Dean Poling

Around Father’s Day, almost every year, for the past 35 years and counting, I think of them … at least for a few minutes.

Sitting in a circle with a group of murderers in a Virginia prison.

Why do I annually think about a group of admitted murderers at Father’s Day?

Because they were fathers.

Fathers separated from their children, with no recourse to guide them or help them.

They were going nowhere. They did not expect to ever be released from prison. They were in for life and that’s where they expected to spend the rest of their lives.

They had all pleaded guilty or been convicted of murder. Some served double life sentences. They recited their sentences in years – 150 years, 200 years. None of them were eligible for parole. None of them believed they would ever be free or live outside of a prison again.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t change lives.

I met them as a reporter for a southern West Virginia newspaper. I spent a couple of hours with them in prison. I encountered them again as they spoke to a group outside of the prison.

The inmates had formed a program designed to keep troubled kids from making the same mistakes they had made. The program was fully backed and sponsored by corrections officials.

Troubled kids visited the prison or the inmates met the kids in facilities outside of the prison. The program was like Scared Straight in that the aim was to keep these kids from one day being sentenced to prison but the inmates didn’t yell or scream at the kids.

They didn’t openly threaten the kids like in the Scared Straight documentaries.

Instead, the inmates showed the kids how wrong turns can lead to dead ends. The threat was implied: Keep making mistakes and you could end up living in prison with us.

The inmates told their stories.

Hard stories, powerful stories, stories from when they weren’t convicted killers but kids who started making wrong choices, kids who became men who made choices that put them behind bars.

And while some people said the inmates had an ulterior motive. That they created and participated in this program with hopes of redeeming themselves or one day freeing themselves. Those folks were only partly right.

Again, these inmates would never be paroled, according to the conditions of their sentencing.

But they did have ulterior motives.

They were all fathers.

Each one had children out in the free world. Sons, daughters, growing up without a dad in their lives. Most of them had no contact with their children. They were sentenced to life in prison and banished to exile as fathers.

While the inmates said they wanted to prevent kids from going to prison, they hoped and prayed somebody would help their children make the right choices, since they could not.

If I help this child, maybe someone will help my child.

When it came down to it, even in their circumstances, even when their choices led to their children growing up without fathers daily in their lives, they were still dads worried about their children.

They worried about their children’s safety, their children’s wellbeing, would their children turn out OK.

They worried about the stuff that most dads worry about but they hoped someone would positively help their children since they could not.

That’s why I often wonder what happened to these men. Are they still in prison? Are they still alive? How did their children turn out these decades later? Did they ever have a reconciliation with their children?

What happened to these men as dads?

And that’s why I often think of a group of admitted murderers at Father’s Day.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.