"We Didn't Want to Lose Two People": A Story of Forgiveness

On this episode of Our American Stories, Laura Treppendahl’s life was one worth remembering. After being killed in a drunk driving accident, Laura’s family told the judge that they completely forgave the young man who hit her.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
beautiful legacy of Laura Trependall, a young lady whose life
was cut tragically short, and the resulting story of grace
and forgiveness offered by her family. Here's Madison, the best

(00:33):
way to find out who a person truly is is
to hear it straight from their family. Let's hear from
David and Rob, the father and brother of Laura Trependall.
Laura was definitely the first child. She kind of dominated
the other children, right Rob. She was a little bossy,
you know. She played her role well of being the

(00:54):
oldest child, and she followed the rules, and she definitely
made sure that we follow the rules. Summer, Laura went
up to visit with her grandmother, my mother, Jean Mamma.
And after several days together, my mother got frustrated with
Laura and she sat her down to teach her a lesson,

(01:14):
and she says, Laura, you have a very bad habit
for a child, and that is you correct people. And
particularly what's bothersome is that you correct adults. You should
never correct adults. And Laura looked at her serious as
she could be, and she says, Jean, Mama, it's adults,

(01:39):
not adults. My mother just fell out lading. She just
left her alone after that classic oldest child. Yeah, Catherine
was born seventeen months later, and then three years later
you came three years later, Sophie King. And Laura was
just the coolest, delightful, interesting, funny child. She had this

(02:04):
ability to just be completely pressing with people, so that
when she was talking to you, nobody else mattered. She
made you feel important. It kind of created a problem
with guys because they would all think she was in
love with them. She would do this thing where she
would hold your hand with both of hers. It was

(02:25):
just all deeply into your eyes. It's like, how do
you resist that? She actually was just a really good friend.
Laura was the first of her siblings to move out
for college. One night, she was hanging out with friends
in her new town of Oxford, Mississippi. That same night,
another student was with friends. They were drinking at a bar.

(02:45):
It was a Thursday night, February sixth She was hanging
out with friends, having some community. It was very close
to the bar, it was like a few hundred yards
and then she headed home sometime around a leven you know,
they closed the bar. They were in there just playing
these kids as much alcohol as they could. When they
said okay, everybody out, they sent everybody out. Greg Gibbs

(03:09):
was underage. Most of the guys that were Greg and
eight friends here they are at the bar. They're nineteen
years old, Layen twenty years old. They're under age, and
Greg says, he says, hey, I'm too drunk to drive.
Can anybody else drive? And they all said we're too
drunk to drive to Nobody volunteered to be the jasay driver,

(03:33):
and so so Greg says, okay, it's not very far
this guy. We get a call it eleven thirty or
so at night from Dallas, who was Laura's boyfriend that
was almost her fiance. He was a paramedic, and so Dallas,

(04:01):
Laura has been in a terrible wreck and she's been
taken to a Baptist hospital and I'll tell you whatever
I know when I find it out. And so so
we go through an hour and a half of this

(04:23):
incredible agony, and then we get the next phone call
and it's Dallas and then he hands it to the
doctor and the doctor says she's gone. Within thirty minutes
after that phone call, my first cousin Welling and his

(04:47):
wife and the episcopal minister. We're knocking round or it's
just you know, they just showed up. There's something to
be said for just showing up. Although Laura attended college
in Mississippi, her funeral was held in her home state

(05:08):
of Louisiana. Oxford is what from Baton Ridge, five hours
or so? Five hours on the money. They had like
a hundred and fifty kids come from Oxford for a funeral.
I'm gonna remember if it was fourteen or fifteen different
girls that came up to me and kind of put
their arms around me and said Laura was my best friend.

(05:32):
She had fifteen girls they considered Laura to be their
best friend. How do you do that? I'll tell you
what my funeral was somebody else. It was at First
Presbyterian Church, and this church will see about twelve hundred people.

(05:53):
Over two thousand people came to that funeral. Three people spoke,
and Phyllis's one and Phyllis was one of her teachers
in bad Ridge. So during that service, when we started it,
it was really overcast and it was really dreary, and
right when Phyllis started her servant about talk about Laura.

