Jailhouse Rock of Faith

Jan. 3, 2007

This holiday season provided the gift of an interview with a Mother Teresa kind of couple who have a completely different take on Christmas. Jamie and Bob Hall knock themselves out during the holidays on behalf of the area men and women who spend Christmas in jail. Working with them is assistant chaplain Dave McIntyre.
The three work out of an office in the basement of the Grand Traverse County jail building, which is pretty much what you’d imagine — a little stark with lots of religious posters on the walls. Jamie Hall was on a tear that day, just coming back from WLJN, the area’s Christian radio station, to urge listeners to give gifts to the inmates’ 178 children. After that, she had to stamp and mail a huge pile of Christmas cards that inmates had written to friends and family.
They’ve served as kind-hearted jail elves for quite a long time. Bob Hall has been chaplain at the Grand Traverse County jail for no less than 55 years (he also serves the Leelanau and Benzie County jails). He raised eight children, and married Jamie 17 years ago after his wife passed away from cancer. He and Jamie had worked together for seven years as chaplains. Hall’s wife urged him to remarry Jamie after she died because they were “committed in spirit.”
Today, Hall, 80, has skin cancer (not serious) and walks slower than he used to, but he has no plans to retire. Each day he goes to the men’s cells and invites each inmate to come over and shake his hand. He’s a gentle soul, and easy to confide in. Sometimes the inmate will ask to talk awhile in the hallway.
Jamie, 61, a chaplain for 24 years, organizes religion classes for the women, does the office work and raises money.
McIntyre is fairly new on the job, and looks like a likely candidate to take over when Bob Hall retires — “Or when the Lord calls Bob home. I don’t think he’ll ever retire,” Jamie said.
Here’s an interview about their work and their feelings about Christmas.

NE: You’ve worked as a jail chaplain for 55 years. How has the jail changed?
Bob: For one, there were only 25 to 30 inmates during the peak time of summer—and very, very rarely was a female there. Now we see numbers reaching as high as 200 (30 of them are in the Leelanau County Jail)—about 24 right now are women.

NE: The area’s population, of course, has gone up. But what else is going on?
Bob: One of the problems is that so many of these men don’t know their fathers. There might have been a one-night stand and they have built up anger over time. One inmate said to me, “Why don’t I have a father like everyone else?”

NE: One circuit judge mentioned to me that the problem starts early—single moms who have to work two jobs and leave the kids home unsupervised at very young ages. They raise themselves and hang around with other kids who are raising themselves.
Jamie: I can relate to that problem. I was single for 15 years and raised two children myself.

Bob: Another problem I see is that 17, 18-year-olds want to be grown up, but they’re not. Some parents put their kids out when they’re 18, and some are just not ready for that. But they have to leave home.
One fella said, “I was scared. I didn’t have any money. I had no place to live.” He wasn’t a bad kid. His parents made all their kids move out right at 18. This fella told me it was cold out, and he needed a place to stay, so he broke into a building. He didn’t take anything, but he was arrested for breaking and entering.
These kids are 18, but they’re not up to going out on their own. The drug peddlers are after these people, these young people abandoned by their home.

NE: As you go cell to cell, do some of the inmates ever refuse to shake your hand?
Dave: They might have an attitude, but if they do, another inmate will tell them, “You don’t treat the chaplain that way.”
Bob: If they don’t want to meet me, I just tell them, “OK, I’ll see you here tomorrow,” and the next day, they usually will talk to me. Some will tell me then that they’d like to talk to me about their problems. Most have pretty significant problems before they ever get here.

NE: What do you do when you find someone who has a real desire to change?
Jamie: We try to help them and match them up with a family who is willing to take them into their homes for a while. Most of the time, it’s a positive experience. Bob and I used to take them into our own home. We’ve been married 17 years, and for the first 10 years, we almost always had someone in the house.

NE: Have you ever been robbed or hurt in any way?
Dave: It’s a fair question. You’re opening up everything to them, but they need to learn what a true family is like.
Bob: You need to understand that I really get to know someone before they get out. I know where their heart is. My belief is that when someone feels respected by you, they want to show you the same kind of respect in return.

Jamie: We had one young man, he did not steal from us or anything, but he was using drugs while he was there at the house, and I could feel it. The Lord has given me a special sense of when I’m being conned. You can’t con a con.

NE: So you served time in jail yourself?
Jamie: Yes I did, for 45 days. That’s how I first came to know who Bob was. He likes to say, he loves his work, he took it home. He married me. (She laughs.)
His niece was in the same cell as me. I had come to the Lord and committed myself to the Lord, and I had a past that I needed to get cleaned up. While I was there, one of his nieces by marriage was in jail for killing a man while she was in an alcoholic black-out. There was no ministry, and I heard someone singing in the catwalk—it wasn’t very good—and then talking about the Lord. I wanted to know who these people were. The girl spoke up and said that’s my uncle, and he’s been coming in here for years.
That’s how I got to know who he was. A year later, I started to come back in to work with the women, and we got to know each other… When I started, there was nothing, absolutely nothing for the women. I’d take the girls out in the back of the jail, and let them walk around or run. Then we’d sit down and have a Bible study together.

