Clifford Hampton and Kuantau Reeder have been incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary 51 years and 17 years, respectively.  They discussed the choices and circumstances that brought them to prison, how their outlook has changed since their incarceration, and their hopes for the future. They also discussed punishment, redemption and forgiveness.

Maurice Rabalais and his mother, Dora Rabalais, talked about what it is like living, working and raising a family at Angola Prison. The Rabalais family has lived and worked at Angola Prison for three generations. Maurice and Dora talked about the closeness of the community of employees at Angola. Maurice spoke of how he feels at home as soon as he sees the Louisiana Penitentiary sign at the gates to the prison and that when he helps a co-worker at Angola it is likely he’s also helping a neighbor.

Lane Nelson and Gary Tyler discussed their shared experiences — first living as prisoners on death row, and then, after their release, working in the prison’s hospice program. Lane remembered shaking hands with men walking down the hall on death row to be executed. He couldn’t help but contemplate his own death. Now Lane and Gary help others face death, as volunteers in hospice. They take pride in their work, particularly when patients specifically request them to be their hospice volunteers. They have sat with many people as they passed. Lane remembers one patient who kept hanging on to life long enough to see his family. After the family’s last visit, Lane told him he was free to go, and he closed his eyes and was gone.

Assistant Warden Joe Lamartiniere talked about his work in Angola and his experiences evacuating prisoners from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Joe is now Assistant Warden at Angola and leader of the prison’s tactical team. He led the evacuation of Jefferson Parish and New Orleans Jails during Katrina. His team started with the ground level and watched the water rise by the levee. He cut a hole in the metal wall to open the jail and evacuate the inmates. On their final day in New Orleans they evacuated the officers and their families. In his 18 years in corrections Joe has met a lot of inmates, and is often recognized in jails and prisons that he visits.

Additional participants at Angola included Robert M. Tycer  and Johnny Bert Dixon; Donald Humble and Ray Jones; Edrick Jenkins; Kerry Myers; Kevin Seward and Stephan Ross Proctor; Ron C. Hicks and Donald R. Biermann; Ronnie J. Fruge and Wanda Fruge; and Bert Dixon.

We’d like to thank the staff and inmates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary for welcoming us and sharing their stories. Special thanks also to Whitney Henry-Lester, Lillie Love and Mitra Bonshahi for contributing to this post.

Father Bob: A True Man

Jim Murray and his son Bob Murray came to the MobileBooth to talk about Father Bob, Jim’s older brother and a devoted priest. Jim and Father Bob are the two youngest sons in an Irish-Catholic family of five boys, all with big personalities. The other brothers became engineers, attorneys, and insurance partners, but Father Bob knew from the age of nine that he’d become a priest.

Jim recalled, “He was never a pastor…He was quiet. If we were in a room, and if there were thirty people in that room, I’d go around and meet thirty people and I’d remember who they were and where they were from. But if there were two people in that room that were hurting, and one was thinking about suicide, somehow they would talk to Father Bob. And he would make them feel better about themselves.”

Father Bob’s life was cut short by sickness when he was just in his 40s, and Jim named his son after him. Jim explained, “He did his best. In a quiet way. And sometimes in our society we forget that to be quiet, to have inner peace, to have inner strength-that that’s what should be admired in our society. And I’m not knocking our society, it’s a great society, but sometimes there are people that see life in a different vision than we do, and it’s healthier than the way we look at it.”

Lillian Roudebush: A Caretaker Across Generations

When they were young, Emma Lee McCloskey and her brothers had a babysitter, Lillian. To Emma Lee, she was more than a babysitter. “I don’t think that would be the term I’d use. She was so much more than that.” Throughout Emma Lee’s childhood, Lillian would take her on walks around the Erie cemetery and down the street to spend time with elderly neighbors.

Years later, Emma Lee was a single parent with a son of her own, and Lillian cared for him as well. She took Brad on walks similar to those she’d taken with Emma Lee. Both Emma Lee and Brad remember the cemetery filled with tulips, and the PB&Js that Lillian would make, using more jelly than anyone else would consider. They also both remember the day she was hit by a truck in a terrible accident. Emma Lee and Brad were with Lillian through her recovery, through the sickness that ensued, and through her death in a nursing home.

