May 13, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Laura Treppendahl’s life was one worth remembering. After she was killed in a drunk driving accident, Laura’s family told the judge that they completely forgave the young man, Greg, who hit her.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
beautiful legacy of Laura Treppendall, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Best 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 Treppendall.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Laura was definitely the first child. She kind of dominated
the other children right ron.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
She was little BOSSI.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
You know, she played her role well of being the
oldest child, and she followed the rules and she definitely
made sure that we follow the rules.
Speaker 6 (00:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Summer, Laura went up to visit with her grandmother, my mother,
Jeene Mama, And after several days together, my mother got
frustrated with Laura and she sat her down to teach
her a lesson, and she says, Laura, you have a
very bad habit for a child, and that is you
(01:20):
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, tea Mama,
it's adults, not adults. My mother just fell out laughing.
Speaker 7 (01:45):
She just left her alone.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
After that, classic oldest child.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, Catherine was born seventeen months later, and then three
years later you came.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
Three years later, Sophie came.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And Laura was just the coolest, delightful, interesting, funny child.
She had this ability to just be completely pressive with people,
so that when she was talking to you, nobody else mattered.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
She made you feel important. It kind of created a
problem with guys because.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They would all think she was in love with them.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
She would do this thing where she would hold your
hand with both of hers. It was just all in,
deeply into your eyes. It's like, how do you resist that?
She actually was just a really good friend, right.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
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.
Speaker 5 (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 eleven you know.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
They closed the bar.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
They were in there just playing these kids as much
alcohol as they could, and they said, okay, everybody out.
They sent everybody out. Greg Gibbs was underage. Most of
the guys that were Greg and eight friends here they
are at a bar.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They're nineteen years old.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Nineteen twenty years old. They're underage.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
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 drift it. Nobody volunteered to be the days
a driver, and so so Greg says, okay, it's not
very far.
Speaker 6 (03:39):
Let's let's go. We get to call it eleven thirty
or so at night.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
From Dallas, who was Laura's boyfriend, that was almost her fiancee.
He was a paramedic, and so Dallas said, Laura has
been in a terrible wreck and she's been taken to
the Baptist hospital and I'll tell you whatever I know
(04:13):
when I find it out. And so so we go
through an hour and a half of this 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
(04:41):
phone call, my first cousin, Wellan and his wife and
the episcopal minister, we're knocking on our door. They just,
you know, they just showed up. There's something to be
said for just showing up.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Although Laura attended college in Mississippi, her funeral was held
in her home state of Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Oxford is what from Baton Ridge, five hours or so,
five hours on the money. They had like one 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 that considered Laura to be their
best friend.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
How do you do that? I tell you what.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The funeral was something else. It was at First Presbyterian Church,
and this church will see about twelve hundred people, over
two thousand people that came to that funeral. Three people spoke,
and Phyllis's one and Phyllis was one of her teachers
of back rouge, so doing that service. When we started it,
(06:04):
it was really overcast and it was really dreary, and
right when Phyllis started her s talking about Laura, the
sun came through the windows and it just lit up
the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
It was sort of striking how that happened.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And everybody showed up.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
It's a fairy, powerful thing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
One of the letters came from James, the paramedic on
duty the night of Laura's wreck. Years later, he felt
the urge to contact David to tell him about the
last moments he was able to spend with Laura and
the regrets he had. Here's James to read the letter.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
Hello David, this is hard for me. My name is
James Pritchard. I'm a retired cap at the Oxford 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
(07:15):
for telling her that lie, and I will also never
forget the look 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 happy and healthier
(07:35):
than anybody on this earth. I'm so sorry if I'm
bringing up hurtful 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
(07:56):
it would either upset you or seem selfish to come
tek you. The past few years, my career has 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 peace some mouth through this tragedy.
(08:19):
After that night, I would pray with the people that
I was trying 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,
(08:40):
and I thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Today James has come to terms with some of the
regrets of his career, and the Treuppendalls have reassured him
that he didn't lie, and that Laura really is okay.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And the two words you never want to hear as
a parent, she's gone. In my goodness, the letter we
just heard. These are the stories we love to bring you,
and you're just at the beginning. The remarkable and regrettably
short life. The beautiful life of Laura Treppendaal and her
(09:21):
families continues here on our American Stories. And we're back
(10:11):
with our American Stories and the story of Laura Treppendall.
