PRISON EVACUATIONS OVER

Friday, September 6, 2019

NOTICE: The prison hurricane evacuation was only a test. If it had been a real hurricane evacuation, there would have been high winds and rain blowing off roofs and flooding the streets in Florida. Instead, thousands of prisoners were quickly bused to distant inland prisons as practice, in case a real emergency comes up during the current hurricane season. No one is complaining. Hurricane Dorian blew away large swaths of the Bahamas, but spared Florida. All we saw were breezes and intermittent drizzles.

On Wednesday, September 4th, the FDC Secretary, retired U. S. Army General Mark Inch came to Columbia C. I. to thank the prisoners for cooperating with the challenging prison evacuations. That's never happened in my 41 years imprisonment, the head man showing up and openly talking with the prisoners. We're hoping that willingness to participate in dialogues with prisoners continues.

The guards came in the dorm at 3:23 a.m. this morning and told us to get ready to return to Tomoka C. I. Ten hours later, we boarded buses. Dozens of guards were waiting for our return. Everyone was exhausted after the rough bus ride, and I looked forward to falling out on my bunk. It was not to be. Every bunk had been "flipped," the term they use for ransacking the housing areas while we were gone. It looked like Hurricane Dorian's wrath had been imported into our dorm, tossing the bunk mattresses, scattering pillows, sheets and blankets.

I understand. Everyone was gone, nothing was happening, the hurricane bypassed Daytona, they were bored, had nothing to do, someone suggested, let's ransack everything. Hey, good idea. "C'est la vie."

The worst part is the authorities have cancelled family visits for the second weekend in a row. It's easy to remake a flipped bunk. Losing days with your loved ones is irreplaceable.

Please pray that the weather build-ups in the eastern Atlantic Ocean fizzle out and spare us all any more natural disasters this year.

Best to all.

Charlie

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