We were so honored to have this event covered by the Raleigh News-Observer and placed on the front page both "in print" and "online" on Sunday, March 28, 2004. The article and slideshow of that special day will remain in the archive of the Raleigh News-Observer for a period of time. Below is the article that appeared in the newspaper. You may read it here on our site or go directly to the Raleigh News-Observer's site. Be sure to view the moving slideshow of the day's events prepared by the News-Observer by clicking on the link with the article in their site.

Inmates, kids tighten bonds
Camp unites children, imprisoned fathers to play, create, connect

By ANNE SAKER, Staff Writer
Raleigh News-Observer

SPRUCE PINE--Scottie Barnes bustled around the concrete-block room checking on the gifts for the children. A steel door opened, and she turned to see 22 men in plain brown shirts and pants entering.

They were killers, rapists, thieves. Barnes shook every hand and smiled as if to welcome the prison inmates into her beauty parlor back home. "Are you excited about tomorrow?" she asked, "because I sure am!" "Oh, yes, ma'am."

In less than 24 hours, that group of men would spend Saturday, March 13, with their children. Barnes called the event "One Day With God Camp." No one had tried anything like it in a North Carolina medium-security unit. But Barnes, 57, believed the camp would prove to others what was long obvious to her: Just as men can find religion in prison, they can discover fatherhood.

At Mountain View Correctional Institution, 225 miles west of Raleigh, prisoners faced long sentences, and passages into and out of the visitation room required strip searches. Prison officials selected the camp participants by ruling out sex offenders then requiring 90 days without infractions. The 22 men chosen were expecting 38 children to come to camp.

James Massey, 38, doing six years as a habitual felon, carried in his pocket a letter from his daughter, Jamie, 7, on ruled paper torn from a spiral-bound notebook. She visited him regularly, but a guard kept watch nearby.

Habitual felon Hubert Allen, 29, serving eight years, would see his four children by three women for the first time in five years.

Johnny Allen was 22, married and the father of two boys when he began a 24-year sentence for raping and stabbing an elderly neighbor. He had not seen his sons in 10 years.

The smiling Barnes, her blue eyes sparkling, waited for the inmates to take their seats.

"Now, you all remember what I told you, don't you? If you don't behave, I'm going to twist off your ears and nail 'em to the wall! But I won't have to do that, will I?"

The men shuffled their feet and laughed softly.

"No, ma'am," they said.

A father's influence

From her earlier work in prisons, Barnes knew the Mountain View officials, and when she proposed her camp in January, they agreed. They saw camp as a way to break a cycle of prisoners' children making bad choices and ending up in a cell, too.

Certain factors enter into the analysis of what makes a criminal: drug abuse, alcohol addiction, poverty, mental illness. Another condition, perhaps the most fundamental, often escapes examination: fatherlessness.

Little empirical research has been done. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that of the 1.5 million children in 1999 with at least one parent in prison, 94 percent were missing their fathers. A 1994 Virginia study revealed that offenders' children are six times more likely than their peers to end up in prison. Plus, research from New Zealand suggested that inmates with strong family connections tended to succeed on parole.

The potential of Barnes' idea was spreading. She had received inquiring phone calls from officials at another state prison and from prison fellowships in Michigan, Wisconsin and Arkansas.

To get the inmates ready for camp, Barnes arranged for a four-hour seminar, complete with workbooks, from the Great Dads ministry, a Virginia organization that promotes fatherhood. The speakers said children often feel that they caused a father's absence. They counseled the inmates to tell their children that only Daddy was responsible for what he did.

A daughter's mission

The inmates slouched in the stiff chairs.

Barnes took the microphone. She wore a brown knit pantsuit. A gold cross hung from around her neck. As befitting the owner of Scottie's Headquarters in Taylorsville, her hair lay in perfect brunette waves with auburn highlights.

"I'm so glad to see you-all," she said. "How many of you have heard me tell this story?"

Most of the inmates raised their hands. But they asked her to tell it again, and so she did.

Her daddy, James Pennell, was a gambler, a playboy, a drug kingpin. She first visited him in prison when she was 3 or 4. Years later, when he got out, he abandoned her and her mother. Scottie prayed for her daddy through her life, while she cut hair, married, bore two daughters, divorced, remarried, became a grandmother.

One day, her daddy came to her door, saying he wanted to go straight. But the high stakes of drug smuggling were irresistible to a gambling man. When he was arrested again at 61 with a bad heart, he faced decades behind bars. But to Barnes' joy, her daddy at last accepted Jesus.

He died in prison, and Barnes walked from his grave promising God that if something good could come of this mess, she would do it.

A few years later, a prison chaplain asked her to give witness to his inmates. She thought she had nothing to say, but her story wrung tears from the felons.

Speaking invitations poured in. She quit cutting hair and established the nonprofit Forgiven Ministry. In 2003, she organized a three-day trip to a private campground for soon-to-be-free prisoners and their children. Then she decided to take camp to the men who would still be inside when their children learned to drive or got married.

Ready for 'One Day'

Barnes finished her story. She was not smiling.

"I don't care what it takes," she said. "You put your arms around those children and say, 'I love you.' "

She sent each inmate to a table with a cardboard name card. Before them lay hand-held computer games, small radios, stencil kits, black gym bags and children's Bibles, all donated. On the piles were cut sheets of wrapping paper; from the chair backs hung strips of clear tape. Most of the inmates had never wrapped a present.

Hubert Allen laughed as he wrestled with the paper.

Barnes teased him. "You're going to be here all night, with four children, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

James Massey pulled out Jamie's penciled letter. She had drawn hearts struck by Cupid's arrow. She had written: "I am going to be so happy on March 13th."

