Teen Explores Life behind Prison Walls

BY: ERIN GALLAGHER

The author outside of Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County

Jun 10, SOUTH CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA (SUN) — A South Charleston high school student visits Tirtha in Prison.

I’m a 16-year-old female and I just got out of the state’s maximum-security prison for men: the Mount Olive Correctional Complex. I recently went to prison not because I did anything wrong but to interview a Vietnam veteran who is serving a life term for murder and awaits a similar fate in California for another murder.

The prisoner, Thomas Drescher, was a member of the Hare Krishna community at New Vrindaban in Marshall County when he was convicted of murdering devotees Charles Saint Denis in West Virginia and Steven Bryant in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Drescher believed the two were trying to harm his religion.

My father, Andrew Gallagher, worked for The Associated Press and that’s how he met Drescher. He covered events dealing with Drescher after his conviction, and a friendship developed between the two.

Getting into my father’s car to drive to Mount Olive, my nerves began to freeze over as if a new Ice Age had just come. Nervous, I had no idea what I was going to say to Drescher. My plan was to interview him for a paper I was writing on Vietnam because he had seen combat during the war.

The prison’s main entrance was a gray building with a massive chain-link fence topped with huge coils of razor wire. A tower stood at the center of the hilltop facility. We passed through a guard checkpoint to reach the parking lot, then walked into the main intake area.

We waited for about 10 minutes for an officer to come tell us what was going to happen. We took off our shoes and anything metal we were wearing or carrying and placed valuables in a locker before walking through a metal detector.

We put our shoes back on and walked into a medium-sized room where we were frisked by different officers: a woman for me and a man for my dad. We were told to sit on metal folding chairs and await a sniffing dog. As the dog gave us a once over, his tail kept wagging and my mind kept racing.

After being cleared, we were given wristbands to identify us as visitors. We walked through the next checkpoint, where a guard saw I had a few pieces of paper and a pen - prohibited items. However, my father had called ahead and received an OK from the warden since I needed them for my interview.

We then received a stamp on our wrists that was visible only under black light and were buzzed inside. Sitting at a small, plastic, gray table, I began to get jumpy as I waited for Drescher. The room, enclosed in large glass windows that made it very light, was full of khaki-clad prisoners and their families. My legs were bouncing and my eyes darting all over the place.

In walked Drescher. He had closely cropped hair and a red hue to his face, reflective of the cold. He had deep blue eyes and walked with a cane. He was shorter than my father, who is only 5’9”. He smiled easily and talked directly to me, which slowly put me at ease.

The interview went amazingly fast; yet, in my mind, it seemed slow. I was intoxicated by every answer. Each time he spoke, I was so nervous at first that I forgot to write his answers.

Drescher was both captivating and amazing. While I was nervous to meet him and wondered what he would be like, I found him to be one of the sweetest, knowledgeable and most sincere persons I’ve ever met.

He is also a fascinating man. He received five Purple Hearts during his time in combat. He’s written books on his religion and has his own Web site. We talked about everything from pictures to walking around outside to his room in a different building to my learning to drive.

Then he began to talk about how he felt being in prison for the rest of his life. I will never, ever forget what he told me.

He said that being in prison for the rest of his life felt like he was standing still in time, and the rest of the world and everything he cared for was moving further and further away from him. He said it was as though he was standing at a window and watching his life drift past.

It was the most heartfelt sadness I’d ever heard from anyone.

How would any of us feel if we were in prison - not able to see our parents, our homes, friends, pets or anything we loved and cared for ever again? It would feel like we were completely ripped from the world and life as we have come to know it.

I remember how nervous I was when I got out of the car, stepped into the prison and heard the clanking of the doors close behind me. Going in, it was a lonely and frightening feeling as the metal echoed through the halls.

When exiting the prison, I was sure that this was a place I never, ever wanted to live in for any reason.