Greg Gibson and Wayne Lo

This StoryCorps conversation was one that was difficult to have, and for some, will be hard to hear. It happened at a prison, where a father sat down to talk with the school shooter who killed his son.

On December 14, 1992, Wayne Lo, an 18-year-old student at Simon’s Rock college in Massachusetts, stalked the campus with an SKS semiautomatic rifle loaded with ammunition he ordered over the phone and had delivered to him at school. He fired at random, killing two people and wounding four others. At the time, he said he was receiving commands from God. Today, Lo is serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Greg Gibson’s son Galen, also a student at Simon’s Rock, was murdered that night. In the years since, Gibson has set out to understand how it happened, in the hopes of preventing anyone else from having to live through what he has. He interviewed other people involved in the shooting — victims and their families, school officials, even the man who sold Lo the gun. He later put those conversations into a book, Gone Boy: A Father’s Search for the Truth in His Son’s Murder. 

Then, after it was published, Gibson started getting letters from the one person he hadn’t talked to: Wayne Lo.

As the 25th anniversary of the shooting approached, Gibson visited Lo in prison for a StoryCorps interview. Gibson said he wasn’t looking to forgive him or to find closure, but just to look Lo in the eye and talk. It was the first time they had ever spoken.

In the introduction to his book, Greg writes about his often complicated journey:

But what about this matter of moving on, and the healing and forgiveness it implies? There’s a lot of grand-sounding mumbo jumbo in circulation, but I’ve never read book or seen a talk show that can explain the mystery of a person making a conscious decision not to be defined by a Bad Thing, and simply living life from that point on, day-by-day. Then the Bad Thing becomes just a part of a life, and when we look around at other people we discover that most of them have experienced bad things too, and have made similar decisions. Survival is the rule, not the exception, and I can’t understand the “why” of it any more than I can understand why a cut heals over.

The idea of forgiveness is a greater mystery still—one I’ll spend the rest of my life attempting to unravel. As it happens, I’ve got a helper in this endeavor, a strange sort of sidekick. His name is Wayne Lo and he’s the man who murdered my son.

Wayne writes to me a few times a year, usually with a small check, which I deposit in the Galen Gibson Scholarship Trust. He earns the money by selling his artwork on the internet. This made the news for a moment in the spring of 2007 when a zealous fellow down in Houston realized that murderers were cashing in on their crimes. He coined the term “murderabilia” and decided to put an end to this practice.

Media people contacted me for an opinion, expecting some juicy murdered-son outrage. I opined that donating money to a scholarship fund in Galen’s name was one of the ways that Wayne Lo, locked in prison for the rest of his life, could try to atone for what he’d done. Society, I told them, has been very efficient about punishment, but backward about reconciliation and rehabilitation. This was not the answer they wanted to hear, so it didn’t make the news…

…There are endless branches on this journey, and no two people’s experiences are ever the same. I hear a lot about what I “ought” to be doing and feeling and, as was the case with the “murderabilia” issue, I am often confronted by people who expect me to feel a certain way when, in fact, I do not feel that way at all.

Much of the time, I realize that what I’m really dealing with are people’s own fears or their overwhelming desire to normalize what for them must be an unthinkable situation. What is there to do but try to be honest with them, and keep on moving? If I’ve learned anything since Galen’s death, it is simply to follow my heart, regardless of the expectations that surround me.

That, as much as anything else, is what this book is about.

 

From Gone Boy by Gregory Gibson. Published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2011 by Gregory Gibson. Reprinted by permission of publisher.

Originally aired December 8, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: Galen Gibson at Simon’s Rock. Courtesy of Greg Gibson.

Karen Goodwin and Marlene Shay

This is a story of two women brought together by an unintended consequence of the opioid epidemic. As of late 2017, as the number of deaths skyrocketed, about one out of every 10 organ donors had died of an overdose.

When 21-year-old Adam Shay overdosed on heroin in 2014, his pancreas and kidney were donated to a stranger, Karen Goodwin, who was a recovering addict herself. At the time of her transplant, she had been sober for 13 years.

Karen reached out to Adam’s mother, Marlene Shay, a year after his death. They sat down for this conversation at StoryCorps in Beachwood, Ohio.

Originally aired November 17, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom image: Karen Goodwin and Marlene Shay at StoryCorps in Beachwood, OH.

Kristin Glasgow and Karen Offutt

In the late 1960s, Karen Offutt was a patriotic teenager who got chills whenever she heard the “Star-Spangled Banner.” At 18, she dropped out of nursing school to enlist in the U.S. Army and was deployed to Vietnam.

As a stenographer, Karen was given top secret “eyes only” clearance working for high-ranking generals. Her duties included everything from typing and transcribing to serving tea.

At StoryCorps, Karen spoke with her daughter Kristin about her time at war.

Originally aired November 11, 2017, on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Middle image: Karen Offutt being sworn into the Army in 1968. Photo courtesy of Karen Offutt.

Bottom image: Karen Offutt being awarded a Certificate of Achievement for her heroic acts in Vietnam in 1970. More than 30 years later, she was awarded a Soldier’s Medal for Valor. Photo courtesy of Karen Offutt.