(06:15):
The sun came through the windows and it just lit
up the whole thing. It was sort of striking how
that happened, and everybody showed up. And the letters that
we got for days and months and years after she died,
of people who are affected by her, they're still coming in.
It's a it's a fairy powerful thing. One of the

(06:37):
letters came from James, the paramedic on duty the night
of Laura's reck. Years later, he felt the urge to
contact David to tell him about the last moments he
was able to spin with Laura and the regrets he had.
Here's James to read the letter. Hello David, this is
hard for me. My name is James Pritchard. I'm a

(06:59):
retired cap at the Outsford Fire Department. On February seventh,
two thousand and three, I had the privilege to sit
in the car with Lord and say a prayer and
make a promise to her that everything was going to
be okay. I will never forgive myself for telling her
that life, and I will also never forget the look

(07:19):
of comfort she had on her beautiful face as I
prayed and told her that we were going to be
finished in just one minute. I know, just from the
moment she and I shared, she is with our Lord,
and she is much happier and healthier than anybody on
this earth. I'm so sorry if I'm bringing up hurtful

(07:40):
thoughts and memories. I just can't go any longer without
trying to let you know that I truly try my
best to save your beautiful little girl. Since that night,
I've either thought about or seen Laura every time I
laid my head down, but I thought it would either
upset you or seem selfish to come and text you.

(08:01):
The past few years, my career's caught up with me,
both mentally and physically, and I just wanted to ask
you for your forgiveness for not keeping my promise to Laura.
I'm in no way asking for pity. I just need
to find peacele mouth through this tragedy. After that night,
I would pray with the people that I was trying

(08:22):
to help, but I would never again promise anyone that
was going to make things okay, or that they would
be okay. I'm so sorry I couldn't do more, and
I pray that you and your family have found peace,
and I hope to find your forgiveness, and I thank
you for your time. Today James has come to terms

(08:47):
with some of the regrets of his career, and the
trep and Dolls have reassured him that he didn't lie
and that Laura really is okay. Two words you never
want to hear as a parent. She's gone, and my goodness,
the letter we just heard. These are the stories we

(09:09):
love to bring you, and you're just at the beginning
the remarkable and regrettably short life. The beautiful life of
Laura Trependall and her families continues here on our American Stories.

(10:10):
And we're back with our American Stories and the story
of Laura Trependall. You're about to hear from another of
the many people who were impacted by her life. Less
Newsome was the minister of RUF, the university fellowship group
at Laura's college here in our small town of Oxford, Mississippi,

(10:33):
about an hour south of Memphis. Laura tended to create
the very community that she was seeking, but she kind
of found a home in her friendships in RUF. The
thing about Laura that was the most compelling to me
was Laura was not unaware of the realities of life.

(10:54):
In the day surrounding her death. I do think that
there was a tendency from the community around us to
her into sort of Saint Laura Drepandal, which is perfectly
natural because she was so delightful. But Laura, I always thought,
would be so uncomfortable with it because she knew her
own struggles. She knew that she was a flawed person,
struggles that she was willing to admit, and I was
one of that to at least be always said that

(11:16):
what brought the richness of her character was not a
natural born sunny disposition. That's what made her so delightful
to be around. So yeah, we instantly connected, and she
was involved in lots of our small groups and a
lot of just great connection people. As a matter of fact,
we were having our UF in the springtime on Thursday
nights in two thousand and three, on the evening of
her passing, she had left our UF to attend a

(11:39):
group of girls that were having discussion time. They would
after go to someone's house. They would play a board
game together and just talk and share a lot of
rich fellowship together. That was vital for Laura and central
to who she was and the fact that it was
what she was involved in in the night of her
death always meant a lot to me, and thinking about it,
I'd actually gone to my own small group myself right
around you know, eleven thirty or midnight. We'd be to

(12:00):
hear sirens from the house that I was at. She
was on her way home from that gathering with those
girls to her home to work on the paper. She
actually told him, I've got to leave early because I've
got to go work on the paper. I left my
gathering probably around midnight, went home, and at that moment
got a call from her boyfriend Dallas, saying, Lara's in
the hospital. She's been struck by a car. We don't

(12:20):
know if she's going to make it. So I made
it to the hospital around twelve thirty maybe one o'clock
in the morning, and they were already probably fifty college
students gathered in the lobby of Baptist Hospital there, and
somewhere around one thirty or so, the dean of students
came out and announced that Lara had passed. I was
immediately taken back to meet with Dallas. We left the
hospital together and about two am to about five am.

