June 5, 2026 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, at seven years old, Randy Liberty visited his absent father behind bars at the Maine State Prison, whose imposing walls later helped inspire Stephen King's novel The Shawshank Redemption. Decades later, he returned to that same prison, not as a visitor but as a corrections officer. Along the way, he charted his own unique path, rose to become the prison’s warden, and helped reshape corrections in Maine by introducing groundbreaking programs designed to reduce recidivism and change lives.
Be sure to check out his book, Liberty’s Prison.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next comes the story from a
listener in Maine, Randy Liberty. For most people, a prison
is a place they hope never to see from the inside.
(00:31):
For Randy, it was simply a part of childhood. But
instead of turning away from that world, Randy eventually dedicated
himself to changing it.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I wasn't, you know, I wasn't quite sure in high
school what I wanted to do, and then I didn't
have any negative or positive feeling about law enforcement time
and when it came off Actor Doo and I worked
at the local police department. I did my interview with
the police chief and the detective and they said, who's
your dad And I said, you know, Ray Liberty. I said,
(01:04):
raise my uncle. I tried to leave it there, and
he said, yeah, we know, Raise good Man. I said
who's your dad and I said, you know, Gene.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's my uncle, and they kept it going.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I said, yeah, who's your dad and I said, 'ron
Liberty And they put their pens down and said, we
know Ronnie.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And I said, yeah, I know, you know Ronnie.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I'm Randy. I said, I have a year and a
half of college. At this point, I was a military
policeman or a sergeant. I said, I'm not Ronnie, and
they gave me a chance. My first memories, I was
probably four years old, and I remember my father coming
(01:41):
home drunk again and he was violent. I remember grabbing
my mother by the hair and hollering her into the
bedroom and her screaming and you know, throwing a plate
against the wall. I remember as a four year old,
five year old, ten year old witnessing the domestic violence,
witnessing the alcoholism, the drunkardness, and it makes you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sick to your stomach.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
As a child, because you're along for the ride, you
have no say and what's happening in the family, You
have no power. You can't prevent anything from happening. You
just know that on a Friday night, when they start drinking,
it's not going to go well.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It's not going to go well.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
When Dad isn't around for the weekend, and you know,
Sunday night, when he finally comes home, it's kind.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
To go like it always goes.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
You know that when the landlord comes knocks on the
door and while there's a quiet kids and you're pretending
not to be home.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
You know that at the end of the month, there's
no food in the house.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You know, best meal was at school.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
You know, in the seventies, when we would be in school,
they would call.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The students up that were paying for their lunch.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They'd lay down there seventy five cents and ten cents
for tarachal milk, and then they'd say freehouse lunch kids.
They clearly identified who the poor kids were. We had
a different colored ticket. There's red, and you'd go up
there and do the walk of shame and get your
free ticket.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
You know, some people just refused to do.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It because they're too ashamed, and they went without the
shame that we put on these children because of the
acts of their parents. My father had gone to a
local variety store and there was a collection jar for
some charity and just full of money. My dad grabbed
it and ran. The police were chasing him. He ran
(03:21):
down the railroad tracks. He stashed it and he ran
home and he told my brother, who is twelve at
the time. Hey, Ryan, if you go grab that, I'll
split it with you two dangerous for you to go
get it, but he'll send you a son note to
grab it, you know. So there's a lot of that,
a lot of unemployment. There was a lot of him womanizing.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And he didn't hide it.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
In nineteen seventy five, he came home one time drunk
for the last time, and my mother locked the door,
but he with the door off the hinges and came
in the house and he told my mother that he
had gotten to girl pregnant, and you can imagine how
that went over. And so she called the police, and
the local police chief and the local state trooper showed up,
(04:04):
and my father was a fighter, and a fight ensued,
and that was the first time I smelled mace. And
where four boys and a tiny two bedroom trailer, and
they sprayed him and he dropped on the ground and
they hauled him off, and that was the last time
he was at the house. He was charged in the
end with child support, which he didn't pay, and so
(04:27):
we just suffered.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
That was it. We suffered.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
My mother's pregnant at fifteen, at seventeen, at twenty and
twenty two. There are four children in one my brother's
nine one bedroom. I mean, there were times in the winter,
with the pipes and freeze, we woudn't have any water
for a couple of months, no shower, no drinking water,
no toilet, you know, all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We'd go to the neighbors and borrow three.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Or four gallons of water, you know, just to cook
with maybe, and melt snow to flush the toilet. And
up here in Maine, real cold winters, and there are
times in the length would buy kerosene by the gallon
jog just to.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Get us through the night. And times are tough. When
my brother was.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Was eighteen, he joined the army, as many people do
to kind of break the cycle of poverty, and he
joined the military police.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And I went to visit him my senior year the
next year, and it was pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
He had an army uniform own he was driving a cruiser.
I'm like, wow, you know, just you know three months ago,
you know, you were here in high school.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
And so I decided to do the same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And when I saw the recruiter, I said to him,
I want as much college money as you can give me,
and I want to be a military policeman.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I very much enjoyed the army.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
The structure was good for me, the positive male role model,
and you always had supervision from sergeants and staff sergeants.
They were always present. I deeply respected the drill sergeants.
They were professionals. They were just the masters of their world.
And what I really liked about it, too, is nobody
knew who your father was, Nobody knew you lived in
(06:07):
a shack, Nobody cared. Everybody starts zero. You're nothing. I
don't care if your dad's a professor or a surgeon,
or he's in jail. You're going to be judged on
your integrity, your work ethic, your ability to work as
a team member, and.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Can you do a good job, you care, are you patriotic?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
You know all of that, And so so I got
busy doing that. You know. I maxed up the physical
fitness test. I was an expert on the my rifle.
