The heavy steel doors clanged shut behind me. In front of me were row upon row of cells holding the most hard\u00adened criminals in the state. I felt them staring at me, sizing me up. What they didn\u2019t know was that I\u2019d been here before.<\/p>\n
The first time I\u2019d set foot in Maine State Prison, I was seven years old, visiting my father, who was serv\u00ading time for burglary. For many years, I\u2019d told myself I was different from him, from the 900 men imprisoned here. But now, walking in on my first day as warden, I knew there was a lot we had in common.<\/p>\n
I too had grown up desperately poor<\/a>. Plastic had covered the broken windows of our trailer, useless against the bitter Maine cold. One winter, due to frozen pipes, we went without wa\u00adter. A $200-a-month welfare payment had to cover all our expenses, includ\u00ading feeding four boys. I was the second oldest.<\/p>\n Dad never swore at us kids or hit us. But he was more interested in drinking and carousing than holding down a job. If there wasn\u2019t money for something, he\u2019d steal it. He was in and out of jail.<\/p>\n He had epic fights with Mom. She held the family together. When Dad was in prison<\/a>, we piled into the car and made the hour-and-a-half drive every week to visit him. He hugged us and told us he loved us, but there was no fatherly advice, no admonitions not to follow in his footsteps.<\/p>\n The Christmas I was seven, an inmate dressed up as Santa, and my older brother, Ron, and I sat on his lap. A photographer took our picture, and I held on to it.<\/p>\n I loved my parents. But there was no point in crying to them about how hard life was. I just had to suck it up. Not even God wanted to hear how I felt.<\/p>\n I\u2019d been taught that my Heav\u00adenly Father loved me, but I saw that he helped those who helped them\u00adselves. People like Ron, who left home in ninth grade. He joined the Army, the military police. He visited me my se\u00adnior year of high school, pulling up in a new Ford EXP sports car. What a way to escape a life of poverty! I enlisted at 18 and, like Ron, became an MP.<\/p>\n I served as a military policeman at a U.S. Army prison in Kansas. I didn\u2019t look down on the prisoners. They\u2019d made bad choices; this was the conse\u00adquence. In the early 1980s, contribut\u00ading factors like mental illness, addic\u00adtion and PTSD<\/a> weren\u2019t talked about.<\/p>\n After three years, I transitioned to the Reserves and came home to Maine. I got hired as a corrections of\u00adficer in Somerset County, where I\u2019d grown up. Once I even guarded my dad. He badgered me for favors, like hot water for his coffee.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t do that,\u201d I told him. \u201cIt\u2019s your fault you\u2019re in here, not mine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cC\u2019mon,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m your dad.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t bend. I couldn\u2019t make excep\u00adtions for prisoners. Besides, incarcera\u00adtion was meant to be a punishment.<\/p>\n Over the next 20 years, I rose through the ranks, working as a rescue diver, K-9 handler, drug investigator. I loved the adrena\u00adline rush of law enforcement. Busting down doors. Searching for drowning victims\u2014including 19 I recovered too late to save.<\/p>\n That threw me. But I couldn\u2019t dwell on it. I\u2019d been pro\u00admoted to chief deputy of Kennebec County. There was no place for feel\u00adings<\/a>. If you showed any sign of pain or weakness, you put lives at risk, includ\u00ading your own.<\/p>\n That was a message I drilled into the men under my command in the Army Reserves. In 2004, my unit deployed to Iraq. I took a leave from my job, said goodbye to my family. \u201cI\u2019ll be back before you know it,\u201d I said. Silently I prayed to come back in one piece.<\/p>\n I was a sergeant major, leading a 10-man team embedded with nearly 800 Iraqis in Fallujah. We patrolled con\u00adstantly. Twice I hit roadside bombs. I was in firefights and saw civilians die, caught in the crossfire. The worst was losing 30 men in a helicopter crash.<\/p>\n I found comfort in my faith, but still, the grief was crushing<\/a>. I used my one 15-minute weekly call home to reach Ron. Despite his being a veteran, there was a disconnect. The war was too re\u00admoved from his everyday life. I gave up. As I\u2019d learned long ago, there was no point in sharing my feelings.<\/p>\n I came home in 2005. I was in one piece, but something was off. My heart raced when I walked down Main Street or got stuck in traffic. Im\u00adages from the war haunted me. Other memories. The drowning victims I\u2019d been unable to save. I told my wife, Jodi, I didn\u2019t want to talk about Iraq and was glad when she didn\u2019t press me. If I pushed everything down and did my job, I\u2019d get past it.<\/p>\n By 2007, I was sheriff of Kenne\u00adbec County. One day I was in my un\u00admarked Chevy Silverado, Jodi beside me, driving our son, Caleb, home from camp. A driver swerved in front of us, then gave me the finger. Something snapped inside me. I flashed my lights and pulled him over. Stormed up to his car wearing shorts and a T-shirt.<\/p>\n I flung open the car door. Grabbed the driver by the shirt to yank him out. But his seat belt caught. His face was panicked. What am I doing? <\/em>Neither one of us said a word. My grip loos\u00adened. I walked back to my truck. That was stupid. <\/em><\/p>\n Jodi and Caleb looked stunned. \u201cDon\u2019t you think you were a little hard on that guy?\u201d Caleb said. I shrugged. I wasn\u2019t in the mood for a debriefing. I pushed what happened out of my mind and drove home.