EPILOGUE
GETTING UP, MOVING FORWARD
MARK BECKER WAS FORMALLY CHARGED WITH FIRST-DEGREE murder the day after Ed Thomas’s funeral. One week later, he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The Thomas family learned later that Becker had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic long before the shooting. He claimed voices in his head told him to shoot Coach Thomas because Coach was becoming “a devil tyrant.” Prosecutors admitted that Becker was mentally ill but maintained that his actions on the day of the shooting demonstrated a full understanding of the difference between right and wrong.
The actual trial did not begin until the following February. The Thomas family attended every part of the trial, including the preliminary hearings. The jury deliberated for twenty-five hours before returning a guilty verdict. Becker was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His court-appointed attorney immediately filed an appeal.
After the verdict was handed down, Todd Thomas told the press, “Our family is extremely relieved that a guilty verdict did come out. We do feel that justice has been served. And we feel like the system worked. Without a doubt, no verdict is ever going to replace Dad, but we do take comfort in knowing that he is in a better place. That allows us to keep moving forward.”
Aaron Thomas added, “Our family is not over anything. The Becker family is not over anything. We are still going to deal with this daily for as long as we live. Nothing that is going to happen, like Todd said, is going to bring my dad back. And now all we can do is for each of us to try to live the way he lived and by the example he set for all of us.”
Part of the challenge both brothers face as they live out their father’s legacy is the pain of his loss and the anger it stirs up within them. Aaron explained, “The real challenge verse for me has been Mark 11:25. ‘And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.’ I read this verse right after the shooting, but I didn’t want to hear it then. However, the Lord keeps bringing me back to it. Forgiveness is a daily decision I have to make. Do I still feel anger when I think about what happened? Sure. I probably always will. But I know I have to turn that over to God.”
Todd answered the same question. “I never once questioned why my dad was taken from me that day. I am fully convinced that my dad had touched the last kid he was supposed to touch that day. There is no doubt that we are in a spiritual battle on this earth. Evil came after my dad that day, but evil did not win. The day of the funeral, many lives were changed. People saw a man who had finished strong, and peoples’ lives were changed. Kelly Williamson said it best that day when he said, ‘You know that you know that you know.’ Our lives are nothing but a vapor on this earth. Without a doubt, my dad knew where he was going to live in eternity. And at eight o’clock that morning, Dad was doing what he does every day; and in an instant, he was standing before God. There is no doubt in my mind that he heard the words that we all long to hear: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant!’ “*
Shortly before the start of Mark Becker’s trial, the Iowa state legislature began debate on what was called “The Ed Thomas Bill.” The original version of the bill created an administrative process for hospitals to notify law enforcement personnel when releasing someone who had been receiving treatment for mental health issues and is subject to arrest by warrant or against whom charges are pending. However, the bill was essentially no different from existing Iowa statutes in place at the time of Coach Thomas’s murder. If that bill had been law when Mark Becker was taken into custody on the Saturday before the shooting, he still would have been released without police notification.
Chris Luhring stayed in constant contact with legislators during the debate on this bill. At his urging, the Thomas family publicly stated that they did not support the proposed bill and asked that Ed Thomas’s name be removed from it. Their actions prompted major changes in the proposed legislation. The new bill eliminated the requirement that law enforcement obtain a court order to hold a subject in a mental health facility for forty-eight hours. It also created a uniform process and form by which law enforcement may request to be notified of the discharge of someone taken to the hospital for serious mental impairment or of a person incapacitated by a chemical substance. Law enforcement must retrieve the individual within six hours of notification of the patient’s release. Hospitals cannot hold the patient beyond the forty-eight hours already dictated by Iowa law. If hospitals fail to notify the proper authorities when requested, they face a civil penalty of $1,000 for the first offense, and $2,000 for each subsequent offense. The law also provides civil and criminal protections for those who comply with the law.
During debate on the strengthened bill, Aaron appeared before the subcommittee and urged the committee to honor his father by “doing the right thing.” The state attorney general’s office and the Department of Public Safety also went on record to state that the strengthened bill did not violate patient privacy rules dictated by HIPAA.
Even so, it appeared the bill might die in committee. On the final day of debate, Jan went to Des Moines and met with legislators, asking them to support the bill. Jan’s visit turned the tide. The bill passed out of committee by unanimous vote. The Iowa House of Representatives then passed the bill by a vote of 90 to 0. The Senate followed suit with a 50 to 0 vote.