Johnny Allen picked up the computer game. He gave it some study. Then he covered it with paper.

On Saturday, mountain sunlight glinted off the concertina wire as 45 volunteers in blue "One Day With God" T-shirts carried in homemade brownies and cupcakes. Many belonged to Barnes' church. Some came from Prison Fellowship, a nationwide ministry helping cover the costs for camp. Barnes instructed the volunteers: Don't hover. Be a servant.

She distributed the camp T-shirts for the children and fathers, which were the green of a new leaf.

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With everything ready, Barnes went to the front-gate building to greet the children, who arrived in new jeans and fresh haircuts.

"I'm Scottie!" she said. "We're so glad you're here!"

The children followed her to the concrete-block room, where volunteers helped them get into T-shirts and brought plates of cookies. Barnes drew the children's attention to the craft project.

"This is what you and your daddies will work on today," she said, holding up an oblong box. "It's a lamp with a little beaded lampshade. And you can take it home with you and put it in your rooms. Now what does a lamp do? It lights up the room, and we're not afraid of the dark anymore."

A praise band plugged in. Two clowns distributed small gold medals on red-white-and-blue ribbons. A face painter did a steady trade creating on each little cheek a butterfly or a flower or I (heart) you Dad.

Big hugs, quiet hellos

At Johnny Allen's table, a mother tried to coax conversation from her tall, slender sons in Atlanta Braves caps. Sherri Allen of Kings Mountain divorced her husband after he went to prison in 1995, and she saw no use in taking Jonathan and Chris to see him. But when they received the invitation to camp, the boys, now 13 and 11, said they wanted to know their father.

She sighed. "It was going to happen eventually."

Barnes spotted the inmates approaching in the hallway, and she called out, "Get ready, they're coming! You just run up here and get a hold of Daddy!"

When the fathers stepped into the room, the children launched themselves.

Hubert Allen hugged his son and three daughters over and over, and he ran his hand over 5-year-old Meliah's wild curls.

James Massey touched Jamie's face and said he liked her new sneakers.

From out of the crowd, a tall man headed toward the two Allen boys. He sat down and stared at the young faces so plainly sculpted from his. The mother gestured: That's Chris. That's Jonathan. Then she left.

Johnny Allen said hello. Jonathan and Chris mumbled a response, sneaking glances at him.

"All right, let's go to the gym!" Barnes announced.

The three slowly rose then fell in together. The man put a hand on each boy's shoulder.

Squeals resounded in the gym. Half the group tossed and caught balls over a volleyball net, and the other half played a running-and-passing game. Hubert Allen put Meliah on his shoulders, and she held his ears. Johnny Allen and his sons, all smiling, heaved balls over the net. James Massey comforted Jamie after a ball struck her in the eye. She went for a drink of water, and he shook his head.

"I've put more pain in that girl's heart than my worst enemy," he said.

Together alone

Barnes led the parade back to the concrete-block room for the craft project. Fathers and children unpacked the beads, pins and wire to make the lampshade. Meliah watched Hubert Allen sort the parts.

"You make these all the time?" she asked.

"No, it's my first time!" he replied, and they laughed.

Johnny Allen and his sons finished their lamps, and while they waited for everyone else, the boys brought out photographs of themselves in their baseball uniforms. Then the father said his piece.

"I'm not saying you have to jump back into Johnny's arms. I'm saying that I'll always write to you, and I'll try to get moved closer to home."

He pulled his sons to him. They bowed their heads and grabbed his neck.

"It's not y'all's fault," he told them. "I just messed up."

Outside the prison, a delivery truck brought 55 pizzas. After lunch, the fathers distributed presents. Hubert Allen told his children, "You know, I wrapped those myself."

Over the din, Barnes called out, "Hey, I heard that Alex is celebrating a birthday on Monday. Right? No? Is anyone celebrating a birthday this week?"

No one answered. It did not matter. Barnes led the room in the song.

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday dear ColbyAaronClarissaDarius MoneshaKyleStacyDaddy ...

Happy Birthday to you!

In the gym, everyone munched popcorn through a movie about a rodeo cowboy produced by the Billy Graham ministry. The clowns performed a pantomime about a lost soul finding redemption.

Then Barnes announced that just 30 minutes were left to camp. She sent the fathers and children to the far end of the gym for some time to themselves.

She approached a father and his young son. The man said the day meant more to him than anything he could imagine. The boy tried to speak, then his face contorted, he curled against his father's body and he cried.

'I love you, Daddy'

The group returned to the concrete-block room for the last few words. The fathers pulled off their leaf-green T-shirts and gave them to their children. One boy balled up the T-shirt, put his face into it and inhaled.

The children were supposed to leave first. They did not see a prison guard catch each inmate's eye and point to the steel door at the back of the room.

Hubert Allen kissed his children, then volunteers guided them away. James Massey put his hands on Jamie's shoulders and said, "See you soon." Johnny Allen bear-hugged Jonathan, then Chris.

"I love you," he said.

The boys dropped their heads, the bills of their Atlanta Braves caps shielding their eyes.

A barred door clicked and swung open, and the children called out as they left.

"Bye, Daddy!" "I love you, Daddy!"

The Allen boys looked back at their father. They waved.

He waved. They walked out. He balled his fist and brought it down over his heart.

Staring, silent, the men waited in line to leave the visitation room. A smiling Barnes, tears in her eyes, shook every hand. One inmate finally said, "How can I thank you?"

"You-all did just great today," she said. "I didn't even have to twist off your ears and nail 'em to the wall."

Staff writer Anne Saker can be reached at 829-8955 or asaker@newsobserver.com.

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