You're about to hear from another of the many people
who were impacted by her life. Les Newsome was the
minister of RUF, the university fellowship group at Laura's college
here in our small town of Oxford, Mississippi, about an
(10:33):
hour south of Memphis.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
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. In the day surrounding her death. I
do think that there was a tendency from the community
(10:58):
around us to her into sort of Saint Laura Dreppendol,
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.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
She knew that she was a flawed.
Speaker 8 (11:11):
Person, struggles that she was willing to admit, and I
always wanted that to at least be always said that
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 connections people. As a matter of fact,
we were having our UF in the springtime on Thursday
(11:32):
nights in two thousand and three, on the evening of
her passing, she had left our UF to attend a
group of girls that were having discussion time. They would
after OURF 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
(11:52):
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, to
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 them, 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
(12:14):
got a call from her boyfriend Dallas, saying, Laura's in
the hospital. She's been struck by a car. We don't
know if she's going to make it. So I made
it to the hospital at 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, dean of students
came out and announced that Laura had passed. I was
(12:36):
immediately taken back to meet with Dallas. We left the
hospital together and about two am to about five am,
all of Dallas's friends just descended on his home in
the middle of the nights. 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
(12:57):
produces this amazing fruit of did connected relationships that exist
to this day, texting each other on that 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, Christy.
(13:18):
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, they were compiling photographs
and someone had taken a picture of Laura in a field,
just typical Laura. They had arrived to this field because
she just thought it was beautiful, and she thought, you
(13:39):
know what, that's a field that we just need.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
To run across.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
So they had pulled the car over and pulled their
camera and snapped a quick photo as Laura is starting
to run up into the field, so it's the pictures
of this large field and she's on the right of
the photograph running up the hill. And after she passed,
that photo became aim the one that everybody sort of
clung to because everybody kept looking at saying, you know,
(14:04):
it just looks like she's going somewhere, and we knew
exactly where she was going. Was very inspirational, so much
so that there were a couple of ladies that actually
did paintings of that photograph that I kept because they
always reminded me of Laura's homegoing.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The day after Laura's passing, Les and Laura's boyfriend Dallas,
rode together to Saint Francisville, Louisiana, where her parents, David
and Coco, were having a wake at their home.
Speaker 8 (14:29):
Before we left for Saint Francisville, Dallas and I went
to her house. As soon as I walked into her room,
there's that immediate heartbreak of seeing a place that used
to be occupied and isn't anymore, and it just 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
(14:52):
was whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say,
it is well with my soul. It was the first
thing I saw when I went to her bedroom, and
it was just that 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
(15:13):
of those evenings where you're up into the night trying
to 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.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
LUs remembers being there with the treppend dolls at the
sentencing for Greg the young man who struck Laura.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Again, I can place myself in that courtroom. I do
think Greg came in within a tendent 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 the letter that I received from the
young lady's parents saying that they had forgiven Greg completely
(16:05):
and did not hold any grudges against him.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Your honor, we appreciate the opportunity to 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, we have
(16:44):
no need, nor will we gain any satisfaction from seeing
Greg Gibbs further punished. We recognize, however, that much more
is involved here than their own personal well being. A
felony has been committed. The life of a beautiful, innocent
young woman has been law in this date, through the
office of your Court, is responsible for taking the wisest
(17:06):
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 treppend Dolls.
Speaker 8 (17:27):
There's not a whole lot of experiences that I've had
that come really 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 ashen, just gray face, terrified
(17:50):
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 on me,
it was a powerful moment. The whole room was in tears.
