Detroit — As far as the healing power of Christ’s message of forgiveness, Pennie Iott and Meleny Malcolm tell a story that’s hard to forget.
It started 10 years ago, when Iott’s first husband, Philip, was killed in a car accident. Driving in a residential area, his car was slammed into by another vehicle as it sped unexpectedly out of a driveway; its 16-year-old driver was talking on her cellphone.
Malcolm, now 26, was at the wheel.
At first, Iott was in no mood to forgive the reckless teenager who had caused the worst day of her life. Malcolm, for her part, was not only wracked with remorse for the death she had caused, but distraught by the resulting legal troubles and her own injuries.
Yet Iott did forgive her, and the judge in the case persuaded her to appear with Malcolm as the teenager worked off her community service sentence by giving talks to students in driver’s training, anger management classes and other audiences on the dangers of distracted driving.
But their relationship eventually grew beyond the forgiveness — initially given grudgingly — to genuine affection.
As Iott explains it, the decision to forgive Malcolm wasn’t really her idea, but her late husband’s.
“I was getting into my car to go to daily Mass, and starting the car, and I felt his presence, and heard him say to me, ‘We are going to offer Mass for Meleny today, and we are going to forgive her,’” Iott said.
Still, she knew she couldn’t take that step without Divine help.
“I went back in my house, and I knelt down at the side of my bed, and prayed, ‘I am going to forgive her, but You are going to have to do the work,’” she recalled.
Then, in court, Monroe County Judge Pamela Moskwa — who sentenced Malcolm to 600 hours of community service — asked Iott if she’d be willing to accompany Malcolm when she made her presentations.
“I shook my head yes, but inside my head I was screaming; working with her was not something I expected,” Iott said.
Malcolm recalls the awkwardness she felt as they began working together.
“I needed Pennie to know I was deeply sorry for what I had done to her family,” Malcolm said. “But I didn’t know how to tell this woman how truly sorry I was — I couldn’t find the words.”
Because Malcolm’s driver’s license had been revoked after the accident, the two women didn’t just appear together at their speaking engagements — they’d also travel together.
“While we were driving places, we’d talk about things — talk about life, talk about Phil. We really got to know one another,” Malcolm said.
But as Malcolm’s 19th birthday approached, by which, according to the judge, she needed to complete her community service hours, it became clear she was in danger of falling short — meaning some time behind bars was a looming possibility.
It was then that Iott reached into her heart.
Because the program set by the judge allowed double credit for those hours Malcolm and Iott worked together, Iott came up with an idea.
“She still had 100 hours to do, so we decided to go on a weekend retreat together,” Iott said. But the first one they planned was canceled, and “if we couldn’t find another one before her birthday, she would have to go to jail for the remaining time.”
They found another retreat before the deadline — at the Dominican Sisters’ St. Mary’s Retreat House in Oxford, to be conducted by Deacon Alex Jones. Their plan was to simply attend, without telling anyone why they were there.
But it was a remark from one of the sisters that caused Iott to rethink their plan. “This nun said ‘A seed that is held withers,’” Iott recalled.
She convinced Malcolm they should let the group in on their secret. “Toward the end, Pennie said that God wants us to tell our story,” she said. And they did tell it before Sunday Mass, an experience that let the emotions flow.
“I think that was when she really truly understood how sorry I was,” Malcolm said.
And Iott agrees.
“I had forgiven her, but I didn’t have a love for her,” Iott said. “After that, I felt: ‘What if this had been my daughter?’
“It was at that retreat that God finally fulfilled His promise to me — all that stress and anxiety turned into a mother’s love,” she said.
Since then, Iott and Malcolm have remained close, though not in a geographical sense. Iott, now 55, still lives in Monroe and is a member of St. Joseph Parish, Maybee. She has remarried, and her husband, Tom Clark, works as director of religious education at St. Joseph Parish in Trenton.
Malcolm moved to Ypsilanti to pursue her career in early childhood education, training to be a family life specialist at Concordia University in Ann Arbor. She hopes eventually to work at a children’s hospital.
Despite the distance, Malcolm says Iott was also instrumental in the rebirth of her faith in God, sponsoring her at her 2007 confirmation at St. John the Baptist Church,Ypsilanti.
And later, Iott attended Malcolm’s wedding at the same church, and was there when Malcolm’s husband received the sacraments after going through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.
“A lot of people can’t understand the depth of our relationship, but I feel it’s been healing for both of us,” Malcolm said. “My life has been touched in so many ways. I still don’t quite know how Pennie could forgive me.”
But Iott’s example continues to affect her.
“Whenever I’m upset with anyone, I think of the depth of her forgiveness, and it puts things in perspective for me,” Malcolm said.
Reflecting on the depths of guilt and shame she felt in the aftermath of that 2002 accident and the contrast with her life today, she says it testifies to “the endless possibility of forgiveness.”
