When I read about the clemency for Mark and Patricia McCloskey this past week and the most worthy case of Kevin Strickland, a wrongful conviction for a triple murder, my mind strayed to Patty Prewitt, a 72 year-old grandmother I knew through the Prison Performing Arts program. Her story of dubious conviction and willing rehabilitation is documented wonderfully by Aisha Sultan in 33 and Counting.
Details of the case can also be found at [ https://www.stlmag.com/news/33-and-counting-new-documentary-aisha-sultan-patty-prewitt/]
But more significant than the controversy surrounding her conviction are the decades of service Patty has offered daily to fellow incarcerated citizens, as well as to rehabilitative organizations such as Resident Encounter Christ, Restorative Justice Project, and Prison Performing Arts. I have seen the stunning achievement of men and women of all ages and uneven educational background presenting dramas from Shakespeare to the adaptation of Jane Austen through the project Prison Performing Arts. Working with director Chris Limber and his artistic staff, Patty has been the inspiration that brought her fellow actors to the stage.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-59fD5sZWo)
The performers in the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice: First Impressions, had one thing common, besides acting: they were incarcerated citizens of the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correction Center (WERDCC) in Vandalia MO. Embedded within the play, each actor told the story of her first reading or viewing of this drawing-room comedy of young, white, privileged women seeking love in early nineteenth century England. What I witnessed was not only a hilarious rendition of Pride and Prejudice, but a testimony of transformed literacy and identifying with characters so distant from the ways of the inmates as one galaxy from another.
It’s true I am a sucker for student performers, having taught high school for twenty years, but never did such heartfelt performances say so much about character and the need for a free life for many of them. Following the show, I wrote a poem I shared with the acting company through Prison Performing Arts about my “first impressions” of the performance. The entire poem is at https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2019/05/23/first-impressions/, but here are the final lines:
And how do I explain the pathos
That squeezed tears from me
Over a comedy of manners?
Because
I could not forget where I was
Who these dauntless women were
How much confronted and overcome,
How much risked and renounced
To deliver a two hundred-year old drawing room comedy
With spirited excess.
Two dozen stories, within this story,
Grabbing at my heart.
Many of the incarcerated citizens have families, and, to prevent recidivism, it always matters what awaits them on the outside when they are released. No one has a better landing place than Patty, whose four children have had open arms for thirty-four years. I’ll let this appeal from Patty’s website conclude my claim for her clemency, which competes with the claim for Mark and Patricia McCloskey.
A Family Who Wants Her Home.
The Prewitt children lost their father as a result of the crime for which Patty was wrongfully convicted. The oldest Prewitt child, Jane, described the murder of her father and the conviction of her mother as a “double tragedy” that orphaned her and her siblings. Today, the four living children and the many Prewitt grandchildren pray for Patty’s release. Jane even has a bedroom waiting for her mother. https://pattyprewitt.com/