Six Degrees from …

            A true story: Summer, 1998. We are at Myrtle Beach and our younger son is eleven months old. We’re on the beach and realize we need a change of “floaties” and juice. I leave the beach and head through the hotel lobby and into the elevator to go to our room. As the door begins to close an arm comes in.  The door opens and in walks … Kevin Bacon. That’s right, the actor Kevin Bacon. Being who I am, I look at him and go, “Hey, how’re you doing?” I get a tepid “fine” and then Mr. Bacon puts his head down and has no further conversation with me.

            A second true story: we have a wonderful biology teacher this fall. She’s energetic, enthusiastic and brilliant. She’s also a “local,” raised in Charlotte County before moving away to become an infectious disease researcher. We were talking the other day and the subject of the movie, “Sommersby” came up. That movie – starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster – was filmed in the town I was living in with my wife and then only child.

            “My brother rented his house to Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford,” she told me. I knew the house. And, I remember Cindy Crawford. See, while Richard was “filming,” his significant other was exploring our little town (made famous after Brown vs. Board of Ed, when the white country school board voted to close the public schools rather than integrate). And that led Cindy, in a spandex sports bra and tights, to end up at the gym I worked out at. Cindy (I still feel like I’m on a first name basis!) came over to me and, in a sweet voice, said, “Can you please spot me?” How could I say no? So there I was standing over the lovely super-model as she bench-pressed.

            That evening, I regaled my friends with my “Cindy” story paying particular attention, and providing minute detail, to one part of her anatomy. It eventually led my wife to comment, “You’d think he never saw nipples before.” Which – in turn – led to my retort, “not like those!”

            “Famous people” stories. I have dozens of them from my travels and I use them with the guys in here who are enamored with fame. I tell them their lives matter as much as Jay Z or Snoop Dogg or the dozens of other celebrities they wish they were like. I tell them the same thing I told my older son after I’d spent a night at a high dollar craps table with the producers for the band Coldplay. My son asked me “Did you get your picture with them?” I responded, “They should have asked to get a picture with me!”

            We live in a world that is obsessed with fame and celebrity. But, the truth is, people are people and the real work, the real decency, isn’t in your fame, it’s how you treat each other. I understand why these guys “want” the lives they see these other folks living. But for me, as great looking as Ms. Crawford was, I value the moments I have with these young guys a whole lot more.

            Six degrees from “name the celebrity.” That isn’t what’s important. Heart, courage, mercy, those matter … and never more so than for guys putting their lives back together in here.

Saying No

The PBS news broadcast “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” had a story last night about California’s response to the U.S. Supreme Court recently declaring – in Brown v. Plaza – that the state’s prison system was “inhumane” and ordered the release of 33,000 inmates over the next two years to partially alleviate the excessive overcrowding that exists in complete violation of the Eighth Amendment.

What has California decided to do in response?  According to the news report, they are just saying “No”.  The DOC director (query:  how do you keep your job after the stinging rebuke received from the court?) announced that “no inmate will be released early”.  What is their solution?  Force local jails – already overcrowded and straining under the pressure of excessive prisoners and budget shortfalls – to keep state prisoners up to three years.  As one sheriff noted “we can’t afford to have the inmates we already have.  We don’t have the space or the money.”

The few men in the building who watch PBS news instead of BET’s “Freestyle Friday” (a “rap off” hosted by the incredibly attractive “Roxie”) came over to my bunk, heads hung low.  “They aren’t doing what the court ordered”, I heard from a number of men.  “We break the law, we go to prison.  They break the law and nothing changes.”

I smiled and uttered four small words:  “You gotta have faith”.  I have never been a patient man until…until all this.

California’s DOC director is not the first political leader to “say no” to justice.  History is full of men who arrogantly presume they know better.  And those men end up as mere footnotes to the transcendent power of human beings to overcome.

It was then Governor George Wallace who stood on the steps of the University of Alabama refusing to let black students enter.  “Over my dead body” he roared.  “Segregation now and forever.”  Wallace, the loudmouth bigot, is gone as are his sick views on race relations.  Young men in my writing class find it hard to believe that fifty years ago the idea America would elect a black President was “beyond reason”.