(18:13):
There was such a well spring 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 it any other way.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling. Laura was infectious
with grace. I keep picturing her stopping with some friends,
seeing that field 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 pre sentencing from a family that
(18:51):
could teach all of us 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
(19:11):
that we've told here on this show. The story continues
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(19:41):
American stories and to Laura Treppendall's story. Here's Madison to
take it home.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Many people wonder how the Treppendalls chose to forgive the
driver who hit Laura.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
It was no.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Effort to do that.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
We just weren't angry at Greg Gibbs.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
We were sad, but it's like.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
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 ginned
up anger if we'd have tried.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
We were sad we missed Laura.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
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. I said, look,
we're not mad at Greg. Anybody who carries around this
(20:51):
bitterness is just too fund.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
It'll put an attorney out of a job. You're used
to the anger.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
There's nothing to be gave by carrying around bitterness and vengeance.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Right, It just eats your guts out.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
And knowing that the perpetrator for Laura's death is suffering
does not benefit our family in any way.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
Yeah, we didn't want to lose two people, right.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
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 was facing was enough.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
We wanted to move on. We all wanted to heal
from it and wanted him to heal from it.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
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.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
So what we did.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
One of Laura's favorite restaurants was Old Tailed Grocery.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
It was like two months later.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
We said, we're gonna have a celebration of Laura's life
and we're gonna invite some of her friends to come
and tell Laura stories. And the deal is, no said stories.
It all has to be funny.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Often you have a funeral and it's very sad and
then that's it.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
But this was an unconventional way of doing things.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So the risk show would I hold like two hundred
and twenty people, and so we said, well, we went
the whole thing out, but my gosh, we're not going
to two hundred and twenty people.
Speaker 6 (22:24):
It ended up who's in and who's out.
Speaker 9 (22:27):
The standing room only one in, one out.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
And then it is like everybody wanted to come.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
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 teld crazy Laura.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
Stories things that we'd never heard.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I mean, stuff about painting her fingernails green and doing
races through Walmart and shopping carts and pushing through it.
Speaker 9 (23:03):
I mean, I was gonna sounds like it was really good.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
And I think something that our family did was we
grieved well.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
We embraced Laura.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
We didn't put our pictures away, and we didn't try
to forget.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
We wanted like all of it. We wanted to hear
every story.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
And while those stories are kind of sometimes painful to hear,
it's part of the grieving process.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I probably released more tears over that two hour period
than any other period, 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
(23:50):
was such a relief.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Laura journaled extensively throughout her life, from the time she
was fourteen years old.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
We have all of our journey. 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
(24:19):
she was.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
It's like she knew 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 tremnis not out of piece.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
In that category.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
One day, Laura was riding in the car with her mother, Cocoa.
They were on their way to her college tour.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
About halfway along the drive, Laura just burst out crying,
just uncontrollable sobbing. The Cocoa pulls over inside the road says, Laura,
what are you crying about? And she says, I think
heaven is going to be boring. I love life so much.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Whi's the way it is.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I can't imagine that life after death is going to
be better than this.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
I don't want to be born.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I don't want to be up there with the angels
and the clouds and the harp Soun's kind of stuff.
She really thought about those types of thing, and so
in her last few months she had a different perspective
and she was ready to go.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
She was ready.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
I mean, if you just read what she wrote, it
just talks about how there really is happily ever after
and everything does kind of like an everything does work
out no matter what, and says she wrote this.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
In her journal which last Journalist.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Which was about a week before she died.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
One of my best friends about fifteen years ago, looked
at me and he says, David, I want, but you have.
I just don't want to pay the price you paid
to have it. Having gone through this experience, there were
huge silver linings. Rob and his two sisters weren't particularly close.
They're soulmates. They're best friends.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Our whole family drew near and that nearness has never left.
It's been eighteen years. We needed each other and that
has not changed since February seventh.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
For me, I always had these night fears as a kid.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
I was very afraid that someone was coming into the house,
feared that someone was gonna come and kill me or
my family.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
I had this level of anxiety at night as a kid.
Speaker 6 (26:25):
So sorry, So he got his little sister sleep in
his room so they would get no.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Job before No Joe put her by the window. So
but Sophie issued my sacrificial lamb. I'm seven, I'm eight
years old, when she's three years younger, and I'm like, well,
they'll get her first.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
If Sophie's not in the room, I'm sleeping on.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
The floor in my parents' room, my sister's rooms, and
I'm went 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 Laura died. After that, I slept in peace,
and I never thought about it at all.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
It was as an overnight.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
What I realized later as I kind of put the
pieces together was what I feared the most.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Something terrible happen to my family happened, and I was okay.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
The way that this experience affected us in the long
term was a life filled with more meaning more purpose
and way less fear.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You need these things to make you who you're gonna be.
