As Janet and Scott Willis promoted her new children’s book in the heart of the Cabrini-Green housing complex Thursday, the couple didn’t want the ex-governor’s name to come up.
But “A Dad’s Delight” is about forgiveness, and an inevitable question came up: Do they forgive former Gov. George Ryan, convicted this year of sweeping corruption charges?
Among them was a license-for-bribe scandal that emerged from the fiery highway deaths of six of the Willises’ nine children in 1994. The trucker responsible was an unqualified driver who received his commercial license by bribing an official in then-Secretary of State Ryan’s office.
While the answer was “yes,” said Scott Willis, a retired preacher, full forgiveness can’t be had until the ex-governor asks for it–or at least acknowledges wrongdoing.
“People ask if we’ve forgiven George Ryan for what we believe and what the jury believes that he participated in,” he said. “George Ryan needs God’s forgiveness. … I want to forgive Gov. Ryan.”
But with ready smiles and a stack of their books in the lobby of Kids Club, a Cabrini-Green after-school program, the Willises did their best to steer talk away from Ryan.
Each using a small sheet of notes as a guide, Scott Willis, 58, and Janet Willis, 59, who moved to the woods outside Nashville 1 1/2 years ago, seemed more at ease while discussing faith, charity, forgiveness and, of course, the book Janet Willis wrote and illustrated.
The 34 pages of vibrant watercolors lean heavily on the Willises’ Christian faith as it tells the true story of their son, Hank, breaking a window in his father’s church with a baseball despite a posted sign that said, “No ballplaying near the building.”
Terrified of the repercussions, the boy instead found his father putting his arm around him and explaining the importance of mercy. Scott Willis described that moment as unique, as “God working through me.”
“I was just as probably surprised as Hank was at what transpired,” he said. “It wasn’t how I would have done things normally. With a broken window, [usually] we would have talked about it, had a spanking, a hug and forget about it.”
Instead, he said, God was teaching him a lesson about mercy.
Hank, 7, was among the children killed in what Scott Willis called “our accident.”
The couple, which settled a lawsuit against the state for $100 million in 1999, printed 10,000 copies of the book at a cost of $32,000 from their own pocket. All proceeds will go to one of three charities that buyers can pick–including Kids Club–when buying the book online, at adadsdelight.org.
Janet Willis said the incident was remarkable enough in their home to inspire the book, which took 2 1/2 years to create. She studied art for three semesters at the University of Illinois before getting married, then studied three more semesters–hesitantly at first, she said–after the deaths of her children.
“I knew I need to stay busy, and I basically asked the Lord for something to do and give me an idea,” she said. “It was therapeutic in the sense that it kept me busy.”
She hopes the book stimulates conversation between parents and children.
“I thought it might be a good message for others,” she said, her hands still covered with scars from the wreck.
Part of that message, Scott Willis said, is “for forgiveness to come there has to be an admission that there’s something that has been done wrong.”
While saying his son had done that after breaking the window, he implied Ryan has done no such thing, though he again hesitated to invoke the former governor.
“I’ll let you guys figure it out,” he said. “I think you can make the connection on that.”
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jbnoel@tribune.com
