“Mr. Governor, I am asking for a second chance at life. I am asking for a second chance to be the man that I know that I can be,” Kyle Beebe wrote in his pardon application to his father, the station reported.
The Democratic governor told the station: “I would have done it a long time ago if he’d have asked, but he took his sweet time about asking. He was embarrassed. He’s still embarrassed and, frankly, I was embarrassed and his mother was embarrassed. All of the families that go through that. It’s tough on the families, but hopefully the kids learn.”
Beebe says his son, now 34, did some “stupid stuff” when he was younger. “Liked to have broken his mother’s heart. His mother and I were stereotypical parents from the different end of the spectrum. She was the enabler that tried to fix everything. I was the nuclear bomb thrower that thought you ought to shoot him. Somewhere between those two extremes was probably the right thing to do,” Beebe told KATV.
“Especially young people with drugs if they’ve straightened up, to get their life back on track and have a second chance, so this is no different. It’s different because it’s my son.”