Confession is good for the soul.

And there's a lesson for all of us. Rhonda Harris, would you care to lead the way?

Harris, 51, a former Wagoner bank manager, on Monday received the longest white-collar prison sentence in the history of the U.S. Eastern District of Oklahoma, said U.S. Attorney Sheldon Sperling —14 years in prison for embezzling $5.5 million from trusting bank customers.

I bet some former Enron employees can empathize. Trust and integrity always accompany the handling of our money, or so we think.

But a new reality is this: Donna Hales wrote in her story earlier last week that Harris’ longtime friend and bank customer Barbara Moore wrote the judge that her mother had taught Harris in school. She said her parents banked with Harris from the beginning of her career and trusted her implicitly. Harris of Wagoner always greeted the family members with a hug.

“I never realized that with her arms around me, she had a knife in my back,” Moore wrote in a court exhibit.

The story also said that Harris' attorney, Donn Baker, said the scheme had gone on so long, a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul chain of events made her an employee who never took a day off. Covering your tracks does that. I can only imagine the stress of hiding something for years. Cheating on your job, cheating others and even cheating on your spouse can do that. Harris may have an imposing task of paying back those she stole from — I wonder if they'll ever see those funds -- but in even in a surreal way today, she has to feel a sense of relief. Doesn't she?

I know people who kept dirty secrets for years say how relieved they were. Of course, none of them had to pay back $5.5 million to someone. If we are all fallible, then everyone has something to confess. Living in denial, however, can be burdensome, not to mention create some unnecessary back trouble down the road. Stress, they say, can do that.

Corporate people can learn this, too. Company A's CEO tells its employees not to believe that the sky is falling on their industry, that real investors know this so we should, too. Yet within weeks, they're laying off those same people because investors are seeing losses. A hug with one hand, a knife in the other, you know.

It's a good thing that the oil industry and all those speculators have found time to confess. Just this week, oil prices began falling. The Associated Press story said prices fell harder than they have in 17 years as “fears that record fuel prices are spreading broad economic pain exacerbated the third big sell-off in less than a week.”

Glad they finally noticed what the rest of us have been seeing for several months. Or maybe the confessional booth was not on the map.

The truth, as it is said, shall set us free. Not to mention a little common sense.

Kays is the Phoenix sports editor. Reach him at mkays@muskogeephoenix. com.