The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Prison was a ‘spiritual transformation’
DARIEN — It took two stints in federal prison, and the assurance of his daughters, before John G. Rowland found his true calling, channeling the political skills that won him a record third election as governor to help offenders like himself back into their communities.
Speaking to about 120 men gathered for breakfast and prayers with the New Canaan Society, Rowland, in one of his first public appearances since his release from prison last May, tied an old story into a new one, proclaiming that “it was a blessing to go back to prison for a second term.”
Speculating the various active investigations into “the leader of the free world,” President Donald Trump, are political in nature, the state’s former top Republican said that during the 2014 federal probe that led to his indictment and conviction, Rowland was told that it was mostly payback for a relatively lenient first stretch in prison.
The 61-year-old development director for the Prison Fellowship said that during the latest sentence for political-campaign corruption, he realized he had a lot more going for himself than an average inmate, even as he fit the definition of recidivist, among the majority of inmates who return to incarceration.
“I had a loving wife, children, a stable home and a high school diploma and there wasn’t much of that among the faces around me,” said Rowland, a Waterbury native and Villanova University graduate who served two terms in the state House of Representatives and three terms in Congress before winning the 1994, 1998 and 2002, governor’s races. He resigned in mid-2004, on the heels of an impeachment inquiry that preceded a guilty plea for corruption and his first 10-month prison term.
Released last May from his “latest adventure” in the Lewisburg, Pa., federal prison camp, Rowland, whose state pension is $53,065, said he turned down a lucrative job to become a Northeast regional director of the nonprofit Prison Fellowship, “the land of the frozen chosen,” he quipped.
The Prison Fellowship had a $40 million budget last year, most of which went into its prison ministry program, according to its annual report, which includes $9.1 million in fundraising, $3.3 million in public education and $3.9 million for management expenses.
He noted the irony of his experience, first running Connecticut’s prisons, then becoming a twotime inmate.
“I know the ins and outs and ups and downs,” he joked to the weekly males-only, Jesus-oriented breakfast group, gathered in a Post Road restaurant in downtown Darien. The founding chapter of a national group, the New Canaan Society’s motto is “Through friendship, men helping each other become better husbands, fathers and leaders.”
Rowland began his 25-minute speech with an often-told story he heard from Gen. William Westmoreland, who was the top military commander during the Vietnam War. Westmoreland recalled a phone call he made to a motor pool to ask for an inventory of vehicles, when an enlisted man counting the equipment included a jeep “for the stupid general.” Identifying himself, Westmoreland was met with silence over the phone, then a hasty “Goodbye stupid,” before the soldier slinked off into anonymity.
Rowland said that life came relatively easy for him when he was young. “Sometimes when you have early success, with that early success there’s not grounding, maybe there’s no wisdom,” Rowland said. “I have the extraordinary, the unique opportunity to be one of the 67 percent to return to prison. You need spiritual transformation in order to become a better person.”
The former governor said that the spiritual life he fostered in his first prison term and later, in a career as an afternoon-drive host on WTIC-AM radio in Farmington, blossomed during his latest incarceration.
“What is God’s purpose?” he said. “What is God’s plan? How do I use this?”
When he heard he was being investigated for again, “I couldn’t kind of grasp what happened,” Rowland recalled, adding that his attorneys quoted federal prosecutors as saying, “your guy didn’t do enough time 10 years ago.” In September 2014 he was convicted of seven felony counts for a behind-the-scenes role in the losing Republican congressional campaign of Lisa Wilson-Foley, whose husband, Brian Foley, paid Rowland $35,000 in consulting fees.
He remembered sitting on a bench in the park behind the New York Public Library when he realized his appeal would be rejected. He started praying and wondering, “How is my family going to deal with this? And I lost hope. I was always an upbeat guy.”
But at dinner that night with his wife Patty and their daughters, Kirsten and Julianne, the young women gave him hope.
“Dad, we’ve got this,” they said.