Radford Noone Research Service

climbing your family tree

Mighty Drofdar

Spirits in Prison and Moving On

 

By Dwight A. Radford

 

 

             Karma is a real bitch. For the previous two years, I had visited my brother-in-law Nelson at the penitentiary and then acted as his sponsor at the half way house. I have to admit, my curiosity was piqued by invitation to actually test drive the prison behind the cinder block walls of the visitor’s room and descend into the belly of the beastie. I knew that in the visitors room I was seeing the sanitized version of the prison. Nelson only prodded my longing to know more with his brief, but graphic, stories. “When I come to meet you in the visitor’s room I have to undress right before I enter and get a full body cavity search.” All I could do was hope my jaw didn’t break as it dropped on the floor. He continued, “They are looking for drugs or contraband that inmates smuggle out to visitors.” As the images of rubber gloves, naked bodies, spread legs, and probing fingers raced across my brain, Nelson was extra cruel. “And I also have to do the same thing just after I leave the room when our visits are over. I figure if they want to see my chapped ass they can. I no longer care.” At that moment, I couldn’t help but mutter to myself, “Toto we’re not in Kansas anymore.

 

My volunteer work at the men’s section of the Utah State Prison is strange enough in itself. Originally I was invited to come down and meet the inmates. “You’re a professional genealogist and you might like helping the men with their family history.” The invitation came from another genealogist who volunteered at the Mormon family history center at the Wasatch Unit of the prison. The use of the word men seemed odd, but then so did terms like inmate, convict, or prisoner. Of course I accepted the invitation to travel deeper into the concrete canyons that are the Utah State Prison.

            

             In Utah you get used to the Mormon Church being called the LDS Church. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is difficult get out of your mouth in a sentence. It’s just easier to say LDS Church, and everybody uses that term. However, at the end of the day it’s simply “the church,” and in Utah everybody knows what that means. The church uses genealogy as a tool of self-discovery and rehabilitation. It’s tied to the religion, like having ketchup with your fries. At the family history center, the inmates order in microfilm, write letters, and use computer databases of historical records. Men of all backgrounds utilize the center. The only requirements are that they are first approved, and then they follow the center rules. Other denominations have their own outreach programs in place.

            

             After first visiting and meeting the men, I was hooked and said that I’d love to volunteer each week helping out where I could. What was never told to me upon volunteering was that there was an emotional component in the job description. It must have been in the fine print somewhere. I would never have dreamed that the day would come when I would be getting phone calls about inmates from the center director, and that it would impact me to the degree that it does.

 

 The phone calls will begin innocently enough, “Hi Dwight, how are you doing?” It’s never that simple and I’ll beat him to the draw, “What now?” I’ll immediately strike in a precision blow. “Randy got his face beat in and has sixteen stitches.” The director certainly didn’t beat around the bush on that one. With a sigh, I continued, “Oh no not again,” as my heart sank deeper and deeper. The process of sorting through the day’s events at the family history center was something that I never thought I’d be involved with. Yet there I was, chained to the other end of the telephone, hanging on to every word from the director, as if I had won the Publisher’s Clearing House million dollars.

 

Randy is Caucasian, with long hair and in his early forties. He has no tattoos and, while slightly unkempt in his prison white uniform, it’s not overly so and hardly noticeable. Inmates let their hair grow long for one of two reasons. Prison hair is donated to make wigs for cancer patients. Volunteer service such as this is not uncommon in Utah. Otherwise, as I’m reminded by the men, “The prison just raised the cost of haircuts to $2.00, and they know we only make 40 cents an hour.” In Randy’s case, he wants to give his hair so that wigs can be made. He has a consciousness about him that I only rarely see with inmates. I’ll observe him helping other inmates with their research and trying to explain sometimes difficult research concepts and computer skills that are usually far beyond the average inmate. This in itself makes Randy somewhat odd, as many of the men wouldn’t lift a finger to help another inmate if their lives depended on it. As inmates explore the family history center to see if that’s for them, I often forget that most have never used a computer before, let alone a keyboard.

 

Randy was raised in Salt Lake City. He hopes that the discovery of his heritage will be a gift to his family and temper the bad in his life with something good. The family history center is a refuge for him from the violence and insanity on the block. He’s housed on Baker Block (B-Block) which is where the skin head neo-Nazis and the gladiators (men who like to fight) are warehoused. He will often attend LDS Church services on Sunday although he wasn’t raised in any religious tradition.

            

             The family history center is part of the Wasatch Chapel. It’s the older section of the facility built in the 1950s. To reach the chapel I have to pass through long corridors made of concrete and barred windows. The concrete walls are so thick they seem to radiate the hot Utah summers and the cold Utah winters. On regular shifts there are inmates cleaning the concrete floors, giving it a creepy-clean shine that my floors at home will never be. Between the thousands of inmates who have walked the hallways, and the drums of cleaner used over the past sixty years, a smell somewhere between sweat and disinfectant permeates everybody’s clothes. When I walk outside the metal gates and under the razor wire to go home, I sense that I’m somehow different from anybody else I may encounter. At home, I quickly change clothes and try to convince myself that what I just experienced for those hours at the Big House was somehow normal. Even in my new attire I still feel like a favorite bush marked by a dog. Then there are the phone calls.

            

             Randy became symbolic to me in many ways. He was the first inmate I saw in the process of “moving on.” The director’s wife dubbed this psychological state simply by that term. It’s a stage where an inmate finally extends beyond himself and his own self-interest, reaching out to other people. Since it was being concerned only about one’s self-interest that got these guys incarcerated in the first place, moving on is a big step in the rehabilitation process. For those who truly move on will enter back into society with little trouble. Unfortunately, many inmates never move on in prison, nor do they make the transition once released. It was Randy who would provide me with the definition of what moving on means. “I am just so tired of being an inmate and associating with prisoners. All I want to do is move on to what’s next in my life and get out of here.”

