The Ohio prison I'd left was old and in a poor state of repair. The food was horrible and medical care almost non-existent. Violence was constant and there was a prevalent air of apprehension. Fear floated in the air like sulfur laced fog. I expected going into the federal prison system to be an improvement. Like everyone else, I'd heard stories of "Club Fed" with tennis courts, golf courses and gourmet food served in your room. I would rather go home, but since I had to do a few more years, Club Fed seemed like the place to do time.

With such high expectations, my first experience with federal prison was a letdown. Like most federal prisoners of that era the United States Marshals drove me to a designated airport to meet "ConAir." It's ironic that a few years later when the movie "ConAir" was released that it became one of Mary's favorite movies, yet one I couldn't stand. I think Mary has a thing for Nicholas Cage, whereas he didn't do anything for me. As a pilot I'm critical of movies that use airplanes in an unrealistic manner, which this movie did a great deal of. Plus the airplane used in ConAir was nothing like the real thing. I can't write about the real ConAir, but I think I can say that it's not a propeller driven aircraft and it doesn't have dog cages in it.

I might have mentioned these discrepancies to Mary the first few times we watched the movie but when I realized how much she liked the movie I was smart enough to shut up. I watched it with her at least six times and I don't think I said I hated the movie a single time past the second viewing. As insensitive as I am, I finally realized she liked the movie because it was a love story about a man fighting to get home to his family. I am sure she equated this to the times I had broken out of prison to come home to her.

At that time all federal prisoners were flown to Oklahoma and taken to the El Reno Federal Correctional Facility. They do it differently today, but back in 1994 this was standard. Once there I was placed in the large transit cell block, which looked a hundred years old. The cell block was five stories tall and appeared to be taken from my worst prison nightmare. There prisoners from every background, ethnicity, nationality and culture were put together for a few weeks before we would all be shipped off in different directions. When I first walked in the door I thought this would be a "Gladiator School" which is convict lingo for a place you had to fight to survive.

Before the day was over I realized, to my great relief, that I was wrong. The group dynamic here was different from anything I had experienced in any prison. An early concern was that as a white guy I was a minority here. I'd never been in the minority before and in this strange place I thought this would be a problem. But there wasn't a racial issue here. The group dynamic here was one on unity. There was a deep convict thing going on there where as long as everyone respected everyone else there were no problems. In the time I was there we had no fights and no tension. Everyone worked together and everyone got along. There was a sense of safety under this paradigm, but it was still a bit scary being in the minority.

El Reno was nothing like what I expected. Since I was only there temporarily, with hundreds of other guys, I figured we'd all be locked in our cells and fed through the bars. All the in-transport prisoners were held in a massively large old cell-block, sort of like I expected, but to my surprise we were free to roam the block all day until lockdown at 10:00 pm. The real shock was dinner when we all walked across the compound and went to the chow hall. The chow hall was large and open, with a cafeteria style serving line. Like everyone in line I was given an entire 14" pepperoni pizza and offered other stuff that I didn't opt for as the pizza was all I could handle. After the starvation diet I'd been on in Ohio, this was a feast. But it didn't end with the pizza. There was an impressive all you can eat salad bar, a hot bar with vegetables, and soda machines.

The food was wonderful.

Back in the cell block I was paired with another inmate for my celli. His name was Ray. Though this was twenty-four years ago I remember his full name and everything about him. The most amazing thing about having Ray for my celli is that he was pilot. He was the first pilot I'd met in prison, and in all the time I have done I have only met two others. Oh, I've met guys who lied and said they were pilots, but the lie is quickly exposed when we start talking about flying. I'd not met any of these pretenders yet, but Ray, who'd already done most of his federal time, had met quite a few. So after introductions and back ground exchanges, Ray mentioned he was a pilot. When I said, "me too," Ray asked me a string of questions that only a real pilot would know. With credentials established, Ray and I became fast friends.

After the four weeks we spent together at El Reno I have not heard from Ray again. Yet I liked him so much that I make him part of my story. In prison you meet some interesting people of which Ray is a standout. To start with, Ray is not a criminal. Never had been, and I seriously doubt he ever would become one. He is that rare animal in prison; an innocent man with absolutely no criminal past.

