Fortunately, I have never done time, but I have had a good friend who did actually do time in prison. His name was Gene, and as a youth he was a member of a very unstable family. His parents divorced and he lived with one for awhile and then the other. His father was an alcoholic and as a young adult (18 years old) he was free to do what he pleased and became a very heavy drinker, himself. He hung around bars where fights often broke out. One evening he was one of the combatants and during the fight he became so angry that he pulled a gun and shot the young man he was fighting with. He died on the spot. Gene was sentenced to 78 years in a Texas prison. For the first few years he did only what he was told and during the free time in his cell he was listless. During that time he began wondering about his family; he had never been told where his ancestors came from. He did remember that his grandmother had a strong Swedish accent and that was the extent of his ancestral knowledge. His curiosity was sparked, so he wrote to his mother but she gave him very little information. He wrote to his dad and he only knew a little about his French and Indian background; his ancestors had strong ties to the fur trade. His great grandfather and uncles were ‘voyageurs’ delivering trade items west to the native American trappers and then returning to Montreal with the traded furs. That was all done in birch bark canoes traveling through the great lakes. Voyageurs were tough men who had very few luxuries in life, just hard work and primitive living conditions. His grandfather, in fact was born on the White Earth Indian Reservation in North Western Minnesota. That’s where my mother was born and raised, also. This information sparked an interest in him. There was enough interest in family history that he started writing letters, gathering bits of information, here and there, and started developing family group sheets and charts, etc. He wrote to court houses and churches and hospitals, individuals and everywhere he thought he could get information about his ancestry. One day his father happened to see an inquiry from me on a message board asking for information about a common family member and he sent that information to Gene. Gene wrote me and we found out that we have common ancestry on both sides of our family. We wrote back and forth, weekly, sometimes monthly for many years sharing our research results, until he was released a year ago. Gene was one prisoner that was never stir crazy, he never had time to think about stir, only family.
He wrote a very good rationale for researching family. When he started it seemed that no one knew anything about their family. Yet everyone somehow preserved bits and pieces of what they had heard as kids, when great-grandparent told stories, I assume, a very cold Minnesota winter’s night. He found out that people knew things that they had long forgotten but a word or sentence brought it back such as trips back to the reservation to visit almost strange distant relatives, etc. There are family traits that connect people: musical talents, fondness for certain foods, the way we communicate with animated gestures, etc. He said that over the last 26 years, while in prison, he had become connected to a disconnected family. Because of his interest and sharing with his family he feels his family, once disconnected are now reconnected. They have learned to communicate openly and to share things and resolve problems rather than focus on past issues between them that have divided them. He said that they have grown stronger and better as individuals in the family. Gene has contributed to his family at large and their descendants will have available to them a trove of ancestral knowledge. He concluded by saying that, “I am a better man for having embraced my family history.” He believes that if he had to condense all of his awareness and insight into one short description, it would be that ‘Family is everything’.