San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Teen’s future gets big boost from inmates
Eleven cents an hour, earned sweeping cellblock floors and mopping prison showers, won’t make much of a dent in a big prepschool tuition bill. You’ll need help. You will need to convince several hundred of your fellow prison inmates to buy into the concept of “mucking.”
And so it is that Syon Green is now a freshman at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, playing on the basketball team and studying to become a sports announcer.
Green, 19, has never been in trouble, but he has spent a lot of time in prison. His academic career got a huge boost from inmates at Soledad State Prison.
And the men at the prison have received a huge boost from Green.
The lifealtering moment came at the beginning of Green’s sophomore year at Palma High, a Catholic prep school for boys in Salinas. His parents were stretching the family budget beyond its limits to pay the tuition of about $10,000 per year, in hopes of maximizing the potential of their only child and avoiding problems at the local public high school. Then Green’s mother suffered an eye
“It just showed me how much they really cared, honestly.” Syon Green, on Soledad State Prison inmates’ donations to pay his tuition at Palma School in Salinas
injury that ended her career as a health care worker, and his father needed emergency heart surgery, putting him out of work as a chauffeur. Tuition was going to be impossible.
Out of the blue, Syon and his parents, Frank and Bashana, were called to a meeting at the school. They were informed that a group of inmates at nearby Soledad State Prison were offering to pay Syon’s tuition for his final three years, $32,000.
The inmates didn’t know Syon. He didn’t know them.
About five years earlier, an inmate named Johnny Howe had reached out to Palma School to start a program in which about 15 students visit the prison once a week to study literature with the inmates and discuss their lives.
The program worked well for both sides. At a session four years ago, the group was studying a story about a POW camp in North Korea during the Korean conflict. The allied POWs were dying in misery and despair, it was every man for himself, much like prison life can be. Then one group of POWs began practicing what they called “mucking.” The men paired off, each man was challenged to do whatever it took to help his buddy. If he is starving, you gave him your food. You muck for him. Morale shot up. Survival became possible.
As the Soledad inmates and Palma students discussed the story, Ted Gray turned to fellow inmate Jason Bryant and said, “We need to start a scholarship and help a young man who doesn’t have the ability to go to Palma.”
The two men set their goal at $30,000, to be given to one student.
“Instead of spreading our donation an inch deep and a mile wide,” said Bryant, “we wanted to go an inch wide and a mile deep, and have a fundamental impact on one young man’s life, change the trajectory of his entire life.”
The two inmates went to work. Spreading the gospel of mucking, they enlisted about half of the 1,100 inmates in the central prison. Some chipped in a few bucks. Some sold art and donated what they made. One inmate kicked in $100, a month’s wages.
The inmates were no longer simply sweeping and mopping. They were mucking.
In less than four years, with a little matchingfunds help from a nonprofit, the inmates raised $32,000.
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” said Jim Michelleti, an English and theological teacher at Palma School who helped institute the prison reading program. “They said, ‘We value you guys coming in. We’d like to do something for your school. Can you find us a student who needs some money to attend Palma?’ ”
The school chose Syon Green.
Sy, as friends call him, first met his benefactors by joining classmates at one of the weekly prison sessions, attended by about 300 of the inmate donors.
“Going in, I definitely was nervous,” Green said, “but once I got inside the facility, there was an instant feeling of being welcome, I felt at home, which is weird to say.”
Green began attending the weekly reading sessions. Then the inmates extended an invitation to Green and his parents. Would they like to come to the prison one additional night each week, to meet with a group of about 10 inmates, so Green could get to know the people investing in his future, and vice versa?
“Here’s the interesting thing,” Bryant said. “We’re locked up, most of us had life sentences, the family could have just said, ‘Oh, thanks for the help and see you later.’ But Syon’s parents were truly remarkable people. They would bring him in to receive coaching, how to have a responsible attitude, cast a vision for his future, give us space to hold him accountable for his grades. They trusted us to invest in their son.
“Even if he failed in some way, we had every opportunity to add value to his life, and that’s all we were asking for.”
It wasn’t always easy for Green.
“I think it was my second session, they had me stand up and do my 10year plan,” Green said. “That was super tough, they were really getting into me, it definitely was the most intimidated I had been, it was very tough to have to do that in front of all those guys, and my parents.”
Green’s parents let the inmates know that he had issues with procrastination and helping around the house.
“Did we call him out? Absolutely,” Bryant said. “We had some difficult conversations. We had him chart out a whole list, his duties as a son, as a student, his vision as an athlete. ‘In light of those duties you’ve identified, how important is playing video games? How important is spending a bunch of time on YouTube?’ We were having conversations most of us never had with our parents or big brothers.”
Green said, “They were telling me that they were investing all that money into me, if I’m not going to hold up my end of the bargain, it’s not going to end well. ‘Hey, you better pull your weight.’ It just showed me how much they really cared, honestly, that they were willing to go to those lengths.” When Academy of Art reps visited Palma School, Green was impressed with the university’s broadcasting major, so he applied for admission. A 6foot2 guard, he did not play basketball his senior year, but he did play AAU ball, and he wrote to the Academy’s head coach and sent video.
“To be honest, I didn’t reply,” said Art U coach Scott Waterman. “I get thousands of emails like that. He persisted, finally I responded . ... Then COVID hit. He told me he was coming to school and I said, ‘Well, you’ve got a spot on our team.’ I just kind of took a blind chance on him.”
Waterman said Green is far from polished but has athleticism and a great attitude, the potential to eventually contribute to the improving program. The Urban Knights play in the Division II Pacific West Conference.
“He’s the youngest guy in our program, by far,” Waterman said. “He’s already started to make significant strides ... and he’s just an incredible kid, very polite.”
Green said he plans to return to Soledad Prison whenever he can, to reconnect with his big brothers. Bryant and Gray won’t be there.
In 1999, when Bryant was 20 and Gray 22, they joined a third man in an attempt to rob the home of a drug dealer. A gun battle ensued and one man in the home was killed. Bryant was convicted of murder — although it was determined that he was not a shooter — and was sentenced to 26 years to life. Gray and the third member of the robbery team fired shots. Gray was shot three times himself. He was sentenced to 40 years to life for murder, robbery and a firearm enhancement.
Behind bars, Bryant earned a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees, in philosophy and psychology, and is a statecertified counselor. He and Gray reconnected about 10 years ago and instituted several programs for inmates. Because of their work, Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted their sentences. They were released in March. Both men work at the nonprofit Gray founded while in prison, assisting former inmates in readjusting to real life. Bryant and Gray are keeping an eye on Green. So far, so good.
“As a freshman, Syon has already captured everyone’s hearts here,” said Elisa Stephens, the university president. “His future is limitless. It would not surprise me at all to see this exceptional young athleteartist achieve his dreams of becoming a sportscaster, or even playing for the Warriors someday.”
That last part is a long shot, but whatever his goals, Green knows he has a lot of friends. Also a lot of pressure. He carries the expectations of hundreds of men who worked for pennies, mucking for a brother they hadn’t yet met.
“That’s how diamonds are formed, by pressure, the right kind of pressure,” Bryant said. “We want him to always know we’re here to support him.”