NE: I heard that you live on very, very little money, as in a McDonald’s wage would be a step up. Is that difficult?
Bob: No. If we were looking for money, we’d go for a different job. I’ve been here for 55 years, and every day is a new challenge. It isn’t hard to come to work.
The police officers don’t have time to talk to the inmates, and it’s not their job, anyway, although some of them do take the time. We have a lot of new officers now. I told the captain, it’s a breath of fresh air. They’re quiet, and they treat the inmates very well.

NE: Who pays you for your work?
Bob: We work for Forgotten Men Ministries out of Grand Rapids, but we have to raise our own money in Traverse City. It’s not a very big salary, but …. Area churches contribute, and we have two banquets a year.

NE: So Christmas is about the spirit of giving, and that’s basically your life year-round.
Jamie: It’s 24/7, 365 days a week. When we tell the jail officers that we’re going on vacation, they joke with us: “Which prison are you going to visit?” That’s because even when we take a vacation, we visit two or three prisons. During the year, we have Friday and Saturday at home, but not during the holidays. We work 24 out of 25 days leading up to Christmas.

NE: What kind of things are you doing?
Jamie: We have the gift tree for the inmates’ kids, and then on Tuesday we’ll have a party and we’ll sing and someone we helped here will share his testimony. On Saturday, we have a puzzle contest. We give 1,000-piece puzzles to each cell, and the first three cells done get a pizza party with pop, and let me tell you, pizza and pop mean a lot to them right now.

Dave: The puzzle contest is the quietest time in the jail for the whole year.
Bob: We also have a poster contest. The inmates draw their idea of Christmas. It’s pretty varied. The three top cell winners get a pizza party too. And then year-round, some of the inmates do a self-guided Bible course and they get a diploma if they complete it. Some have never received anything like it. They’re so proud—it’s like they graduated from college.

NE: You said you gathered 178 names of kids for 83 families. How does it work?
Jamie: We go to every inmate and ask them if they have kids, and then Susan
(my daughter), calls them up and asks what they want.
Sometimes there are other kids in the house who need gifts, too, and she’ll wring it out of them. “Oh, I hear a baby crying
in the background. How are you doing
with gifts for her?” Sometimes they’ll refuse gifts, because they’re already provided for. They don’t need them. Other times, they’ll just bust out in tears—they already told their kids there wouldn’t be any gifts this year.

Bob: That’s happened hundreds of times.
Jamie: The giving tree at the radio station is loaded with names—we still have a long way to go. People can give gifts or money. Some give $20 and some give way, way more than that. We divide up the gifts so that every child has the same number of gifts. We even everything out. On Friday, we raised $1,500 on the radio to buy jackets and snow pants for all the kids who need them.
Bob: It’s really special for these kids. I had one fella, he’s handicapped and 19 years old, and he has never owned a brand new pair of pants. Ever. He was not tall, so we made sure that whoever drew his name was able to get the pants tailored to fit.

NE: Was he an inmate or the son of an inmate?
Bob: The son of an inmate, although that brings up an interesting point. Five thousand children are arrested every day. And if you look at their backgrounds, one or both parents have been in jail at one time.
Jamie: A lot of times, 50 percent minimum, the parents get these kids on drug and alcohol, giving real champagne to seven and eight-year-olds on New Year’s…. Grandfathers giving beers to their grandbabies toddling around. I saw that with friends of mine before I got turned around. Even then, it turned my stomach.

NE: So I want to talk about Christmas. It’s a springboard for you to give to the poor, but for most people….
Bob: It’s very stressful with all the ads they see and the pressure to spend. People are going to be burdened with this “No money, no payments until 2009” and they’ll think, “Great, I’ll have more money in 2009,” and then they don’t. They buy gifts, and then they can’t afford the credit card bills.
Jamie: We see a lot more shoplifters come in at Christmastime. We have women here charged with embezzling and gambling. Christmas is a lot worse for that kind of thing.
Bob: Just recently, someone came in for shoplifting at Meijer’s… We are so money centered. We think money is where it’s at, and it is not. A very good friend of mine is a millionaire, and he’s a very unhappy man.

NE: Do you tell this to your inmates?
Bob: No, we just don’t bark off on religion.
Jamie: They get to know us first.
Bob: I don’t consider Christianity a religion. It’s a life of faith and the faith is I believe God. Not I believe in God. I believe God and his word and his story. It’s the way of life for us.

NE: So how is your belief expressed at Christmastime? Do you give gifts to each other?
Bob: We give to a missionary group in each other’s names.
Dave: Susan and I exchange gifts, but not this year. We’re content and don’t need or want anything.

NE: How do you live on so little?
Jamie: The Salvation Army on 28th Street in Grand Rapids! You get brand new shirts, brand new clothes for almost nothing.
Bob: All the clothes I’m wearing today came from there. I paid 99 cents for this tie, $3 and change for my pants, and $3 for my shirt, which probably would cost $15 to $18 brand new.

NE: One last question. If Jesus were alive today, what would he think about his birthday celebration?
Bob: He wouldn’t participate in it. He wasn’t one seeking money. Everything is His, so why would He have to seek for anything? I don’t think He would praise the Christians for their participation in it.