By Rita McInerney

There were husbands and wives who came together with a group of people who quickly became friends and confidantes. They needed to talk about their lives, the problems affecting their marriages, how to cope with the fear of infidelity, separation, grief.

The weekend went exceptionally well for the 15 couples who participated, for the priest, the minister, and the other team members. It was enriching, honest, deeply spiritual and highly emotional, team members agreed. There were tears, smiles, songs and dances. It was a success far beyond the dreams of any of the participants and planners.

It wasn’t held in a sylvan retreat or in a high-rise hotel. It was the first marriage enrichment weekend held at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta on Sept. 5 and 6. It was for English speaking prisoners in the maximum security area.

Father Juan M. Alers, chaplain at the penitentiary, asked Mary Ellen Hughes, of the Office of Family Concerns at the Catholic Center, to do such a program. Excited about the idea, she called Jan Adams-Williams who does a remarriage workshop with her. She was enthusiastic and so was her husband, the Rev. Melvin Williams, pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur.

Two others saying “yes” to the idea were Dr. Pat Cleveland, counseling director, and Roberto Montano, clinical caseworker, both at Catholic Social Services. Later, a couple active in Marriage Encounter and pre-Cana, Tom and Kathy Foos, were invited to join the team. They agreed.

Team members met with Father Juan and some of the inmates to discuss what was needed. “They told us,” Dr. Cleveland said, “that they didn’t want the focus to be on negatives, everything that was wrong with their situation. They wanted to know how they could cope with anxieties, how their marriages could survive the fear of infidelity, the loss of control, the divorce syndrome.”

“Jan and Mel got in touch with a lady in North Carolina (who had led enrichment programs in prisons there) while on vacation in Myrtle Beach with their 18-month-old baby,” Mary Ellen Hughes continued. “They pulled everything together in two weeks. The team divided up the workload and went with it.”

Sixteen couples attended the Friday session which went from about 3 to 8 p.m., but one wife dropped out overnight. Father Juan, in deciding on the inmates to make the “program,” insisted on one stipulation – that they attend the entire weekend. Telephone calls were made to the wives, who live in Florida and Georgia. They all agreed to come and stay in hotels for the weekend.

Looking at photos of the group taken Saturday anyone would think they were people attending a 15 or 25-year class reunion. Except, of course, the men were not in blazers and tailored slacks, but wore tan shirts and pants of inmates. But their faces resembled the faces seen emerging from office towers at 5 p.m. or of the salesmen selling cars at a boulevard showroom. Many are in prison for white collar crimes, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement. Others are in prison for drug-related crimes. Their wives, some beautiful, and others wholesome looking, were dressed to please their men, in bright colors and soft fabrics, with artful makeup and shining hair.

Early in the program on Friday afternoon, each person received pencil and paper and was asked to finish these sentence fragments: I am. I can and I want.

“One reaction several people shared,” Mrs. Adams-Williams said, “was how surprised they were to be here. They didn’t realize their lives had gone awry to the point that they landed in prison.”

“Several wives said ‘I am angry, I want my husband home.’ Others said ‘I am growing;’ others said ‘I want to grow closer.’ Several were eager to find out how they could use this crisis to make their marriages stronger.”

Reverend Williams included some of the wishes of the confined husbands and waiting wives in a litany he prayed at the Friday night closing:

I ask God’s help.

I want to put a protective hedgewall around my wife and daughter.

I want to make sure that my son doesn’t come the same route that I came.

I want strength to make it until we can reunite.

I want to wait and believe things will work out.

I want guidance in making the decisions I have to make without being able to share and discuss with my husband.

I want my wife to be safe.

It wasn’t all intense discussion and praying. There was a social Friday night with Latin tempos played by a group of the Cuban prisoners. The inmates pooled their money to provide the soft drinks and snacks. One inmate confided to a team member that “It felt good to buy something with money I hadn’t earned from drugs.”

Dinner Saturday night was another social highlight. The entire group moved to the officials’ dining room for a festive farewell meal together, meat loaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and dessert. Later a group of prisoners entertained with country music.

Except for the Saturday night meal, the weekend activities were held in the chapel area, a large room divided into two sections. Everyone in the group had the freedom of this room, the hall and the bathroom. Guards were stationed outside the locked door.

Throughout the day the husbands and wives shared, inmates shared with other inmates, wives shared with the other wives. The group split into clusters, then came together for large group activity and prayers. Shame and embarrassment were major heartbreaks for several wives. One told the others of her double life, keeping her husband’s imprisonment secret from her boss, co-workers and neighbors, staying home from the office Christmas party rather than going and having to lie about her husband’s absence.