Governor Chet Culver signed the Ed Thomas Bill into law on March 24, 2010, with Jan, Aaron, and Todd in attendance. Aaron said on the occasion, “I think this is a bill my dad would be very proud of. This is a great thing, but obviously we wish we didn’t have to have this bill in my dad’s name.”
A few days after his father’s funeral, the A-P school board asked Aaron to move back to Parkersburg as the school’s athletic director. With the new school year just around the corner, he had to make a decision quickly. After much prayer and consideration, he resigned his position at Union High School in La Porte City, Iowa, and took over for his father at A-P. After selling their house in La Porte, Aaron and Ellie and their three sons moved in with Jan while their new house was being built in Parkersburg. Even one year after the tornado, there were no houses available to rent.
Taking over as A-P’s athletic director fills every one of Aaron’s days with reminders of his father. No one at the school calls him Coach Thomas, or even Mr. Thomas. Those titles will always belong to his father. For most people at the school, Aaron is simply Aaron. His players call him Coach.
In the summer of 2010, Aaron hired Alex Pollock as A-P’s first new head football coach since 1975. Alex played for Ed from 1998 to 2001, including during the state championship season in 2001. The 2010 team went through the season undefeated before losing to Dike-New Hartford in the second round of the state playoffs. They finished the year with a 10 and 1 record, the same record as in Ed’s final season.
Todd and Candice had always planned on moving to Parkersburg. After his father’s death, Todd felt a greater sense of urgency to be closer to his mother. Near the Parkersburg golf course, they built the home they had planned on building even before the tornado came. Shortly after Mark Becker’s trial, Candice gave birth to their first child: a son. Todd also rejoined the A-P Falcon football coaching staff. Like his father, he now coaches the offensive linemen.
In the weeks and months after Ed’s death, Jan found herself turning to the book of Job over and over again. One phrase from early in the book leaped off the page to her. After Job suffered the deaths of his ten children, along with experiencing complete financial ruin followed by debilitating illness, his wife told him he should just curse God and die and get it over with. He responded to her, “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?”* Jan could not get those words out of her mind as she wrestled with coming to grips with the loss she had suffered. She had read them before, but they never had the power they now had. As she turned them over and over in her mind, she came to the realization that if only good things happen in this world, no one would ever see a need for God. It is not that God causes sin. James 1:13 makes that crystal clear. Sin is, Jan came to realize, the absence of God. In a world filled with sin, bad things will inevitably happen. Acts of cruelty, such as the one that took her husband away, do not take God by surprise. He knew what would take place in the weight room that morning. However, in the midst of her pain, she knew that God was right there beside her. He made a promise in Hebrews 13:5 – 6 to which she was now clinging:
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”
Even so, Jan found sleep elusive. Long before the shooting, she had started on a “Read through the Bible in a Year” calendar. She did most of her Bible reading during her restless hours late at night, which she followed with times of prayer. The two were her lifelines. Through it all, she found great comfort in knowing that Ed was rejoicing in the presence of God in heaven. That knowledge gave her the strength to face another day. However, it didn’t make her miss him any less.
Later in the summer of 2009, Jan received a letter from one of the students who had witnessed the shooting in the weight room. The girl told Jan how she had struggled since the shooting, but also how the experience had caused her to reevaluate her own life. As a result, she gave her life to Jesus Christ and now felt confident that she would go to heaven someday. Reading the letter, Jan knew what Ed would say. He would say that if this girl were the only one to come to Christ as a result of his death, then it was all worth it. But I know she won’t be the only one! The thought put a smile on Jan’s face. She knew Ed had to be rejoicing in heaven as well.
In response, Jan wrote the girl:
I am so happy for your definite decision for Christ. This shooting is something that those of us who went through it will never truly get over. Don’t let anybody tell you that you should be over it by now. Unless they have gone through something like this, they don’t understand what it is like. I know how hard it had to be for you to witness this. I pray that someday you will know exactly why you were there. But for now, we have to trust God that he knew what he was doing by allowing you to be in there. He has a purpose for you, just as he has a purpose in this tragedy.
On the day after Ed’s murder, Jan had prayed that God would use this act of evil to accomplish something good. This letter, and the many others that followed it, gave her a glimpse of how God was doing just that.
*Matthew 25:21; Luke 19:17.
*Job 2:10 NLT.