Change Requires Work

By Sylvester A. Harris

Just days before my 18^th birthday in 1975, I took a stranger’s life.  Sadly, not because I had to but for his belongings and I made my girlfriend an accomplice.  Although we weren’t arrested until several months later, the case was cut and dry.  We both took guilty pleas and I was given two mandatory 25 years to life terms.

When I was bundled off to prison in 1976, only 19 years old, the prison system was known as the Department of Rehabilitation. A local community college provided ample educational opportunities so I took a plumbing class during the day and worked on my associate degree at night.  There was also every other outlet for self-help you can name: AA/NA, Human Relations, Go-Lab, the church, etc. There’s no excuse to leave these places in the same condition as when we arrived.

Change requires work and a desire to become a better person.  It took me a long time to quit playing the blame game and accept responsibility for the wreck I’ve made of my life.  At some point I realized how deeply I’d disappointed my family, my codefendant and others who were counting on me.  This is truly the coward’s way out!  While my father, oldest brother and sister, among countless others, never lived to see how this would all turn out, I’ve always had this compelling need to make things right.  I had a notion to seek out my victim’s relatives and ask their forgiveness but was told that wouldn’t be a good idea.  Momentarily averted as I worked the 12 steps of AA/NA I knew I had to make amends to a lot of people.  Everyone who has completed their Kairos/Curgillo walk can relate to the struggle within me.

As you can imagine, I was carrying tons of guilt around and eventually found an outlet to channel my misery into something positive.  While at Sumter CI, I met others who shared my sentiments.  Together we formed the Captain J.A. Schultz Memorial Lifer’s Group, a prisoner-founded organization dedicated to making a positive impact on tomorrow by investing in today.  LIFERS educates and inspires its members to live with personal integrity, to act responsibly and to provide selfless service to the communities on both sides of the prison fence.  Although the group was created for people in my situation, our goal was to reach out to everyone doing time.  Plus the youth doing time, those in the boot camp and those brought in from the streets where criminal behavior is deterred, hopefully, by exposing them to the realities of prison life.

Prison is nothing like it was. You can look at the prisoners coming in and the people who are employees of the Department of Corrections. Notice the name change? But it is not all bad, or doom and gloom. You have to elevate yourself above the nonsense, pray and stay focused!  PRIDE, the prison industry, taught me a lot about the printing industry from purchasing to running large offset printing presses as well as silkscreen. I then thought it was time to learn computers. I completed PC support and computer repair. Now I’m learning programming through VisualBasic.net.

At times getting out is scary.  How do you cope in a world where a kid or anyone, for that matter, can pull a gun on a mirror image of himself and pull the trigger without a second thought?  I’d like to think I’ve helped some people get their lives back on track.

As for me, my parole date was last year.  The parole board decided to add five more years and will interview me again in 2013.  I’m told the victim’s kin wrote a letter that was read by someone in the Victim Advocate Office.  Amazing! I had 6 parole hearings over a period of 10 years and that was the best they could do.  I cannot fault the people who do not know me but know how horribly I disrupted their lives.  And you know what?  I’m about three decades too late but several weeks ago I finally wrote and apologized.  Maybe it will not change anything but I know I’ve changed and the peace I have felt having finally unburdened myself is indescribable. 

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