Matters of Record

Dear Editor,

Ten years ago Clarence Stearns made a choice and a mis­take that nearly ruined his life, not to mention being an affront to the country and to its laws.

Ten years ago he thought his life was ruined anyway, with back-breaking child support and unfair alimony demands (by which I make no excuses for him, only supply background). He paid with a maximum sentence despite it being a first offense. He was a model prisoner in a minimum security facility.

With his debt to society paid, his rehabilitation 100 per­cent, and despite the unimaginable embarrassment - upon release he returned to his home.

He took the first job offered him. I wasn't that hard to find, though he'd worried incessantly about his felony record and destroyed reputation supplanting the previous one of a flaw­lessly hard worker, son of a teacher and farmer, and second-generation Waitsburger of good repute. He holds that same job today, now in a right-hand-man position, and has married a wonderful woman who's contin­ued her education to the betterment of her own employment status. His son, a fine, hard-working young man, now lives with them in their Waitsburg home. Clarence is in all ways an upstanding citizen with his rights as one returned to him.

You won't find a more law-abiding human being, nor one who will spend, most honestly, the rest of his life being sorry for that one bad choice. He will never forget, nor quit trying to atone, nor hoping others can forget and forgive. For the most part I think they have.

Clarence is the example of a man who has put his life back together when the odds were decidedly against it. This takes strength and backbone. I think it deserves a handshake and a show of respect, not a slap in the face. On top of which, the man just buried his father. You read about it here last week. Then, the Times picks his story, out of all the stories there were 10 years ago, to bring up and remind everybody all over again. What a cruel blow. But after all, it is a matter of record. And the truth is all that counts.