Sunday, Oct. 05, 2008

Ex-inmate gets ticket to new life

LITTLE RIVER — Roger Dale Smith pumped his fist, bidding farewell to inmates across the yard as he boarded a bus Wednesday morning at Walden Correctional Institution in Columbia.

Smith, who served five years for forgery, left at 6:25 a.m. with no money and little more than the clothes on his back. His biggest asset: a voucher for a bus ticket to Myrtle Beach.

“I didn’t think I was gonna make it on this yard right here,” Smith said, minutes before being released. “You gotta make friends up in here to make it. You ain’t got no friends, you’re lost.”

The 60-year-old Smith, known as “Pop” in prison, was one of 809 inmates released Wednesday by the state Department of Corrections. Most had someone pick them up; 91, including Smith, requested bus tickets to start their new lives.

State law, written in 1868, provides “a suit of common clothes and if deemed necessary furnished transportation for each released convict.”

In Columbia, that means prisoners are taken to the Greyhound bus station on Gervais Street.

About one in three will return to state prison within three years, statistics show.

“There’s no doubt that individuals that get out and have some sort of safety net, either family or employment, have better chances of success of not coming back to prison,” Corrections spokesman Josh Gelinas said.

Smith knows those odds.

He served five years in the old Central Correctional Institution for housebreaking and larceny in the early 1970s.

He said crack led him back to prison, adding he is determined not to fail again. He used connections on the inside to line up help on the outside.

In prison, Smith made the beds of other inmates for money and cigarettes. It helped him make friends, he said.

One of them was 26-year-old Buddy Dixon, who is serving 10 years for attempted armed robbery. Dixon asked his stepfather, Coy Honeycutt, 72, to give Smith a place to stay and work.

Honeycutt, a born-again Christian, offered to let Smith live and work at his Little River junkyard. Smith has only met the Honeycutts once.

“I’ll be nervous when I get down there,” Smith said.

Smith was dropped off at the Gervais Street bus station about 7:10 a.m.

Curtis Webb, 44, who was released from the minimum-security prison with Smith, gave him a can of tobacco, a cigarette and the white T-shirt off his back. Smith rolled cigarettes for everyone who asked.

It won’t be easy for Smith, said Webb, who served four years for burglary. “How many years of work does he have left?”

BUS RIDE

Smith boarded the bus at 9:15 a.m. for the nearly 2½-hour ride to Myrtle Beach.

Several people released from prison boarded with him — unmistakable in their loose-fitting khaki pants and short-sleeved, blue, button-down shirts, provided by the Department of Corrections.

“If you come out of prison feeling sorry for yourself and trying to get even, you’ll end up right back in there,” Smith said. “What’s done is done. Let it go.”

About 45 minutes later, the bus rolled into Camden, and 30-year-old Don Davis, who was released from the medium-security Kershaw Correctional Institution, got on.

Davis, a muscular man with silver teeth and tattoos covering both arms, sat near Smith near the back of the bus.

Davis has been in and out of prison for 16 years, this time serving two years for shoplifting.

“It’s like a 50/50 chance,” Davis said. “The hardest part is getting out knowing that you might not be able to get a job. I’m going at it hard this time, this year.”

Smith considered himself lucky when he met Ronnie Phillips, who got on the bus at Florence after being released from the maximum-security Lee Correctional Institution after serving a couple of months for a probation violation.

Phillips, 45, whose parents were murdered when he was a child, has been in and out of prison for 22 years. He had no money, no place to stay in Myrtle Beach, no plan.

“There’s nobody that’s gonna be meeting me,” he said. “I’ll just be walking probably to the ocean to go look at the water, just reflect, enjoy the moment. ... I’d rather be homeless than be in jail.”

The bus arrived in Myrtle Beach at 12:35 p.m., and Smith was greeted by 68-year-old Dominic Trapasso, who works at the junkyard.

Trapasso told Smith he was the luckiest man in the world and Coy Honeycutt would look after him.

“When he got involved with them two people, the Honeycutts, he was blessed,” Trapasso said of Smith.

THE MAN WHO TOOK HIM IN

When Smith arrived at Coy and Karen’s Auto Parts in Little River, Honeycutt came up and put his arm around him.

“It’s good to be free, ain’t it?” Honeycutt asked.

“I’m telling you,” Smith said, “I wish I could fly like a bird.”

Honeycutt has helped two other men move on with their lives after prison, he told Smith.

