CHRISTMAS AT SAN QUENTIN
by Jody Cramer I spent quite a few days during the Christmas season of 1998 in the visiting room for death row prisoners at San Quentin State Prison. December 19th is especially a day full of images that remain in my mind.
The visiting room was frigid. Everyone in the room had on layers and layers of clothing. The lucky ones even had gloves. A small, inexpensive space heater sat on one side of the room, its heat detectable only if one bent down inches away. Not only was the heater a joke, but it caused the fuse box in the visitor room to periodically blow out. When this happened, the vending machines would stop dispensing their array of overpriced sodas, candy bars, sandwiches, popcorn, and bagels. Someone waiting in line to use the machines would notify a guard and, if things went well, the circuit would be back on in five to ten minutes. Eventually, the space heater was removed from the room, without complaint, since it was useless.
During the holiday season, families come to visit from long distances. Since every man on death row in California is "housed" at San Quentin, prisoners' families are often hundreds of miles away. The prison also holds prisoners from other states and even other countries. I saw many new faces during December as the infrequent visitors arrived. One family consisted of two beautiful teenage girls with long, silky hair and model's figures, their mother, and the imprisoned father, a man who looked like he could be a doctor or a clergyman. Much hugging and touching went on among these four. The father, in his required "state clothes," sat in rotation next to each of his loved ones, talking to them individually, holding their hands, or wrapping his arm around their shoulders. This group could have passed for the Brady Bunch. ''What went wrong?" I wondered.
Across the room another prison dad held his sleeping toddler son across his chest. The scene was a classic "Kodak moment," filled with this father's obvious love and devotion to his child. His wife sat next to him touching his arm and talking softly in his ear. A young prisoner, with tears streaming down his face, announced his engagement to a lovely young woman with abundant brunette hair tumbling over her shoulders. "What was ahead for them?" I wondered, since he is under a death sentence. At one point, several adults arrived with gifts for the children. The kids received and opened them with glee, totally unaware that they were children of the "condemned" in a maximum-security prison. Soon toy trucks were scurrying about the floor and rubber footballs were whizzing past visitors. The kids played around a sad, totally bare Christmas tree which seemed to have been placed in the corner of the room as an afterthought.
Since there were special visitors and this a special time of year, many families wanted to take pictures, but the guard said there was no Polaroid film. No mind, nothing-not the cold or the "state clothes" or the lack of pictures or the bare tree-could stop the true spirit of Christmas which pervaded the room, a spirit of acceptance, of friendship, of love, of caring, and of gratitude for life.
--Jody Cramer is an activist working to end the death penalty, to provide residential group homes for indigent, disabled adults as an option to nursing homes, and for animal rights. <jody@activist-etc.org> <www.activist-etc.org>