I was always to work early, I was always last
one there. I was always very courteous to my superiors,
my subordinates, and to the people I arrested. And I'll
tell you I you know, I loved serving in the army,
(06:44):
and when I.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Came out of active duty.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
You know, I decidedn't want to get out of the
army because I want to be a law enforced master
in the Salian world. And I applied for a position
at the Somerset County Jail. And when I did, the
sheriff asked me, yes, we'd be glad. How are you
have a good background in the army and his military policeman,
But you have any questions of me? And I said,
the only question I have is is it going to
be a problem that my father is.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Currently in that jail? And he says, not if it's
not for you.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When we come back more of the story of Randy
Liberty here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show
(07:36):
we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and
your stories. Send us your story small or large to
our email oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's oas
at Ouramerican Stories dot com. We'd love to hear them
and put them on the air. Our audience loves them too,
(08:09):
And we continue with our American Stories and the story
of Randy Liberty. When we last left off, Randy had
just accepted the job as a correction officer in the
very prison his own father was incarcerated.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Here's Randy, I love my Father's my father. He just
missed the duty to take care of his children, really,
and he felt no obligation to do that. He was
always a good time dad without the burden of the
responsibility of grinding to pay for everything, knowing that your
children are on food stamps and welfare and free hot lunch.
(08:44):
And funny, I never had a lot of ill feelings
toward him. He was, you know, the funnest one in
the room, charismatic, hug you, kiss you, love you, and
then go out.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know, he did what he wanted in the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I mean, there's one time where we didn't have any
Christmas presents under the Christmas tree, and he looked across
the street and he saw there was a six seated
toboggan with a pad on it, and that's, you know,
probably a hundred dollars toboggan fancy, and he went over
and grabbed it, and it was obvious that the young
girl had received that for Christmas. He grabbed it, brought
in the house and said, Marry Christmas, kids, and then
the law enforced officis pounded on the door an hour
(09:20):
later and said, Ronnie, they saw you take the toboggan.
And he said, you gotta warrant, get the hell out here,
and slam the door.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And that night he.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Was pulling us behind his truck through the snow and
we were riding all over town in this toboggan. Good time, Dad, right,
good time Dad. Even when he was incarcerated and I
was his officer, it went right over his head. It
was like, good to see her in where you and
I would hunker into our sale and be so ashamed. Right,
(09:49):
your child is supervising in a correctional facility.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
But it went over his head. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
He lacked that ability to feel maybe a remorseful. In
the eighties, there was very little training for corrections officers,
and so literally they handed me keys and gave me
a jumpsuit that didn't fit, and up the stairs I went,
and not only was he in the same jail, but
he's in the same unit. So when I went into
the unit, there he was, and hey, Dad, how you doing?
(10:18):
And so for three months I would literally say what
do I do now?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And he was training me as a corrections officer while
he was an inmate and as silly as as sounds,
but he helped me kind of navigate how to be
a Sillian corrections officer. Frankly, it was some of the
best time I spent with him, you know, eight hours
a day, forty hours a week we talked and there
we hung out. You know, I think that living with
(10:42):
the father was incarcerated or domestically violent, and then as
a law enforcement officer, spending twenty years on the street,
being in homes where I'd see people in a very
disadvantaged environment, whether it'd be a single parent trying to
do the best they could. No money, you know, no
you shut the power off, maybe drug addiction, a lot
of that going on. I could sympathize with the victims
(11:06):
of that. I could civilize with the children. I you know,
I could simplize with a single parent trying makeens meet.
And I felt, you know, some connection to those families.
And I think that it informed my leadership as a sergeant,
as a chief, as a sheriff, as the commissioner, as
the warden. In twenty nineteen, the Commissioner of Corrections here
in the state of Maine asked me if I'd have
(11:27):
interest in becoming the warden at the Main State Prison.
The Main State Prison is the inspiration for Stephen King
shosh Ank Redemption.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's the prison.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And so it had been forty plus years since I've
been there to visit my father, and now I was
at the prison as the warden. And when I got there,
I saw a lot of solitary confinement. I saw an
atmosphere that was US against them. Officers were being assaulted frequently.
There was a lot of hopelessness. And it was there
(11:55):
that I decided that, you know, we're going to fix this.
But it was a channel. There's a certain prison tradition
and culture, and every one of the correction facilities I
manage and throughout the nation, the traditional US against them.
A baton in my hand and a can of mason
my other hand. That's how we manage thing through violence.
That's not the kind of modeling that I want to do.
(12:16):
I want to model how to be a good man,
a professional. How would I treat my children, my spouse.
It's not with a baton and mace. We talk through
things and so we begin that journey. But it was difficult,
you know, there's a lot of tradition and a lot
of the Ashers thought, you're going to get people killed.
When someone arrives in my system, what I try to
(12:38):
do is I try to identify what brought them there.
Is it addiction, is it mental health? And then we
work together to try to resolve those issues when they're released.
We don't continue this pattern because no one wins if
they continue.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
To come back.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The taxpayers lose, the families lose, the individual loses. Everyone
loses if they continue to come back. So anything that
we can do to reduce the return to custody or
recidivism rate, we get busy doing that. With everything that
I did had to be low cost, no costs, because
I didn't want to give the governor or the legislature
the ability to say that's unfunded, you can't do it,
(13:12):
so I would even ask. So when I first got there,
I saw all these lawns and I said to myself,
you know, why aren't we gardening? This is very therapeutic,
like you would do the grandmother, to be able to
put your hands in the soil to nurture and grow something.
And so we chilled up the land and the land
was like something you see on the side of the road.