“Well, ya know, none of us are perfect,” Honeycutt said. “When I was a kid, I wasn’t no angel. I wasted a lot of good years when I could have been working for the Lord.”

Honeycutt took out a $50 bill and handed it to Trapasso to take Smith to lunch.

“I’m tickled to death to be here,” Smith said.

Smith, who didn’t have breakfast, ate lunch at 2:15 p.m. at Mama Jean’s Home Cooking in Little River. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Smith expected it to take a week to adjust to eating food on the outside. In prison, he specialized in cooking with a microwave.

He ate barbecue chicken, fried okra, green beans, potatoes and cabbage, and drank sweet tea.

“I’ve been waiting on this for five years,” he said. “This is good. This is really good.”

THE JUNKYARD

After lunch, Smith walked around the six-acre junkyard where he will work, checking out the 36-foot trailer that will be his home.

Poodles and a scratched-up kitten ran through the dirt and darted through some of the 600 junked cars in the yard.

Smith, originally from Woodruff, has experience repairing boilers in prison, and installed commercial laundry machines before he went to jail.

Honeycutt told Smith he would teach him a trade, get him clothes at Wal-Mart, and they would go to church three times a week.

Honeycutt doesn’t like to talk much about his past but uses it to explain the reason he’s taking Smith in.

He said he was a friend of serial-killer Pee Wee Gaskins for eight years and once talked him out of hurting someone.

“I was the devil for 62 years,” Honeycutt said. “I was just a mean man. I cursed. I tried to do things to people.”

He told Smith not to look back.

“It’s a new day for Pop today,” he said. “It’s a new day.”

Smith, a divorced father of two who hasn’t met three of his four grandchildren, thought about calling his daughter.

Honeycutt said his wife, Karen, maybe could look her up on the Internet.

“My youngest daughter, she’s gonna skin me if I don’t call her,” Smith said.

CHURCH

Honeycutt pulled his Cadillac into the parking lot of The Christian Church in Myrtle Beach at 6:37 p.m.

“HELL YEAH OR HELL NO, YOUR CHOICE,” read the sign outside.

Honeycutt introduced Smith to senior minister Joel Wilson.

Wilson encouraged Smith to attend church, keep busy and surround himself with a good network of people.

“An idle mind’s the devil’s workshop,” Wilson said.

Honeycutt told Smith he would be there for him.

“I will be your worst critic,” he said. “If you fall, I’ll love you and pick you back up. If you go astray, I’ll hit you upside the head.”

Smith attended an hour-long service and leafed through a Bible.

He joined hands in a circle with 43 others for prayer.

After church, Smith talked to Honeycutt about possibly dating one of the women there.

“I wouldn’t mind meeting them,” Smith said.

Honeycutt took Smith to Serafino’s, a pizzeria in Myrtle Beach, for dinner.

Smith satisfied another craving: a cheeseburger and fries, with a Coke to drink.

While at the restaurant, Honeycutt’s stepson, who set Smith up with a place to live, called his family from prison to check on things.

Honeycutt’s wife handed the phone to Smith.

“What you doing?” Smith asked his friend, flaunting his new freedom. “You doing time?

“Well, I’m sitting here with a bunch of good-looking women.”

HOME

At nearly 10 p.m., Smith sat on a leather chair at Honeycutt’s home in nearby Longs to call his 26-year-old daughter, Nicole Lakatos.

She regularly wrote him in prison but hadn’t visited him in more than two years.

The last time she visited, she was pregnant with her daughter, Alexes, now 2½.

Smith was hopeful they could meet up soon at her home in Woodstock, Ga., he told her.

“I’m gonna try to get down there and cook Thanksgiving for y’all,” he said.

Lakatos was eager for her daughter to meet her grandfather.

The last five years were tough on Lakatos. She’s always been a “daddy’s girl,” she said.

Smith took a cigarette break on the porch, then sat down to go to bed.

While he liked the “big ol’” bed, staying in a stranger’s home would be different, he said.

But he would do fine, he said.

In two weeks, Smith is scheduled to move to the mobile home at the junkyard, where he’ll live by himself and keep watch over things at night.

He’s not allowed to have a gun, so he’ll be armed with a mobile phone and Raider, Honeycutt’s 10-year-old German shepherd.

“I done the time. Ain’t no need to feel sorry for me,” he said. “It’s all in the past.

“I think I got a pretty good start here.”