A Life Wasted

Failure & Trouble 1978

April 29, 1978
I was twenty-one when Emily was born. Every father knows the feelings I experienced with the birth of my first child. The joy of new life, the feeling of immortality through your child, and the weight of responsibility. Some men would say the burden of responsibility, but for me there was no sense of burden, only a deep understanding that I had created this child, and for years it would be my responsibility to provide for her. We had been married ten and a half months when Emily was born, yet somehow I hadn't quite understood that I held the same responsibility for my wife. Of course I understood my responsibility to provide for my wife, but it hadn't really sunk in. I fully understood this responsibility the first time I watched my wife nurse our child. Not the burden of responsibility, but the beautiful gift of it. I also felt a deep sense of fulfillment. I understood right then that it was my destiny to be a husband and father. My life was perfect at that moment. I had strong faith in a Living God. I had a family. A beautiful wife. A woman full of excitement and wonder. A woman I loved so much I often believed her a dream. I had a daughter, a precious gift, a promise of forever. And we had a growing business that looked unstoppable. The foundation of my new life was strong and growing by the day. But foundations can crack, and hope can be destroyed. For me it took a little pressure and a series of very bad decision.

Two months after Emily was born the three of us drove our van and trailer to Florida for a fresh load of tropical plants. There we found a treasure. I was able to purchase a full load of the most beautiful ferns I'd seen. I bought them at a fair price and I knew the Cleveland floral market would go nuts over them. So it was with thoughts of a healthy profit that we began our trip north. While taking I-285 around Atlanta our van broke down. By the time we were able to get the van and trailer towed a garage our perfect ferns had been damaged by excessive heat. In the time it took to repair the van most of the ferns had died. None survived the rest of the trip to Ohio. This was a great financial loss, and would set us back, but we still had a green house full of plants to sell, including a rich trove of cactus that would be worth a great deal in a few months.

We felt the final nail slam home on our business coffin when we pulled into the drive. It was the first week of June and had been a hot summer, even in Ohio, so when I noticed our green house closed up tight I knew we had a problem. We had one employee. While we were gone his job had been to open the greenhouse's vents every morning, water the plants, and close the vents at night. He had done none of this. Every plant had died of excessive heat and no water. Even the cactus died from lack of water. Our business was in ruins.

Mary took it all in stride. She liked the greenhouse and shared in my excitement over our success, but now that it was gone she wasn't upset. Mary didn't care about "things", something she always reminded me of. Some people say stuff like that, but Mary meant it. To me the loss of our product meant the loss of our business. I was devastated.

For several weeks I tried to revive the business. We were nearly out of money, but I'd made some good industry contacts and was attempting to pull something from our ruin. Our only real asset was the greenhouse so I looked for an opportunity to use it to our advantage. Before I had a chance to succeed I learned of a new rival that removed any hope. At the beginning of the summer, Ralston Purina, the dog food company, had purchased a large greenhouse complex south of Cleveland. They were a major grower with miles of greenhouses in Costa Rico, and had just entered the wholesale greenhouse market with facilities aimed at the Cleveland market. My market. I heard of them from one of my customers, who showed me their price list. They were delivering single plants to Cleveland florist cheaper than I could buy them by the truckload in Florida. They would have put us out of business even if I hadn't lost every plant.

I wish I could explain my thought process, but I'm not sure I had one. If I did I've blocked it out. What I do know, is that July 29, 1978, exactly three months after Emily was born, I was arrested on burglary charges. Recall that when I was in Texas, Kentucky had a detainer on me that wasn't me. A man that shared my name had shot a police officer in Kentucky. Back then computers weren't so great, so the Ohio police thought I was that guy. So when they arrested me they thought I'd had already shot a police officer. They used a technique called a felony stop when they pulled me over. Mary and Emily were in the van. Mary has never shared her view of that event, but it had to frighten her. It would have terrified anyone.

I was charged with two burglaries. Mary borrowed money and bonded me out of jail. It was very hard to face her that day, but she wasn't judgmental. As always she was supportive and loving. I decided I wasn't going to prison again, so I told my wife we were going to leave and start over. Mary didn't like this but she didn't argue. She did ask if I was sure this was the best course of action.