It was gravelly sandy. It was just fill. And so
(13:34):
what I did was I jumped in the dumpsters. And
you can imagine and when you feed four thousand meals
a day, the scrapings, the peelings, that all the organics
that were there, they were being thrown in a dumpster
and brought to the transfer station. That cost me about
one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year to pay
for those tipping fees. So I jumped in the dumpster,
we removed all the organics. I brought in the main
compost school. They taught our residents how to compost, and
(13:56):
then we started composting everything and rotating it back in
the soil no cost to anyone. I then went to
the local nursery, the greenhouse, and in Maine, you can't
plant anything that's delicate before Memorial Day because still a
thread of frost, and so any of the seedlings that
are after Memorial Day that are at the greenhouse that
are twelve inches tall, the two leggy that they won't sell.
(14:19):
And so I went to the greenhouse and said, do
you have any post retail seedlings that I can you
know we can work out a deal. I can get
a reduced cost. He said, you can have them all,
and so he gave me three thousand pouder plants, four
thousand tomato plants. We planted every one of them. I
brought on the university main corporate extension. Now they've talked
at more than one hundred and forty Moresis to be
master gardeners. They were excited about it. They were learning
(14:42):
about botany and they really enjoyed it. And so the
first year we had a ton of tomatoes and peppers,
and then we only grew from that.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
We now we.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Produce about three hundred thousand pounds of produce in all
of my correctional facilities. There's no chemical fertilizers, there's no pesticides.
It's all organic, and it allows them to have an
endless salad bar. Twenty five percent of the vegetables and
produce that we produce in the prison goes to the food.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Pantries on the outside.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So we're doing a lot of that kind of redemptive
work that allows the individuals to redeem and be released
healthy than when they arrived. And they have a refrigerator
or a stove, they cook their own food. If you
and I were to go there right now, they're probably
making banana bread or something, and off you sit down,
and it's very normalized. And I don't even have an
officer in there. This is a maximum security prison. There's
(15:26):
no officer in there. An officer comes through occasionally and
say you guys need anything, everything cool, and then leaves.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
That's unheard of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I had the Liberation Institute come to me and say,
would you consider allowing us to come in the facility
to do yoga instructor to certify yoga instructors?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What were to cost me? They said, nothing, Come on in.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
So anything that we did was low cost, no costs,
didn't cost anybody anything, but greatly enhanced the environment that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
We were working in.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
In twenty seventeen, nine eighty seven assaults on staff.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And last year I had seven.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
I created a veterans pod and there are seventy four
veterans there and they have that shared experience of combat
of service. And I brought in an American Legion post
a resold to them. I said, I'm a legioneer, retired
command star as a major.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I did a tour in Iraq.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Let's talk about what you can do for your veterans
that are incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
They were very well.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Most of these guys were retired. They're looking for something
to do with help fillow vets in. They came and
it allowed them to be connected to the veterans on
the outside and the legionaires come in and ares that fellowship.
As part of that, we have a America Bed Dog Program,
and that program allows our incarcerated veterans to train service
dogs for fourteen to sixteen months, creating the cleanest dogs
(16:42):
I've ever seen. These dogs, these service dogs that are
released back to the community to disabled veterans. Turn lights on,
get something on the refrigerator, get your diabetic bag, if
you're having a.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Nightmare, they'll nudge you.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
And it gives the veterans on the inside a chance
to continue to serve on the outside.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And you've been listening to Randy Liberty tell one heck
of a story. He gets through the army and then
discovers that he has an appetite for working in the
prison does and gets promoted all the way up to
warden at the prison that inspired the movie Showshank Redemption,
And it was there that he wanted to sort of
create a new way of thinking about incarceration and about inmates.
He wanted to figure out how to lower the return rate,
(17:26):
that is, lower the recidivism rate, and part of that
had to be treating those inmates as human beings and
treating them well. Gardening, cooking. You heard about all the
things that they ended up doing. In nineteen eighty seven,
there were eighty assaults in this prison. That number reduced
to almost seven when we come back more of the
story of Randy Liberty here on our American stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and to the story
of Randy Liberty, the son of an inmate who dedicated
his life to reforming American prison systems.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Here's Randy once again.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I've got one hundred and sixty individuals that are in
college full time in the prison system. I've got twelve
that are graduate students. I've got four that are PhD candidates.
And the benefit of that really is is if somebody
graduates from college while they're in the main deprominent corrections,
they return to prison at a ray of point zero
five percent, so they don't come back. They become good
(18:42):
father those good mothers, you know, good spouses and they
don't return and they become good citizens. The first time
that we started this was maybe eight years ago. I
had Colby College, it's an IVY League school here in Maine,
reached out to me. They asked me if one of
the residents who was a graduate student could be an
adjunct professor at the college via zoom, and after consideration,
(19:03):
I granted it, and he taught three semesters. And then
on a Saturday night, Governor Mills called me and said,
please tell me he's not teaching at Colby. The positions
of commissioner are very fragile. The average lifespans about two
and a half years nationally, and things go wrong, we're gone.
And so I said to her, before you make me
(19:25):
parate my bags, let me explain. He made twenty seven
thousand dollars last year, and when he made that, he
paid tuition for his nephew to go to college.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
He paid eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Dollars for his mother to get breaks so she could
get her car inspector and go to work. He paid
for a residence that don't have any money, an indign
resident fund. He paid one thousand dollars to the homeless shelter,
and She's like, this is the stuff we're looking for,
and so since then we've blown that up. I have
an individual that obtained a paralegal degree while he was
(19:56):
in He worked for a law firm while he was
in a law farm. On the outside, he did much
of the illegal work. When he was released, he.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Was a paer. Illegal for them still is to this day.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I have one woman that's doing a thirty year bid
and she's the grants manager for home healthcare company. She's
got twenty more years ago, but she's earning sixty five
thousand dollars a year by doing that. And that you know,
some of the listeners are going to say, where's the
punishment in that? What I say to them is, when
I was a drug investigator, there'd be times when people
(20:27):
may do thirty burglaries before they caught, and they owe
the victims of their crimes fifty thousand dollars in total.