(12:43):
All of Dallas's friends just descended on his home in
the middle of the night because I knew their friend
was hurting, And you could start to see the beginning
formation of a community that would rally around a great
tragedy but produces this amazing fruit of did connected relationships
that exist to this day, texting each other on that

(13:05):
February evening, And I think that David would definitely say
that Dallas became a part of their family. As a
matter of fact, when Dallas got married many many years later,
they were at the wedding celebrating along with Dallas and
his new wife, Christine. So it was just amazing to
see how God sort of worked through Laura's life. She
was infectious with grace and it continued to manifest itself
even after her death. In the days after her death,

(13:28):
they were compiling photographs and someone had taken a picture
of Laura in a field, just typical Laura. They had
arrived at this field because she just thought it was
beautiful and she thought, you know, that's a field that
we just need to run across. So they had pulled
the car over and pulled their camera and snapped a
quick photo as Laura is starting to run up into

(13:49):
the field, so it's the picture is of this large
field and she's on the right of the photograph running
up the hill. And after she passed, that photo became
the one that everybody sort of clung to because everybody
kept looking at saying, you know, it just looks like
she's going somewhere, and we knew exactly where she was going.
Was very inspirational, so much said that. There were a

(14:10):
couple of ladies that actually did paintings of that photograph
that I kept because they always reminded me of Laara's
home going. The day after Laura's passing, Less and Laura's
boyfriend Dallas, rode together to Saint Francisville, Louisiana, where her parents,
David and Coco, were having a wake at their home.
Before we left for Saint Francis Pille, Dallas and I

(14:31):
went to her house. As soon as I walked into
a room, there's that immediate heartbreak of seeing a place
that used to be occupied and isn't anymore, and it
it all looks wrong and unnerving. But I immediately also
noticed that she had painted all over the walls. The
first thing I saw on the left hand side. I
can still put myself there on the top of the
clauset was whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say,

(14:55):
It is well with my soul. It's the first thing
I saw, and I went into her bedroom and it
was just it was Laura's identity, so much so that
she couldn't even live in a room without being plastered
on the walls. And I actually got to preach on
that very passage at her funeral some days later, which
was a big honor for me. It was one of
those evenings where you're up into the night trying to

(15:15):
put together whatever I was going to do, and what
in the world do you say in the midst of
this kind of tragedy. But it was her guidance that
got me through that, because she was the one who
had provided the scripture, passage and the theme of her life,
and she's got a chance to stand up and tell
people that it was well with Laura's soul, and there's
a lot of joy in that. LUs remembers being there
with the trep and dolls at the sentencing for Greg

(15:38):
the young man who struck Laura. Again. I can place
myself in that courtroom I do think Greg came in
with an attendant amount of fear and anxiety. But people
began to stand up and read letters, and the judge
even talked about how many letters they had received, and
he ended by saying, and I was most astounded by

(15:58):
the letter that I received from the young lady's parents
saying that they had forgiven Greg completely and did not
hold any grudges against him. Here's David to read the
letter that his family wrote to the judge on October
the twenty first, two thousand and three, about a week
before Greg's sentencing. Your honor, we appreciate the opportunity to

(16:23):
convey our sentiments to you regarding the sentencing of Greg Gibbs.
We are Christians. Forgiveness is an integral part of our
Christian faith. We have asked Christ and He has enabled
us to fully forgive Greg Gibbs and the other young
men involved in this tragedy. Therefore, from our own personal perspective,

(16:43):
we have no need, nor will we gain any satisfaction
from seeing Greg Gibbs further punished. We recognize, however, that
much more is involved here their own personal well being.
A felony has been committed the life of a beautiful,
innocent young woman has been law, and this date, through
the office of your Court, is responsible for taking the

(17:05):
wisest possible action to minimize the chances of similar tragedies reoccurring.
You have been entrusted with an awesome responsibility. We pray
that God will guide you and give you his wisdom
as you decide the appropriate sentence for Greg Gibbs. Sincerely, Yours,
the Trump and Dolls. There's not a whole lot of

(17:28):
experiences that I've had that come, Billiam very close to
the impact that that experience had on me. Dallas actually
grabbed me by the hand and said, they want me
to come back and meet with Greg. Would you come
with me? So the three of us went back with
all the lawyers in the room, and I can see
this to this day. Greg came and sat down, ashing,

