TODAY is my 51st ANNIVERSARY
of going to prison.
I was 20 years old.
I stood before District Judge Leo Brewster and made a plea of "Guilty".
Refusal to comply with the Universal Training and Military Service Act.
I was termed a "Conscientious Objector" during the Vietnam War.
I'd never been in any legal trouble before in my life - so this was a BIG start to my criminal career
Since I wasn't an "adult" yet - the judge had to sentence me as a "YOUTH" under the Youth Correction Act.
I remember asking what sort of "correction" could be expected since it was a matter of religious conscience and belief.
The Judge made one of those faces an adult makes when a kid is a smart-ass.
"The maximum sentence for an Adult is 5 years in prison. Since you are not an adult - I sentence you to the maximum sentence for a Youth, which is 6 years."
Technically speaking, it was termed an "Indeterminate" sentence which meant the Federal Correctional Institution's parole hearings would determine how long I remained locked up.
Judge Brewster dangled a bit of mischief in front of me.
"IF at ANY TIME during your incarceration you decide to CHANGE YOUR MIND, send word to me and I'll have you out in 24hrs and you can satisfy your duty to Alternate Miltary Service."
Here's what that means:
When I couldn't take it anymore - I could get out. I could simply go to my Alternate Service job in a Hospital. Easy Peasy, right?
When I couldn't take it anymore - I could get out. I could simply go to my Alternate Service job in a Hospital. Easy Peasy, right?
Jehovah's Witnesses, like any Conscientious Objectors, were not required to serve in combat, but only to serve equivalent time performing hospital service. Sounds very reasonable, doesn't it?
Of course it is!
But here is the rub!
Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed by their Governing Authority to accept alternate service. It was deemed a "compromise" and viewed exactly as the same thing as having gone into the infantry and pulled the trigger!
Crazy? Sure.
Unreasonable? Certainly!
JW's claim to not be a CULT. Does this sound like "not" a cult?
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I was sentenced and taken immediately to the Tarrant County Jail for processing.
My butt was searched for god knows what and I passed inspection, then put on an elevator up six floors to a long corridor of concrete and steel.
I'd have to get used to the echo of slamming steel for awhile.
I entered a large cage with 20 inmates who stared at me with the kind of expression monkeys see on human faces at a zoo.
Ironic.
I am six feet 4 inches and I weighed 165 lbs. It's hard to blend in with 80% black and Mexican inmates.
Every one of them had cigarettes lit and thick smoke in that cell never went away. Cheap tobacco - not regular cigarettes. Roll your own stench.
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I sit here this morning at the age of 73 looking backward through time at that 20 year old nincompoop who was me.
I wasn't so much "scared" as I was in a state of hypnotic, self-willed "determination".
I began an interior dialogue:
"If I were outside and free I'd be standing or sitting or walking. So I CHOOSE to stand in here, sit in here, and pace about in here. I CHOOSE THIS."
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And that's how it began ...51 years ago this day in 1967.
My Brothers and Sisters in the local Congregation would never send me a postcard, come to visit, write a letter or indicate they knew I was alive.
The day I got out in 1969, nobody in my congregation threw a party or patted me on the back.
Several asked me, "How was college?"
My prison sentence was viewed as a kind of sabbatical for self-indoctrination.
The human mind is a mysterious place where anything can seem noble and courageous if one is committed to BELIEF.
I went in wanting to "Do the right thing" and came out with a mind wrecked and dazed.
I threw myself into Full-Time door to door ministry until I crashed and burned and had a quiet nervous breakdown.
In 1974, I took my family and fled from Texas to California to escape the clutches of my "Brothers and Sisters" who didn't give a flying fork about me.
None of those people will talk to me - my old "Friends" and Brethren view me as a "mentally diseased Apostate."
They have been stuck in that cult for these 51 years.
At the funeral of my (former) best friend (who pulled me into the JW religion) I looked at their hang-dog, depleted faces filled with weary steadfast obliviousness and I shook my head:
*There but for the grace of *________* go I." (Name withheld to protect the guilty.
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Publisher's blurb:
________
From my book:
I Wept by the Rivers of Babylon (A Prisoner of Conscience in a Time of War)
I Wept by the Rivers of Babylon (A Prisoner of Conscience in a Time of War)
"Jail is like living at the bottom of a drain with the hair, spit and rotten teeth. Jail is for cheaters, thieves and molesters, bullies, sober drunks and dangerous creeps. There is no safe distance or personal space or intermission within the s-t-r-e-t-ch-ing elasticity of time. Jail is not for 20 year old virgin Christian boys who had never hurt a fly."
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Publisher's blurb:
I imagine there are a great many young men and women who--unless I warn them--will go down the self-same path I took, wasting my youth.
I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON is a cautionary tale for unwitting travelers on their imagined road to heaven or paradise. I mark the blind alleys, pitfalls, side-tracks to nowhere and last horizon where sanity drops off and HERE THERE BE DRAGONS.
IF I can stop just one more person from going along with the Watch Tower allure of empty promises and broken dreams, I can stop my nightmare from its eternal return. You see, it was too late for me. But, while there is still breath in my body, I have determined to raise the cry:
PLEASE! DON'T GO INSIDE!
For the casual reader, it is a historical recounting of the conscientious objector grappling with the Draft Board, FBI and federal justice system during the Vietnam War.
The 1960's was an incredible decade in which all the old values were turned on their head and a youth movement unhinged the power structure of modern society. Totally at odds with the hippies, flower children, rock n' rollers, druggies, war protesters and existentialist poets--young Jehovah's Witness men were clean-cut, polite, squeaky clean oddballs about to be fed by their Governing Body into a meat grinder on purpose. My book reveals that purpose and the human rights violations wrought by men of hubris who ran the publishing business cum religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. The path from ancient Rome and early Christianity up through the centuries to the time of Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford provides an enlightening contrast. Each denomination, sect and cult insisted they read the same Bible and followed the same God--and yet--the results of their absolute certainty were ever at odds!
How does it happen and what will make it stop? Read my book and hear my own answers.
I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON has succeeded in granting me peace of mind, at last.