Others brought up the difficulties of carrying on the family alone; the decisions, finances, the heavy emotional load of what to tell the children other family members. One outspoken wife commented, “I think for us women it is more difficult outside. I am getting the punishment, from friends, family, the rejection of society.”

One woman related that her husband had told her that he couldn’t ask her to stay married because of his jailing. “I will make the decision. I’m in it to stay.” She told the group she had informed him.

They were able to share, said Mr. Montana, how they had been ostracized, the problem of having the children know, and the children knowing that others knew that their fathers were in prison. “It’s a tremendous experience to be able to communicate the same pains as someone else has,” he said.

One couple, Miss Hughes said, were groping since the death of their son from a brain tumor. The man had been unable to share his grief with his wife to the point that it had strained their regular visiting time together and their telephone conversations. During the weekend he was able to pour out his sorrow to her, to weep with her.

“We all cried a lot. There was a real spirit of openness and honesty from the beginning. They shared with us and demanded that we open up,” one team member commented.

“Just to realize that you are with people who have not been able to touch or hold each other, to sit beside each other, the little things we take for granted, is overwhelming,” Miss Hughes said.

The Williams made up marriage books which were given to each man and wife to write in their family memories – the happiest, funniest, saddest; favorite holiday, what they feared most, what they most wished for their relationship. Polaroid photos of every couple were taken and pasted in the books. Each husband was given his wife’s book to keep in his cell. The wives took the husband’s book home with them.

It was intensive and emotional for everyone, team members acknowledged. Mr. Montana said, “I don’t think they were burned out. There were the breaks, the meals. We helped them to be active, drawing, the marriage book. They took it seriously, we didn’t have to push them.”

“They were eager to learn. There was a nice balance of action, lecture, sharing. There was a good balance of encounters. I think we really touched them, helped them.”

As the program was drawing to a close, Tom Foos began to cry, Dr. Cleveland recalled. One inmate, a real macho type, came up to him, hugged him and began to cry also. This was an emotional moment felt by everyone, she said, as the prisoner hugged each inmate in turn. He admitted later it was the first time he had cried in five years.

“I think we’re still processing through the weekend,” Kathy Foos said in a telephone conversation a few days later. “I don’t think we’ll ever be the same again. No longer were they inmates and their wives but friends. I think they were very hungry for the recognition we gave that they were human beings and had a right to be treated with respect. My husband is a strong law and order person and we had made prejudgements. But when we got to know them, shared jokes, the feeling is not simple, cut and dried. They deserve to be treated with love and kindness.”

Father Juan is eager to have more such weekends. And already he has been asked to share the experience with the other chaplains in the federal prison system. He is grateful to the warden, J.S. Petrovsky, for permitting the weekend to take place, and for the cooperation and encouragement he offered.

Some of the inmates told the chaplain later that they would rather have two such a weekends a year than the four visits each month. The “really powerful” experience, they told him, made them feel like human beings. They have written several letters to the warden, urging him to keep the program alive for the good of prison morale.

Looking back on the weekend, Mrs. Adams-Williams admitted that “I was very nervous, didn’t know what to expect. I feared they would be openly hostile, but they weren’t that way at all. They shared their deep needs, it was an emotional and spiritual experience.”

Mrs. Foos was touched by the concern frequently voiced by the inmates for the Cuban prisoners because they are not just a state away, but a country removed from their homes and families.

As for the wives, one told Mr. Montana on the way out of prison that she “was going to pray so you can have more of these weekends.” Some of the wives, Miss Hughes said, who come from out of town and meet at the hotel, thought forming a support group was a good idea.

One of the wives, Kathy, talked with the Georgia Bulletin a week after the program. “I don’t think I had any expectations about the weekend. To be truthful, I thought it was going to be a big joke. It turned out to be 300 percent better than I expected.” She thought it would be a chance for the wives to see their husbands, to be fed, and see something of the prison.

Until the weekend, Kathy said, she had no contact with the other wives except to exchange hellos during the visitations.

“I felt, while there, more love, more kindness and understanding than I had ever gotten in a group. Deep emotions were shared and the feeling has remained. Peace and inspiration live inside me. We all needed what we found there.”

Her husband has served one year of a 15-year sentence but she says she prays for miracles that would bring him home to her and their son, six, sooner. She described him as “real positive” and expressed hope that the weekend would generate a spiritual attitude that would see him through.

She is hopeful that more such weekends can be scheduled as one way of helping achieve what prison is supposed to do; make better persons of the men confined there.

Just as Kathy spoke of God “living inside me,” so many mentioned His presence during the weekend, Dr. Cleveland said. Several told what a strengthening effect being in prison had on their relationship with Him. “God is the only go-between in their marriage, the only one who can be in both places at one time.”