Johnny From Detroit

Johnny From Detroit

          I think everyone has had the experience of meeting someone purely by chance. Sometimes, those encounters are a one-time thing, and you never cross paths with that person again. But sometimes they lead to long lasting friendships which can change our lives for the better. That is what happened to me during the summer of 1966.

          I was born and raised in a small town in north central Missouri. As a young boy I was a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. I enjoyed playing baseball during the hot and humid summer months on the ball fields in our town park which was a short distance from our home. Sometimes my dad would take me to one of the ball fields to watch fast pitch softball games which were very popular in those days. As I watched the players from various teams play, I was amazed at their skills and hoped that one day I could be as good as them.

          One hot summer day my dad and I went to watch a fast pitch softball game between one of the teams from our town and a team from the local prison. It was a medium security prison located about six miles south of town. The prison team was comprised of inmates and played games in town against local teams during the summer. Their players were also quite skilled, and they won more than their share of games.

On this day, my dad was approached by one of the prison officials who asked him if he wanted to meet one of the players on the prison team whose last name was the same as ours.

Now the surname Kehoe is of Irish descent and while there are people with that surname all over the country, it is not a common name, certainly not like Smith or Jones. My dad and I went over to meet him.

He introduced himself as John Kehoe and that he was originally from Detroit. I think we talked with him for a while during the game while his team was batting, and he was in the dugout area. When the game ended, we said goodbye and I thought that while it had been fun meeting a ballplayer with the same last name, I would never see him again.

When we got home, we shared the details of our experience at the ballpark with my mom. That sparked her curiosity, and it was decided that we would visit him at the prison. I remember being scared while going through the various security check points in the prison. As a young boy my mind was full of images of prisons being horrible places occupied by horrible persons who had done horrible deeds. I was not sure at that point if I really wanted to see John Kehoe again.

We visited with him for a while that day and learned that he was from Detroit and that he had made bad decisions when he was young which led to him being sent to prison. He regretted those decisions and said that he looked forward to the day when he could be released on parole. I really do not remember much about that first time seeing him in the prison other than being nervous the whole time while I was there.

Later he was transferred to a minimum-security location, and we traveled there to visit with him several times. That place was less intimidating to a young boy, but the longer drive to get there seemed to take forever. Then after a year or so, he was approved for parole by the state board and was released from prison.

John came home with us and lived in our home for a while. I remember we had an upstairs room converted into a bedroom for him. He went to a special school to learn how to drive tractor-trailer trucks and operate heavy duty equipment. He later met his future wife, and they were married in the Catholic Church which we attended. Later they had two wonderful children and they bought a nice home in town. He liked to barbecue, and I remember eating barbecued chicken for the first time at their house which I thought was the greatest thing I had ever tasted. We had lots of fun together at those gatherings over the years.

One special memory I have is when my beloved St. Louis Cardinals played against his Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series. The Cardinals had won the Series the year before and were up three games to one against the Tigers. I was having a fun time teasing John that his Tigers were about to lose to my Cardinals when, lo and behold, the Tigers came back and won the Series four games to three. Then he had the last laugh at my expense.

Several years later John was seriously injured while driving over the road and his health began to deteriorate. We would visit him and although he was not the same physically, he was still the same fun person to be around. After my wife and I were married we would visit John and his wife in their home. He had a hobby of collecting music boxes of assorted designs and he gave several of them to us which we still have prominently displayed in our living room at home.

John Kehoe died on November 22, 1990, at the age of fifty-four. Although his life was not very long in years, he touched the lives of many people, especially me and my family. I learned from him at an early age that people in prison are good people and not just people to be forgotten or discarded. Like John, many of them came from broken homes and without positive role models in their lives which made it easier for them to make bad decisions. But also, like John, they are sorry for their mistakes and then commit to turn their lives around. Thanks to God’s grace and help from people who care about them, they are successful at making a better life for themselves and others. Whenever the topic of prisons or prisoners comes up in conversations or in the news, I am always reminded of the saying, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Epilogue: Life is full of ironies. Thirty years after meeting John on the hot, summer day in my hometown in Missouri, my family and I moved to southeast Michigan after being transferred by my company. We live about an hour north of Detroit where I now root for the Tigers along with my Cardinals. We have even gone to some games when the Cardinals played the Tigers in Detroit. On at least one occasion I wore a Tigers t-shirt or cap and a Cardinals t-shirt or cap in memory of John and our friendly teasing of each other during the 1968 World Series.

                                                                   By Mark Kehoe