32 years after cheating, missionary confesses

Norm Lewis had gotten away with it.

In 1968, then a 51-year-old doctoral candidate in history at the University of Washington, Lewis slipped into the bathroom during his final exam and sneaked a peek at his notes. The test proctor, who had permitted Lewis to leave the room, never suspected.

And why would he? Lewis had already spent more than half his life as an evangelical missionary, much of that time in Argentina. His master's and doctoral dissertations focused on missionary work in the New World.

Lewis was in the clear.

As falls from grace go, Lewis' transgression was barely a blip on the screen. St. Peter might have greeted him with a knowing wink before gently patting him through the Pearly Gates, even if he never came clean.

But for 32 years, Lewis lived with remorse, keeping his secret from his wife, his eight children, his grandchildren and the countless people to whom he spread the Gospel, teaching them and pleading to be prepared for the next life. While all the time, deep in his soul, he believed he was not.

His passion for the Word was so fervent he once told family members in a crowded California restaurant that he would stand up on the table and begin preaching the Bible, if he thought it would convert one person.

"We got worried," said his granddaughter, Susy Brommers, who along with her husband was in the diner with him at the time. "But then he said he didn't think it would work."

His stringent faith only made him ache all the more for the moment of frailty buried in his past.

Finally, aged 83 and still healthy and active, Lewis decided it was time to atone.

"Dear Sir," he wrote in a recent letter to UW President Richard McCormick. "I cheated on my Ph.D. final exams in 1968. . . . I have regretted the act ever since."

There, in a few keystrokes, Lewis' confession was complete. He added: "I believe the Bible which affirms that `We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5:10).' "

McCormick had never seen anything like it. His first response was to ensure Lewis wasn't a kook.

A search of school records revealed Lewis had indeed received both his master's and doctoral degrees at the UW. His dissertations still were in the stacks in a school library.

Contemplating the odd situation, school officials made an equally unusual decision: They let it go.

"While I respect this man and his motives, we're not going to rescind a degree awarded over 30 years ago on the basis of a brief lapse during an exam that is largely a formality," McCormick said. "(A Ph.D.) is based inevitably on a cumulative effort over many years, chiefly on the production of an outstanding dissertation. So even if he consulted some notes for a few minutes on an exam, he could not possibly have been awarded the Ph.D. on the basis of a handful of questions."

Even had Lewis admitted his deception in the days or weeks after the test, school officials say they likely would have made him retake the test rather than rescind his degree.

"I think there is an important lesson here for students about the costs of cheating," said Jeanne Wilson, president of the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI), a consortium of colleges and universities founded in 1992 to address the issue. "He has felt guilty all these years, and has felt burdened by this secret, believing that he never really earned the degree he was awarded."

According to the center, cheating is prevalent on university campuses and has been spreading as students try to keep up with their competition - that is, students who cheat and get away with it.

"At some point you reach such a number of students cheating that others start cheating simply out of a sense of fairness," said CAI founder Donald McCabe of Rutgers University. "You get students who start saying, `I'm not going to sit here and be disadvantaged because others are cheating.' "

Surveys conducted by the center in 1990, '92 and '95 at 26 colleges and universities revealed that 75 percent of undergraduate students admit to cheating.

But Lewis' case is exceedingly rare. First, though few data exist, experts agree that cheating is scarce at the post-graduate level. Even more unusual are people who turn themselves in.

"In my experience, most of those who admit to cheating do not do so spontaneously - they do so because they've been caught, or they fear they will be caught," Wilson said.

"I had one individual call me twice, anonymously, seeking assurance that his degree would not be revoked if he admitted his cheating from several years prior. In the end, he decided not to give me his name, and I never heard from him again."

Wilson agrees with the school's decision not to take action against Lewis, given his age, his voluntary confession and that he also had to complete coursework and a dissertation.

"On the other hand, I think an institution might feel compelled to revoke the degree if we were talking about a medical or law degree or license, or some other professional field such as engineering or education, and the individual were younger and still employed on the basis of that degree or license."

Lewis said he never intended to serve as an example by turning himself in.

"It's not something I'm proud of. I just decided it was time to make a clean breast of things so I would not have to carry this to my grave," said Lewis, who declined interview requests but agreed to answer a few questions.

Lewis and his wife, Annabeth, share a house adjacent to the 35-acre campus of the United States Center for World Missions in Pasadena, where he occasionally works and where his son continues to serve as a missionary.

"I guess as a missionary, you never really retire," Lewis said.

Lewis has published a handful of works relating to missionary work, affixing his doctorate title next to his name.

Born in Missouri in 1917, Lewis grew up in neighboring Nebraska, where his father was a businessman, according to family members. In his 1998 book, "God's Word: Unique, Magnetic, Eternal," Lewis writes that he converted to Christ in 1931 while a premed student at the University of Nebraska, beginning a lifelong quest to convert people to Christianity.

In 1945 he carried that task overseas, moving his family to Argentina, where they lived and served as missionaries the next 15 years. He returned to the U.S. in 1960 and began his post-graduate work in Seattle, where, according to his book, he also served as president of King's Garden, now called CRISTA Ministries, in Shoreline.

"He's a very sharp man. He's like a mentor," said Susie Servant, a receptionist at the William Carey Library in California, which published Lewis' book "Priority One: What God Wants." Servant said she recently attended a prayer meeting led by Lewis. "He loves God with all of his heart, you can tell."

Servant described him as soft-spoken with an acute memory.

"He speaks in a gentle manner, but you know exactly what he's saying; he gets right to the point. There are no insinuations."

In a world where getting away with it is often held synonymous with absolution, Lewis says he came clean after all these years for a simple though powerful reason: "God knew."

Ray Rivera's phone: 206-464-2926. E-mail: rarivera@seattletimes.com.