BIS BOYS TALK — SESSION 6

AND ANOTHER BOY HAD TO TALK
The two boys featured in this article are FRANK, who is talking about his years at the BIS and 30 years of prison life after he left the BIS. The second boy, a 17 year-old felt compelled to talk to an employee about a big personal problem .
May 9, 2011 – FRANK L left this comment on our website
“Out of the clear blue sky I thought about trying to find out whatever happened to the BIS. As a resident in and around 1958 for almost two years in Bushnell, there are many memories of these homes on “the Hill”. Reflecting back, it was basically how you made it as to whether you survived or not. If you were looking for trouble, it would find you rather quickly. By the same token, if you went in and did your own time, things went pretty smooth.
“It’s amazing how many names I remember from there and often wonder how they turned out: [Frank named two brothers and two other boys whose names I will leave un-named for their privacy.] The cottage “parents” was [a couple] named Snyder. I don’t recall working but did attend school. Unfortunately I didn’t learn how to stay out of trouble. I must have been around twelve or so. Went from there to JDC in Columbus and on to TICO in Columbus. Always escaping so they sent me to ‘the field’ at OSR. Ended up staying there until my 21st birthday. Was out maybe a year and ended up in the federal prison, Milan (Michigan), Tallahassee FCI, Lewisburg Penitentiary, Atlanta and several others.
“Out for another year and busted in Canada and ended up doing 20 years for a robbery gone bad. I guess that was when I thought that I would never see freedom again. But in 1990 I was released and deported back to the states and finally free for the first time in over thirty years. It was a whole different world. It was tough the first year. No support. Had to do it on my own. It turns out that I was just fed up with doing time. Been out almost 22 years without a blemish. Since 1995, have been a Corporate Operations Manager for several corporations and have married with three kids. BIS and those days are only memories, but they are ones that allow me to reflect on what a total waste of time I allowed myself to become involved in. I guess it shows that at that young age you really don’t understand the complexities of what life is really all about until you end up suffering the consequences of your actions. By then it is too late. Would really like to hear from those around those years that I was there. Also, would like to know where to look for pictures from that period.”
FRANK L
++++ THANKS FRANK, for your personal victory story.
YOUTH LEADER Harold Freisner (1978) told us the next boy’s story
During another generation of boys there was a 17 year-old FSB (Fairfield School for Boys) boy who approached his Youth Leader asking to talk privately about a problem. (We will be featuring this Youth Leader in another article but this young man’s story was so compelling about a boy ‘on the Hill’ who had a very unusual problem that needs to be in this BOYS TALK series.)
Youth Leader Harold Freisner relates this account: “There are many many stories I could tell you but to show you some of the boys did not stand a chance when returning home.  I had one 17 year old at FSB come to me and said he wanted  to talk to me in private about a personal manner.  So I took him upstairs in the day room where no one was around.  He told me that he did not want any more passes off campus with his step-mother because all she did was pick him up, go to a motel and have sex.  He said that his Dad was a long haul truck driver and ‘…as soon as he left on a haul she would get in bed with me….’ This started when he was about fourteen and he said if his Dad ever found out ‘he would kill me’. .I went to the social worker about the matter and the boy’s step-mother was barred from further passes or visits.”
Here was a young man already in a detention center because of his own bad judgments and his step-mother was intensifying his problems! His choosing to have a talk with his Youth Leader manifests the young man was serious about becoming a different kind of boy. Youth Leader Harold Freisner listened to this FSB boy talk – and changes were made to protect this young man from a very thoughtless and immoral step-mother. The State of Ohio was literally doing all it could to provide a young man an opportunity to improve himself only to have basic concepts of morals and integrity dishonored by his father’s wife.
Counseling, in reality, was an every-day-job for school teachers and shop instructors. This youth leader made himself available when he was needed. The photos below show the employees specifically trained to counsel boys at FSB. Counselors, as many as a dozen at any given time, other than those pictured, were there specifically to listen to the boys, you could say, “they were paid to listen”. Talking (to them) was up to the boy(s) in need.

CATHOLIC PRIEST Father Schweitzer counsels a boy…

THE STAFF OF CHAPLAINS at the Fairfield School for Boys during 1969-1971
Rev. Gelen Roher, Father Kessler and Rev. Carl McClellan
EVERY COTTAGE had a staff willing and ready to listen to boys talk.

Here Mrs. Dillard talks and listens to boys in the Herrick Cottage
+++++ IT TAKES COURAGE to make changes in our lives and these two boys (now grown men) exemplify the kind of courage it takes to make life mean something. THANKS TO THESE BOYS, and to the staff throughout the years at the BIS who were willing to listen and then follow through with procedures to make necessary improvements.
THE WORDWRIGHT.