Forgiveness Brings Peace
Rochelle Riley
Fifty-one weeks after Tom Wellinger killed Gary Weinstein's family, the jeweler decided to accompany his attorneys to a meeting with Wellinger at the Oakland County Jail."They did preliminary questions, and then my attorney said, 'You got any questions for him?' " Weinstein recalled. "I hadn't really prepared."
So he asked the only thing that mattered: "How's your kids?"
And in that moment, they were what they were: two family men who lived within a mile of each other, whose names were on the same page in the Farmington Hills phone book, two fathers whose children attended the same schools -- until Wellinger took Weinstein's away forever.
A Farmington Hills family's routine trip to the dentist Tuesday afternoon ended in tragedy when a speeding SUV with a drunken driver behind the wheel smashed into the car, killing a woman and her two children.
"Here he is," Weinstein said of their meeting, "a father like me, and that was the only question I had."
In that jailhouse conference room, stripped bare of pretense and away from the community ripped apart by the May 2005 tragedy, two fathers who had never met talked briefly about forgiveness. They did not discuss details of the crash. There were no recriminations, no tears.
In response to Weinstein's question, Wellinger, without hesitation, said he hadn't seen his son in more than a year. He was underage and not allowed in the jail.
"I haven't seen mine either," Weinstein replied. "He asked me could I ever forgive him, and my quick response was: 'Can you forgive yourself?' "
The jailhouse conversation was the last between Gary Weinstein and Tom Wellinger, who is now in prison. But Weinstein said he has reached out to Wellinger, asked to speak to his children, to help them heal.
Unthinkable. Unless forgiveness is involved.
Weinstein has now decided to tell his story as part of a documentary film and healing campaign called Project: Forgive, the brainchild of Shawne Duperon, 48, a filmmaker and child molestation survivor whose life also changed the day of the crash. She was friends with both families.
Her children had baby-sat the Weinstein children. She knew and loved Judy Weinstein, who was her husband Terry's business coach. Duperon was numb when she learned they had been killed. But the day would get worse.
"A couple of hours later, I got the call that Tom had done it," she recalled, the shock from that day still visible in her eyes. Wellinger's ex-wife was her partner in monthly Mastermind groups, where people work to improve their personal and professional development.
"There are two Toms," she said, "Tom, this man who killed a family and is in jail, and Tom, a beautiful, loving family man who happened to make a horrific mistake."
The saddest twist of fate, she said, was that Tom Wellinger's immediate family had flown to Michigan the day of the accident to stage an intervention over his drinking. It was scheduled for the next day.
Judith Weinstein and Alex, who was in the front passenger seat, died at the scene, police said. Sam was ejected about 20 feet from the car, landing in a driveway. ... There were no brake marks on the roadway to indicate that the driver of the SUV ever saw the Honda or tried to stop.
"Tom had been sober for years," Duperon said. "He was a very giving man, an extraordinary man, and life hit him, and he went back to drinking again. It's that circumstance where you have that amazing person who in the next breath killed a family. It's a difficult thing to hold in your brain.
"The day that Gary's family died, I knew that day that we were going to do this project, a project that is now a movement and a mission," she said. "This is a deep inquiry into what is forgiveness. This documentary will look at what happens when we forgive, what happens when we don't."
Duperon's coproducer is Scott Rosenfelt, who produced the Julia Roberts movie "Mystic Pizza" and executive produced "Home Alone." Duperon also is collecting thousands of stories from around the world detailing how people have forgiven. She hopes that like Jack Canfield's successful "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, stories of forgiveness will impact those who might need to offer it.
"Forgiveness is critical, and I think it's one of the big challenges in our culture," said Canfield, who will appear in the film and whose "Soup" series just sold its 500 millionth book worldwide. "We're a culture where a lot of people hold grudges forever, and I think all the research shows that it filters to your health, your relationships. ... I think it's a very important project."
A cross-country journey of healing
Sixteen weeks after the accident, Weinstein got a call that his jewelry store was on fire. Almost instantly, he made two decisions:
He decided to rebuild, moving the business to temporary quarters down the road while redesigning a new store, changing it from the gallery it was to a charming salon with a sofa and jewel-filled shadow boxes.
And he decided to play golf. Weinstein had mostly stopped going to his jewelry store. Customers seemed uncomfortable. They didn't know what to say. So like Forrest Gump, the beloved movie character who suddenly began running one day, Weinstein decided to golf across America.
"I decided to play golf in all 50 states in eight months," he said. "I put 42,000 miles on my car, but I never played alone. I only flew to Hawaii and Alaska. I played two rounds per state. I always told people who I was and what happened, and that was very therapeutic."
He spent no energy hating Tom Wellinger.
"There is an understanding in the community and in the world that alcoholism is a disease," Weinstein said. "If I think that it's a disease, then he was clearly sick. ... In some ways, I don't hold him totally responsible. I knew him as a guy of conscience and commitment. He fell off the wagon. ... I know there is some kind of difference to be made in what occurred."
