A model of grace falls far

Chris McNair is in prison. Those words can't help but sadden many people, especially African Americans, who lived in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s.

It's hard not to ignore this newspaper's style rules and call him Mr. McNair, because that's who he was to all of us who knew him as our milkman, who collected empty glass bottles and left full ones of milk and buttermilk on our porches.

We also knew Mrs. (Maxine) McNair, because she taught at our school, Center Street Elementary. And we knew the McNairs' daughter Denise, a classmate of one of my brothers. But you may have heard of her, too.

Denise, at age 11, became a civil rights martyr when she and three other little girls were killed in the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. I've written about that day before, recalling how I heard the blast from my home a few miles away, and how my daddy and other fathers armed themselves that night expecting a war with the Ku Klux Klan.

Fast-forward to now, and McNair is an 85-year-old man who in June began serving a five-year sentence at a federal penitentiary in Illinois for public corruption. At his age, it could be a life sentence unless President Obama intervenes and pardons him, which I and so many others who knew McNair pray will happen.

How did this man, who nearly 50 years ago became a symbol for dignity and graciousness in the face of disaster, fall so far from grace? His accusers will say it was greed, though McNair appeared to plead naivete. The old man told prosecutors he didn't mean to break the law and didn't understand that he had.

The former member of the Jefferson County Commission was convicted by a federal jury in 2006 of bribery and conspiracy involving a $3.2 billion construction project to repair the county's sewer system. In all, 21 people were convicted or pleaded guilty in the case.

McNair was accused of taking nearly $1 million from companies that won bids to do the work, including $225,000 to expand his photography studio and add a memorial room, $320,000 to build a lake house in Arkansas, and $410,000 in cash.

McNair contended that whatever he took from the contractors were not bribes, but gifts from friends. His daughter Lisa tried to explain further to another Birmingham expatriate I know, Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home, who recently wrote about the case for the New York Times.

Lisa McNair said the white men gave her father gifts because they felt guilty for the McNairs' tragedy after seeing the local premiere of Spike Lee's 1997 documentary on the church bombing, Four Little Girls.

White guilt seems such a rare commodity these days that it's hard to fathom the contractors being so moved. In the past 10 years or more, it has been more common for me to hear from whites who complain that black people should be over whatever happened to us in the past and work harder to be successful.

But if the contractors, out of guilt, really wanted to do something for McNair, why did they choose an illegal act? What's that old saying? With friends like these, who needs enemies.

More to the point, though, why did McNair succumb to their enticements? In 1987, he was elected the first black commissioner of the Alabama county that includes "Bombingham," in part, because he was seen by whites and blacks as a paragon of integrity.

Christians are taught that no man can avoid every temptation, but God would like us to try. And when we fail, there's even a Get Out of Jail Free card, so to speak, that we can use to avoid our deserved fate. The gospel of Jesus speaks to that. But there's no biblical verse that will free McNair.

It took decades before any of the suspects in the 1963 bombing were convicted. The only one alive is Thomas E. Blanton, convicted in 2001 and sentenced to 25 years. Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2002, died in prison two years later. Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, who was convicted in 1977, died in prison in 1985.

What a tragedy if that also becomes McNair's fate - to die in prison. His medical history reportedly includes hypertension, strokes, diabetes, prostate cancer, sleep apnea, and depression, a diagnosis that doctors connected to the 1963 bombing.

McNair's crime left a bad taste in the mouths of people who were inspired by the story of a man who, in the aftermath of an incredibly heinous, racist act, became a respected leader of blacks and whites. What he did isn't excusable. But it is forgivable.

Obama should pardon McNair on behalf of a nation that yet owes a debt not just to four little girls killed in a church bombing, but to all the civil rights martyrs. Let an old man return to his home. He still has a story to tell, one of remorse, which would be important for the next generation to hear, too.