In writing The Honey Locust Tree, I realized that my memories of prison ministry had some gaps, so I got in touch with two people who I hoped could help me.
The first person was Per Bykstra. He was the drug counselor from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, who had volunteered in maximum security hundreds of times. (To protect people’s privacy, I changed all names in the memoir.)
Per was in his mid-seventies at that point and didn’t go out too often, but I convinced him to meet at a café near my house. He had the same paw-like hands and shock of gray-blond hair, but when we found a table, he had difficulty hearing me over the noise. I told him that his hundreds of visits to maximum amazed me.
He rubbed his chin. “That was a lot, wasn’t it?”
I reminded him about the session in maximum when he discussed his grandson’s birth and his sister’s impending death.
“I don’t remember that,” Per said, “but it sounds like me.” He was trying to butter his whole wheat roll with a wooden coffee stirrer, but pieces of cold butter kept falling on his paper plate.
“When I first joined prison ministry, I was told that never, under any circumstances, should we ask about an inmate’s crime. But at one of our meetings, you talked about an inmate who’d killed two people in a bar fight. I thought that was off-limits.”
Per shrugged. “I wanted to know.”
I cupped my hands around my coffee. “Why did you do prison ministry for so many years?”
Per didn’t answer for the longest time. Around us, people chatted and laughed. Behind the counter, a barista yelled out an expresso order. He took a bite of his roll. “When we reached a peaceful state in maximum, it was more moving than any meeting I ever attended on the outside.”
The second person I sought out was Tim Putnam’s wife. She lived at Laurelmead, the assisted-living facility in Providence where she’d moved after Tim died. Of all the Quakers who’d volunteered at the prison, Tim had inspired me the most.
It was December and the lobby was decorated with holiday wreaths and brightened by a gas fireplace. Karen wore a gray wool suit and green silk scarf. When I asked how she was, she told me she’d just turned eighty-nine and wasn’t too keen on her new hearing aid. On the way to the dining room, we passed the bar. Karen said, “You want a drink?”
“No thanks.”
Over dinner, I described how Tim had written letters of reference for inmates and had lent his Faith and Practice book to an inmate in minimum security. I told her how the inmates asked if Tim was feeling all right if he didn’t show up at the prison.
Karen’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t know that.”
“The inmates admired Tim so much,” I said. “They didn’t listen to anyone else the way they listened to him. Once, he told a story about two people who noticed a woman swimming in a river. The first person said the woman was a Quaker, the second person asked why, and the first person said because she was swimming against the current.”
Karen smiled. “That sounds like Tim.
I reminded her of the story I’d heard about Tim driving down from Vermont to conduct services in medium security on Christmas evening.
She’d barely eaten her dinner and lay down her knife and fork. “My daughters and I weren’t so happy about that, but Tim didn’t want the inmates to spend the holidays alone.” She looked, for a moment, proud.
When I asked why Tim stopped volunteering at the prison, she said, “He had Lou Gehrig’s disease the last year of his life. He had a car accident and went in the hospital. They wanted to do all these things to keep him going, but he had no interest. He was a doctor. He knew what he had.”
Karen and I talked a bit more and then I thanked her for meeting with me.
“Thank you,” she said. “I learned some things about my husband.”