If somebody is working in the prison making one hundred
dollars a month, those victims never get their money back.
You send them each a five dollars check. It's insulting.
And if we care about the victims of crime, an
individual making sixty a year is sending that eighty year
(20:48):
old widow one thousand dollars a month and making her
whole again, and then they have some money in their
pocket when they release, and they'll come back and the
community stronger as a result of it. And we've done
that forty five times of forty five individual people doing
time at the mainstay prison and elsewhere. The most outrageous
case that we have is we have an individual that
taught himself to code and he's now a senior software
(21:10):
engineer in San Francisco from main prison. He made one
hundred and sixty last year and he's able to pay
all those victims off. He pays me room and board
for the privilege living in a prison, so he relieves
the tax burden on the taxpayer. He pays taxes for
the state and the Feds. He pays child support, mortgage,
(21:30):
and for the victims. One of the best programs that
we've been able to affiliate with is the National Prison
Debate League. We have been able to form debate teams
to every one of our correctional facilities, and an all
women's debate team coming from the Women's Center. We invited
(21:51):
MIT to come their debate team or some of the
shopper's minds in the US. They debated them, and to
see these women who have in many cases not have
any education, no self esteem, many of them of victims
of sexual assault and domestic violence, some of them missing
many teeth, no self esteem at all, to study, research
(22:11):
practice and debate students from MIT and they beat them.
They beat them, and they've beaten six different schools that way, MIT, Harvard,
Wake Forest and the staff we're cheering the residents. I'm like, Oh,
we're onto something there. We're all people, we all care
about each other, We're on the same journey. The National
(22:33):
Prison Debate League was really groundbreaking, and I have other ones.
We do scrabble tournaments and each one of the prisons
brings a champion to one central location and it's a
big deal. Always trying to find things for them to
do that's meaningful to them, that fills that time, grows
them intellectually, builds you self esteem, and really assure success
when they release. I have many stories of transformation. We
(22:59):
have a lot of people, Like many states, I have
ninety people doing life. You know, when you get arrested
and you get a fifty year bid as a twenty
year old. You're probably not going to make out alive.
And so we have a lot of people that were
very helpless, were in segregation.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
There was no hope, there's no opportunity.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I had an individual that got a forty year bid
and it was helpless and was in segregation. And when
we started to open up opportunities for him, he flourished.
He was able to get an associate degree in early
childhood development. He has a bachelors degree in early childhood development,
and I just went to his graduation where as a
master's degree. And he's using that to help the youth
that are incarcerated here in Maine. I've got thirty seven
(23:37):
youth that are incarcerated for violent crimes. He's able to
zoom in from the main state prison and find meaning
and helping.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To coach and mentor them.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
He's able to say, I have traveled to your journey.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
This isn't cool. Being at the mainstay prison is not cool.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Go to school, be respectful, get a college degree or trade,
raise a family.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Be truly happy. What do you want?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
This drink and drugging and this trouble is going to
land you here and you will be sincerely regretful for
what you've done. And he made seventy two thousand dollars
last year. He works externally for a firm, a guy
doing He's probably done twenty seven years of his bid.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
He was able to purchase.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
His own home from the main stay prison. Now he
has a home in the community. He's fixing it up
through contractors. He's going to be a homeowner, a landlord,
renting it out to a freemainer from the prison. Right
and now he has hope. He knows that he has
employment when he gets out. He never dreamed he'd have
a home. Never dreamed he thought, I'll get out when
(24:40):
I'm fifty five years old, I won't have any money
in the bank, i won't have an education, i won't
have a career. I'm going to be on welfare. I'm
going to be a loser, you know. And he just
felt that way, And now he has all the hope
in the world. It was just truly amazing to see
that transformation. I had another gentleman that became incarcerated and
doing a heavy bid, and when I first went to
(25:02):
the prison, I met him and he had tattoos all
over his face and is a very dark man. He
had no hope and he since has done a conversion
and he has a bachelor's degree. Now he works for
a nonprofit on the outside, earning a fair market wage.
He goes on Zoom now with fellow employees that are free,
(25:24):
and when they see his face covered in tattoos, it's
offsetting knowing he's coming from the prison and he looks
like that. That can be a barrier to people. I
purchased a tattoo removal piece of equipment and he was
the first one in line.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
When I went to the prison to.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
See how it was working. There are two nurses and
he had his goggles on and they were moving all
of the ink on his face.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
And so he's going through.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
The process, and the process is eight times. You have
to have six eight weeks in between. So he's on
a journey for a year and a half to get
all these tattoos removed. But he's been significantly transformed. It's
been amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
You know. I think that if I.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Haven't traveled the journey that I traveled, I wouldn't truly understand.
You know, regardless of where you start off in life,
you don't have to stay there.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
In America.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
You can be redeemed, and you can set the course
for whatever you wish to do. Anything is possible through
education or service in the military.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
If you work hard and you have good.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Integrity, and you do the right thing when no one's watching,
you can be successful. And I think my brother's and
I our example of that. And there are hundreds and
hundreds of people that are incarcerated that if we give
them a second chance, we give them an opportunity, they
can be successful too.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericott, and a special thanks to
Randy Liberty, author of Liberty's Prison. My Goodness, this should
be a movie. No better still, it should be a
TV series. Story after story. A man who well sort
of could have easily given up hope given his childhood,
easily could have turned in the wrong direction. But in
(26:59):
the end, as he said, regardless of where you start
in life, you can do anything in America, and my
goodness did he And I think.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Without that experience with.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
His dad, I don't know that he would have done
what he did. I don't know that he would have
had the empathetic power to transform a prison and provide
hope to those inmates and potentially a future life. The
story of Randy Liberty, a hope story and a redemption story.
Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next comes the story from a
listener in Maine, Randy Liberty. For most people, a prison
is a place they hope never to see from the inside.
(00:31):
For Randy, it was simply a part of childhood. But
instead of turning away from that world, Randy eventually dedicated
himself to changing it.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I wasn't, you know, I wasn't quite sure in high
school what I wanted to do, and then I didn't
have any negative or positive feeling about law enforcement time
and when it came off Actor Doo and I worked
at the local police department. I did my interview with
the police chief and the detective and they said, who's
your dad And I said, you know, Ray Liberty. I said,
(01:04):
raise my uncle. I tried to leave it there, and
he said, yeah, we know, Raise good Man. I said
who's your dad and I said, you know, Gene.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's my uncle, and they kept it going.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I said, yeah, who's your dad and I said, 'ron
Liberty And they put their pens down and said, we
know Ronnie.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And I said, yeah, I know, you know Ronnie.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I'm Randy. I said, I have a year and a
half of college. At this point, I was a military
policeman or a sergeant. I said, I'm not Ronnie, and
they gave me a chance. My first memories, I was
probably four years old, and I remember my father coming
(01:41):
home drunk again and he was violent. I remember grabbing
my mother by the hair and hollering her into the
bedroom and her screaming and you know, throwing a plate
against the wall. I remember as a four year old,
five year old, ten year old witnessing the domestic violence,
witnessing the alcoholism, the drunkardness, and it makes you.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Sick to your stomach.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
As a child, because you're along for the ride, you
have no say and what's happening in the family, You
have no power. You can't prevent anything from happening. You
just know that on a Friday night, when they start drinking,
it's not going to go well.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
It's not going to go well.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
When Dad isn't around for the weekend, and you know,
Sunday night, when he finally comes home, it's kind.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
To go like it always goes.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
You know that when the landlord comes knocks on the
door and while there's a quiet kids and you're pretending
not to be home.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
You know that at the end of the month, there's
no food in the house.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
You know, best meal was at school.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
You know, in the seventies, when we would be in school,
they would call.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
The students up that were paying for their lunch.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
They'd lay down there seventy five cents and ten cents
for tarachal milk, and then they'd say freehouse lunch kids.
They clearly identified who the poor kids were. We had
a different colored ticket. There's red, and you'd go up
there and do the walk of shame and get your
free ticket.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
You know, some people just refused to do.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It because they're too ashamed, and they went without the
shame that we put on these children because of the
acts of their parents. My father had gone to a
local variety store and there was a collection jar for
some charity and just full of money. My dad grabbed
it and ran. The police were chasing him. He ran
(03:21):
down the railroad tracks. He stashed it and he ran
home and he told my brother, who is twelve at
the time. Hey, Ryan, if you go grab that, I'll
split it with you two dangerous for you to go
get it, but he'll send you a son note to
grab it, you know. So there's a lot of that,
a lot of unemployment. There was a lot of him womanizing.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And he didn't hide it.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
In nineteen seventy five, he came home one time drunk
for the last time, and my mother locked the door,
but he with the door off the hinges and came
in the house and he told my mother that he
had gotten to girl pregnant, and you can imagine how
that went over. And so she called the police, and
the local police chief and the local state trooper showed up,
(04:04):
and my father was a fighter, and a fight ensued,
and that was the first time I smelled mace. And
where four boys and a tiny two bedroom trailer, and
they sprayed him and he dropped on the ground and
they hauled him off, and that was the last time
he was at the house. He was charged in the
end with child support, which he didn't pay, and so
(04:27):
we just suffered.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
That was it. We suffered.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
My mother's pregnant at fifteen, at seventeen, at twenty and
twenty two. There are four children in one my brother's
nine one bedroom. I mean, there were times in the winter,
with the pipes and freeze, we woudn't have any water
for a couple of months, no shower, no drinking water,
no toilet, you know, all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
We'd go to the neighbors and borrow three.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Or four gallons of water, you know, just to cook
with maybe, and melt snow to flush the toilet. And
up here in Maine, real cold winters, and there are
times in the length would buy kerosene by the gallon
jog just to.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Get us through the night. And times are tough. When
my brother was.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Was eighteen, he joined the army, as many people do
to kind of break the cycle of poverty, and he
joined the military police.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
And I went to visit him my senior year the
next year, and it was pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
He had an army uniform own he was driving a cruiser.
I'm like, wow, you know, just you know three months ago,
you know, you were here in high school.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
And so I decided to do the same thing.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
And when I saw the recruiter, I said to him,
I want as much college money as you can give me,
and I want to be a military policeman.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
I very much enjoyed the army.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
The structure was good for me, the positive male role model,
and you always had supervision from sergeants and staff sergeants.
They were always present. I deeply respected the drill sergeants.
They were professionals. They were just the masters of their world.
And what I really liked about it, too, is nobody
knew who your father was, Nobody knew you lived in
(06:07):
a shack, Nobody cared. Everybody starts zero. You're nothing. I
don't care if your dad's a professor or a surgeon,
or he's in jail. You're going to be judged on
your integrity, your work ethic, your ability to work as
a team member, and.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Can you do a good job, you care, are you patriotic?
Speaker 3 (06:24):
You know all of that, And so so I got
busy doing that. You know. I maxed up the physical
fitness test. I was an expert on the my rifle.