Few people recall that the case of Brown v. Board of Ed was heard and decided twice.  The first case was held over by Chief Justice Warren.  A new justice came on board, arguments reheard and by a vote of 9 to 0 the United States Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional.

Southern states thumbed their nose at the court.  The public school system my own sons attend(ed) in fact closed for years rather than integrate, all part of Virginia’s “massive resistance” campaign against integration.  Hey Virginia, how’d that work out?

My faith tells me good triumphs over evil.  Imagine sitting beside your radio in the darkest days of the Great Depression, 25% unemployment, the Midwest bread basket turned into a dust bowl.  There on the radio you heard Roosevelt say “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Imagine being an Israelite, enslaved for 400 years, crying out to God “when Lord, when?”  And a fugitive shows up.  Wanted for murder, this shepherd goes up to the most powerful man in the world – Pharaoh – and says “I have a message from God.  He says ‘Let My People Go’”.  Pharaoh?  He says “no”.  Plagues and pestilence follow and Pharaoh still says “no”.  Each action by God hardens Pharaoh’s heart even further.

Even after the Passover, after the death of the first-born of every Egyptian, Pharaoh still says “no”.  The waters part.  The Israelites walk to freedom.  And Pharaoh and his army?  Swallowed by the waves.

The California DOC director isn’t the first leader to say no to the drumbeat of justice.  And, he won’t be the last.  California will release inmates as will Virginia and every other state.  America can no longer afford the reckless, backward, inhumane prison system it has created.  Politicians may say “no” but the truth sees it differently.

The Visit

I had an emotional visit last Sunday. One of my close friends, a man who regularly visited me during my year of hell in jail, came by. He brought an elderly man with him. That man was always one of my favorite people in our church. He and his wife sat directly behind my family every Sunday morning. He and I would laugh and joke before the service. I considered him one of the finest, most decent men I’d ever met.



He and his wife were married in that church over fifty years earlier. His mother and father were members there. His children married there. His grandchildren were baptized, married and then had their children baptized in that church.


He’s 84 years old and he has seen a great deal. He was there in Prince Edward County when they closed the public schools after Brown v. Board of Education was handed down. The whites in the county didn’t want to integrate the schools. He doesn’t see color. A farmer all his life, he and his wife are simply kind, gentle, Christ like people.


After I was arrested, while nearly my entire church ceased communicating with me, he would send me a card or a quick note just to let me know he was praying for me. He testified on my behalf at my sentencing. I reread the transcript of my sentencing hearing. The Commonwealth Attorney was trying to get him to say how shocked and angered he was when he learned of my thefts. He looked the Commonwealth Attorney in the eye and said “No sir. He’s a human, made a mistake; but, he’s a good man.” That moment in the hearing always stayed with me as I struggled with the guilt I carried for letting so many people down. I didn’t feel like a “good man”. Far from it. I thought everything was my fault. I thought I deserved everything that was happening.


Then Sunday at visit he and I were talking, catching up on people at church. He told me he missed having me in the pew in front of him. Both men told me how well I looked and how impressed they were with my attitude and the work I was doing.


I couldn’t handle what happened next. As the older man listened, my friend told me my ex and younger son were “hanging in there”. I choked up and told them how much regret I felt over the hurt I caused my ex and two sons. “Not a day goes by that I don’t die a little because of the divorce. Everything that happened is my fault.” My friend fought back tears.


Not the old man. He grabbed my hand, looked me straight in the eye and said “Larry, you’re a good man. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We all fall short. You’re still a fine man and I’m proud to have you as a friend.”


There are times when things are said at just the right moment; that was one of those times. What most people don’t understand is I write a good deal about this place to help me deal with what I face. I come across as moving easily in and out of the various groups of inmates. And, that is true. But, what people don’t see is the level of sorrow I feel over what happened.


I live each day with the constant thought that I let down my wife and two sons. I didn’t just let them down, I devastated them. Imagine going through the remainder of your life knowing you deliberately failed the three people you love more than anything.


There is nothing DOC could do to me that would be worse than what I already feel. So yes, I write about the evils and stupidity of the corrections system. Yes, I write about the hustles guys run to cope with life in here. But, each day is filled with sadness and sorrow.