Don't waste them when they come, because they're gonna come.
If you let them and bitter you, you have missed the
opportunity that they offer to you, which is to grow
up and to.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Trust and to come out of them to be a
person who doesn't have fear anymore. Being freed from fear
is the biggest gift that you can receive from a
challenge like this.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
You don't get.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Through this thing carrying a bunch of anger and vengeance
and bitterness.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
It'll never leave you.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
I mean, you want to get through life, you want
to have quality of life. Don't carry all this bitterness stuff.
So we didn't do anything herculean or wonderful.
Speaker 9 (28:07):
It was just this universal thing where we felt sorry
for Greg.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
We felt bad for Greg, and.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
We later help with him getting your pardon.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
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 the situation.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
We'll go through something like this and then you look
at your children or soulmates and yield your way for clothes.
I mean, the little stuff just doesn't bother. It's it's irrelevant.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
I go through this.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It's a ticket out of the rat race if.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
You allow it to be.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And a special thanks to the Treppendall family for telling
this story, this 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 in Oxford.
It took no effort at all. The dad said about
how they managed to forgive Greg. We couldn't have ginned
(29:17):
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. And then
as he said, I shed more tears during that dinner,
joyful tears than I had in the entire time before.
(29:40):
And that it was such a relief or over what
the son said, that we had to grieve, and we
grieved well. The story of Laura Treppendahl and her family
a story of grace, forgiveness and love. Here on our
American stories, it do compu
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
beautiful legacy of Laura Treppendall, 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.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Best 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 Treppendall.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Laura was definitely the first child. She kind of dominated
the other children right ron.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
She was little BOSSI.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
You know, she played her role well of being the
oldest child, and she followed the rules and she definitely
made sure that we follow the rules.
Speaker 6 (00:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Summer, Laura went up to visit with her grandmother, my mother,
Jeene Mama, And after several days together, my mother got
frustrated with Laura and she sat her down to teach
her a lesson, and she says, Laura, you have a
very bad habit for a child, and that is you
(01:20):
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, tea Mama,
it's adults, not adults. My mother just fell out laughing.
Speaker 7 (01:45):
She just left her alone.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
After that, classic oldest child.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, Catherine was born seventeen months later, and then three
years later you came.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
Three years later, Sophie came.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And Laura was just the coolest, delightful, interesting, funny child.
She had this ability to just be completely pressive with people,
so that when she was talking to you, nobody else mattered.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
She made you feel important. It kind of created a
problem with guys because.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They would all think she was in love with them.
Speaker 5 (02:21):
She would do this thing where she would hold your
hand with both of hers. It was just all in,
deeply into your eyes. It's like, how do you resist that?
She actually was just a really good friend, right.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
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.
Speaker 5 (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 eleven you know.
Speaker 6 (02:56):
They closed the bar.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
They were in there just playing these kids as much
alcohol as they could, and they said, okay, everybody out.
They sent everybody out. Greg Gibbs was underage. Most of
the guys that were Greg and eight friends here they
are at a bar.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They're nineteen years old.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
Nineteen twenty years old. They're underage.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
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 drift it. Nobody volunteered to be the days
a driver, and so so Greg says, okay, it's not
very far.
Speaker 6 (03:39):
Let's let's go. We get to call it eleven thirty
or so at night.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
From Dallas, who was Laura's boyfriend, that was almost her fiancee.
