The students' parents were troubled, supportive, and forgiving. Responses to Greenough, while always respectful, varied from pleading to polite challenges to the court's judgment. Lumbard's father protested his son's "extremely unjust treatment." Gilkey's father hoped his son would be readmitted to erase the impact of a "penalty out of proportion to his delinquency", Roberts' father noted "how this dreadful news has upset me" and sought assurances from Greenough that his son had terminated his "evil practices" some months before. Others engaged in protracted correspondence and had employers send testimonials. In Day's case, since he was an orphan, his cousin undertook a long correspondence detailing his cousin's work habits and social contacts. Say's father, a Connecticut grocer, asked to see the evidence against his son, and Greenough replied that he could not send "the great mass of evidence" through the mail, though the actual evidence against Say consisted of a few sentences of testimony that mentioned him. Say's mother wrote as well and indicated she felt that others of greater means like Lumbard were not being treated as harshly as her son: "My son's father is not a doctor, but he is a good, honest working father."