"Many inmates have no visitors or people who write to them. It strikes me that this is also the plight of many who live in institutions: the old, the mentally or severely physically handicapped, and those in hospitals. These are the bored, the lonely, the frightened, the forgotten by the world.

For the most part we shrug our shoulders with indifference because we pay good money for someone else, other people, to take care of these non-functioning or dysfunctioning members of society. What else can we do?

I have been incredibly fortunate in that several of my friends and family have stood by me from the beginning and are still with me 20 years later. That is rare indeed.

However, as time has passed, my mentors have begun to die. About five years ago, the first shocked me by dying before I was released. A few years ago I wrote about T.J. A few months ago another pivotal person died. His name was Al Garris and he was an extraordinary character.

When we first met in about 1991 or 1992, he did not much care for me. Or I for him. I thought he was gruff, he thought I was a snob. Circumstances, however, forced us to work together. I was a drafter and he was the superintendent of maintenance for the correctional enterprise factories. While he had several drafters working for him, one of them, a friend of mine, urged him to utilize my skills. He believed in her, trusted her judgment and so gave me a change.

Al would later say it took him a year to get me to speak a complete sentence to him. I always maintained it took me a year to get a word in edgeways. Al, “Uncle Al” as he became to me, was a storyteller, a teacher, an imparter of wisdom and he had lots to tell.

He had lied about his age, enlisted, and fought in World War II. It was in Europe he met his first wife. He returned to the United States and because of his astonishing brilliance (a rare combination of theoretical razzle-dazzle mixed with the ability to tinker creatively with his hands), he was one of the men chosen to work on the NASA rocketry projects.

But his dreams were thwarted. Domestic problems led into legal problems, followed by addiction and numerous long trips to the state pen interrupted his life. Everyone, including Al, gave up on him. His life, once so full of promise, vanished.

Disappeared in a quagmire of the habitual offender, convict, felon, loser, nobody; the gift of his life was passed-by unnoticed, unopened until he had an extraordinary visit from his estranged daughter. He had not seen her in 20-odd years, since she was a baby.

The visit, and the subsequent development of a wonderful relationship with his daughter, made him believe that anything was possible: forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation. It restored his faith. He took steps, slow, difficult awkward steps to change his life from huckster to man of integrity. Once he changed his life, he married a woman as remarkable and determined as himself. He then made it his life’s work to help other inmates change their lives.

He was no sentimental do-gooder. He was a bantamweight boxer. An in-your-face, fierce, straight-talking, sharp-witted, suffer-no-foolishness feisty man who knew the system thoroughly. He influenced hundreds of inmates to change the direction of their lives. Because of Uncle Al, many men and women completed nationally accredited three- and four-year apprenticeships and many of those inmates who’ve been released have gone on to create successful businesses and to lead productive lives.

When he believed in you, he trusted you and he insisted you take that responsibility seriously. He made me believe that what I did, even in this place, mattered. He made me believe I still had something to contribute and that contribution was unique and vital. He taught me about the realities and practicalities of faith through loneliness, boredom, the grind of the everyday. He taught me too how to find the strength and courage to keep getting up, standing up, no matter how many times I am knocked down.

But when he died I felt as though another cord of my parachute was cut. I felt adrift and frightened about my present and future. Where are the Uncle Als, the TJs, the chiefs? How could I survive without the love and friendship and resilient faith of these people who knew me exactly and intimately and who still believed in me?

As the selfishness of my grief begins to clear, I find my heart aching for those many, many inmates who have never had anyone believe in them, take time with them, visit them, write them a kind letter of encouragement, or challenge them to live to the best in themselves rather than settle to live at the level other people think of them. I shudder to think of all the gifted lives that go unlived and unopened.

Of all the skills and knowledge Uncle Al taught me, I hope that I learned enough from him to invest and believe in other people. Whether it be another inmate who feels defeated, or the shame-filled child of an incarcerated parent, or a person who fells abandoned through circumstances, homelessness, illness or old age, I hope I have his unending courage and passion to help others reclaim the joy of living.

And that is probably Uncle Al’s greatest legacy: Those of us he bear-hugged with faith and love, he also painted in us a desire to make a difference. As Uncle Al would say, you can do it too." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, October 19, 2006).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'