<\/p>\n A couple days later, I was in my of\u00adfice when Ron came in. \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n I broke down sobbing, shocking myself. \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJodi asked me to come talk to you,\u201d Ron said. \u201cYou should see someone at the VA<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The VA assigned me to Dr. David Meyer. I\u2019d never been to therapy. I settled into the chair across from him and made small talk, trying to steer the conversation away from myself.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re here,\u201d he said. \u201cIn our sessions, I\u2019m going to ask you to relive the trauma you\u2019ve experienced. It won\u2019t be easy, but you\u2019ll gain more understanding over the emotions you\u2019re feeling<\/a>. Otherwise, it\u2019s like a pressure cooker with no release valve.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Meyer explained more about post-traumatic stress disorder, how it manifests as a variety of involuntary mental and emotional symptoms. I\u2019d heard the term, of course. But I never imagined it applied to me.<\/p>\n Dr. Meyer dimmed the lights. \u201cTell me about one particular day in Iraq,\u201d he said. His questions were probing.<\/p>\n I was back in Fallujah. The sound of gunfire. The sand in my teeth. Chaos. People dying around me. I couldn\u2019t go more than 30 seconds without breaking down. But I kept at it, week after week.<\/p>\n It was like cleaning a garage stuffed to the rafters with experiences and emotions I\u2019d never processed.<\/p>\n Dr. Meyer pushed me to unpack even more. \u201cYour PTSD<\/a> isn\u2019t just from Iraq,\u201d he said. \u201cThe poverty you ex\u00adperienced as a child, the instability of your parents\u2019 marriage, dealing with violence and death as a sheriff\u2019s deputy. You\u2019ve faced a lifetime of trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n All the stuff I\u2019d tried to escape\u2026was a part of me. Dr. Meyer showed me ways to open up, to understand how one experience affects another. There was no judgment about being scared, angry, sad. I learned that feeling your feelings is healing<\/a>, that emotion is the difference between merely surviving and truly living.<\/p>\n I shared more with Jodi. And with God. I poured out my soul to him. I\u2019d thought God wanted me to be strong, to fend for myself. What I discov\u00adered was that he saw all of me\u2014my strength, my work ethic, my problem-solving but also my pain, my vulner\u00adability\u2014and loved the whole person.<\/p>\n Why else would he have a laid out a life of meaning for me, each experi\u00adence connecting to the next, like bricks in a carefully constructed pathway? The chaos of my childhood drawing me to the structure of the military yet also equipping me to handle the un\u00adpredictability of war and law enforce\u00adment. I asked God to guide me to what he wanted me to do next.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just my own life that I saw differently. I gained a new perspective<\/a> on the men and women I worked with. As well as the people we arrested. Each of us was affected by trauma in our own way.<\/p>\n I brought in experts to educate my deputies about PTSD. We shared openly with each other. Several dep\u00aduties began counseling.<\/p>\n I started a treatment program for inmates with substance abuse issues. And I created a separate pod in the county jail for veterans, focused on their particular circumstances. When we realized the sound of cells locking automatically sounded like machine guns firing, we began manually locking up.<\/p>\n With the leadership of Justice Nancy Mills, a county superior court judge, we started a veterans court, allowing veterans<\/a> to avoid prison time if they participated in an intensive therapeu\u00adtic program, including mental health and drug and alcohol treatment. Giv\u00ading out diplomas to the program\u2019s first graduates was one of the most gratify\u00ading days of my life.<\/p>\n I earned a master\u2019s degree in lead\u00adership management from Liberty Uni\u00adversity, allowing me to more closely connect my faith and my work.<\/p>\n That day in 2015, when I walked into the Maine State Prison as warden, I brought with me a vision of prisons as doing more than simply warehousing inmates. We started referring to the men entrust\u00aded to us as residents. I talked to many who had a childhood like mine, which reinforced how blessed I was that God had a plan for that little boy who sat on the lap of an inmate Santa Claus one Christmas.<\/p>\n I kept a framed copy of that photo in my office to remind me how all my experiences had prepared me for this work and given me real empathy for each man now under my care. I want\u00aded to see the whole person, not just the bad things he\u2019d done. What if we addressed the issues that had led him to get in trouble with the law? Doesn\u2019t everyone deserve a chance to do bet\u00adter? Isn\u2019t Jesus\u2019 message one of atone\u00adment and redemption?<\/p>\n In addition to investing in mental health and substance abuse programs, we started vegetable gardens, with 3,000 pepper plants and 4,000 to\u00admato plants that first year. More than 60 residents became certified master gardeners. Our composting program saved more than $100,000 in trash disposal. Another 60 residents got certified as beekeepers, building their own hives in the prison woodshop.<\/p>\n And as I did at the county jail, I cre\u00adated a separate pod for veterans. They trained puppies to become service dogs<\/a> for other vets through America\u2019s VetDogs and for adults and children with disabilities through Little Angels Service Dogs.<\/p>\n We gave these men not only a sense of purpose in prison but also job skills they have used to build new lives for themselves on the outside.<\/p>\n Today I\u2019m commissioner of the Maine department of corrections. It\u2019s a humbling position for a boy who grew up visiting his father in the state prison. I still pray to God for guidance. For forgiveness. A chance to redeem myself<\/a> when I fall short. It\u2019s what we all deserve.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n