At our wedding a friend sang Jim Croce’s song “Time in a Bottle”. I can’t allow the words to even enter my mind. I want to go back to a time when I could look at her face and hear her say “I love you”. I want to go back to a time when my older son hugged me. I want to go back to a time when my younger son and I were in the yard playing catch.


Shortly after Croce released “Time in a Bottle”, he died in a plane crash. I wondered how long his wife grieved, how many months, years she prayed for just one more day.


My older friend’s visit reminded me at my core I’m a good man. Right now, I live with a great deal of memories and regret. But, there is still time.

All About Race

This is an uncomfortable issue for me to write about. It’s all about race, black and white. In my other life, my “on the street” life I had a good number of opinions about race issues. Growing up, our family only knew one black couple in our church. I still recall my mom commenting on more than one occasion “they are such a credit to their race”. Even at a young age I knew my mom’s comment was ignorant and wrong.



By the time I became the company’s in-house claims attorney, I had the most black employees working for me of any manager: five women. They’d come to my house for outings. I thought I was “color-blind”.


Yet, our family had no black friends. My wife, for all her liberal leanings, had no black professors working with her. Our church was all white, our friends the same.


Our kids were somewhat different. The schools they went to – Prince Edward County Public Schools – were part of the four consolidated cases that made up the historic Brown v Board of Education decision. Virginia’s history of school integration is as clouded as it’s handling of criminal justice and prisons. Rather than integrating the schools, Virginia politicians instituted a policy called “massive resistance”. Public school systems shut down. White children attended newly opened private academies. Black kids were deprived of school. An entire generation of black children failed to be educated.


As a result the Prince Edward schools were majority black. Our sons had black kids in every class, every grade. And, in another unfortunate twist, many of the black families in Southside Virginia, besides being under-educated, are also under-employed and poor.


After I was arrested, I learned rather quickly what it meant to be a minority. At the jail and here at prison, whites account for only about 30% of the inmate population. Blacks make up the vast majority of the men incarcerated here as well as the staff that works here.


I used to think blacks just needed to “get over it” – the whole “I’m a victim of slavery” mentality that seemed to me to permeate the black community. “Work hard; get an education, quit bitchin. You’ve got great opportunities. Get over it.”


I was wrong. I have gotten to know a large number of black men in this prison experience. A fair number I am fairly close to. I count them as friends. Almost my entire creative writing class is black. To a man, when they open themselves up, there is a self-hatred, a feeling of alienation that comes from their perception of being less than equal. It is a feeling that is generational and is a direct result of this nation’s abysmal record of dealing with blacks.


Whites don’t get it. But, for blacks there is no escaping the fact that they were brought here in chains and were deemed chattel, not persons.


White liberals, in their quest to show they “get it”, end up being condescending. Conservatives don’t even attempt to think race has anything to do with class status, crime, employment.


Fact is, America is hung up on race, whites and blacks don’t talk the same, think the same. There’s a funny song in the musical “Avenue Q” called “Everybody’s a little bit racist”. The sad truth is, it’s true.


Blacks are suspicious of whites. Whites suspicious of blacks. On the “street”, whites are in charge. In prison, blacks control and they take a good deal of frustration out on whites. As one of my students told me:


“You’d get a pass at a higher level ‘cause you’re a lawyer, but other white guys get their asses kicked.”


I sit in class and listen as guys describe childhood experiences. “My you are dark.” I’ve come to empathize with their comments about the police and the courts. As one guy in class told me after hearing about my experience with the detective and the judge: “Welcome to our world. You just became an honorary black man.”


I don’t think I’m responsible for slavery. But I know I have to be open to understand exactly what the slave experience has meant to black Americans. And, I have to be willing to call it as I see it. You start a sentence with “I’m not racist, but . . .” you are racist.


Everyone has prejudices, preconceived notions of how people act, how they are. We’ve all got to learn to see people, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.


The sad truth is, blacks are disproportionately ill treated in the criminal justice system. Crack cocaine convictions are predominately a black crime. Until recently sentences for crack cocaine were significantly greater than for powder cocaine (a “white” crime). Child porn sentencing (another white crime) carries lesser sentences than crack.


I’ve been made an “honorary” black both in jail and prison after guys heard and read about my case. It’s taken that experience and hearing the stories these guys tell to know things have to change about race.


We’ve got a long way to go and it starts first with just listening and sympathizing and understanding.