One afternoon when I was living in Bowling Green I heard the doorbell ring. As I looked outside I noticed a woman in her mid 40’s.
Thinking it was someone collecting money for some cause, I asked if I could help her. She said she was a reporter for the New York Times, and wondered if she could talk to me. I said yes and invited her in.
Talking to reporters was not unusual for me, but they rarely came to my home.
She explained she was the wife of an inmate I knew when I worked in the prison. A number of the inmates told her “you must meet Dr. Bergman before you go home to New York.”
They gave her my address and, after she left the prison in Jackson, Michigan, she stopped by to meet me. One of the first questions I asked her was why her husband was in prison.
She mentioned she interviewed him for a story several years ago and a long correspondence ensued. After several visits she married him. It was a hard decision and, she explained, one she has never regretted.
I did not remember talking to him, but then I had come to know several dozen inmates whose stories were in many ways similar.
Over 70 percent of the inmates were black and it never occurred to me to ask her if her husband was black to help me identify him in my mind. I did ask her why she married an inmate.
She exclaimed she loved her job which involved traveling all over the world. Her lifestyle ended her first marriage.
I mentioned that many inmates exploited women who live on the outside because women friends were a significant source of money for them.
She recognized that fact, but countered that she was very successful at her work partly because she had learned to read people in spite of their words.
I learned later, after reading a few of her articles, that she was an unusually talented writer. “I value being married to someone who truly loves me and is not going to be unfaithful as my first husband was,” she mentioned, adding “he is safe in prison and is not going to be untrue to me, a value that is very important to me.
As I travel the world, I know my husband is with me in spirit. I have very good feelings about him and our marriage.
I also know that I am very important in his life and can help him. I know that he greatly appreciates me. Although a lifer, it is always possible that he will be paroled and, when older, we can live together as husband and wife.
He was convicted of first-degree murder, so I realize that may never happen. I know all about his case and support him. He knows he made a horrible mistake that he, and I, must live with.”
I never did ask her for details about the crime he was in prison for. “We are both very happy in our relationship and that is what is all important,” she exclaimed.
I do not know if a newspaper story developed from our conversation. She just wanted to meet me because her husband found our conversations very helpful in helping him adjust to prison life.
