Wichita ? For about one hour, 50 relatives of murdered people sat in a workshop discussing a touchy question: “Do I have to forgive?”

The question, easy for some to answer, complex for others, brought emotions to the surface. Lips trembled and voices rose, at times straining to contain anger and old pain. Opinions varied.

The question framed one of many workshops that drew about 300 people to the national conference of Parents of Murdered Children at the Hyatt Regency Wichita. Other workshops dealt with victims’ suffering, coroners’ examinations, the death penalty, grief, DNA testing, victims’ rights, prison life, poetry and personal journals.

Death penalty

Bud Welch, 64, a former service station owner from Oklahoma City, spoke up in a resonant voice. Tim McVeigh — a monster in the minds of millions — killed Welch’s 23-year-old daughter.

Julie Marie Welch was a tad over 5 feet and weighed 103 pounds. She had a genuine smile and a keen intelligence. She spoke several languages.

She was doing her job the morning of April 19, 1995. She was serving as a Spanish translator, helping a Mexican man, walking with him back to her office on the first floor of the federal office building in downtown Oklahoma City. But at 9:02 a.m., a bomb that would shake the world exploded in her workplace.

Yet after being robbed of his daughter, Welch told the group Friday, he has forgiven McVeigh, who has since been executed in federal prison.

He had to forgive, he said, because the bitterness was killing him. In his grief, he was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and drinking abusively.

“When I forgave Tim McVeigh,” he told the others, “I released myself.

“He no longer controlled me.”

Now Welch travels the world, speaking about grief, forgiveness and his opposition to the death penalty. McVeigh’s execution, he tells people, gave him no relief.

He is not totally free of pain. He will be somewhere and see a young woman who reminds him of Julie, and sometimes it will trigger what he calls a “moment of rage.”

He makes a distinction: “I didn’t forget it; I forgave.”

Betrayal

In the same room Friday sat a 52-year-old mother, Barb Prevort of Milwaukee. She told the others that she still can’t forgive the man who shot and killed her son, John Goddard, as he slept 7 1/2 years ago.

She wears a button with John’s smiling face. “I was so proud of him,” she said. John was 22.

She felt betrayed. After all, John’s killer was his best friend. He had stayed at her home and called her “Mom.” Then he killed her son and two others before taking his own life, she said.

Prevort’s suffering culminated one day when she went to the killer’s grave and stomped on it. She cursed at him, as if he were there. She must have looked like a crazy woman, she said. Then she sat down and cried.

“I still hate him,” she explained after the meeting. “Just, I’m in a place now where it’s not eating me up.”

Still, Prevort won’t forgive. People have warned her that she will never be able to join John in heaven because she won’t forgive his killer.

Others don’t understand

Some at the workshop agreed that they have grown weary of people telling them how to feel. “They’ll never understand,” a woman interjected.

“Some of the most clueless are the clergy,” a man added.

One woman talked about how she spent years feeling bitter toward her son-in-law for killing her daughter. “I tried to hate him so much,” she said.

Gradually, things changed. He wrote her a letter saying he was sorry. She became convinced that he was trying to redeem himself. She ended up speaking in his favor when he faced parole.

The others listened quietly to her story. But as soon as she said, “They let him out,” someone in the room blurted out, “Oh!” — apparently disagreeing that the release was deserved.

Endless journey

One woman said there is a misconception among those who haven’t lost someone to murder: “A lot of people think we spend a lot of time thinking about the murderer.” Instead, she said, the survivors mostly remember the ones they’ve lost.

Sometimes, another woman said, survivors blame themselves: “If I hadn’t let him go out that night….”

“I had to start forgiving myself,” she said.

One man said forgiving is a seemingly endless journey.

“It started when I was crying over my son’s casket,” he said. “I’ll deal with it the rest of my life.”