Progressive
Prison Project
Innocent
Spouse & Children Project
Greenwich,
Connecticut
Our Week at The Nantucket Project 2013
Jeff Grant
Day Five: Nantucket, Friday, Sept. 27, 2013:
________________________
The Nantucket Project
Friday, September 27, 2012
"The Art of Surviving Prison"
Jeff Grant
Good afternoon. My name is Jeff Grant, I’ll start off by telling you three
things about myself that might not be obvious by looking at me. First, I served almost fourteen months
in a Federal Prison for a white-collar crime. Second, I am an alcoholic and drug addict. Third, I’m the Associate Minister and
Director of Prison Ministries at The First Baptist Church of Bridgeport – a
church in one of the roughest neighborhoods in one of the roughest cities in
the country. I am also the
Director of the Progressive Prison Project and the Innocent Spouse &
Children Project, both based in Greenwich, Connecticut - which I am certain you
know is one of the wealthiest communities in the country. These are the first ministries in the
United States to support the families of persons accused or convicted of white
collar and other nonviolent crimes.
We’ll talk more about these ministries that my wife Lynn and I have
founded in a little while.
Over the next ten minutes, I am going to tell
you the story of how I was transformed from being a successful New York corporate
attorney, by successfully surviving almost fourteen months in a Federal prison,
into becoming an inner city minister – who also helps people accused or convicted of white collar crimes,
and their families, through their own transformation stories.
I have one more admission to make up front – this
is not my first time speaking at The Nantucket Project – although it is my
first time presenting on the Main Stage.
You see, I am an alumnus of The Nantucket Project Fellows Academy. Last year, when I was a 2012TNP Fellow, it was an honor to be
alongside Sen. Bill Frist when he & I spoke at the Fellows Academy Lunch to
kick-off the 2012 Nantucket Project.
And you know what? An amazing thing happened at that lunch! As soon as people found out that I was
a prison minister, and that I had gone to prison, prison
become the overarching theme of the luncheon!
I really shouldn’t have been surprised – the
topic of prison seems to be everywhere now. It captures people’s imaginations. It reaches into their homes and affects their families and
their lives. If I took a poll of
the people in this room, and asked people to raise their hands if they had a
friend or family member in prison, who has been to prison or in fear of going
to prison – many of you, maybe even the majority of you, would raise their
hand. The original Netflix series,
Orange Is The New Black was an
unmitigated hit this summer season. Martin Scorcese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DeCaprio, comes out next
month. Prison stories are gripping.
Prison is topical. And Prison is personal.
I thank Tom Scott and Kate Brosnan for inviting
me to be the first alumnus of The Nantucket Project Fellows Program to tell his
story on the Main Stage..
_________________
It began when I suffered a sports injury in
1992. I was a young, successful corporate
and real estate lawyer with all the trappings – big house in Westchester
County, NY, Mercedes, and vacations to the Caribbean. You get the picture? Anyway, I was playing basketball with my biggest
client when lightening struck and I ruptured my Achilles tendon. And in the course of the rehabilitation
from that injury I got hooked on pain killers. I never meant for it to happen – but it did and for over ten
years I took them almost every day of my life. The problem with taking pain killers – at least for me
– was that it was insidious. Day
after day, little by little, they cut away at my soul, ate away at my judgment.
If I had had the ability to pull
back and look at my life from a distance and see it in five or ten year slices,
I probably could have seen how different everything looked over these different
time periods. The compromises I
was making. The physical changes.
The mood and behavior issues. The
money problems. It probably would
have been obvious. But I
couldn’t do that – instead, day by day the cumulative effect was
imperceptible. I was miserable –
my weight had ballooned to 285 pounds – I was vomiting up blood from
anxiety. I was spending way more
money than I was making. I was
taking more and more painkillers.
I stopped showing up for client meetings. The law firm was spinning out of control.
Until one day my office manager came to me
and told me that we had a problem.
She told me that we weren’t going to make payroll that week. How could that be possible? I had been in business as a lawyer
almost twenty years – and despite all the problems, all the madness, the
business had grown to become one of the most successful law practices in
Westchester County. We were
bringing in millions of dollars a year – something I still have no explanation
for. But we were out of cash
– I could have done a lot of reasonable things. I could have called a friend, I could have called the bank.
But my mind was reeling, the drugs wouldn’t let me focus. And that’s when I made my deal with the
devil. I told her to borrow the
money from the firm’s client escrow account. She asked me if I was sure that’s what I wanted to do, and I
told her to do it. And with two
key strokes of a computer, my fate was sealed.
I wound up borrowing and replacing client
escrow funds a few more times – but the damage was done. As these things go,
soon there would be a grievance against me that started out over something
small - but my client escrow records would be subpoenaed and I would start a
long three year battle to defend against the defenseless. Racked with shame and guilt,
my pain killer use escalated and I got really out of control.