I was always to work early, I was always last
one there. I was always very courteous to my superiors,
my subordinates, and to the people I arrested. And I'll
tell you I you know, I loved serving in the army,
(06:44):
and when I.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Came out of active duty.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
You know, I decidedn't want to get out of the
army because I want to be a law enforced master
in the Salian world. And I applied for a position
at the Somerset County Jail. And when I did, the
sheriff asked me, yes, we'd be glad. How are you
have a good background in the army and his military policeman,
But you have any questions of me? And I said,
the only question I have is is it going to
be a problem that my father is.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Currently in that jail? And he says, not if it's
not for you.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When we come back more of the story of Randy
Liberty here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show
(07:36):
we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and
your stories. Send us your story small or large to
our email oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's oas
at Ouramerican Stories dot com. We'd love to hear them
and put them on the air. Our audience loves them too,
(08:09):
And we continue with our American Stories and the story
of Randy Liberty. When we last left off, Randy had
just accepted the job as a correction officer in the
very prison his own father was incarcerated.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Here's Randy, I love my Father's my father. He just
missed the duty to take care of his children, really,
and he felt no obligation to do that. He was
always a good time dad without the burden of the
responsibility of grinding to pay for everything, knowing that your
children are on food stamps and welfare and free hot lunch.
(08:44):
And funny, I never had a lot of ill feelings
toward him. He was, you know, the funnest one in
the room, charismatic, hug you, kiss you, love you, and
then go out.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know, he did what he wanted in the moment.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I mean, there's one time where we didn't have any
Christmas presents under the Christmas tree, and he looked across
the street and he saw there was a six seated
toboggan with a pad on it, and that's, you know,
probably a hundred dollars toboggan fancy, and he went over
and grabbed it, and it was obvious that the young
girl had received that for Christmas. He grabbed it, brought
in the house and said, Marry Christmas, kids, and then
the law enforced officis pounded on the door an hour
(09:20):
later and said, Ronnie, they saw you take the toboggan.
And he said, you gotta warrant, get the hell out here,
and slam the door.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And that night he.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Was pulling us behind his truck through the snow and
we were riding all over town in this toboggan. Good time, Dad, right,
good time Dad. Even when he was incarcerated and I
was his officer, it went right over his head. It
was like, good to see her in where you and
I would hunker into our sale and be so ashamed. Right,
(09:49):
your child is supervising in a correctional facility.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
But it went over his head. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
He lacked that ability to feel maybe a remorseful. In
the eighties, there was very little training for corrections officers,
and so literally they handed me keys and gave me
a jumpsuit that didn't fit, and up the stairs I went,
and not only was he in the same jail, but
he's in the same unit. So when I went into
the unit, there he was, and hey, Dad, how you doing?
(10:18):
And so for three months I would literally say what
do I do now?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Dad?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And he was training me as a corrections officer while
he was an inmate and as silly as as sounds,
but he helped me kind of navigate how to be
a Sillian corrections officer. Frankly, it was some of the
best time I spent with him, you know, eight hours
a day, forty hours a week we talked and there
we hung out. You know, I think that living with
(10:42):
the father was incarcerated or domestically violent, and then as
a law enforcement officer, spending twenty years on the street,
being in homes where I'd see people in a very
disadvantaged environment, whether it'd be a single parent trying to
do the best they could. No money, you know, no
you shut the power off, maybe drug addiction, a lot
of that going on. I could sympathize with the victims
(11:06):
of that. I could civilize with the children. I you know,
I could simplize with a single parent trying makeens meet.
And I felt, you know, some connection to those families.
And I think that it informed my leadership as a sergeant,
as a chief, as a sheriff, as the commissioner, as
the warden. In twenty nineteen, the Commissioner of Corrections here
in the state of Maine asked me if I'd have
(11:27):
interest in becoming the warden at the Main State Prison.
The Main State Prison is the inspiration for Stephen King
shosh Ank Redemption.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's the prison.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
And so it had been forty plus years since I've
been there to visit my father, and now I was
at the prison as the warden. And when I got there,
I saw a lot of solitary confinement. I saw an
atmosphere that was US against them. Officers were being assaulted frequently.
There was a lot of hopelessness. And it was there
(11:55):
that I decided that, you know, we're going to fix this.
But it was a channel. There's a certain prison tradition
and culture, and every one of the correction facilities I
manage and throughout the nation, the traditional US against them.
A baton in my hand and a can of mason
my other hand. That's how we manage thing through violence.
That's not the kind of modeling that I want to do.
(12:16):
I want to model how to be a good man,
a professional. How would I treat my children, my spouse.
It's not with a baton and mace. We talk through
things and so we begin that journey. But it was difficult,
you know, there's a lot of tradition and a lot
of the Ashers thought, you're going to get people killed.
When someone arrives in my system, what I try to
(12:38):
do is I try to identify what brought them there.
Is it addiction, is it mental health? And then we
work together to try to resolve those issues when they're released.
We don't continue this pattern because no one wins if
they continue.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
To come back.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
The taxpayers lose, the families lose, the individual loses. Everyone
loses if they continue to come back. So anything that
we can do to reduce the return to custody or
recidivism rate, we get busy doing that. With everything that
I did had to be low cost, no costs, because
I didn't want to give the governor or the legislature
the ability to say that's unfunded, you can't do it,
(13:12):
so I would even ask. So when I first got there,
I saw all these lawns and I said to myself,
you know, why aren't we gardening? This is very therapeutic,
like you would do the grandmother, to be able to
put your hands in the soil to nurture and grow something.
And so we chilled up the land and the land
was like something you see on the side of the road.
It was gravelly sandy. It was just fill. And so
(13:34):
what I did was I jumped in the dumpsters. And
you can imagine and when you feed four thousand meals
a day, the scrapings, the peelings, that all the organics
that were there, they were being thrown in a dumpster
and brought to the transfer station. That cost me about
one hundred and forty thousand dollars a year to pay
for those tipping fees. So I jumped in the dumpster,
we removed all the organics. I brought in the main
compost school. They taught our residents how to compost, and
(13:56):
then we started composting everything and rotating it back in
the soil no cost to anyone. I then went to
the local nursery, the greenhouse, and in Maine, you can't
plant anything that's delicate before Memorial Day because still a
thread of frost, and so any of the seedlings that
are after Memorial Day that are at the greenhouse that
are twelve inches tall, the two leggy that they won't sell.
