Part 50, page 187

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

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President Reagan speaks on behalf of Employer Support of the National Guard and Reserve.

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A Public Service of The Magazine & The Advertising Council

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to one prison record, through the seventh grade or to about 1929. Then he dropped out for good when he was about thirteen years old. His common-law stepfather, Ben Wooldridge, was also dead by that time, another victim of the bottle.

When Jack was only fifteen he broke into his grandfather's grocery store in nearby Baxter Springs, Kansas with a "false key" and, according to the courthouse records there, "stole diverse bars of candy and packages of gum and $10 in silver." His irate grandfather insisted on pressing charges and on May 20, 1932, Jack was convicted of burglary and larceny, third degree, and sentenced to the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory at Hutch- inson for a term "not to exceed five years." He was just sixteen years old. This was the beginning of the 20 years, eight months, and 13 days of his life that he was to spend in various jails and prisons. Two years later, when he was eighteen, he arrived at the for- bidding rock-walled fortress of McAlester prison in dreary southeastern Oklahoma for a three-year stretch upon being convicted for yet another burglary after his parole from the Kansas reformatory. His path in life — that of a hardened criminal — was already well- formed.

None of the charges he was ever convicted on, however, were for crimes of violence — unless you count grabbing a deputy's pistol in an escape attempt. "Jack said prison was awful. They'd never keep him locked up again — he'd escape," remembers his sister. Incar- ceration must have been terrible to him. One prison medical report states that in 1947 Jack underwent "two operations ten weeks apart" for being cruelly kicked in the "left groin," and the same report later states obliquely that "this prisoner has history of gunshot wound left foot." Had he been shot there? In 1974 Jack expressed nothing but hatred for the prison authorities, telling me vengefully, "I always wanted to get them back for what they did to me!"

His prison "rap sheet" was nearly impossible to obtain. At one point in our investigation, after we had secretly procured a copy of it, the government even tried to confiscate it on grounds that it was "federal property." But it makes long and often humorous reading, in- cluding items such as this one contained in his Atlanta Penitentiary Admissions Summary: "Presently he got into a reform school in Kansas where he was further disillusioned by indications of corruptions on the part of some of the officials and employees of the institu- tion!" On May 19, 1949, Jack began a ten-year sentence at Atlanta Penitentiary for interstate auto theft and attempted escape upon being rudely caught, and by that time he was un- swervingly bitter towards "the system." His dossier then best explains his state of mind:

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Stagecoach Restaurant

Stagecoach Restaurant. — A mouth- watering array of entrees, sandwiches, desserts, baked goods, etc. Budget breakfasts, 'graveyard' specials and that 'kitchen-back-home' feeling.

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88 NOVEMBER 1983/LAS VEGAN MAGAZINE

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