The
First Meeting with Ron:
Excerpts
from My Diary
by
Greg
6/14/01 -...it was time to head to death row. The nerves were kicking in and it would only get worse up until the point I entered the prison walls. Let me set the scene first. After 80 miles of driving I found myself on a gently winding two-lane road. Glorious green fields, trees and small farms spread out along the way, then one more turn, and boom, the prison. Which is not to say that it didn't fit in there, in an erie way it did; the grounds were kept up nice by the small number of inmates who were out manicuring the landscape. I parked my truck, and then walked slowly towards a small building met by fences on three sides. I was shaking noticably, not because I was afraid of the inmates but because I have developed a fear of authority. Ever since my Canada trip when I was stopped at the border (twice), I just get this fear (which makes no sense because I am fairly law-abiding) when met by law enforcement officials.
So I walked in trying to hide my artificial guilt, presented my I.D. and was metal-detected thoroughly. There was another lady visiting who could tell that I was a first-timer, so she talked me through the whole thing probably having felt the same way the first time she entered a prison. An electric door opens, we enter, it closes, and another electric door opens. We were past the entrance and into the main grounds, where prisoners in their white jump-suits (likely fashioned when Teddy Roosevelt was president) were turning over dirt and planting flowers. They nodded at me and I nodded back, I was feeling more easy by the second. Into another building and through another set of slow-moving steel doors, and there we were.
The room was U-shaped, and in the center of the "U" was another room where the prisoners were placed. I was assigned a booth and I sat there for a good fifteen minutes staring into the cage in which Ron was to be placed. There was at least half an inch of glass between me and the other room which was essentially a corridor with several mini-cages for the prisoners. Eventually a prison guard arrived, and following her was Ron.
I smiled at him and he showed little to no emotion until his cage was closed and the guard had removed his handcuffs. Then we both picked up our respective phones and he let loose a smile, he was only keeping on his game-face for the guards. This began one of the best four-hour conversations of my life. Now from here on I will tell you about what I thought was going through his mind at certain points in the conversation but know that it is only speculation. What do I mean? Well after we greeted one another, talked a little sports and other smalltalk, the conversation turned, not by my steering, to death row. When he talked about it, the look on his face was as though an open wound was being touched repeatedly. I really think it was hurting him to talk about it, but he did so because it had been his life for the past nine years.
Ron has one of the sweetest faces I have ever seen, he could be on television with that face, but it was hard to look at him when he appeared to be in pain. Now this was only from time-to-time when we were talking about his situation. On some conversation topics his eyes would light up and he would glow, smile and all. But no matter where we went with our conversation it always came back to death row; neither of us was responsible for this, it just happened... He told me about what he did to land him on death row in absolute honesty. He could have lied to me; he could have not told me about it at all, for I didn't ask (and part of me didn't want to know). But he was straight with me, and it showed me that he really values my friendship...
Both of us sat in our place leaning forward, our heads resting on one arm while the other arm held the phone to our ear. I was a lot closer to him distance-wise than I usually am with others, even at a dinner table, and yet there was the glass. So we talked and talked, and sometimes I struggled to hear him over the phone because visitors on my side of the glass were talking so loud. We talked about travel, sports, politics, current events, our childhoods... I was able to buy him a vending machine lunch. The way it worked was I put the money into the machine, I pushed the button for the appropriate item, but the guard had to take the item out of the machine. I bought him a turkey sandwich, some chips, some raspberry twinkie-things, a soda and a water. Ron was mad when he heard the water cost a dollar and he said he wouldn't have asked for it if he knew it was so much. Of course bottled water always costs that much, if not more, so I told him not to worry about it...
...Time slowly wound down (glad that it didn't go too fast), our four hours came to an end, and I was told that I had to leave. He told me how much he had enjoyed the first part of our visit and I concurred. We told one another to take care and it was pretty easy to leave since we both knew I would be back tomorrow (but tomorrow will be a different story I think). Then I was back out into the sweaty, cloudy Texas daylight. Talk about taking something for granted... I hopped in my car and drove to The Rothko Chapel in Houston. I first read about this place last month in an in-flight magazine on my way to New York. It is essentially an eight-sided room with huge Mark Rothko paintings on every wall. On the ceiling there is an opaque sky-light, and the light in the room changes dramatically with the passing of clouds over the sun. Now Rothko's paintings are something I would normally ignore. I mean here were these giantic works that were solid purple, or black, or a little of one bordering a whole lot of the other, but it is not what I would consider art. In this room though, with the light fading in and out, your mind pulls out images from the canvasses. I was overcome with absolute tranquility; the problems of the world do not exist in the Rothko Chapel (which is not to say I did not think about my time with Ron). Maybe I can even say the world does not exist within the Rothko Chapel. People go there to meditate, to think, to pray... I even saw one guy just reading a book. It's Hemingway's clean, well-lighted place. It's glorious. And it is free, no admission; accessible arts is so rare in America. There should be strongholds of peace like the Rothko Chapel in every city, every small town. So there you have it with all the dot-dot-dots, one of the better days in my short life...
