prison funerals

 

July 7, 2022

A friend recently asked me how prisoners who died while incarcerated were handled; the following was my reply, which Libby thought was worthy of posting, as others may be interested:

A brief treatise on prison funerals.

The Florida Administrative Code, Chapter 33 Rules, FDC, regulate procedures concerning inmate deaths, notifications, and funerals. I haven't read the updated rules, since they don't particularly pertain to me, yet. Check the FDC website for corroboration.

From 1980--83 I lived in Bldg 7, C Area, of the Southwest Unit, 13 bldgs, air conditioned, your own key to your two-man cell door. Best living conditions in Florida prisons at the time. My cell window looked south, past the gun tower and the triple fences, across a large cow pasture, up a hill where the prison cemetery rested. Some people called it Boot Hill, after the movie Westerns. Others called it Gopher Ridge. Having never been there, I couldn't confirm the presence or absence of gophers.

My friend Roy died in a botched escape attempt. The chaplain notified his next-of-kin, his wife, in Tampa, asking if she wanted his body. She replied, "What am I supposed to do with it?"

The Starke Funeral Home had the state contract for prison deaths. Roy was taken there. They embalmed him, put him in a cheap pine box, and took him to Gopher Ridge. Several inmates with minimum custody on the outside grounds squad dug the grave. A chapel orderly, Nat Grimes, read some words from the Bible. The state auto tag plant made an aluminum tag with Roy's prison number only. No name. The tag was attached to a white cross. That was it.

Years later a new rule was posted, stating that unclaimed bodies could be cremated, saving the state money.

I suppose Gopher Ridge is still there.

Charlie Norman

CAN ONE BE A SUCCESS IN PRISON?

 

06-05-2022

Good morning. My name is Charlie Norman, and I am honored to have been asked to speak before this Gavel Club banquet on the subject of success. I hope together we can answer the question, can one be a success in prison?

When I was seventeen years old I went to church every Sunday. I was actively involved in our church youth group. We had several married couples who were our counselors, and one, Carol O'Neal, asked me to lead our fundraising activities for our upcoming summer projects. I organized Saturday car washes, spaghetti dinners, and door-to-door sales of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, a very popular item. We raised so much money that we paid for our summer camp programs, our beach weekends, a big banquet, and left money for the younger group behind us.

Carol O'Neal jokingly said to me, "Charlie Norman, by the time you're twenty-one, you'll be either a millionaire or in Raiford."

For those who don't know, Raiford was the state prison, also known as The Rock and Union C. I.

Carol never knew how prophetic her words would be.

My life turned and twisted in different directions. For about a four-year period I lived the high life, wearing a gold Rolex, dressing in hand-stitched Italian silk suits, flying first class on jumbo jets to exotic locales, partying with fashion models, rock stars, and professional athletes, and making more illicit money than I ever imagined. By the standards of the crowd I ran with, I was a huge success. It wasn't to last.

Carol missed it by a few years. I was thirty years old the day that battered prison bus drove through the River Gate and dropped me off at Raiford, the state prison. By anyone's standard, with a fresh life sentence, I was a total failure.

A few years later my younger brother Danny brought his family, wife Sandy, children Timmy and Tammy, to visit.

Danny said to me, "Charles, I wish I were as smart as you."

I was flabbergasted. Sure, I had always made good grades, and earned a four-year academic scholarship to the University of South Florida, but I had to be pretty stupid to wind up in prison for life.

"Dan," I said, "What are you talking about? You have a wife and children who love you, a house, a good job, a dog and cat, a boat, two cars, you go to church on Sunday, you're free to travel anywhere you choose, and the only times you've been in a jail or prison was when you came to visit me. I have ten dollars in my pocket, and when I leave here later, I'll be locked in a cell. That doesn't sound very smart to me. You're ten times smarter than I am."

Success.

Can anyone tell me, what is the definition of success? Raise your hands, please.

The dictionary says that success is ---

<--The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors

<--The attainment of one's goals

<--The attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like

<--A performance or achievement that is marked by success, such as the attainment of honors. " The play was an instant success."

When researchers ask men and women what are their definitions of success, they get a wide range of answers that change over time.

Overall, women define success in terms of life balance and relationships. Men define success more in terms of material success. How much money do you make?

Think about what success means to you, in your life. What do you have to do to feel successful?

Let me share with you how regular people have defined success.

--"Accomplishing the goal of helping myself and others lead a better, happier, healthier life."

--"Achievement of goals that help others succeed."

--"Positive outcome after hard effort and useful experience."

--"Success is about perception. It can be a defeat, but if you think it is a good result you will be happy."

--"To me, success is felt and realized when our works achieve acclaim. A sense of satisfaction at the end of each day is success, too."

--"Success is the positive consequence of one's achievement."

Let me share more definitions of success from famous people:

--John Wooden, an acclaimed basketball coach, said, "Success is piece of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming."

"The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do."

"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time." Steve Jobs.

'I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure-- try to please everybody."

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Albert Schweitzer.

"Fall down seven times. Stand up eight." Japanese proverb.

