Meet John and Mary Thomson, ages 79 and 76, respectively. At first look, the pair may very well be mistaken for the North Pole’s Mr. and Mrs. Clause, a combination up they affirm has occurred greater than as soon as. He has a full white beard, a stomach and attentive ear. She exudes sweetness and calm with a prepared smile. They have been married for 44 years and are dad and mom to 3 grownup youngsters and 6 grandchildren.
Gabby receives a proposal
The Dear Gabby column on Jan. 28 included a letter from somebody who described themselves as “an incarcerated writer with nothing waiting for me on the outside.”
Eleven days later John wrote to Gabby. John Thomson shared that by the age of 26, “he had spent the past 11 out of 13 years in penal institutions of one sort or another. I was tired, hopeless and in utter despair.” Yet 9 years later, he was married, awaiting the start of his first little one and gainfully employed. He was open to telling his story if the RoundTable was open to listening to it. We had been.
A troubled childhood
Over two conferences and a number of hours of speaking, John advised his story. He rapidly remembers dates, names and particulars. His father, Wilmer, was an alcoholic. When he was drunk, based on John, Wilmer would beat his spouse, Frances, and John, the second oldest of his 4 youngsters from his marriage to Frances. Both dad and mom labored for Illinois Central Railroad, Frances as a phone operator and Wilmer as a switchman.
His dad and mom divorced when John was 10 years outdated. Frances turned a single mom with 4 youngsters (ages 12, 10, 6 and a couple of) and an uninvolved ex-husband. John was vulnerable to stepping into bother. He was caught shoplifting on the age of 6.
Glenwood School for Boys
Frances despatched John to Glenwood School for Boys in Glenwood, Illinois, a army academy for troubled youth, the place he lived from 1954 to 1957, between the ages of 10 and 13. During the summers, he attended Glenwood’s camp in Wisconsin. Hazel Crest is lower than seven miles from the Glenwood School. Each mum or dad visited him as soon as throughout his first yr, however in any other case nobody in his household visited him throughout his three-yr keep.
In 1956, whereas John was at Glenwood, Frances married John Killian, additionally a switchman for the railroad and had the primary of 5 youngsters along with her new husband. When John Thomson obtained out of Glenwood, he met his new stepfather and toddler stepbrother, Michael. As John Thomson tried to combine himself into this new household, it turned clear that he didn’t get alongside together with his stepfather.
The spiral continues
John Thomson dropped out of highschool when he was 16 and continued to get in bother with the legislation. His crimes saved escalating in seriousness. His sentences demanded extra time behind bars in harsher environments. Although John stated he by no means bodily harm anybody throughout any of his crimes, he acknowledged that he prompted emotional and psychological ache to his victims.
Over the following 10 years, John could be given probabilities, jobs and help by household and buddies, however he repeatedly upset the individuals who tried to assist him. In 1971, he wound up within the St. Louis City Jail following an arrest for the armed theft of a financial institution.
The man with the black lunch field
John was searching the window from his jail cell. He stated, “At 26, half of my life had been in juvenile or adult penal institutions. I looked out and I saw a man coming out of the courthouse, and he had a black lunchbox in his hand. I looked at him and I said, ‘Why can’t I be satisfied with that?’ I pictured a man who had a family, a job and so on, and I thought why can’t I just be satisfied with that? But no sooner than I thought it, I dismissed it as wishful thinking. And I resigned myself. I resigned myself to living the rest of my life in prison.”
But this man and what he symbolized – a purposeful life – was etched in John’s mind. He would recall this picture many times.
At his subsequent court docket look, he modified his plea from responsible to not responsible by cause of madness, which required that he endure a psychiatric analysis. John was despatched to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, for a 90-day statement.
Meeting Mary, a jail worker and volunteer
During his keep on the jail medical heart, he spent any free time studying within the jail’s studying heart. (In 1965 John had achieved his GED whereas a prisoner in a reformatory in El Reno, Oklahoma. He was in solitary confinement most of that point.)
One Sunday, he noticed individuals in avenue garments coming into the jail advanced to steer the weekly church service. Sundays had been a sluggish day and John was in search of one thing to do. On two consecutive Sundays, he sat within the again and attended the service. He didn’t say something. No one spoke to him.
