Perhaps you have never heard of Katherine Lawes.
Katherine was thewife of
Lewis Lawes, warden at Sing Sing Prison from 1920-1941.
Sing
Sing had the reputation of destroying wardens. The
averagewarden's tenure before
Lewis Lawes was two years. "The easiest way toget out of Sing Sing," he once quipped, "is to go
in as warden." Inhis 21 years he instituted numerous reforms - and
an important part ofhis success was due to his wife Katherine.
Katherine took seriously the idea that the prisoners are
human beings,worthy of
attention and respect. She regularly visited inside thewalls of Sing Sing. She encouraged the prisoners,
ran errands for themand spent
time listening to them. Most importantly, she cared
aboutthem. And as a result,
they cared deeply about her.
Then one night in October of 1937, news was
"telegraphed" between the
prison cells that Katherine was killed in an accident.
The prisonerspetitioned the
warden to allow them to attend her funeral bier. Hegranted their strange request and a few days
later the south gate ofSing
Sing swung slowly open.
Hundreds
of men - felons, lifers,murderers, thieves - men convicted of
almost every crime conceivable,marched slowly from the prison gate to the
bier, reassembled at thehouse and returned to their cells. There
were so many that they
proceeded unguarded. But not one tried to escape.
If he had, theothers
may have killed him on the spot, so devoted were
they toKatherine Lawes,
the woman who daily walked into Hell to show the
mena piece of Heaven.
Katherine's strength was to see the men less as
prisoners and more as
individuals. Thomas Moore has said, "We can only
treat badly those
things or people whose souls we disregard."
To treat people well is to honor their
souls. To honor their souls isto understand what it means to love your
neighbor.