My favorite, by Ralph Waldo Emerson--

"To laugh often and much to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children to appreciate beauty to find the best in others to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch--to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is success."

What is the definition of success to you? Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What makes you the happiest?

What satisfies your core needs?

What do you value?

What types of accomplishments feel the most worthwhile to you?

Does your idea of success have multiple parts?

When I came to prison over forty years ago, several wise old prisoners saw something in me and took me under their wings, giving me valuable advice on surviving a life sentence. If you are going to survive and succeed in prison, they told me, you have to make a few big decisions, what kind of person you are going to be, that will eliminate a lot of little decisions in the future.

I decided I wanted to become a better person, to improve myself and help others. I renewed my faith in God, and attended Kairos. I joined Gavel Club.

 

I took every program available. I took college courses. I studied writing, and my poems, short stories, memoirs and essays were widely published. My plays were performed in New York City.

I wanted to become an artist, so I studied art for years.

My writing directly led me to my greatest accomplishment in prison. Twenty-two years ago I met, fell in love with, and eventually married my wife, Libby, a most extraordinary woman, my life partner. Together, we pray that one day soon we will continue our lives in free society.

You need to take your success and the skills you developed to achieve it, with you wherever you go, both inside and outside the fences.

The question remains-- can one succeed in prison? You have to want it.

By my own example, the answer is yes.

Thank you.

Charles Patrick Norman

June 6, 2022

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS CHANGE

 

The FDOC, in its wisdom, has made a deal with the JPAY company to digitize all Florida prisoners' U.S. Postal Service mail. We will not receive any original letters or cards from the "outside." Instead, JPAY will scan all our mail, and send it to our tablets, effective May 9, 2022. If you choose to send me a letter, please use the following format. Thanks. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Norman, Charles #881834
P. O. Box 23608
Tampa, FL 33623

Best wishes to you and yours...

Charlie

IN BONDAGE-- 44 Years an American Slave

 

04-05-2022

 

They don't call us slaves any more. Too many negative connotations. For some time they called us convicts, then prisoners, followed by their newest euphemism, "inmates," like deranged patients in a mental hospital, rather than slaves, what we really are. There are over two million of us in America, the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave.

Tuesday, April 5, 2022, will mark my forty-fourth year of enslavement in a succession of twenty-one Florida prisons. April 5, 1978, I awoke for the last time as a free man.

We are not allowed to write on our cell walls, endless scratches marking the days, months and years of captivity, like actors in those old black-and-white prison movies we used to see, but if we were, my wall would be filled with over 16,000 scratches, over 16,000 days in these small, dreary cages. I was twenty-eight years old when I was enslaved. I am seventy-two now. Add it up. Don't take my word for it.

To go along with that, they tell me I have over 10,000 days of incentive "gain-time" accumulated, over 27.4 years credit, at twenty days a month, every month, for "above satisfactory" good behavior and positive program involvement, for what good it does me.

My "Prospective Parole Release Date" (PPRD), remains frozen at July 4, 2017, the date I was supposed to be freed to return home to my  wife, Libby. However, the politically-appointed parole commissioners owed a debt to the corrupt former prosecutor, Mark Ober, who suborned perjury from convicted felons to wrongfully convict me for murder. His more powerful political crony had him appointed to the "Parole Qualifications Committee," (PQC), where he personally approved the appointments of the three sitting parole commissioners, a neat hat trick. No way would those three go against the wishes of their benefactor, who claims he fears me. What does he have to fear from me? I forgave him his sins against me long ago.

After I turned down his increasingly lenient plea offerings, after he threatened me with the electric chair, the death penalty if I refused his offers, after I refused to pay the bribe that would make the case "go away," Mark Ober was overheard telling his lackeys, "Norman will never survive a life sentence." Mark, I beg to differ with you. Although I am in failing health - prison grinds down the strongest-- I've vowed to survive this life sentence and once again breathe the air as a free man.

We are seeking a new parole hearing before the renamed "Florida Commission on Offender Review" (FCOR), asking the commissioners to affirm the July 4, 2017, release date and grant my parole. I have an excellent parole release plan that was approved five years ago. My trial judge, J. Rogers Padgett, a senior judge still on the bench, wrote letters to each parole commissioner approving my parole, a rare act. The FCOR commissioners ignored his recommendation.

There is so much more. Many men and women are out on parole with far more serious sentence circumstances, with convictions for two and even three murders, even suspected serial killers released after serving their 25-year minimum sentences. In the law, that is called proportionality, "may the sentence befit the crime." The Florida Supreme Court examines every death penalty case for dis-proportionality, but since I didn't get the death penalty, the issue didn't come up.

Do you want to help? Letters from citizens in support of my release have a positive impact. Emails work, too, but Libby needs copies of letters and emails to include in our release plan. Any questions? Libby can answer them, and we'll be thankful for your help.

Last but not least, I still believe God has a plan for all our lives, and pray that plan comes to fruition soon. Without faith and hope, and the protection of guardian angels along the way, I would never have made this forty-fourth anniversary.

Thank you and God bless you.

Charles Patrick Norman