To start over I would need new identity. There were people who sold false identity, but I had no idea how to find such a person nor the money to pay for it, so I had to do it myself. Ohio driver's licenses were issued by the automobile club, AAA, which I knew because I had an Ohio license. Going low tech I photocopied my North Dakota birth certificate and changed my name on the copy. I took that into the Trumble County AAA office and said I needed a license. I was too old to be applying for a first time driver's license so I had a story about missionary parents ready. They never asked any questions nor did they ask to see my fake birth certificate. After passing the written and driver's test I walked out of AAA with a valid Ohio driver's license with my photo and a fake name.

We drove to Atlanta and lived with my mom. I got a job doing construction work and we set about starting a new life. The reason I went astray so fast doesn't matter. Whatever my justification, it was nothing but a lame excuse. I'm past excusing my actions, so I wont make one up now. What matters is that once again I turned to crime, and again I was caught.

November 11, 1978 I was arrested in Atlanta and charged with burglary. The arresting officer ran my Ohio driver's and it came back with no arrest record. That would have been the end of it, but that morning Mary had given me a letter to mail to our former pastor. The police found the letter in the van and read it. Mary had used my real name in the letter, so they knew I was wanted in Ohio. No bond with a detainer. January 8, 1979 I was sentenced in Georgia to one year in prison. Mary finally figured out that I wasn't who she thought I was, so she went back to Ohio and told me she needed to think about our future.

In March 1979 I was moved from the Fulton County Jail to the Georgia State Prison at Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain was a medium security facility. With only a year to do I would have went to a minimum security camp, but I already had two escapes on my record and a detainer for charges in Ohio, so medium it was. I escaped from Stone Mountain March 29, 1979, ten days after I got there. Escape #3.

In one of those strange twists of fate, the first ride hitched on the north side of Atlanta was a trucker headed for Cleveland with a stop in Pittsburgh. He dropped me off on the Ohio Turnpike at a point less than a mile from where Mary was house sitting for family friends. All I had to do was climb the Turnpike's low fence and walk to the house. We only spent a few days together but managed to patch up our relationship. The time together ended when the police surrounded the house and arrested me. Since I wasn't a violent person, the Georgia prison sent a single guy to bring me back on a commercial flight. Mr. Esposito was a nice man who allowed me to spend a few minutes with my wife at the airport if I gave him my word I wouldn't try to escape on the trip back.

Georgia decided not to charge me with escape, but sent me to a place they felt confident I would stay. Statistics show that less then .5 percent of prisoners ever try to escape, and only a small percentage of those who try actually succeed. Those same statistics show that the .5 percent who try once will try again. It was a lesson Georgia knew well, so they had a special prison for men who had attempted to escape in the past. It was located next to the Savannah airport. Chatham Correctional Institute was a hard labor camp designed to punish while not offering an opportunity of escape. Every man there had at least tried to escape from somewhere else, yet in the previous four years no one had even tried to escape from Chatham CI. One reason was that the last two who tried were killed. The story is they were executed while attempting to surrender. I don't know if this is true, but it was believed by every man there.

When I arrived at Chatham I was allowed to call home to let my family know where I was. The only call allowed in Georgia prisons back then. The guard Captain dialed the number and sat with me while I made the call. I called Mary and gave her my new address and let her know I was okay, which was suppose to be the extent of the call, so the Captain was telling me to wrap it up. Mary asked me to promise her I wouldn't escape, but I wasn't willing to make that promise so with a nod to the Captain I said, "Don't worry Honey, this place is escape proof." She wasn't buying it so asked again, to which I said something similar. The Captain took the phone from me and explained to my wife that she had nothing to worry about that his prison was escape proof. That they wouldn't have any trouble hanging on to me. He had intended to end the call but Mary convinced him to put me back on. After hearing the Captain's reassurance Mary said to me, "Promise you wont escape." She didn't care what the Captain said, she knew me too well. I said I had to go and got off the line. I remember thinking with satisfaction that my wife knew me better than I'd realized.