you forgive people, no matter what. And that was why I had to do it. I didn’t feel as if I had a choice.”

Malone Jones (her married name) died in 2005 at the age of 63.

 — “Transition — Vivian Malone Jones,” 
Newsweek (October 24, 2005)