On Sept. 11th, when I saw the
plane hit the second tower, I went into sheer madness. It was as if the world stopped
spinning. I couldn’t think and I
couldn’t work - I started to lose
clients and staff. I was in a pit
of denial and was looking for my way out.
There were commercials on TV and the radio for small business loans for
businesses that had been adversely affected by the tragedy – I called and
described my problem. They told me
that I qualified for a 9/11 loan.
But even having qualified, I was just too desperate and stoned – and I
embellished my loan application to make sure I got the loan. In a few weeks I did get the loan and I
thought I was on track to save my law firm and start a new day. But it didn’t really help – within a
few very short months, all the evidence had mounted and it became clear that I
was going to lose my grievance case and was going to be disbarred from
practicing law.
One day in July 2002 I had enough – I had no
more fight left in me. I just
couldn’t take it anymore. I called
my lawyer and told him to throw in the white flag and resign my law license. That night, after my wife and kids went
to sleep, I sat down in the big easy chair of the den in our house in
Westchester, and tried to kill myself.
I swallowed an entire bottle of pain killers. I just wanted the pain and the madness to stop.
________________
I woke up a few days later in the Acute Care
Unit of Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, CT and there was no way of knowing
then that instead of my life ending, that my new life had begun. I made it through seven weeks of rehab and started the long
arduous but incredible journey of a road back to life through recovery. I went to my first AA meeting on
my first night out of Silver Hill Hospital – and at that meeting I did exactly
what I was instructed to do. I
raised my hand and said, My name is Jeff, I’m an alcoholic and I need a sponsor. I met my first sponsor at my very AA
meeting, and have attended almost 9000 AA meetings since then and have never
again touched another drink or a drug.
I am very proud to say that on August 10th of this year, I
celebrated my 11th sobriety anniversary.
But, of course, we already know that there was
more to my story. I did what any
"sane person" would do with no money and no job – I moved my family to Greenwich,
Connecticut – perhaps the wealthiest community in the country. There I became a very involved member
of AA, and took on a lot of responsibilities and commitments. After all, recovery had saved my
life. Over the first year or two,
with so much wreckage to take care of – I had lost my career, my money, I lost our
home in foreclosure, my marriage was in shambles. But recovery was my bedrock – I was staying sober.
One morning, when I had about 20 months of
sobriety, I received a call from the FBI.
The agent on the phone told me that there was a warrant out for my
arrest in connection with my fraudulent statements on the 9/11 loan. I couldn’t believe it – it had been
four years, I was now sober almost two years - and I couldn’t believe that
anybody was looking at that loan.
But one of the gifts was that I was able to face this as a sober man,
and be there for my family, for my community and for myself sober.
I was sentenced to eighteen months in Federal
prison. For those of you who don’t
know how the designation process works in the Federal prison system, basically
on the day your name comes up you are designated by your security level lowest
to highest and given a bed kind of like checking into a hotel. I had a security level of "zero" – so I
could have been designated to a camp anywhere within 500 miles of our home in
Connecticut. But on the day I was designated there were no beds in camps in this
area – so I was designated to a Low Security Prison. And that’s where I went. On Easter Sunday, 2006, I reported to Allenwood Low Security
Corrections Institution in White Deer, Pennsylvania. And soon found out inside that there was one former lawyer - that would be me - two former doctors, five former stockbrokers, and 1500 drug
dealers. This was real prison and
would be home for the next thirteen and a half months.
________________
Among the many, many things I learned about
successfully surviving prison are two main points. The first is that everything – and I mean everything is about respect in some shape
or form. In prison, respect
basically comes from keeping your mouth shut most of the time, and believing
none of what you hear and half of what you see. It’s amazing how much I learned about respect in
prison – respect for others, respect for life, respect for possessions, respect
for God. It’s as if I had been
sleepwalking my entire life and never had my eyes open to the human condition
or what it took to be free, until that freedom was taken away from me. The other thing main point I want to
share today about successfully surviving prison is to a have a plan.
Before I went to prison I read the works of great leaders who survived captivity,
and read about their ability in prison to manifest control over bodies and
attitudes – and their abilities to help others. Even before I went to prison, I decided that my plan would
be a daily regimen of mind, body and spirit in helping others and myself. For my mind, I learned to play
guitar – and took over 200 guitar lessons while I was in prison. For my body, I walked 14,000 laps
around the track – the equivalent of walking across the United States from New
York to Los Angeles in one year.
And for my spirit, I turned to God. I read the Bible, went to religious services and communed
with other suffering people in ways I had never before encountered. And there was AA in prison too – and it
was a gift to be able to keep my AA program going giving the other inmates
comfort that they could stay sober on the street as they taught me how to stay
sober in prison.
