HURRICANE DORIAN THREATENS PRISON EVACUATIONS

For weeks my wife Libby and I have been looking forward to the Labor Day weekend, three days of visiting together, and quietly celebrating my seventieth birthday. It was not to be. This morning the JPAY website notified everyone with a tablet that due to the hurricane, all visiting statewide has been cancelled. We knew that already. The only remaining question is will we be evacuated in the next day or so.

Dorian crept up on us, a mild tropical storm that spared Puerto Rico and headed west, building up strength, aiming toward Florida. Rumors abounded. Would we be packed on prison buses and evacuated somewhere north and west? In the past few years, this prison in Daytona Beach has been evacuated twice. In 2004, however, three powerful hurricanes converged and passed through Tomoka C. I. in a six-week period, raising holy hell. No electricity, no plumbing, no showers, peanut butter sandwiches three times a day, no visits. But we hunkered down and withstood everything Mother Nature threw at us.

The trees were not so lucky. Tomoka was known for its tall trees shading the compound for twenty-five years, only fitting since the prison was carved out of a bird sanctuary in the Tomoka State Forest. Red-shouldered hawks still perch on fences and seize inattentive mourning doves, sandhill cranes dig for insects in the lawn beside the library, occasional bald eagles glide overhead, panicking the turkey vultures and black vultures that roost on the stained water tower, and a colony of wood storks stake out swamp trees east of the compound. Territorial mockingbirds still serenade our visitors waiting for entry on weekends, and tirelessly chase away crows. A flock of wild Osceola turkeys roam across the parking lot, ignoring the visitors. None of our feathered friends nest in trees inside the fences. The trees are all gone.

There must have been at least two-hundred trees here before Hurricane Charlie demolished half of them. After hurricane season ended, the authorities decreed that the remaining trees would be chopped down for "security reasons." Within weeks the large compound was barren, except for a few oaks in the outside visiting park, and a lone pine left standing near the PRIDE factory. One of my favorite visiting park photos showed me standing in front of a beautiful oak in 2010. I left Tomoka that year for an eight-year tour of bad prisons, and upon my return in 2018, was saddened to see the visiting park trees gone, too.

The question remains--will we stay here or evacuate. The decision is said to be announced today at noon. The most recent weather radar models indicate a Dorian landfall near West Palm Beach/Ft. Lauderdale, many miles to the south, far from Daytona Beach, instead threatening perhaps six thousand or more prisoners in the South Florida region.

If you don't hear from me for awhile, we may be incommunicado. Please keep all the Florida residents threatened by Dorian in your prayers, including the thousands of prisoners who may be chained up in crowded prison buses heading to parts unknown.

Charlie Norman

Note from Libby: Sunday night late Charlie called me, said the authorities advised them that due to the severity of Hurricane Dorian, Tomoka C. I. would be evacuated on Monday, September 2. No one knows where the men will be sent, but most likely they will be split up among prisons on the Florida west coast, North Florida, and the Panhandle. They were allowed to carry only a pillowcase with a few hygiene items and medication with them. No one knows when they will return, depending on whether the institution sustains storm damage.

Charlie will turn seventy years old September 4th. Please keep him and all the millions of Floridians threatened by this storm in your prayers. I will let you know what's happening when I hear something. Thanks to all.

Libby Norman

Norman Cousins Reunite After Over Sixty Years Apart

Dateline: Saturday, July 6, 2019

This has been the year for reuniting with long-lost relatives. After 41 years apart, my cousin, Linda Thornhill Willett, in Texarkana, my home town, talks with me every week now, fifteen minutes of laughter, usually about the foibles of our mutual Walker relatives. After almost two decades apart, my brother, Dan Norman, has visited us twice this year, driving my mother, Lucille Norman, Aunt Alice Walker, and niece Tammy Norman to Daytona Beach, Tomoka C.I., for a few hours together.

The record was set this past Saturday when my cousin, Sue Jones, from North Carolina, visited with Libby and me. It has been at least sixty years since Sue's sisters, Betty and Jane, spent time with our family one summer when we first moved to Florida from Texas. We had a great time together hitting it off and becoming acquainted. Sue came to Florida to visit her sisters, and the last-minute visitation approval scramble almost didn't coalesce.

