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Alcatraz Island - Reunion on the Rock

Alcatraz Island - Reunion on the Rock

Old Aug 13, 2002, 11:25 am
  #1  
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Alcatraz Island - Reunion on the Rock

Source: sfgate.com

The most exclusive alumni association in the world -- people who lived on Alcatraz when it was a prison island -- held its annual reunion Sunday.

It was a homecoming to the strangest of small towns, where the largest group of residents were the worst men in the country, locked away to rot on a windswept rock.

The other residents were guards, their families and kids who grew up in what was the safest neighborhood in San Francisco.

There was even a mystery: two FBI agents quietly circulated through the crowd of ex-cons and ex-guards Sunday, asking about James "Whitey" Bulger, a onetime mobster who is on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. Bulger, 73, a murderer and extortionist, is also a student of history who likes to visit historic sites.

Alcatraz ranger John Cantwell said the FBI thought Bulger might have taken an Alcatraz tour in the past, and they thought he might, just might, show up for the alumni reunion.

If Bulger, a master of disguise, was there, there was no sign of him, but there were a dozen former guards, five ex-inmates and plenty of Alcatraz family members there to tell their stories.

They talked about the infamous criminals -- George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis and Robert Stroud, the bird man.

Karpis, said former guard Frank Heaney, was "a braggart" who worked in the prison kitchen and told the same tales over and over, a bit like your creepy old uncle who shows up at family reunions with long, dull stories. Stroud, Heaney said, "was the worst guy I ever met in my life."

"I liked Kelly," he said.

The guards and the men they guarded are elderly now -- Heaney, once the youngest guard on the Rock, is 75 -- and they mingled in the sun outside the main cell block a bit warily, like old enemies from a forgotten war.

"They paid their debt," said Robert Sutter, 87, who was a guard from 1942 to 1949. Guards liked to be called "custodial officers," but the inmates called them "screws" or "bulls."

At a reunion in years past, Sutter sat with ex-inmate Jim Quinlen and talked for hours. It was friendly conversation, Sutter said, "But there was no doubt in my mind that they would have killed any guard to get away. No doubt."

George Devincenzi, 75, remembers playing checkers with Stroud, the birdman. He thought Stroud was intelligent, always writing, always studying. "He told me if I ever got in his way, he would kill me," Devincenzi said. "He was a psychopath."

The ex-inmates on hand looked nothing like that. Willie Radkay, 91, a little man in a black fedora, told how he still had six pieces of buckshot in him and talked about the bloody rebellion at Alcatraz in 1946, when it took the U.S. Marines to recapture the main cell block.

Darwin Coon, 69, a gentle-looking former bank robber in khakis and a brown jacket, told a chilling story of how he had been locked up for 29 days in isolation, a single cell with no light. He went there for carrying a knife. Somebody else out to get him also had a knife, and he thought he might be killed.

"It was pitch black," he said. "All I had on was a pair of boxer shorts. You were cold to the bone, no way to get warm.

"I prayed a lot," he said. "You got no one to talk to, but the Lord is always there. And he's available. So I talked to him.

"I learned my lesson," he said, "Absolutely."

Coon, now a retired property manager in Sacramento, posed for pictures with tourists, standing next to a barred window. They thought he was great; he didn't look like a crook at all.

"He looks just like a grandfather," said Heidi Nelson, 26, from San Diego.

There was another Alcatraz, too, just outside the prison, a small town with perhaps 100 families. Tom Reeves, 55, lived there as a boy. His father was a guard.

He went to school in San Francisco, attending Marina Junior High and Galileo High School. Alcatraz, he said, was a great place for kids: "We didn't have to worry about anything. There weren't even any cars. No crime, of course.

We played basketball and touch football."

He said the families had no contact with the inmates: "It was two worlds, totally." There were also were some restrictions. No toy guns, no knives, so they never played cowboys and Indians. "Sometimes we played custodial officer and inmate," he said.

"It really was a great place to live," Reeves said, "Best view in the world. "

Like everything else, it depends on who you talk to.

"They talk about cruel and inhumane punishment," said Sutter, the guard, "But the most inhumane thing was seeing San Francisco all ablaze at night and people all having fun. For them, it might have been a million miles away."

In fact, the city was only a mile and a quarter away, 15 minutes by boat.

The island opened as a federal prison 68 years ago Sunday and closed in 1963. It's been part of a national park for 20 years.

It still has its pull: 1.5 million visitors a year, 5,000 on Sunday.

"It's a mystique," said Heaney.

"I want to know where I was," said Radkay, the ex-con. "I want to follow my own footsteps."

raffy is offline  
Old Feb 15, 2012, 3:41 pm
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Join Date: Feb 2012
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Alcatraz

I lived on Alcatraz when I was a kid, my Dad was a guard . . . I was trying to find other people who used to live there . . .
mrwatcher is offline  

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