(14:19):
And so I went to the greenhouse and said, do
you have any post retail seedlings that I can you
know we can work out a deal. I can get
a reduced cost. He said, you can have them all,
and so he gave me three thousand pouder plants, four
thousand tomato plants. We planted every one of them. I
brought on the university main corporate extension. Now they've talked
at more than one hundred and forty Moresis to be
master gardeners. They were excited about it. They were learning
(14:42):
about botany and they really enjoyed it. And so the
first year we had a ton of tomatoes and peppers,
and then we only grew from that.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
We now we.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Produce about three hundred thousand pounds of produce in all
of my correctional facilities. There's no chemical fertilizers, there's no pesticides.
It's all organic, and it allows them to have an
endless salad bar. Twenty five percent of the vegetables and
produce that we produce in the prison goes to the food.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Pantries on the outside.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So we're doing a lot of that kind of redemptive
work that allows the individuals to redeem and be released
healthy than when they arrived. And they have a refrigerator
or a stove, they cook their own food. If you
and I were to go there right now, they're probably
making banana bread or something, and off you sit down,
and it's very normalized. And I don't even have an
officer in there. This is a maximum security prison. There's
(15:26):
no officer in there. An officer comes through occasionally and
say you guys need anything, everything cool, and then leaves.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
That's unheard of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I had the Liberation Institute come to me and say,
would you consider allowing us to come in the facility
to do yoga instructor to certify yoga instructors?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
What were to cost me? They said, nothing, Come on in.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
So anything that we did was low cost, no costs,
didn't cost anybody anything, but greatly enhanced the environment that.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
We were working in.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
In twenty seventeen, nine eighty seven assaults on staff.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And last year I had seven.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
I created a veterans pod and there are seventy four
veterans there and they have that shared experience of combat
of service. And I brought in an American Legion post
a resold to them. I said, I'm a legioneer, retired
command star as a major.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I did a tour in Iraq.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Let's talk about what you can do for your veterans
that are incarcerated.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
They were very well.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Most of these guys were retired. They're looking for something
to do with help fillow vets in. They came and
it allowed them to be connected to the veterans on
the outside and the legionaires come in and ares that fellowship.
As part of that, we have a America Bed Dog Program,
and that program allows our incarcerated veterans to train service
dogs for fourteen to sixteen months, creating the cleanest dogs
(16:42):
I've ever seen. These dogs, these service dogs that are
released back to the community to disabled veterans. Turn lights on,
get something on the refrigerator, get your diabetic bag, if
you're having a.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Nightmare, they'll nudge you.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
And it gives the veterans on the inside a chance
to continue to serve on the outside.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
And you've been listening to Randy Liberty tell one heck
of a story. He gets through the army and then
discovers that he has an appetite for working in the
prison does and gets promoted all the way up to
warden at the prison that inspired the movie Showshank Redemption,
And it was there that he wanted to sort of
create a new way of thinking about incarceration and about inmates.
He wanted to figure out how to lower the return rate,
(17:26):
that is, lower the recidivism rate, and part of that
had to be treating those inmates as human beings and
treating them well. Gardening, cooking. You heard about all the
things that they ended up doing. In nineteen eighty seven,
there were eighty assaults in this prison. That number reduced
to almost seven when we come back more of the
story of Randy Liberty here on our American stories, and
(18:08):
we continue with our American stories and to the story
of Randy Liberty, the son of an inmate who dedicated
his life to reforming American prison systems.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Here's Randy once again.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I've got one hundred and sixty individuals that are in
college full time in the prison system. I've got twelve
that are graduate students. I've got four that are PhD candidates.
And the benefit of that really is is if somebody
graduates from college while they're in the main deprominent corrections,
they return to prison at a ray of point zero
five percent, so they don't come back. They become good
(18:42):
father those good mothers, you know, good spouses and they
don't return and they become good citizens. The first time
that we started this was maybe eight years ago. I
had Colby College, it's an IVY League school here in Maine,
reached out to me. They asked me if one of
the residents who was a graduate student could be an
adjunct professor at the college via zoom, and after consideration,
(19:03):
I granted it, and he taught three semesters. And then
on a Saturday night, Governor Mills called me and said,
please tell me he's not teaching at Colby. The positions
of commissioner are very fragile. The average lifespans about two
and a half years nationally, and things go wrong, we're gone.
And so I said to her, before you make me
(19:25):
parate my bags, let me explain. He made twenty seven
thousand dollars last year, and when he made that, he
paid tuition for his nephew to go to college.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
He paid eight hundred.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Dollars for his mother to get breaks so she could
get her car inspector and go to work. He paid
for a residence that don't have any money, an indign
resident fund. He paid one thousand dollars to the homeless shelter,
and She's like, this is the stuff we're looking for,
and so since then we've blown that up. I have
an individual that obtained a paralegal degree while he was
(19:56):
in He worked for a law firm while he was
in a law farm. On the outside, he did much
of the illegal work. When he was released, he.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Was a paer. Illegal for them still is to this day.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I have one woman that's doing a thirty year bid
and she's the grants manager for home healthcare company. She's
got twenty more years ago, but she's earning sixty five
thousand dollars a year by doing that. And that you know,
some of the listeners are going to say, where's the
punishment in that? What I say to them is, when
I was a drug investigator, there'd be times when people
(20:27):
may do thirty burglaries before they caught, and they owe
the victims of their crimes fifty thousand dollars in total.