Sue's mother, formerly Frankie Lee Norman, was my father Eugene Norman's eldest sister. She married Ed Hatchell, and they raised three daughters and a son, William, in North Carolina. They made many trips to Dade City, Florida, over the years, to visit with my grandmother, Berta Lee (West) Norman, my uncle, Rufus Norman, and other Norman relatives.

I never knew that Grandma Norman spent so much time staying with the Hatchells and Aunt Eloise Norman. I told Sue about the time Grandma spent a couple of weeks with us when I was fifteen, and she taught me how to play the card game, Canasta. "She taught us, too," Sue said. It was like we lived parallel lives, hundreds of miles apart, connected by our Grandmother Norman.

Sue told us stories about her family and our mutual aunts, uncles and cousins that I'd never known, and her two children and grandchildren that I've never met. We share a mutual love of chickens and dogs, we both majored in accounting in college (although she went much farther than I did), love photography, and love camping (something I haven't been able to partake of in prison). Libby shares the same interests, and sitting across the table from them, observing them smiling and laughing, I was struck by the almost instant connections the two of them shared.

I told Sue that my clearest memory of her father, my Uncle Ed, was the ever present fishing cap he always wore, and the time he and Uncle Rufus took me fishing with them to a local lake, where he showed me how to cast a spinning rod and reel. When I shared that with Sue, she smiled wistfully and said, "He taught us, too."

She'd never heard the story Grandma told me about the prisoner of war camp in South Georgia during World War II, or the German prisoner who worked on Grandpa Robert Franklin Norman's farm. The Army allowed local farmers to sign out German P.O.W.'s to work during the war, and their prisoner became like a member of the family. He was a skilled mechanic, and after he repaired all Grandpa Norman's broken farm equipment, neighbors lined up to get him to fix theirs. When the war ended and the German prisoners were repatriated, their German didn't want to leave, not only because Germany had been bombed into ruins, but for fear of Hitler's punishment for having been captured by the enemy. Hitler wanted all loyal Germans to fight to the death, and captured soldiers were considered traitors to Germany. Fortunately for the P.O.W.'s, Hitler committed suicide.

Sue told me I should write down that story, so here it is, Sue.

Sue told us stories I'd never heard, especially about Normans in Moultrie and Norman Park, Georgia, Norman Junior College, and the Norman Museum. Those places and Grandpa Norman's grave are on our list to one day visit. She also filled in her own family history, which was sad for me, since I had missed out on so much, being in prison most of my life, unable to maintain the family relationships she shared with relatives I only knew by names. Sue, you asked about Uncle Buddy's eldest daughter--I asked my mother on the phone--of course she remembers the names of all our generation's cousins-- Ann Norman.

We shared details of our aunts and uncles, Aunt Frankie Lee's and my father's brothers and sisters--I knew Uncle Buddy fought in WWII, but was surprised to learn that their oldest brother, Theus Norman, had been in the Army, too.

I reunited with Aunt Frankie Lee and Aunt Eloise in May, 1985, at Zephyrhills C.I., when they came for my father's funeral. When they entered the visiting area and saw me, they both began crying. We embraced, and I teared up, too. Aunt Frankie Lee told me, "When I saw you, you looked like our father as a young man." I'd never met my Norman grandfather. He'd died years before I was born. My father was sixteen, and convinced my grandmother to sign enlistment papers that he was seventeen, allowing him to go off to war in the Philippines, carrying a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) and guarding Japanese Imperial Marine prisoners. He never drew his $70 a month pay, sending his allotment to Grandma, instead hustling other soldiers as the checkers champion for his own cash needs. When I told Sue my father met my mother while driving a cab after the war, she told me that her father had driven a cab, too. No wonder we got along so well. The similarities were almost spooky.

There is more, but it is late, and I must return to the requirements of life in prison. I don't know how our visit affected my cousin Sue Jones, but it had a tremendously positive impact on me. I felt that a lost treasure had been found. Thanks, Sue.