6/15/01 - Another day in the Texas "correctional" facility. What it is exactly that they correct, I have no idea. Today they gave Ron and I the best booth in the place with one of the few outdoor views. We started out talking about prison life of course, and I asked Ron how he would change things. He thought that it would be better if they actually prepared them to re-enter the world and provided them with some counselling. Essentially what the prison is breeding are individuals who will not be able to fit into society even after they have served their time. That seems like an excessive punishment that will effect the whole country in a negative way. Punishment alone is no answer. Have you ever seen a child (not that I am equating the prisoners to children) thrive on punishment alone? I learned about the gangs in prison, and how they police themselves, trying to some degree to reduce the problems within. Ron constantly repeated the word "respect," and how it fits into the prison system. When an individual does not respect others within the prison, even in a way you and I might think minor, there are severe consequences. The inmates have created a justice system of their own which is considerably more strict than the one outside of the walls, but when that becomes the norm and they take it out into the real world it can cause a lot of problems, and this is one reason we have the revolving doors of justice... Yesterday while sitting in traffic I watched as several people tried to cut in front of others. We are constantly trying to beat one another in life when, if we all worked together, we would all flow along so much smoother. I briefly considered opening some space to let someone cut in front of me, charity to the cheater, but thought better of it...
The conversation moved on and I learned other bits of Ron's past, about his being shot in the neck, about how he misses barbecuing on his days off with friends. I told him more about my life, we dined on vending machine food, talked sports... It was such an enjoyable, enlightening time. For $6 we got two pictures taken, one for each of us. I stood in front of the glass and accidentally put on my deer-in-the-headlights look while Ron tried to look serious behind me (he doesn't like to smile for pictures but he smiled plenty throughout our conversation so long as the guards weren't looking). The picture makes me sad; it looks like I am posing at some attraction. I wish I could have stood side-by-side with him, but the truth is that not all friendship pictures have to be that way even though they should be that way...
The guard on-duty lost track of time so I got to spend an extra hour talking with my friend. That made the total nine hours. That seems like a lot but I can't call him up tomorrow, I can't immediately continue one of the best conversations of my life... I think if everyone spent just a portion of the time that I did talking with someone on death row they would see the purposeless of this punishment. When I looked around the room at the other visitors they were laughing and grinning into a piece of glass. Behind that glass was someone who made a mistake, no doubt a very serious one, but not so serious that it merits murder by the hand of society. To spend the remainder of their lives removed from society is punishment enough; to remove them further is unconscienable... Ron thinks I would be allowed to visit when I fly back to Houston in a few weeks, not for eight hours but for two. This made my leaving much easier. We told one another to take care; I told Ron how much I enjoyed our time together and he let loose a grin despite the guards standing right behind him waiting impatiently to return him to his cell...
Ron asked me to call his grandmother and ask how she and his mother were doing; he wanted me to make sure they were alright since he hadn't heard from them in a while. Feeling somewhat awkward to begin with, I called the number once back in my hotel room. His grandmother answered (I think) and I told her that Ron had told me to call her and find out how she was doing. She said, "I lost my son." I had to ask her to repeat this because I didn't think I had heard her right, and she said the same words, then told me that he had died and she buried him yesterday. I said I was sorry and that it was terrible news, maybe not the best thing to say but it was the first thing out of my mouth. She was very calm through the whole conversation, told me how God will look after her. I fought my awkwardness and made sure she was alright otherwise, that the Houston flood had not damaged her house (I wonder if the flood is what killed her son; this is so devistating). She seemed reassured that I was a friend of Ron's, that he was checking up on her the only way he could (even though he wouldn't know until I write him a letter except that, as the grandmother told me, his mother is going to visit him tomorrow so I am sure he will know soon enough). She asked me to pray for her, and I said, "I definitely will." You pray for her too, okay?
6/29/01 - ...Yesterday at 10am I had my third and final visit to death row (for now). The two hours were pretty uneventful; it is hard to have a decent conversation when your meeting is governed by a clock. Still, we covered some more ground, looked deeper into the issue of capital punishment. A little sports talk, and of course I told Ron about my trip to California. It wasn't long until we were saying goodbye to one another, and it was pretty easy considering I won't be back until at least December. The letters will resume though...
... On my way out of the prison I was walking alongside a German woman (who resides in Switzerland); she had come all the way from Europe to visit with an inmate. She had received the name through Amnesty International. We shared a little about what a wonderful experience it had been for both of us. I told her that it was great to see that the rest of the world cares about the individuals on death row (since the majority of our own citizens do not). From there, I hopped into my truck and headed south to Houston, then east on I-10...