He was a paramedic, and so Dallas said, Laura has
been in a terrible wreck and she's been taken to
the Baptist hospital and I'll tell you whatever I know
(04:13):
when I find it out. And so so we go
through an hour and a half of this 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
(04:41):
phone call, my first cousin, Wellan and his wife and
the episcopal minister, we're knocking on our door. They just,
you know, they just showed up. There's something to be
said for just showing up.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Although Laura attended college in Mississippi, her funeral was held
in her home state of Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Oxford is what from Baton Ridge, five hours or so,
five hours on the money. They had like one 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 that considered Laura to be their
best friend.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
How do you do that? I tell you what.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
The funeral was something else. It was at First Presbyterian Church,
and this church will see about twelve hundred people, over
two thousand people that came to that funeral. Three people spoke,
and Phyllis's one and Phyllis was one of her teachers
of back rouge, so doing that service. When we started it,
(06:04):
it was really overcast and it was really dreary, and
right when Phyllis started her s talking about Laura, the
sun came through the windows and it just lit up
the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
It was sort of striking how that happened.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And everybody showed up.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
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.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
It's a fairy, powerful thing.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
One of the letters came from James, the paramedic on
duty the night of Laura's wreck. Years later, he felt
the urge to contact David to tell him about the
last moments he was able to spend with Laura and
the regrets he had. Here's James to read the letter.
Speaker 7 (06:54):
Hello David, this is hard for me. My name is
James Pritchard. I'm a retired cap at the Oxford 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
(07:15):
for telling her that lie, and I will also never
forget the look 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 happy and healthier
(07:35):
than anybody on this earth. I'm so sorry if I'm
bringing up hurtful 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
(07:56):
it would either upset you or seem selfish to come
tek you. The past few years, my career has 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 peace some mouth through this tragedy.
(08:19):
After that night, I would pray with the people that
I was trying 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,
(08:40):
and I thank you for your time.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Today James has come to terms with some of the
regrets of his career, and the Treuppendalls have reassured him
that he didn't lie, and that Laura really is okay.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And the two words you never want to hear as
a parent, she's gone. In my goodness, the letter we
just heard. These are the stories we love to bring you,
and you're just at the beginning. The remarkable and regrettably
short life. The beautiful life of Laura Treppendaal and her
(09:21):
families continues here on our American Stories. And we're back
(10:11):
with our American Stories and the story of Laura Treppendall.
You're about to hear from another of the many people
who were impacted by her life. Les Newsome was the
minister of RUF, the university fellowship group at Laura's college
here in our small town of Oxford, Mississippi, about an
(10:33):
hour south of Memphis.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
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. In the day surrounding her death. I
do think that there was a tendency from the community
(10:58):
around us to her into sort of Saint Laura Dreppendol,
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.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
She knew that she was a flawed.
Speaker 8 (11:11):
Person, struggles that she was willing to admit, and I
always wanted that to at least be always said that
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 connections people. As a matter of fact,
we were having our UF in the springtime on Thursday
(11:32):
nights in two thousand and three, on the evening of
her passing, she had left our UF to attend a
group of girls that were having discussion time. They would
after OURF 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
(11:52):
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, to
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 them, 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
(12:14):
got a call from her boyfriend Dallas, saying, Laura's in
the hospital. She's been struck by a car. We don't
know if she's going to make it. So I made
it to the hospital at 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, dean of students
came out and announced that Laura had passed. I was
(12:36):
immediately taken back to meet with Dallas. We left the
hospital together and about two am to about five am,
all of Dallas's friends just descended on his home in
the middle of the nights. 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
(12:57):
produces this amazing fruit of did connected relationships that exist
to this day, texting each other on that 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, Christy.
(13:18):
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, they were compiling photographs
and someone had taken a picture of Laura in a field,
just typical Laura. They had arrived to this field because
she just thought it was beautiful, and she thought, you
(13:39):
know what, that's a field that we just need.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
To run across.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
So they had pulled the car over and pulled their
camera and snapped a quick photo as Laura is starting
to run up into the field, so it's the pictures
of this large field and she's on the right of
the photograph running up the hill. And after she passed,
that photo became aim the one that everybody sort of
clung to because everybody kept looking at saying, you know,
(14:04):
it just looks like she's going somewhere, and we knew
exactly where she was going. Was very inspirational, so much
so that there were a couple of ladies that actually
did paintings of that photograph that I kept because they
always reminded me of Laura's homegoing.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
The day after Laura's passing, Les and Laura's boyfriend Dallas,
rode together to Saint Francisville, Louisiana, where her parents, David
and Coco, were having a wake at their home.