One of the church volunteers was Mary, a former elementary college instructor. A graduate of Beloit College, she was tutoring prisoners on the studying heart. She additionally sang in a Christian people group and was a part of the group coming to the jail.
The subsequent day on the studying heart, Mary was working on the entrance desk. She described John’s look at the moment as “a stone hard face.” She seemed up at him and stated, “It was nice to see you at church on Sunday.”
John’s response was, “Well, that’s nice, but it didn’t do me any good.”
Finding and accepting religion
The subsequent day John apologized to Mary for his unkind retort. Over the following few days, Mary would sometimes interact with John about religion, however only some phrases at a time. He was bitter and with out hope. Recalling the incident, John defined that he had no roadmap or fashions of how to achieve life. He was afraid to attempt in case he made a mistake or failed.
John recounted, “She [Mary] said, ‘I’ve told you everything I know about Jesus Christ. You can either accept him or reject him. You accept him and all the promises of God are yours. If you reject him, the consequences of your life are on your shoulders.’”
That night time, John had a life-altering expertise. It was June 1972.
He stated, “I’m all the evil and criminality that you can lump into one person, right? I pray this prayer. I say, ‘If what she says is true, that you can change my life, then I accept your son.’ And I stop myself. And I go over it again. You know, no hope, no help. It’s all on him. It’s your job, you know, not me. And the second time, I say, ‘I accept your son as my savior.’ I immediately start bawling.”
The subsequent day, he shared the information with Mary. She was overjoyed however circumspect. The guidelines for the way jail workers had been allowed to work together with prisoners meant she wanted to be reserved along with her reactions. She smiled however didn’t say a lot.
A well being disaster results in optimistic adjustments
John nonetheless was going through sentencing within the armed theft. He knew he could be going to jail for years; he simply didn’t know what number of.
Months later, John was sentenced to 12 years within the most safety federal jail in Terre Haute, Indiana. He arrived in Terre Haute in January 1973. By the autumn of that yr he had developed a severe kidney an infection that appeared to require surgical procedure. John obtained transferred again to the jail hospital in Springfield, Missouri, in January 1974.
While he was recuperating, a guard that knew John from one among his earlier stays in a distinct jail observed that John had modified. His demeanor was completely different, much less indignant. This guard steered that John apply to serve his sentence on the jail camp advanced in Springfield, to keep away from being despatched again to Terre Haute. John adopted the guard’s suggestion and his utility was accepted. He spent 1974 to 1977 inside the federal jail camp in Springfield.
One of his jobs whereas in jail was as editor of the jail newspaper, The Weekly Echo.
Reba Place Fellowship
In 1975, Mary moved to Evanston and joined the Reba Place Fellowship. She lived in a big family owned by the church and had a number of housemates. Since she was not employed by the jail, she and John had been allowed to put in writing to 1 one other. They corresponded as platonic buddies for a number of years. She advised her church neighborhood about John and ceaselessly shared his letters to her with church elders.
Back in Springfield, John had 5 years lopped off his sentence for good habits. He spent the ultimate yr of his sentence on the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. Over the course of his 12-year sentence, he was denied parole 5 instances.
The final time he was denied parole was in October 1977. John appealed the denial. He wrote letters to buddies asking them to put in writing to the parole board to alter its thoughts. The marketing campaign labored. John was granted parole in December 1977 and launched to a midway home in Chicago in January 1978.
Epilogue
Reba’s communal households offered John the construction and acceptance he wanted to succeed upon his launch. (Communal households are the place one or two married {couples} and several other single individuals share a house.) There he discovered buddies, fellowship, communal meals, weekend housing and help securing work.
After he completed his keep on the midway home, he moved to Evanston right into a Reba family. It was a distinct family from the one the place Mary lived. March 1 marked the 46th anniversary of John becoming a member of the Reba Place neighborhood.
In jail John had discovered bookkeeping, which helped him safe work. Over the years he labored at Northwestern University as an accounting clerk, at Leo Burnett as an advert auditor, and at Scandinavian Design as a clerk in transport and receiving – he later managed its warehouse.
He and Mary started courting in October 1978 and married in April 1980. On the eve of their marriage ceremony, Mary gave John the proper current: a black lunch field.