Exonerated man has much to catch up on

The innocent man spent 18 years in prison until a DNA test cleared him.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
PITTSBURGH -- Drew Whitley had never met the young woman who approached him outside his mother's modest apartment, gently shook his hand and muttered: "God bless you."
An examiner scrutinizing his driver's license application the other day thanked him for his perseverance.
At a shopping center recently, Whitley encountered a deluge of well-wishers.
"People I don't know walked up to me and told me they are sorry for what happened, and to thank me for standing so strong," he said. "They told me my fight gives people hope."
The warm welcomes feel great, but they take some getting used to.
Only about week ago, Whitley was nearing his 18th year in state prison, where he was serving a life sentence for the brutal 1988 murder of Noreen Malloy, a 22-year old McDonald's restaurant night manager. People weren't so nice to him there.
Then he abruptly was set free with intense press coverage. He had been exonerated by modern-day DNA tests on physical evidence from a crime long ago.
First interview
In his first extensive interview since being released from prison, Whitley talked about spending more than a third of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit, about missing his son's adolescence and family funerals, about being blessed that at least his mother lived to see him vindicated, about the marvels of the cell-phone/Internet world into which he has now emerged.
As for the family of Noreen Malloy, he said, "I don't blame them for hating me."
His head still spinning at the sudden turn of events that resulted in his release, Whitley these days often finds himself muttering, "It's crazy."
"It's crazy," he said, when describing the phone call he received from his lawyer, Scott Coffey, at the State Correctional Institution at Greensburg, telling him that he was going home. Or when seeing that even kids these days have cell phones and know how to use computers. Or when he finds out that Pennsylvania has no mechanism to compensate people it wrongly convicts and sends to prison.
Whitley, now 50, spent his first days of new freedom with his family, renewing acquaintances.
"I am thankful that God didn't come and take my mother before I was set free. If that would have happened, that would have broken my heart for real," he said.
There was much he missed, what he called "the whole nine yards of life."
What motivated him
He was not there for the funerals of his brother Thomas and three uncles. He son was 14 when Whitley went to jail. Now he is 31, the father of four.
Whitley said he was able to keep fighting for his freedom because he was innocent, because of his own strong "spirit," and because of the support of his mother on the outside, and several of his friends on the inside.
One of those was Thomas Doswell, who was incarcerated in various prisons with Whitley before being released last August. Doswell had spent nearly 19 years in prison until DNA tests showed that he could not have committed the rape for which he had been convicted.
"Me and Tommy, we were just fortunate that we had some DNA evidence to test. Believe me, there's a lot of people I know are innocent who are still locked up," Whitley said.