(17:48):
just gray face, terrified at what he was about to hear.
And Dallas reached across the table and grabbed Greg's hands
and he said, there is zero animosity that I half
towards you. So if there's any fear in your mind
that you might feel that is gone. It's not in me.
And it's only because the grace of Christ so when
the judge came in and announced that they had forgiven

(18:09):
on me, it was a powerful moment. The whole room
was in tears. There was such a wellspring of undeserved
favor and it was beautiful and I think marked one
of the reasons why Greg went on and did well afterwards.
Laura would have had any other way. And what a

(18:30):
remarkable piece of storytelling. Laura was infectious with grace. I
keep picturing her stopping with some friends, seeing that feel
and then that picture. I see it in my head.
I see her in my head, and I know you
do too. You want to talk about infectious grace showing up,
presentencing from a family that could teach all of us

(18:52):
a whole lot, how to let go, how to forgive,
how to live with grace and mercy. Christian or not,
this is the answer. And noticed the careful calibration of
that beautiful letter. If only we could all all write
a letter like that after losing a loved one. When
we come back, well, one of the most beautiful stories already,
and it's not over that we've told here on this show.

(19:13):
The story continues here on our American stories, and we

(19:40):
return to our American stories, and to Laura Trependall's story,
here's Madison to take it home. Many people wonder how
the Treppendolls chose to forgive the driver who hit Laura.
It was no effort to do that. We just weren't

(20:04):
angry at Greg Gibbs. We were sad, But it's like
I felt so sorry for him because of what this
had done to his life. I mean, he recognized that
he had a problem, and so we couldn't have gended
up anger if we had tried. We were sad we

(20:24):
missed Laura. Right before the trial, we met with Greg
and his parents and his attorney. The person who was
most affected was the attorney. He started weeping. He says,
this doesn't happen. It's like this just doesn't nobody's ever feels.

(20:45):
I said, look, we're not mad at Greg. Anybody who
carries around this bitterness is just stupid. It'll put an
attorney out of a job. You're used to the anger.
There's nothing to be get by carrying around bitterness and dings, right,
it just eats your guts out, and knowing that the

(21:07):
perpetrator for Laura's death is suffering does not benefit our
family in any way. Yeah, we didn't want to lose
two people, right, The idea of Greg sitting in jail
for a long time would actually make us less happy.
The level of guilt and regret that we knew Greg

(21:27):
was facing was enough. We wanted to move on. We
all wanted to heal from it and wanted him to
heal from it. When you go through a bit of trauma,
you can either isolate or you can draw near to
those that you're with, and we drew near. So what
we did one of the Laura's favorite restaurants was Old

(21:49):
Tale Grocery. It was like two months later. We said,
we're gonna have a celebration of Laura's life and we're
gonna invite some were friends to come and tell Laura stories.
And the deal is, no said stories. It all has
to be funny. Often you have a funeral and it's

(22:09):
very sad and then that's it. But this was an
unconventional way of doing things. Yeah, so the risk I
hold like two hundred and twenty people. It's what we said, Well,
we went the whole thing out. Oh my gosh, we're
not going up two d and twenty people. It ended
up who's in and who's out the standing room only
one in, one out, and then it was like everybody

(22:31):
wanted to come. And we invited the guys who were
in the time, and five of them king and I
gotta say, in the whole process that was the most
cathartic experience of AWE. There were so many people a
king and told crazy Laura stories, things that we'd never heard.

(22:55):
I mean, stuff about painting her fingernails green and doing
races through Walmart and shopping carts with him pushing it through.
I mean, it was kind of sounds like it was
really good. And I think something that our family did
was we grieved well, we embraced Laura. We didn't put

(23:15):
our pictures away, and we didn't try to forget. We
wanted like all of it. We wanted to hear every story.
And while those stories are kind of sometimes painful to hear,
it's part of the grieving process. I probably released more
tears over that two hour period than any other period,

(23:37):
and they were joyful tears. So people would get up
and tell a story. It was really fun. I would
laugh till I cried, and I would cry and I
would cry. It was just it was such a relief
Laura journaled extensively throughout her life, from the time she
was fourteen years old. We have all of her journey.

