Prisoners bring students a message

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, April 25, 2004

SNOHOMISH — Traffic zips by the Garden City Grange, people rushing around to do something somewhere.

Inside, Walter Navas sits in front of about 30 students and tells them time has stopped since 1986. He doesn’t recognize 98 percent of the cars he saw on his way from the Monroe prison to the building where Aim High School, an alternative school, meets.

Navas, 50, of New York, has spent more than 18 years of his life behind bars. He has a little more than six months left before being released. He longs to spend time with his daughter and go to a chiropractor after sleeping on a "10-gauge steel" bed for years.

He killed his girlfriend, whom he lived with and dearly cared for. What happened shouldn’t have happened, he said. He was in a destructive cycle of drug use and bad choices. It’s not easy for him to talk about it. But he believes doing so can help others. "I didn’t want my victim to lose her life in vain," he said.

So Navas shared his experience with the students. He was joined by two other inmates, part of the prison’s Speak Out program, which began in March. Darin Goff, who manages the program, came up with the idea after talking to Navas.

Willie Daigle, the prison’s associate superintendent, sat on the table in the middle of the three inmates who are casually dressed.

"This is not a monologue. This is a dialogue," Daigle said to begin the program.

Inmate Don Howell stood up and walked around the table. Howell, 60, served 23 years in prison for robberies. More recently, he’s been locked up for a parole violation and is expecting to get out May 3. He plans to resume his yard cleaning business in Seattle.

Howell asked students Jared Davis and Whitney Smith, both 16, to step forward.

What do you want to do? Howell asked, standing between the two.

Be a hairdresser, Whitney answered.

A mechanic, Jared followed.

"That means they have aspirations to be somebody," Howell said. "It may happen. It may not happen."

What do they need to do to reach their goals? Howell went on.

"Education is the key," he said.

Doing well in school requires good focus, and keeping the focus helps children stay out of trouble, he said.

Howell, who has six children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild, said teenagers’ success depends on what and how they learn.

"What you’re thinking is important to how society is going to be in the long run," he said.

The other inmate, Ernest Greenwood, 48, took the floor and shared the harsh reality of his more than 24 years in prison for burglary and theft. Greenwood, of Chicago, is expecting to be released in March 2007.

He shared that his son, 25, was just released after more than three years in prison for selling drugs.

Behind bars, Greenwood couldn’t be around his son and watched him fall into a downward spiral.

"It’s more painful than any blazes or bullets that I ever had," he said. Questions from the students ranged from what it is like being in prison to which drugs the inmates had used.

A tough question came from Bryant Nemnich, 15.

"What made you kill a guy?" he asked Navas. Asked later why he asked that question, Bryant said that his biological father was shot to death.

After a long pause, Navas managed to say he had no business taking his girlfriend’s life. He shouldn’t have put himself in that situation.

"That’s probably the darkest period of my life," he said, adding he can’t justify what he did.

There is nothing great about being in prison, the three inmates reiterated. You lose friends, privacy and freedom. You have to go through a strip search just to see family members.

"We are told when to eat, what to eat, how long to eat," Navas said.

Keep control over your life with informed, educated choices, Greenwood said. Otherwise, others will take it over.

Navas said he’s part of the Speak Out program because he wants to be a living textbook to show children the consequences of making bad choices, hoping none of them will follow suit.

But the program may be helping him even more than he’s helping others. He said sharing his experience with students has given him back his dignity and respect.

Navas said he would like to be involved in a youth program when he gets out.

"They can learn from their mistakes," he said of children. "Just because they make a mistake, that doesn’t mean that’s their destiny."

Some students got the inmates’ message.

"The focus is very important," Whitney said, adding what she learned can be a positive driving force. "It makes me want to work harder toward my goals," she said.

The program came as a good reminder for Jared, who said he has been in jail a few times. "People need to take control over their lives," Jared said.

After the program, the students went downstairs to resume their studies.

But the three inmates had to step outside and head toward a white van with an escorting officer. In the van, they found a familiar brown sack lunch: a ham sandwich, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a small muffin, chips and a piece of apple.

Cars pass by around them. People are going someplace with something to do. But for them, time again stands still.

Reporter Yoshiaki Nohara: 425-339-3029 or ynohara@heraldnet.com.