Ronald Clark and Jamilah Clark

During the 1940s, custodians who worked for the New York Public Library often lived inside the buildings they tended. In exchange for cleaning and keeping the building secure at night, the library provided an apartment for the custodians and their families.

Ronald Clark’s father, Raymond, was one of those custodians. For three decades he lived with his family on the top floor of the Washington Heights branch on St. Nicholas Avenue in upper Manhattan. Three generations of the Clark family resided in that library until Ronald’s father retired in the late 1970s.

After college, Ronald got a position as a professor teaching history at Cape Cod Community College.

At StoryCorps, Ronald told his daughter, Jamilah Clark, how living inside the library shaped the man he would become.

Originally aired October 13, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition and re-broadcast on February 22, 2019.

Bottom photo: Ronald Clark, his parents, and his daughter Jamilah. Credit: Clark family, courtesy of NYPL.

Carla Saunders and Kyle Cook

Kyle Cook and Carla Saunders are neonatal nurse practitioners at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville.

They’ve spent decades caring for infants, but when the opioid crisis began to hit in 2010, their jobs changed in ways they never anticipated.

Tennessee has seen a sharp increase in babies born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS), a condition marked by tremors and constant shaking in babies who experience withdrawal. In fact, over the past decade, the incidence of babies born with NAS in the state has risen nearly ten-fold.

Kyle and Carla came to StoryCorps to remember when they began to notice how this affected their patients firsthand.

Over the past several years, Kyle and Carla helped establish one of the first treatment protocols for babies exposed to opioids, as well as a program connecting mothers with treatment and therapy.

Originally aired September 15, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

This interview was recorded at the 2016 National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit, in partnership with Operation UNITE.

Max Hanagarne and Josh Hanagarne

StoryCorps gives people the chance to talk to each other about the events that have helped shape who they are. Josh Hanagarne did just that with his nine-year-old son in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Josh has an extreme form of Tourette’s syndrome, in which his tics — or involuntary movements and noises — have been so severe, they’ve put him in the hospital. He first started showing symptoms of Tourette’s when he was around the age his son is now.

One thing that helps Josh minimize his tics is when he is talking to someone. At StoryCorps, he sat down for this conversation with his son, Max.

Originally aired September 1, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Francine Anderson

Francine Anderson grew up in rural Virginia during the 1950s. It was the Jim Crow South and “Whites Only” signs punctuated the windows of many businesses. Francine came to StoryCorps to talk about one night when she became aware of what those signs meant for her family.

Editor’s note: This story contains a quote where a racial slur is used.

Originally aired August 18, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Left photo: Francine’s father, Frank Napoleon Anderson. Photo courtesy of Francine Anderson.
Right photo: From left to right, siblings Frank, Lynne, baby Ife, Francine and Tony Anderson, shortly after the incident took place. Photo courtesy of Francine Anderson.

Sylvia Bullock and Marcus Bullock

In the mid-1990s, Reverend Sylvia Bullock was raising two kids on her own near Washington, D.C. while working and going to college full-time.

Her teenage son, Marcus, saw how hard his mother was working — and how little they had — and decided to take matters into his own hands. He and a friend committed a carjacking, and although he was 15 years old, Marcus was tried as an adult. He served eight years for the crime.

Marcus was released in 2004. Since then he has created an app, called Flikshop, that makes it easier for inmates and their families to stay in touch. His mom works for his tech company as Fulfillment Manager and Mom-In-Chief. She received her Doctor of Ministry in 2008.

Originally aired August 11, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top photo: Marcus and Sylvia in 2017.
Bottom photo: A Polaroid from one of Sylvia’s visits to Marcus while he was in prison. Courtesy of Sylvia Bullock.

Tom Sullivan and Terry Sullivan

On July 20, 2012, a gunman shot and killed 12 people in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. One of the victims was Alex Sullivan. He was celebrating his birthday at the movies that night — something he had done since he was a small child. Alex and a group of friends planned to see a midnight showing of the latest Batman film, just as he turned 27.

Five years later, his parents, Tom and Terry Sullivan, sat down at StoryCorps to remember him.

After their son was killed, Tom and Terry Sullivan turned to a close network of friends and family for support. Tom’s longtime friend, Dan Van Minnen, was one of those people.

Originally aired July 14, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top photo: Tom and Terry Sullivan.
Middle photo: Terry Sullivan holds a photo of her son, Alex.
Bottom photo: Tom and his friend Dan Van Minnen.

Five Mualimm-ak and Omar Mualimmak

StoryCorps gives people the chance to sit down together and have a conversation they’ve never had before. Five Mualimm-ak did just that with his son, Omar, who was five years old when his father was first incarcerated.

By the time Five Mualimm-ak was finished serving his sentence for weapons charges, he had been in prison for nearly a dozen years, many of those spent in solitary confinement. When he was released in 2012, Omar was a senior in high school. The two have had difficulty connecting since then. They came to StoryCorps together to talk about their relationship for the first time.

Originally aired July 7, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.