__________________________
I was released from prison in 2007 and had to
do a stint in a halfway house, home detention and then three years of Federal
probation. I also had court
ordered drug and alcohol counseling. It was my counselor – a former Catholic Priest turned
drug counselor- who recommended to me that I rebuild my life through
volunteerism. I called my old
rehab Silver Hill Hospital, and asked them if I could come interview for a
volunteer position – they told me to come over that day. We sat and talked for almost two hours,
and importantly, I fully disclosed everything that that happened in the past
few years. They asked me to fill
out an application and told me that they were going to do a background check –
I was nervous. I figured that if
my own rehab wouldn’t take me for a volunteer job, who in the world would ever
let me work for them? I didn’t
have to wait long. Two hours later
my phone rang and I was a recovery volunteer for Silver Hill Hospital. This led me next to becoming a
volunteer house manager at Liberation House in Stamford, CT – a residential
rehab where guys are sent instead of being sentenced to prison. That led me to Family Reentry, a
nonprofit serving the ex-offender communities in Bridgeport and New Haven CT,
the first organization that asked me to serve on its Board of Directors. My then girlfriend Lynn – now my wife –
worked with ex-offenders of Family Entry and converted a blighted inner city
block in Bridgeport into the largest privately owned public use park and garden
in the State of Connecticut.
All this time we were living in Greenwich and
attending AA meetings – and I became known as the “prison guy.” I was sharing about going to prison,
surviving prison, and staying sober through the entire experience. Soon guys who had white-collar legal
problems were seeking me out, and over the next six years I must have met with
and counseled fifty guys in various stages of going to or coming back from
prison. It was an eye opening
experience and I had no idea that it was going to turn into a ministry. I was just putting one foot ahead of
another.
I went to Chris Tate, a Reverend at the church that we
were attending in Greenwich, and told him that I was searching for something
more meaningful. He recommended
that I apply to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. I told him that I thought that was a
little crazy – for one thing, I’m a Jew.
Next, how would I ever get accepted to the preeminent urban seminary in
the world with my story? But, he
told me that seminaries are in the redemption business – I should apply. And I did. I was accepted to Union Theological Seminary and went to
school there for three years.
In April 2011, Chris and Rev. Holly Adams baptized me with water brought back by my friend Walt Chichocki from the River Jordan. In
May 2012 I earned a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary with a Focus in Christian Social
Ethics. For my master’s
thesis, I wrote a 150 page treatise that became the basis of my hopefully soon to
be published book, "The Art of Surviving Prison."
_________________________
A few months later, while still working with
white-collar families in Greenwich and doing reentry work in Bridgeport, I
accepted an offer from The First Baptist Church of Bridgeport for Lynn and I to
start a prison ministry at the church.
You have no idea how blessed we felt to have come from where we came
from, and to have a life of service in a community where we could really make a
difference. And where they could
make a profound difference in us.
I started to blog about the experience of working in the hood during in
the day, and with white-collars in the evening when lightning struck
again.
I received a call from Lawrence Delevingne, a reporter at a Hedge Fund Magazine called Absolute Return (now at cnbc.com), who had
read my blog – he called me an "inner-city minister ministering to white-collar criminals
and their families." He asked if I
would do an interview. And I told
him that I would on one condition:
that the story is
about a new ministry that is bringing suffering communities together in new ways so that they can
survive, transform and succeed. Over three or four sessions Lawrence conducted a sensitive and powerful
interview that caught the attention of a lot of people.
The Progressive Prison Project
and the Innocent
Spouse & Children Project are the first ministries in the United States to
support with intentionality the families of people accused or convicted of
white collar and other nonviolent crimes. These
families receive so little compassion and empathy - and are so easy to
"other" - by a world that is all too eager to believe the next
sensationalized headline and to ignore the human side.
It is true that we still
spend the majority of our time in the inner city, but we find our work with
white-collar families just as fulfilling.
These wives and children are innocents of situations not of their own
doing, in situations where they have often not been independently represented,
in which husbands and fathers have gone to prison often leaving them penniless,
homeless and shunned by their communities. For these mothers and children, we assemble teams of
advocates, ministers, lawyers, counselors and other professionals to protect them and get them safely
through to a new life in a new family dynamic on the other side of prison.
As
I see it, the biggest tragedy of all about white-collar and nonviolent crime is
not how big the matter is, or sensationalized the headlines - it is in our
failure to see it as a human story, with real people, real brokenness, and real
families left behind.
__________________________
Thank you for allowing me to spend a few
minutes with you, tell you my story and share with you the ground breaking work
we are doing the Progressive Prison Project and Innocent Spouse & Children
Project. You can learn more about
it on our website at progressiveprisonproject.org.
May God Bless You and Keep You Always.
