Letter from Mrs Thomas
I received this email from Mrs. Thomas about a week ago. I’ve been trying to compose a response, but I just didn’t know what to say. The rest of you probably want to know, so posting it will be my response until I can think of something more adequate.
From: Mary Thomas <[address omitted]>
Subject: our meeting with Benjamin Robert Meggs
I do not know what addresses are still working for you guys, so am sending to where I hope you will get my message.
please feel free to forward this to anyone you think wants to read it.
Last Wed. afternoon we met with Robert Meggs who was driving the car that killed Phil. He flew to Ft. Myers alone (as his attorney had a family emergency) to face the three of us in the office of our attorney. He seemed to be a quiet, sincere young man who actually reminded me a lot of Phil… kind of tall, thin, pale, sort of nerdy looking; he just had darker hair. he was very nervous as were we. Katherine got out of her classes to drive down from Tampa. We had many people praying for us and I truly could feel God’s presence there making things better than they could have been .Meggs seemed to be genuinely remorseful for what happened. He did not cry until the end of the almost 2 hour session. He did not say he was sorry until then either, although he had said everything else short of coming right out to say it. I think if his attorney had been there he would not have said as much as he did. He lost 10 pounds the first week and would leave his desk multiple times a week for months to go hide and cry…too bad I was not able to leave my classroom to do the same. He is still facing 3 - 15 years for the felony vehicular homicide. It is our understanding that he came in hopes that if he gets a plea bargain we will not recommend prison. They would eat him alive in there… all I could think about that night was how worried his mother must be. He really was an okay guy… the kind you all would probably have liked under different circumsances. I did tell him that I forgive him.. I didn’t speak for the other 2 but for myself. That made him cry.
He met Phil and a group went out to eat… no drinking, no drugs. The road he was on was not one he had traveled the entire length of before so he was unaware of the turn where the accident happened. He does not think he was going the 71.16 mph that the police calculated… said as an engineer he has problem with the way it was calculated (sounded like lawyer talk to us). He said Phil was unconscious but breathing afterwards. He held Phil’s head still until the ambulance came. Said he looked so okay… no blood , just unconscious. He was sure he would be sitting in the hospital laughing with him in just a couple of days because the nurses wouldn’t tell them anyting because they were not family. Said he and Phil seemed to share a similar sense of humor and he thought they could be great friends. One thing we found out that we did not know… we thought (guess Phil did not make it clear to us, as he had to have known) that Kelley was moving to Calif. but in fact.. Phil was driving out with her (ROAD TRIP) and Meggs was flying out to drive back with her before she moved back to Panama City. I guess we just assumed she was moving… She had told Meggs that it was so amazingly simple to talk the two of them into the trip.
Meggs is worried he will lose his security clearance and not be able to work in aeronautical engineering again… just the accusation of a felony might cause that. I told him he could teach school. He was really a pretty nice guy, who did a very brave thing to come meet us. He faces the judge this week to set his trial date, but is apparently hoping that will never come to be. I still want about a million hours of face to face comm. service where he will benefit from getting to know and help someone as well as they will benefit from him. I just wanted to let you all know what was going on with this. Thanks for reading.
Mary Thomas