            

             The director’s wife, in her late sixties and the grandmotherly type, was the first to notice that when I started volunteering Randy, was immediately drawn toward me. Female volunteers are not unusual at the family history center. They are drafted from the church ranks as part of a team effort, almost always with their husbands. Most are retired and one of the sacred rules of the center is they are never to be left alone with the inmates. We all know, “Thou shalt not leave a female volunteer alone with the inmates or heads will roll.” The director’s wife always dresses very modest. Her dress code is in a 1950s kind of way where her dress or skirt extends between her ankles and knees. This is very common among the women volunteers, who are instructed for security reasons to dress in this manner by the church. I would later learn from some of the female volunteers that, even in “uniform,” they don’t pay the matter of their safety much attention. They constantly share that they feel safer at the prison than riding the light rail system in the Salt Lake Valley. As they reason, they are looked after not only by the male volunteers but also by a host of inmates who act as their protectors. Little did I realize at first that inmates like Randy also did this for me.

 

The director’s wife brought to my attention that Randy was not shy about reaching out beyond himself, taking me under his wing. As the first inmate to officially “adopt” me as a buddy, I can say that my relationship with him has been more equal than with most of the other men. As he walks into my office, there’s a fumbling around as he and I begin to engage in a conversation. With most of the inmates I provide a listening ear, give sage advice, provide an expert second opinion on matters, calm them down with logic when needed, and, at times, act as a referee when two inmates have a serious disagreement. Randy doesn’t demand any of those hidden talents I tuck safely behind the volunteer ID badge around my neck at all times.

 

As he enters my office I automatically expect a strong but brief hug as he blurts out, “How are you doing today? I hope things are going good for you.” I’ve learned to let him take the lead in this dance. It’s important for him to be concerned about me first before I can be concerned about him. Eventually, we find the rhythm of the conversation. After one of the times he got his face beat in, I enquired about how he was feeling about it. He responded, “I was mad for the first day, but, after that, I realized it had nothing to do with me. It’s just this place. I’m actually fine. Bruised and stitched but doing fine.” He brushes back his long bangs and continued, “Take a look at this one. Eight stitches on that slice.” I ask if I could examine it to which he consented. As I gently touched it, I hovered between revulsion for the violence done to my friend, and compassion for the circumstances that he has found himself in. After stitches show and tell was over, he concluded, “I just hope my dad doesn’t come to see me too quickly because I don’t want him to see this and worry.”

 

When his dad had a heart attack recently, Randy was scared, feeling helpless and vulnerable. That time, he let me take the lead in the dance, as he desperately wanted to spend time with me and confided the pointed feelings that he was trying to sort through. With the roles reversed, and the conversation smoothly progressing, I offered, “While I can’t do anything about the situation at home…” to which to immediately inserted himself into my thoughts in record time, “You can be here for me.” That’s all he needed to hear in that moment of need to avert a meltdown. “Yes, I’ll be here for you.”

 

The director’s wife has closely observed Randy’s relationship with me. She felt this was a natural progression for him, since we were close in age. She likes him, so to see him drawn toward someone besides other inmates sent her radar into high alert. She thought it was healthy and encouraged my self-confidence in this new area of my life – as a role model. Good thing for Randy that I immediately bonded with him, which helped to no small degree with my insecurities in this area. When I was new, I was the one who needed the role model. Randy taught me about moving on as a new volunteer, not only for myself but also for him. His self-confidence in working with me helped my self-confidence in working with him. 

 

As our experimental relationship grew, he designated himself as my protector. He would clue me in when he felt someone was questionable at the center. “You need to watch out for some of these men. Some of them will not hesitate to manipulate you to get whatever they can from you,” Randy cautioned me. Now being a little challenged in these matters, I risked looking dumb and asked, “What do you mean? I don’t understand.” In that way that friends take you aside and give you the advice that you never asked for, he said in that this is serious now pay attention Bozo way, “I would hate to see you in here. I don’t ever want to see you in here as an inmate. Some of these men will ask you to bring illegal contraband for their own use or for resale. If you ever did that and the officers caught you; they could prosecute you. I don’t ever want to see you in here as an inmate.” As he finished his diatribe, I realized just how much he cared for me and feared for my safety.

 

Aside from being my designated conscience, I grew to trust him as much as he trusted me. If I needed to be educated, no matter how gritty the topic was, violence, sex, crime, drugs, or the prison demon of manipulation, I could go to him. One day I was teaching a genealogy class in another part of the prison, where Randy wasn’t housed, and I had a rather sobering experience of an inmate masturbating while I was teaching. Now I know I’m a good and entertaining teacher, but in all the classes I’ve taught at genealogy conferences, no one before ever enjoyed themselves that much! At one level, all I could do was muse that I got the touch – and apparently so did he. At a second level, I knew that I needed an insider’s perspective on what had just happened.

 

             Upon returning to the family history center at the Wasatch unit, I immediately found Randy, and confided in him. I was unashamed to ask him why the guy would do that. After giving me the blunt psychology behind male sexuality in prison, in a serious tone he began one of his now-expected lectures. I knew Bozo had better pay attention. He began, “You know us here at the Wasatch section, and you’re comfortable with us. You don’t know those men over there. Remember that we act as your buffer against this place. Never forget that prison is a very dangerous place.” In that moment, I realized how helpless he felt as I travelled away from his protective reach. The next unit over was only through several metal doors, under layers of razor wire fences, and one open courtyard for me to walk through; for him my five minute walk must have seemed like an eternity away.

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