Speaker 8 (14:29):
Before we left for Saint Francisville, Dallas and I went
to her house. As soon as I walked into her room,
there's that immediate heartbreak of seeing a place that used
to be occupied and isn't anymore, and it just 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
(14:52):
was whatever my lot thou hast taught me to say,
it is well with my soul. It was the first
thing I saw when I went to her bedroom, and
it was just that 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
(15:13):
of those evenings where you're up into the night trying
to 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.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
LUs remembers being there with the treppend dolls at the
sentencing for Greg the young man who struck Laura.
Speaker 8 (15:41):
Again, I can place myself in that courtroom. I do
think Greg came in within a tendent 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 the letter that I received from the
young lady's parents saying that they had forgiven Greg completely
(16:05):
and did not hold any grudges against him.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Your honor, we appreciate the opportunity to 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, we have
(16:44):
no need, nor will we gain any satisfaction from seeing
Greg Gibbs further punished. We recognize, however, that much more
is involved here than their own personal well being. A
felony has been committed. The life of a beautiful, innocent
young woman has been law in this date, through the
office of your Court, is responsible for taking the wisest
(17:06):
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 treppend Dolls.
Speaker 8 (17:27):
There's not a whole lot of experiences that I've had
that come really 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 ashen, just gray face, terrified
(17:50):
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 on me,
it was a powerful moment. The whole room was in tears.
(18:13):
There was such a well spring 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 it any other way.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
And what a remarkable piece of storytelling. Laura was infectious
with grace. I keep picturing her stopping with some friends,
seeing that field 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 pre sentencing from a family that
(18:51):
could teach all of us 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
(19:11):
that we've told here on this show. The story continues
here on our American stories, and we returned to our
(19:41):
American stories and to Laura Treppendall's story. Here's Madison to
take it home.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Many people wonder how the Treppendalls chose to forgive the
driver who hit Laura.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
It was no.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Effort to do that.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
We just weren't angry at Greg Gibbs.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
We were sad, but it's like.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
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 ginned
up anger if we'd have tried.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
We were sad we missed Laura.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
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. I said, look,
we're not mad at Greg. Anybody who carries around this
(20:51):
bitterness is just too fund.
Speaker 5 (20:52):
It'll put an attorney out of a job. You're used
to the anger.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
There's nothing to be gave by carrying around bitterness and vengeance.
Speaker 6 (21:03):
Right, It just eats your guts out.
Speaker 5 (21:05):
And knowing that the perpetrator for Laura's death is suffering
does not benefit our family in any way.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
Yeah, we didn't want to lose two people, right.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
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 was facing was enough.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
We wanted to move on. We all wanted to heal
from it and wanted him to heal from it.
Speaker 5 (21:35):
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.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
So what we did.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
One of Laura's favorite restaurants was Old Tailed Grocery.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
It was like two months later.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
We said, we're gonna have a celebration of Laura's life
and we're gonna invite some of her friends to come
and tell Laura stories. And the deal is, no said stories.
It all has to be funny.
Speaker 5 (22:07):
Often you have a funeral and it's very sad and
then that's it.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
But this was an unconventional way of doing things.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So the risk show would I hold like two hundred
and twenty people, and so we said, well, we went
the whole thing out, but my gosh, we're not going
to two hundred and twenty people.
Speaker 6 (22:24):
It ended up who's in and who's out.
Speaker 9 (22:27):
The standing room only one in, one out.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
And then it is like everybody wanted to come.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
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 teld crazy Laura.
Speaker 9 (22:53):
Stories things that we'd never heard.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
I mean, stuff about painting her fingernails green and doing
races through Walmart and shopping carts and pushing through it.
Speaker 9 (23:03):
I mean, I was gonna sounds like it was really good.
Speaker 5 (23:06):
And I think something that our family did was we
grieved well.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
We embraced Laura.
