President Donald Trump may want to open the former Alcatraz island prison to accommodate the worst “the worst of the worst”, but a woman remembers “The Rock” as a wonderful place to grow up.
“Don’t you be afraid?” It is a question that Jolene Babyak routinely takes for her childhood on a prison island known for sheltering the notorious criminals as gangsters to Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and Mickey Cohen.
Located about 1.25 miles off the coast of San Francisco and overlooking the Golden Gate bridge, the federal prison, which once housed approximately 250 men, became famous to be “impossible” to escape – though many tried.
Only five managed to get off the island, but are missing and are supposed to have plunged into the bad waters of San Francisco’s breast.
Many films were based on the infamous prison, including the Clint Eastwood film in 1979 “Escape from Alcatraz”.
But “scared” is not a word that Babyak would use to describe living on the island.
“We had a very narrow, completely fun community, a neighborhood with low crimes and millions of dollars!” She says.
Children of alcatraz
Most people do not understand prison staff and their children live on the island along prisoners.
Babyak lived there from 1954 to 1955 (aged 7 to 9) and again in 1962 when she was 15 years old. Her father, Arthur Dolison, was the collaborator and also the executor of the run.
With her parents and her two older sisters, Babyak first lived in a two -room apartment in the 64 building, an old military barracks.
The lower part of the construction dated to the 1860s, and the top (where they lived) ended in 1906. Babyak and her sister, Corinne, shared a large bedroom, while her brother received a “uncontrolled corridor”.
The island had a small general store and a post office but not much more. There was no hospital or medical clinic.
“Don’t get hurt,” were the tips the children received.
Babyak, who today is one of the main historians of the island and has written several prison books, once fell and hit his head.
A “minimally trained” medical technician monitored him for a shock, but that was everything for medical care.
“If it were really serious, if you were bleeding, you would have to go to the city,” she says.
This demanded the capture of a ferry, which often went from a dock on the island.
As a second class in the 1950s, Babyak was sent to the city for school himself.
“Different times,” she says, laughing.
She and other children from the island would get the ferry and then a bus to their school, and again.
No phone on the island could buy the city, so once it left for the day, it was basically itself – with some older children to make sure it got about eight.
The classmates knew she lived on the infamous island.
“They were fascinated,” she says. “They mostly wanted to know about Capone, who had died until then. I have the feeling that they thought children and prisoners all Athen dinner together at a long table.”
A unique childhood but ‘ideal’
She remembers a childhood full of adults who were “very actively involved” in the lives of their children – constantly setting events, parties, dances “,” watermelon sources “and shows to keep young people occupied and out of trouble.
While everyone played in a large playground in the middle of the island, adults were constantly monitoring them, either keeping observation from the windows of the surrounding houses or while men moved forward as they went to and from prison work.
As a teenager, Babyak enjoyed her first kiss behind a “Beatnik” island with another teenage resident. (They are friends on Facebook today.)
“We had this life on a prison island that was ideal,” she says.
She notes that this is the opposite of childhood that most prisoners had, and why they ended up where they acted.
“They were children out of the way,” she says. “Trauma product”.
As an adult, she realized that the prisoners were not there because of their alleged terrible crimes, but because of their anti-sociality show in other prisons “and that most were wisely sick.
Despite always growing up saying that her imprisoned neighbors were the “worst of the worst” offenders, Babyak is convinced that she had never been fought. A prisoner even handed her a ball lost through a fence.
“He must have received permission from a guard,” she says.
Later, the other prisoners told her they had enjoyed the sound of the children they played, that they brought a little sun and normal to their lives.
However, others said they felt strong for the children, imagining they would be “blocked” on the island.
A notorious escape
Babyak was living in a more beautiful Duplex house on the island in 1962, when the island’s most infamous escape occurred. She was asleep when an alarm hit her awake.
“My mother met me on the stairs and she said,” Dress, there is a salvation, we have to look for the house, “she says.
She and her mother, Evelyn, had to go down to the base to see the three escapes hiding there.
“This part was a little scary,” she says, though her mother told her with all likelihood the men had already left the island.
The escapes were three bank thieves, John Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin. Their smart escape involved the placement of the papier-mache model heads resist their heads in their beds, bursting from prison your ventilation ducts and escaping the board of an improvised inflation raft.
As it was supposed that everyone was overwhelmed, their bodies were never found, leaving the trio open to enjoy freedom for the rest of their lives. But Babyak doubts this.
“They had no food or money and two had never been to San Francisco before. They were children of rural farms,” she says.
She believes the men would have committed another crime eventually and was discovered.
Alcatraz Rindiza?
Alcatraz is suddenly in the spotlight after Trump said he wants to reopen the island of prisoners, calling him a “symbol of law and order”.
The punishment was closed in 1962 the second for the difficulty and the high costs associated with its maintenance. For one, there is no real sewage system – the sewage was bayed. Water had to be brought to a boat and stored in a large reservoir. For the small amount of prisoners she housed, only about 250, the cost was not worth it.
“It has been very strange and unexpected,” Babyak says to increase media attention because of the president’s remarks.
Today, the island is a tourist attraction. Babyak has sold books and holding talks there for 30 years, along with the former prisoners and at least another former resident. The speakers have diminished over the years, as more people living on the island pass.
Babyak says she feeds her time on the infamous island and was sad to leave when she was closed.
“We were all sad,” she says. “Prisoners” not so much. “
#grew #Alcatraz #lives #infamous #prison #island
Image Source : nypost.com