Charlie Norman

Freedom Date + 2 Years

Tuesday, July 2, 2019

I Need Your Help--Letters of Support

The Florida Parole Commission changed their name to the Florida Commission on Offender Review (FCOR), removing "Parole," perhaps because only fourteen people were paroled last year, out of over 4,300 people in prison under the authority of FCOR. At that rate, it will take over 200 years to release us all. I don't think we will make it.

Where we are right now: At my April, 2017, prison interview with parole examiner Mr. Z. C. Rowan, he recommended a July 4, 2017, parole release date, based on my excellent parole release plan and acceptance to the "Prisoners of Christ" faith-based residential transition program in Jacksonville, Florida. My trial judge's letter to FCOR approving my parole played a large role. FCOR administrators in Tallahassee also accepted my parole release plan. My wife, Libby, and I were ecstatic, as you can imagine, with the upcoming Independence Day being my first day of freedom after 39 years of wrongful captivity.

It was not to be. Due to the political tampering and conflicts of interest of two corrupt politicians with a personal vendetta against me (another long story), at the May 24, 2017, Tallahassee hearing, the parole commissioners, who owed their cushy jobs to those politicians, refused to sign my parole papers, for vague, contradictory reasons. We went to another hearing on July 19, 2017. Before the hearing, my then-lawyer, Bill Sheppard, was given a copy of FCOR'S "Final Order" denying my release and suspending my July 4, 2017, parole date for seven years. The Final Order was signed and pre-dated, "August 1, 2017," and we got a copy thirteen days BEFORE the final order was supposedly signed, effective August 31, 2017. Obviously, the decision had been made prior to that day's hearing, and nothing we could say that day would have any effect. When attorney Sheppard stated on the record that the decision had been predetermined, Commissioner Davison, who had skipped the previous hearing, denied it.

Although FCOR suspended my date seven years (an "ex post facto" violation), we do have options. Lawyer Sheppard bailed out when the money ran out, although he'd vowed to fight my wrongful imprisonment as a "good cause," leaving us to continue the fight on our own. It took us a year to get all my legal documents from the lawyer.

We are preparing a new parole release plan, in accordance with Florida parole law, seeking a "subsequent hearing" based on new information. As part of that effort, we need letters of support from friends and family, showing that there are reputable, law-abiding citizens (voters) aware of my case, and urging FCOR to right the wrong, grant me a new hearing, and release me on parole. If no one cares if I am not released, why should FCOR care if I am?

It's a numbers game. If only one person wrote a letter of support, they wouldn't feel sorry for me. If a thousand people wrote letters, that would get their attention.

I teach a weekly Parole Planning Workshop for old-timers like myself, most of whom are clueless about the parole process. I asked for a show of hands: "How many of you have no person in free society who would write a letter on your behalf?" Half the class raised their hands. Most of them have outlived their families and supporters. They have no resources or any place to go. They are "The Forgotten Ones."

I don't want to be forgotten. It has been over 41 years of imprisonment in some of Florida's worst, most dangerous prisons, yet I have survived, by the Grace of God. If you want to help, and will write a letter of support, I would greatly appreciate it. If you reach out to others, tell them about my case, refer them to the website and blog, ask them to write letters of their own, that would be great. If you need more information, or help with your letter, please contact Libby, and she will send you the information needed. She has copies of previous letters that might be helpful.

You can email your letter to FCOR Chairman Melinda Coonrod, melindacoonrod@fcor.state.fl.us  or write a letter to:
Melinda Coonrod, Chairman
Florida Commission on Offender Review
4070 Esplanade Way
Tallahassee, FL  32399-2450

RE: Charles P. Norman, DC#881834

### Important---please copy your email or letter to Libby---we have to have a copy to include with the new parole release plan:

Libby Norman
11475 Americana Ln.
Jacksonville, FL. 32218

email: freecharlie2001@yahoo.com...ph.: 904/269-0966...website: www.freecharlienow.com. blog: http://charlienorman.blogspot.com

I am grateful for any help you can offer. Please keep in touch. We should be celebrating two years of freedom on July 4th. Instead, Libby and I will be together in the prison visiting park inside Tomoka C.I., Daytona Beach.

Sincerely,

Charlie Norman