Chris Graham: Two good friends

Sometimes good people do things that you can’t understand, don’t want to try to understand. Doesn’t make them bad people all the sudden.

This thought has been on my mind a lot lately. Two good friends from my teen years have been in the news headlines, both for embezzlement.

The most recent case involves Mike Sutton, the former marketing director at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, who pleaded guilty this week to using museum money to fund uniforms and equipment for a youth baseball team. The amount of money involved – more than $34,000 – is not insignificant; neither is Mike’s exposure to prison time, at a possible 360 years, according to media reports.

He’s not likely to serve more than a fraction of that time, but even that is hard for me to fathom. We’re not talking about somebody that in high school I would have ever imagined being anywhere near this position in life.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have imagined it before this week. I haven’t talked to Mike about the case. He volunteered to help out with an event that I coordinated several months back, and I left the topic off-limits because I felt like he probably needed a break from having to answer questions.

I reached out to him to ask him to volunteer, though, in an unspoken show of support for him and what he’s going through.

And yes, I know that he’s admitted guilt. He messed up; doesn’t make him a bad person.

Nor was Lisa Harrison, God rest her soul, a bad person. Another teen-years friend accused of embezzlement, while working as the bookkeeper at R.E. Lee High School in Staunton. Lisa never made it to have to face charges; she took her own life days after the news hit the front pages of the local papers.

I never had the chance to show support for her, unspoken or otherwise.

She wasn’t a bad person, far from it. Lisa was one of the kindest, gentlest souls you could ever meet.

Mike, too, is good people.

I can imagine that I’m setting myself up for some strenuous ridicule by saying what I’m saying here. Chris is defending criminals. They broke the law, took money that wasn’t theirs. Let ‘em rot.

Sometimes good people do things that you can’t understand, don’t want to try to understand. Doesn’t make them bad people all the sudden.