When Ty Johnson remembers her best Christmas ever, 36 years vanish from her face and she is a young girl again: "I was 12 years old. My mother had just married and I got a bike and a television." Her eyes glow as she thinks back to that day, her smile is wide. As quickly, it vanishes. "We didn't have good Christmases after that," she says, her voice flattening as she relives subsequent holidays in a home gripped by active addiction. "I have younger brothers and sisters, and I remember two Christmases we woke up and we didn't have anything. Nothing, not even a pair of socks. How do you explain that to children who still believe in Santa Claus? Who see Christmas everywhere else? I still feel that to this day. Anything I can do to help someone have a good Christmas, I will. Even if I didn't do it the right way, I tried."
Johnson shoplifted gifts for the young children of her addicted sister. Shoplifting and prostitution were also the means to supply the drugs she needed, and her incarceration history included two stints in prison prior to her final one. "I was so worn out from the streets, I couldn't wait to lay down somewhere, even prison, and be still."
Six years ago, she was arrested in Lewisburg, Tenn., for the sale of Schedule II drugs. With those charges still pending, a bed opened in one of Nashville's Magdalene homes, a residential program for women with a criminal history of prostitution and addiction. She was there for a year before her trial, and despite testimony from Magdalene founder Rev. Becca Stevens, she was sentenced to 14 years in prison with no eligibility for parole for at least three years.
"I went back in May 5, 2010," Johnson recalls. "Magdalene helped me all along the way — they took turns coming to visit me, I had support and I had goals. My heart wasn't hard this time, but holidays were still terrible, no matter what. From Thanksgiving on, I just wanted it all to hurry on. There were people around me, but I felt so alone."
Among those around Johnson was Shelia McClain, a member of the Magdalene Class of 2007 and now assistant resident manager and coordinator of Magdalene on the Inside, a year-old program based on Magdalene's community principle; six inmates of the Tennessee Prison for Women are enrolled. McClain carries her own holiday memories. "Probably my best Christmas was when I was 9 or 10, I got the Grease album and a little record player with a microphone. I would sing and dance — I thought I was Olivia Newton-John."
By 14, McClain was on the street, and she spent many holidays incarcerated. "Christmas was just another day. When I was at a CCA jail, they didn't put Christmas trees up. There was a Christmas dinner but no gifts. My family didn't live in Tennessee, so I was alone for Christmas. I just tried to sleep through the day."
Gaile Owens has also spent many years, many Christmases alone behind bars. She was jailed in Memphis in 1985 for arranging the murder of her husband Ron; after a trial in which her oldest son Stephen testified against her, she was convicted of accessory before the fact, sentenced to death, and in March 1986 she entered Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. She spent the first six years in lockup, estranged from her sons and her sister who was raising them. The only communication she had with the outside was with her attorneys and her parents. Every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, every Easter, every birthday, Owens sent her boys cards; every Tuesday she wrote them a letter. She did not hear back.
In 1992 she was transferred to General Population, where she found her role as a leader, mentor and Christmas maker. "I went to the unit manager the first year I was in GP and asked if we could have a tree in our pod if I could get one donated. She said she couldn't let only one pod have one, but she gave me permission to try, and my roommate Linda and I got a tree for every single pod. Volunteers donated them and decorated them."
Owens was sent back to segregation in 2001, but the Christmas tree program remained — one was in Johnson's pod.
Though it was against the rules, the women found ways to give each other presents — especially to those who had nothing — and the guards typically looked the other way. The simultaneously happiest and most heartbreaking holiday traditions inside, says Owens, were the Christmas parties for imprisoned mothers and their children. "Watching those mothers with their kids was so awesome," she says. "They were so happy, but then the saddest thing was watching them leave. They both knew that was Christmas with Mommy, with their babies, and it was already over."
Following public appeals by a large group of impassioned supporters — including her oldest son Stephen, with whom she had reconciled the year before — Owens' death sentence was commuted to life by then-Gov. Phil Bredesen on July 14, 2010. She was released on parole October 11, 2011, and two months later she spent her first Christmas Eve in 26 years outside of prison, eating a spaghetti dinner with Stephen, his wife Lisa and her two grandsons.
McClain's holiday preparations are now fully immersed in getting gifts not just for Magdalene on the Inside, but as many residents of the prison as she can. "We are collecting flip-flops and scrapbooks for them, and gift cards that they can give their children." Her own Christmas days are now wide awake, loud and full of joy, thanks to her husband, 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.
On May 6, 2013, Johnson was paroled and went from prison back to a Magdalene house and is manufacturing floor manager at Thistle Farms. Last Christmas she went to Florida with her boyfriend and for the first time in her life, stood on a beach. Exactly one week before Thanksgiving, she will move into her own apartment. "I am going to decorate for Christmas the first week of December, I can't wait to get my own ornaments," she says, a smile again lighting her face. "But Thanksgiving is my favorite. I have so much to be thankful for."
To support Shelia McClain's efforts to provide for imprisoned women and their children, contact her at shelia@thistlefarms.org.
