Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 17, 1995 TAG: 9504170044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLAND LENGTH: Long
After all, the seats in the long assembly hall were filled with kids who might normally sleep or talk through a speech.
Here, they were quiet.
But make no mistake - these kids are troublemakers. Some are on probation. Most drink beer, and some smoke pot. One stole a car to pick up a girl for a date.
The people they were here to listen to, however, make their juvenile crimes seem petty. Sitting across from the kids in a semicircle of plastic chairs were seven prison inmates whose crimes range from double homicide to sex offenses to forgery.
And they were here to help.
Since 1989, Bland Correctional Center's Prisoners Assisting Youth program has reached more than 5,700 kids such as these, who are past and present students of Bedford County's Bridge School, an alternative school for troubled children in the fourth to 12th grades.
The inmates conduct sessions in which they try to warn kids away from lives of crime and offer one-on-one counseling by phone for troubled youths.
The kids entered the barbed-wire world of the prison warily, their yellow school bus passing guards with rifles raised in the air, passing inmates who shouted as the kids went by.
With annoyed looks on their faces, the kids walked single-file into the prison hall, getting patted down for weapons and contraband by uniformed guards.
"I heard a lot of bravado from some of them on the bus," said John McCallum, an instructor. "They're bad. They think they could get out of here."
He paused a second and wondered if any of them will be swayed from future misdeeds by their visit to the prison. "I hope so," he finally said. "I'm not overly optimistic."
Ben Perdue, founder of the inmates' program, introduced himself. He has been in prison 12 years and is serving a double life term for killing his in-laws.
That piece of news got the kids' attention.
"How many of y'all have ever been fools?'' he asked. A lot of hands go up. "Well, we've got about 600 fools in here."
He went on to tell them how alcohol led him to make the biggest mistakes of his life and cost him his marriage and his job.
The other inmates told similar stories of their problems with drugs and alcohol. They told the kids of the isolated lives they lead behind bars. Most were divorced or have gotten divorced since they were incarcerated. Their families and friends seldom visit.
When the kids ask about luxuries such as television, they're surprised to learn that inmates are allowed to have only five-inch television sets and they must save the $200 to buy them from their wages of 21 cents to 45 cents an hour.
Barney Snider is serving a 20-year sentence for breaking and entering and grand larceny. His twin brother died while Snider was in prison. He didn't get to go to the funeral, he told the kids. "And it's all because of drugs and alcohol and trying to impress my friends."
One prisoner, a younger man with long hair, sat waiting to talk, his head bowed and his hands clenched nervously. "All I have in this place is sorrow," he told the kids. "I don't have my freedom, I don't have my rights, I don't have nothing."
He landed in prison after he broke into a house and, in a drunken and drugged haze, killed the homeowner. "I didn't mean to take anybody's life," he said. "I wish I didn't do it, but you can see what drugs do."
He has been denied parole six times and gets out on mandatory parole next year. "I came in when I was young. I had to fight my way through to survive. It's very hard to survive in the penitentiary."
Another prisoner, wearing a black cap over his long sandy hair, looked through his dark glasses and talked of his lifelong battle with addiction. Sexually molested as a child, he turned to alcohol. By the time he was 16, he was using narcotics. Finally, he was in his 20s with a $400-a-day cocaine and heroin habit and a fiancee who died in his arms of an overdose.
"Death ain't like you see on TV,'' he told the young audience. "She messed all over the bed, her eyes bulged out, her tongue turned blue, and she spit blood.
"I have to live with that every day. You'd think after that, I'd quit, but I didn't. I used more."
He had a heart attack a few years later, trying to kill himself with an overdose. Then he had a stroke that left him blind in his right eye.
"I've lost my wife, my kids, my business, everything," he said. "I have nothing, nothing at all. My kids are living on the street, and I have to live with that, too. You think, man, `I'll just smoke that crack one time.' But, believe me, it only takes one time."
Dressed in expensive sneakers and low-hung, baggy jeans, the kids asked what kind of clothing prisoners can wear. Blue jeans, they're told, "And you'd better wear a belt," chimed in Lawrence Charles, a convicted forger and drug addict who started by forging his father's name on his report cards.
"This is not a nice place. You better watch who you smile at in here. You can't wear your pants around your butt here. They have rapes in here. You've got to watch what you say, what you suggest."
He warned the kids: "You're at an age now where if you can get away with the little stuff, you think you can get away with the big stuff. But I'm here to tell you that stealing, lying, scheming and conniving will break you."
His words aren't without reason. The kid in the Bridge School class who stole the car is 16. His heroes are gangsta rappers. He has been to the prison for these talks before, but he still gets into trouble. If he doesn't clean up his act in the next two years, his teachers fear the next time he visits Bland, he may not leave.
And with Virginia's recent abolition of parole, new violators won't be getting out for a long time, the prisoners reminded the kids.
"We don't try to scare anybody with our talks," Perdue said. "We try to touch their hearts. Hopefully, something we'll say will keep some kid from getting in trouble or hurting somebody."
This is the fourth class of Bridge School students to make the annual field trip to the prison. Gary Lowry, the school's coordinator, said he hopes more Bedford County kids - not just Bridge School students - will come on the field trip in the future.
"People forget crime comes in all shapes, sizes and colors," Lowry said.
He thinks that out of each class of 30 students he takes, maybe five or so go home with a lasting memory of the prison. But that's a start.
"They were scared," he said. "A lot of them were scared. It's not as glamorous a life as they thought it would be. They heard all these stories about how nice prison is, but that's not true. And now they know that."
Joe, 13, looked a little shaken after the speech, with the zeal of a new convert going down the church aisle to the altar. "I'm going to try to do my best," he said. He'll start by quitting smoking.
"I do it just to impress my friends, just like they were talking about," he said. "I've been arrested a couple of times, but not again. I know it can happen to me."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***