Weinstein is the youngest of four brothers who are all jewelers. He has two sisters, a teacher and a social worker.
He said his journey has been easier because his family trained themselves to always express how they felt. You might say they lived like they were dying or that, at any moment, life could change.
He also attributes much of his success and life philosophy to Landmark personal development seminars, something that he said chased away many girlfriends but intrigued the woman he eventually married. Judith attended a seminar with him and eventually became a Landmark leader.
An attorney who "hated arguing," Judith Weinstein had begun doing conflict resolution sessions with auto executives and was planning to grow to international work. She had just returned from Germany before the accident.
Police said Wellinger's blood-alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit at 3:30 in the afternoon when his Yukon, traveling 70 m.p.h. in a 45-m.p.h. zone, rammed into the back of Judith Weinstein's Honda Accord as she waited to make a left turn on 12 Mile near Orchard Lake Road.
On that last day, older son Alex got up at 6 a.m., dressed and left for school.
"I had already kissed him and hugged him the night before," Weinstein recalled. "I was whole and complete. I kissed them, said I loved them.
"That morning, Judy and Sam were at the kitchen table doing some math," Weinstein said. "They were talking about the orthodontist appointment after school and Judy wrote out the note.
"I still have that note saying, 'Can Sam be excused at 3:15?' I don't think his teacher ever got it," Weinstein said. "He accidentally left it on the table."
Moving forward to find happiness
Weinstein's national golf tour took him to Connecticut, where he met a couple of employees from Golf Digest.
"They happened to be terrible golfers, but they were IT guys," he said with a laugh. "They said they'd like to tell their editor about me." At the time, Weinstein said he was unable to talk about the crash because of a civil suit pending against Wellinger's employers.
A federal court jury Thursday declined to hold a driver's employer, UGS Corp., now Siemens, responsible for the Farmington Hills crash he caused. The plaintiffs argued that Thomas Wellinger was drunk and shouldn't have been allowed to drive himself to a doctor's appointment. But co-workers testified that Wellinger didn't look drunk.
With the case ending in December 2010, Weinstein's first-person story appeared in the May 2011 issue of Golf Digest, including a mention that he planned to play golf in 100 countries in 20 years.
"I had this vision that I had unlimited funds coming," Weinstein said. "But the lawsuit didn't quite work out, so I'm still committed to the venture."
From the Golf Digest article, he has, however, received a number of invitations to play, from clubs in South Africa, France, Switzerland and Belgium.
With his work at the store, his world travel and now a steady girlfriend, Gary Weinstein appears to have moved on. But when you suffer a tragedy as great as his, it is always present. What you decide is how you live with it.
And Gary Weinstein, now 54, has decided not only to live but to help Tom Wellinger live, too. "I want him to speak so that the world will know he's not a monster," Weinstein said. "My understanding is that he's not. I can appreciate that people who know what happened to me think I should be vindictive against him for what he did. But I don't come at it from that point at all."
Wellinger was sentenced to 19-30 years for three counts of second-degree murder. Initially, Weinstein thought that wasn't enough. But later, he signed documents agreeing not to block attempts for an early release.
Weinstein said his sole focus is "how to go forward and how to make a difference in the world."
"What happened was outrageous. It was obscene ... but now ... I live from happiness. There's always a smile on my face. It's almost like I was a fish in the water and didn't know I was in the water. Now, I'm much clearer about it."
Weinstein wants that for Wellinger's children. "I know they're in pain," he said. "I know they don't have the tools I have to move forward. ... They blame themselves for not taking action. I welcome a conversation or an embrace so they can move forward. I'm just that guy who can say to them that they don't need to hang onto that. They can live a life that they don't have to be ashamed of their father. ... It is just what happened. It is just what's so."
Marianne Williamson, the Los Angeles-based international author and self-awareness expert, said that forgiveness is about yourself as much as other people.
"What is growing among us, not only as individuals, but collectively, is a realization that it's necessary to forgive if we're to move on with our lives, if we're to begin again. Resentment is a toxin, and I think it was (writer and actor) Malachy McCourt who said that holding resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy dies. ... You can be bitter or you can be better."
In the nearly seven years since his family disappeared in an instant, Gary Weinstein became ready for other things, as well. He called his high school prom date, Eileen Keegan, who was living in Las Vegas, and renewed their friendship. That turned into a simple, but complicated romance.
They do not plan to marry. She wears a diamond on her left ring finger to symbolize their commitment. But when Gary Weinstein's life ends, he said he will have had one wife and two sons, whose memories he carries on his left ring finger.
There, he wears three interconnected bands: one of pink gold for Judith, who dyed her brown hair red because he liked redheads; one of yellow gold for Alex, and one of white gold for Sam, "for purity."
Yes, Gary Weinstein knows who he is and how far he's come. He knows that the twists and turns are easier to maneuver when you aren't carrying the extra baggage of anger and resentment.
Forgiveness did that.
Thank you so much Rochelle Riley rriley99@freepress.com
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