If somebody is working in the prison making one hundred
dollars a month, those victims never get their money back.
You send them each a five dollars check. It's insulting.
And if we care about the victims of crime, an
individual making sixty a year is sending that eighty year
(20:48):
old widow one thousand dollars a month and making her
whole again, and then they have some money in their
pocket when they release, and they'll come back and the
community stronger as a result of it. And we've done
that forty five times of forty five individual people doing
time at the mainstay prison and elsewhere. The most outrageous
case that we have is we have an individual that
taught himself to code and he's now a senior software
(21:10):
engineer in San Francisco from main prison. He made one
hundred and sixty last year and he's able to pay
all those victims off. He pays me room and board
for the privilege living in a prison, so he relieves
the tax burden on the taxpayer. He pays taxes for
the state and the Feds. He pays child support, mortgage,
(21:30):
and for the victims. One of the best programs that
we've been able to affiliate with is the National Prison
Debate League. We have been able to form debate teams
to every one of our correctional facilities, and an all
women's debate team coming from the Women's Center. We invited
(21:51):
MIT to come their debate team or some of the
shopper's minds in the US. They debated them, and to
see these women who have in many cases not have
any education, no self esteem, many of them of victims
of sexual assault and domestic violence, some of them missing
many teeth, no self esteem at all, to study, research
(22:11):
practice and debate students from MIT and they beat them.
They beat them, and they've beaten six different schools that way, MIT, Harvard,
Wake Forest and the staff we're cheering the residents. I'm like, Oh,
we're onto something there. We're all people, we all care
about each other, We're on the same journey. The National
(22:33):
Prison Debate League was really groundbreaking, and I have other ones.
We do scrabble tournaments and each one of the prisons
brings a champion to one central location and it's a
big deal. Always trying to find things for them to
do that's meaningful to them, that fills that time, grows
them intellectually, builds you self esteem, and really assure success
when they release. I have many stories of transformation. We
(22:59):
have a lot of people, Like many states, I have
ninety people doing life. You know, when you get arrested
and you get a fifty year bid as a twenty
year old. You're probably not going to make out alive.
And so we have a lot of people that were
very helpless, were in segregation.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
There was no hope, there's no opportunity.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
I had an individual that got a forty year bid
and it was helpless and was in segregation. And when
we started to open up opportunities for him, he flourished.
He was able to get an associate degree in early
childhood development. He has a bachelors degree in early childhood development,
and I just went to his graduation where as a
master's degree. And he's using that to help the youth
that are incarcerated here in Maine. I've got thirty seven
(23:37):
youth that are incarcerated for violent crimes. He's able to
zoom in from the main state prison and find meaning
and helping.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
To coach and mentor them.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
He's able to say, I have traveled to your journey.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
This isn't cool. Being at the mainstay prison is not cool.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Go to school, be respectful, get a college degree or trade,
raise a family.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Be truly happy. What do you want?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
This drink and drugging and this trouble is going to
land you here and you will be sincerely regretful for
what you've done. And he made seventy two thousand dollars
last year. He works externally for a firm, a guy
doing He's probably done twenty seven years of his bid.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
He was able to purchase.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
His own home from the main stay prison. Now he
has a home in the community. He's fixing it up
through contractors. He's going to be a homeowner, a landlord,
renting it out to a freemainer from the prison. Right
and now he has hope. He knows that he has
employment when he gets out. He never dreamed he'd have
a home. Never dreamed he thought, I'll get out when
(24:40):
I'm fifty five years old, I won't have any money
in the bank, i won't have an education, i won't
have a career. I'm going to be on welfare. I'm
going to be a loser, you know. And he just
felt that way, And now he has all the hope
in the world. It was just truly amazing to see
that transformation. I had another gentleman that became incarcerated and
doing a heavy bid, and when I first went to
(25:02):
the prison, I met him and he had tattoos all
over his face and is a very dark man. He
had no hope and he since has done a conversion
and he has a bachelor's degree. Now he works for
a nonprofit on the outside, earning a fair market wage.
He goes on Zoom now with fellow employees that are free,
(25:24):
and when they see his face covered in tattoos, it's
offsetting knowing he's coming from the prison and he looks
like that. That can be a barrier to people. I
purchased a tattoo removal piece of equipment and he was
the first one in line.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
When I went to the prison to.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
See how it was working. There are two nurses and
he had his goggles on and they were moving all
of the ink on his face.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
And so he's going through.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
The process, and the process is eight times. You have
to have six eight weeks in between. So he's on
a journey for a year and a half to get
all these tattoos removed. But he's been significantly transformed. It's
been amazing.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
You know. I think that if I.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Haven't traveled the journey that I traveled, I wouldn't truly understand.
You know, regardless of where you start off in life,
you don't have to stay there.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
In America.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
You can be redeemed, and you can set the course
for whatever you wish to do. Anything is possible through
education or service in the military.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
If you work hard and you have good.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Integrity, and you do the right thing when no one's watching,
you can be successful. And I think my brother's and
I our example of that. And there are hundreds and
hundreds of people that are incarcerated that if we give
them a second chance, we give them an opportunity, they
can be successful too.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Dericott, and a special thanks to
Randy Liberty, author of Liberty's Prison. My Goodness, this should
be a movie. No better still, it should be a
TV series. Story after story. A man who well sort
of could have easily given up hope given his childhood,
easily could have turned in the wrong direction. But in
(26:59):
the end, as he said, regardless of where you start
in life, you can do anything in America, and my
goodness did he And I think.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Without that experience with.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
His dad, I don't know that he would have done
what he did. I don't know that he would have
had the empathetic power to transform a prison and provide
hope to those inmates and potentially a future life. The
story of Randy Liberty, a hope story and a redemption story.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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