Emma Lee recalled, “I know that between the two of us and all the people she impacted through her long life, and the way she didn’t dominate but allowed other people to come forth…she taught us by her heart and her caring spirit that one becomes family by being family. And that’s what she was to us.”

Clarence E. Beyers: Champion of Music and Community

Bruce Morton Wright, director of the Erie Chamber Orchestra and Erie Opera Theater, is widely credited with jump-starting Erie’s strong music community. A lesser known fact is that Erie’s music community was also backed by a behind-the-scenes benefactor.

One day 30 years ago, Clarence E. Beyers strolled into Bruce’s pick-up orchestra holding a duct-taped viola case. Bruce didn’t know it at the time, but Clarence was a visionary, and would slowly make his vision a reality. Bruce explained, “Clarence’s dream was to have an organization that could provide quality performances for the community but free of charge: to break down that barrier.”

Unprompted, Clarence began to fund—and continued to fund for decades—Erie’s free music programs, gradually establishing an entire season of free orchestra and opera performances in Erie. And he did all this without seeking acknowledgment.

“Now, Clarence was a special man. There are very few people that I have ever met that want to support something without anybody knowing that they had…He didn’t want to have his picture taken, take bows, or anything whatsoever,” Bruce said. Over the years, Erie’s music community flourished. “But if it weren’t for that individual,” Bruce explained, “that Mr. Beyers, that Clarence, that person that walked in with that viola with that duct tape keeping that case closed, if it hadn’t been for that input, that generosity to get us started, we wouldn’t be here. And I just hope that this community takes a moment to appreciate what he did for it.”

When Esmeraldaliz Torres was seven, she wanted to play the violin. She had signed up for classes at Erie’s Inner-City Neighborhood Art House, but the violin didn’t work out for her. Instead, they gave her a cello.

Esmeraldaliz’s mother Janet remembers the moment she first saw her daughter play. Esmeraldaliz was only seven years old, and Janet “got scared for her first performance because the actual cello was bigger than her.” They both laugh when they talk about that day. “I really didn’t know how you were supposed to play the cello, so I put a miniskirt on her, and that didn’t work because it had to go in between her legs. They ended up making a long skirt for her.”

Now eleven, Esmeraldaliz is one of the best cellists at the Inner-City Art House, and Janet is still front-and-center at her performances.

Not everything has always gone so seamlessly in the Torres family. Janet’s own mother wasn’t around when she was growing up in the Bronx. No one she knew played the cello, and few people in her family finished high school. Esmeraldaliz is an honor student, but she still struggles sometimes with math. Janet remembers working together on long division. “At the time I was still going for my GED because I was a high school dropout. But it was a pretty good process because we learned together… Once I got on that graduating stage, it was like I could to anything. All I could hear was my name being screamed. My kids and my husband.” Leaning into the mic, Esmeraldaliz imitates her family, yelling “Mom mom mom!”

At the end of their conversation, Janet looks at her daughter. She asks: “What’s the first memory you have of me?”

Esmeralda takes a moment before she replies: “The first time that I ever performed. When I saw your face.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought you were really proud of me.”

“I was.”

“She was actually, like, kind of crying.”

Janet laughs. “Tears of joy, though. I was real proud. It’s like I couldn’t believe that I did such a good job that she was up there.”

Site Supervisor Anna Walters (above) welcomed the assembled press and curious onlookers to the MobileBooth. Meanwhile, new Mobile Facilitator Lilly Sullivan facilitated our first interview in Erie, a remembrance by family members of  John Kanzius. He was an inventor, radio and TV engineer, and ham radio operator in Erie. John passed away in February of this year but made headlines after he developed an innovative treatment for cancer using radio waves.

Lilly came out of the recording just in time for the official ribbon cutting! Yours truly facilitated the second recording of the day with Santa-about-town and Gannon University mainstay, Joe Luckey, seen here with Karla Mullenax Wludyga of Gannon University.