(24:00):
What was so phenomenal is to watch her in her
journals spiritually mature, where at some point she's got all
these worries and concerns and things like this. But by
this time, I mean, she's not worried about anything. It's
almost like she knew she was. It's like she knew

(24:21):
it's a it's a scary thing of thinking about living forever.
And that was something she wrestled with for a while,
and in the last few months of her life she
achieved a tremandusent not a piece in that category. One day,
Laura was riding in the car with her mother, Cocoa.
They were on their way to her college tour. About
halfway along the drive, Laura just burst out crying, just

(24:46):
uncontrollable sobbing, and Cocoa pulls over inside. Rose says, Laura,
what what are you crying about? And she says, I
think heaven's gonna be boring. I love life so much
the way it is. I can't imagine that life after
death is going to be better than this. I don't

(25:07):
want to be bored. I don't want to die. I
don't want to be up there with the at angels
and the clouds and the harps. That's kind of stuff
she really thought about the states of thing, and so
in her last few months she had a different perspective
and she was ready to go. She was ready. I mean,
if you just read what she wrote, it just talks

(25:28):
about how there really is happily ever after and everything
does kind of like and everything does work out no
matter what, and says she wrote this inner journal which
last journey, which was about a week before she died.
One of my best friends about fifteen years ago. I
looked at me, and he says, David, I won't what
you have. I just don't want to pay the price

(25:49):
she paid to heaven. Havn't gone through this experience. There
were huge silver linings robbing. His two sisters weren't particularly
close before their soul mates. They're best rooms. Our whole
family drew near and that nearness has never left. It's
been eighteen years. We needed each other and that has

(26:11):
not changed since February seventh. For me, I always had
these night fears as a kid. I was very afraid
that someone was coming into the house, just fears that
someone was going to come and kill me or my family.
I don't know. I had this level of anxiety at
night as a kid starting. So he got his little
sister sleep in his room so they would get her. No,
Joe put her by the window. So, but Sophie issue

(26:33):
my sacrificial lamb. I'm seven, I'm eight years old, she's
three years younger. And I'm like, well, they'll get her first.
If Sophie's not in the room, I'm sleeping on the
floor my parents room, my sister's rooms, and I'm going
to counseling for this. It carried with me, this is
embarrassing all the way into high school. I had this fear,
this anxiety, something was coming. And it ended the night

(26:54):
Laura died. After that, I slept in peace and I
never thought about it at all. It is an overnight.
What I realized later as I kind of put the
pieces together, was what I feared the most. Something terrible
happening to my family happened, and I was okay. The
way that this experience affected us in the long term
was a life filled with more meaning, more purpose, and

(27:17):
way less fear. You need these things to make you
you're gonna be. Don't waste them when they come, because
they're gonna come. If you loot them and bitter you,
you have missed the opportunity that they offered to you,
which is to grow up and to trust and to
come out of them to be a person who doesn't
have fear anymore. Being freed from fear is the biggest

(27:40):
gift that you can receive from a challenge like this.
You don't get through this thing carrying a bunch of
anger and vengeance and bitterness. You don't never leave you.
I mean, you want to get through life, you want
to have quality of life. Don't carry all this bitterness stuff.

(28:02):
So we didn't do anything herculean or wonderful. It was
just this universal thing where we felt sorry for Greg.
We felt bad for Greg, and we later helped with
him getting your pardon right. It's like, we don't want
to continue the cycle of pain. Let's do what little
bit that we can to not add more pain to

(28:24):
the situation. Let go through something like this, and then
you look in your children or soulmates and you know
your way for clothes. I mean, the little stuff just
doesn't bother it's it's irrelevant. I'm not does. It's a

(28:44):
ticket out of the rat race if you allow it
to be. And a special thanks to the Trependaal family
for telling this story is beautiful story, and to less
Newsome and to Madison for putting the piece together. Madison
herself is a product of all miss and lives here

(29:07):
in Oxford. It took no effort at all. The dad
said about how they managed to forgive Greg. We couldn't
have jinned up anger if we tried. We were sad
we missed Laura, which is not mad at Greg. And
when he talked about that party he threw, and he
invited the five guys in the tahoe that took her life.

(29:31):
And then as he said, I shed more tears during
that dinner, joyful tears than I had in the entire
time before. And that it was such a relief. Moreover,
what the son said, that we had to grieve, and
we grieved well. The story of Laura Treppendall and her

(29:51):
family a story of grace, forgiveness and love. Here on
our American Stories. Two