Ray was from northern Iowa, up near the Minnesota border, a farmer who loved nothing more than loving his wife, working his farm and flying his old two seat Taylor Craft off a hard packed strip of ground behind his barn. This idyllic life ended for Ray when his wife was killed in a motorcycle accident. Ray was driving the motorcycle and he never forgave himself for surviving the crash. A few years after her death Ray began trying to put his life back together. Ray was a martial arts black-belt and instructor, so he began teaching martial arts to various groups, one of which was the local police department. Ray had never been into guns, but his exposure to the police force led him to become involved in competitive combat shooting. Something he was good at. Though never a police officer, in no time Ray was a team member on a law-enforcement competitive shooting team.

In this way his life slowly began to rebuild. He shortened the wings on his Taylor Craft and began learning aerobatics, which he loved. (For the record, I don't like flying an airplane any way other than "straight-and-level.") Ray was also a Christian and was active in his small church. He didn't have a girlfriend, nor was he ready for one.

It was in this time-frame that an old college buddy stopped by the farm and ruined Ray's life. The friend had moved to Minnesota and had a business that ultimately failed in a way that the guy blamed on the IRS. Ray's friend and another guy Ray had never met had pooled their resources and were headed to Florida to start over. They stopped at Ray's farm as a free stop over on the long trip. Ray fed them and while they sat around talking after dinner his old friend ranted about how upset he was with the IRS for ruining him. During that conversation the guy said something to the effect that he was tempted to buy a gun and start robbing banks.

The guy had been upset and was saying whatever came to his mind, so Ray didn't take what he said seriously. To lighten the mood, Ray offered some advice. He said, "If you do that, don't use a gun." Ray explained that a woman in his church is a bank teller and she had told a group of them that if she was ever robbed her instructions were to give the robber the money even if there was no weapon involved. Ray said this then changed to another subject and forgot about the conversation.

Four months later Ray was in the barn helping a cow deliver a calf. When he walked out of the barn he was surrounded by a dozen men wearing all black tactical gear. They all had machine guns pointed at him and were shouting for him to get on the ground. The men were the FBI's fabled Hostage Rescue Team. Ray understood immediately that they were making his arrest because he was a martial arts instructor and a ranked combat shooter. What he didn't understand is why he was being arrested.

His two overnight house guest had went on to Florida the next day and spent nearly four months working labor jobs and unsuccessfully trying to find a piece of the good life they saw all around them. When they became frustrated with their progress they decided to follow through on the earlier boast and rob a bank. One said, "We'll need a gun," to which the other repeated what Ray had said about not needing one. So they robbed a bank without a gun and were immediately caught. During a post-arrest interview with the FBI one of the guys mentioned that they didn't use a gun because of what a farmer in Iowa told them. The two guys were indicted for bank robbery, as was Ray.

Lying handcuffed in the mud outside his barn, surrounded by serious armed men, an FBI agent asked Ray if he had told his friend not to use a gun when he robbed a bank. It took Ray a second to recall the event, but when he did he was relieved to know what this was about. Relieved because there was no way he could be in trouble for that innocent conversation. So Ray said, "Yes, I told him that. But it was just a light conversation. Nothing serious about it. Please tell me he didn't go to Florida and rob a bank." The FBI agent read Ray his rights and arrested him for bank robbery.

The two guys who robbed the bank plead guilty and as first offenders were given light sentences of four years for the unarmed robbery. Both guys told the truth about Ray's involvement in the crime. That he had made that statement to an old friend who was ranting about the government. They made it clear that it was not a serious conversation and that once they left his house, neither had spoken to Ray again. Both guys swore to the jury that Ray was innocent, that he was not involved nor aware of what they had done. Ray was in shock when a federal jury found him guilty of bank robbery. His shock was compounded when the judge gave him eight years for his part in the crime. At the point where I met him he was eighteen months shy of release and being transferred to a lower security facility. Friends had taken care of his farm so he hadn't lost it. When got home he planned to sell his farm and fly his Taylor Craft through Mexico, across Central America, and deep into South America. He'd become fluent in Spanish in prison, so I had no reason to doubt him.

As I said, I never heard anything about Ray after that, but I believe he followed through on his plan. A horrible section on federal law covering aiding and abetting ruined Ray's life and turned a man who loved his country into one who hated it. Ray's story has always touched me.