Speaker 5 (23:15):
We didn't put our pictures away, and we didn't try
to forget.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
We wanted like all of it. We wanted to hear
every story.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
And while those stories are kind of sometimes painful to hear,
it's part of the grieving process.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I probably released more tears over that two hour period
than any other period, 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
(23:50):
was such a relief.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Laura journaled extensively throughout her life, from the time she
was fourteen years old.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
We have all of our journey. 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
(24:19):
she was.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
It's like she knew 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 tremnis not out of piece.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
In that category.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
One day, Laura was riding in the car with her mother, Cocoa.
They were on their way to her college tour.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
About halfway along the drive, Laura just burst out crying,
just uncontrollable sobbing. The Cocoa pulls over inside the road says, Laura,
what are you crying about? And she says, I think
heaven is going to be boring. I love life so much.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Whi's the way it is.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I can't imagine that life after death is going to
be better than this.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
I don't want to be born.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I don't want to be up there with the angels
and the clouds and the harp Soun's kind of stuff.
She really thought about those types of thing, and so
in her last few months she had a different perspective
and she was ready to go.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
She was ready.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
I mean, if you just read what she wrote, it
just talks about how there really is happily ever after
and everything does kind of like an everything does work
out no matter what, and says she wrote this.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
In her journal which last Journalist.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Which was about a week before she died.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
One of my best friends about fifteen years ago, looked
at me and he says, David, I want, but you have.
I just don't want to pay the price you paid
to have it. Having gone through this experience, there were
huge silver linings. Rob and his two sisters weren't particularly close.
They're soulmates. They're best friends.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Our whole family drew near and that nearness has never left.
It's been eighteen years. We needed each other and that
has not changed since February seventh.
Speaker 9 (26:14):
For me, I always had these night fears as a kid.
Speaker 5 (26:17):
I was very afraid that someone was coming into the house,
feared that someone was gonna come and kill me or
my family.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
I had this level of anxiety at night as a kid.
Speaker 6 (26:25):
So sorry, So he got his little sister sleep in
his room so they would get no.
Speaker 5 (26:29):
Job before No Joe put her by the window. So
but Sophie issued my sacrificial lamb. I'm seven, I'm eight
years old, when she's three years younger, and I'm like, well,
they'll get her first.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
If Sophie's not in the room, I'm sleeping on.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
The floor in my parents' room, my sister's rooms, and
I'm went 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 Laura died. After that, I slept in peace,
and I never thought about it at all.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
It was as an overnight.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
What I realized later as I kind of put the
pieces together was what I feared the most.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Something terrible happen to my family happened, and I was okay.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
The way that this experience affected us in the long
term was a life filled with more meaning more purpose
and way less fear.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You need these things to make you who you're gonna be.
Don't waste them when they come, because they're gonna come.
If you let them and bitter you, you have missed the
opportunity that they offer to you, which is to grow
up and to.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Trust and to come out of them to be a
person who doesn't have fear anymore. Being freed from fear
is the biggest gift that you can receive from a
challenge like this.
Speaker 6 (27:48):
You don't get.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Through this thing carrying a bunch of anger and vengeance
and bitterness.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
It'll never leave you.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
I mean, you want to get through life, you want
to have quality of life. Don't carry all this bitterness stuff.
So we didn't do anything herculean or wonderful.
Speaker 9 (28:07):
It was just this universal thing where we felt sorry
for Greg.
Speaker 4 (28:10):
We felt bad for Greg, and.
Speaker 6 (28:12):
We later help with him getting your pardon.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
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 the situation.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
We'll go through something like this and then you look
at your children or soulmates and yield your way for clothes.
I mean, the little stuff just doesn't bother. It's it's irrelevant.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
I go through this.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It's a ticket out of the rat race if.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
You allow it to be.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
And a special thanks to the Treppendall family for telling
this story, this 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 in Oxford.
It took no effort at all. The dad said about
how they managed to forgive Greg. We couldn't have ginned
(29:17):
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. And then
as he said, I shed more tears during that dinner,
joyful tears than I had in the entire time before.
(29:40):
And that it was such a relief or over what
the son said, that we had to grieve, and we
grieved well. The story of Laura Treppendahl and her family
a story of grace, forgiveness and love. Here on our
American stories, it do compu
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