CHERYL CORLEY, host:
I'm Cheryl Corley, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Coming up: coping with some of the awkward holiday moments.
But first, the story of an unlikely pair. In 1978, Edward King was a 21-year-old African-American serving a 30-year sentence out of Virginia prison. Ruth Jones was 80 years old, white, patrician, a retired social worker. They became pen pals, corresponding about gardening, poetry and overcoming adversity. Ruth Jones wanted to publish a memoir chronicling their relationship. She died before that occurred, and the letters were left in a box called Edward. And her grandson, Howard Parnell, inherited that box. And now, several years after his grandmother's death, he told the story of Ruth Jones and Edward King in this week's Washington Post magazine.
Howard, welcome.
Mr. HOWARD PARNELL (Former Editor, Washington Post): Hi. Thanks for having me.
CORLEY: Yes. Well, you acquired the box labeled Edward, as I understand, after your grandmother died in 1991. What did you know about this box before you got it?
Mr. PARNELL: I knew that she had had this pen pal relationship with a prisoner in a maximum security down there in Virginia. And I knew that she had tried to write this book, and that just never went anywhere. And, you know, so she put it away. She put it in the freezer in the basement in case the house burned down. The thinking was that the book would be spared and the letters would be spared. That would be spared.
CORLEY: In the freezer?
Mr. PARNELL: Yes. Yeah. She used to say Edward is in the deep freeze.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CORLEY: So, exactly how did they become pen pals?
Mr. PARNELL: Well, a friend of my grandmother's was a teacher at the Youthful Offender Program at the prison, and Edward was one of her students. And he had a strong desire to learn to read and write. He was barely literate. So the teacher thought, why not create a pen pal relationship?
CORLEY: Mm-hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: And my grandmother thought, well, sure. I'll give it a shot.
CORLEY: Now, as I understand, this correspondence went on for quite a while.
Mr. PARNELL: Yes, it did.
CORLEY: Yeah. So how did it changed over the years?
Mr. PARNELL: Well, I think that, you know, what changed was Edward's replies, his end of the correspondence. He became more and more literate, his - the stories he'd tell, the things he'd write about, the thoughts he would express became - seemed more and more complex. He was able to articulate these more.
In the early going, he couldn't write, and he would dictate them to a fellow prisoner.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: And when you considered some of the topics they discussed, you know, kite flying, and bunnies and scarecrows, in the early going. Here's a fellow in a maximum-security prison, a guy, who by reputation, no one really messed with, and yet he's dictating to this prisoner, you know, his reaction to a letter about scarecrows keeping bunnies away in the garden of this crazy old lady.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm. So it's interesting. They didn't really talk about his life in prison at all…
Mr. PARNELL: They…
CORLEY: …or even what landed him there?
Mr. PARNELL: They did not talk about his life in prison. And she stayed away from it. She asked - initially, she asked her friend, you know, what he is in for and for how long? And the teacher said, let's just say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he's doing 30 years.
CORLEY: But, as I understand it, that he was in for burglary and larceny?
Mr. PARNELL: He was.
CORLEY: Uh-huh.
Mr. PARNELL: He was sentenced to a total of 20 years, 10 years on each count. The paperwork that followed him to prison said 30 years, as a typographical error for, you know, is what it turned out to be.
CORLEY: That's incredible. So initially - originally had a 20-year sentence, but was sentenced for 30 years in prison…
Mr. PARNELL: Exactly.
CORLEY: …but because of your grandmother…
Mr. PARNELL: Well, I think my grandmother helped him with his reading and his writing and his confidence and these kinds of things, and I think that as part of that, as he started researching his sentencing, he realized that something was wrong.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm. And he figured out that typographical error.
Mr. PARNELL: He figured out that it said 30 years instead of 20 years, and he contacted the court. And the court very quickly agreed.
CORLEY: Well, we talked about how their correspondence actually changed. How did their relationship - your grandmother's relationship with Edward changed over those years?
Mr. PARNELL: I think that when you read the early letters, you can see that she's coming across as a social worker, working a case in some ways. And then it became much more of a personal relationship, much more of a friendship.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: And, you know, things progressed from there, and they talked more about life beyond prison. They talked about stories of ordinary people achieving extraordinary things like, you know, an amputee who could swim across the English Channel, and things of that nature - things you'd find in Reader's Digest, which she was a big fan of.
CORLEY: Hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: In fact, she sent him a subscription of Reader's Digest and a number of other things so that they would have common things to discuss in these letters.
CORLEY: Howard, what did Edward do in the years after he got out of prison?
Mr. PARNELL: He's done, you know, a variety of labor jobs. He's worked as a cook. He's delivered furniture. He's, you know, I mean, he's flagged traffic around construction sites, and he stays out of trouble. And the other thing that he does, he will wander down to the corner and he'll talk to, you know, kids who are hanging out there, and he'll tell them his story and make sure that they understand that the penitentiary is not a place to be and that they should do what they can do to avoid it. He believes very strongly that this is something that he should do, and that, in a way, that this carries on the work of my grandmother.
Mr. PARNELL: Well, your grandmother died in 1991. When did you begin the search for him, and what prompted you to do that?
Mr. PARNELL: Well, what happened was that I found the name and the phone number of a woman who seemed to be associated with a number of Kings in the Tidewater region, including a couple of people named Edward King. Now information about them wasn't readily available, but I was able to get her phone number. And I called. At first, she didn't quite understand, and she thought, well, you know, my son's never been in Richmond. And then she realized that I was talking about her son's father. And she said, oh, that Edward King. He's up in Washington, D.C. And that happened to be where I was at that time. And I thought, well, here, after all these years, he's probably just around the corner. And about an hour later, he called.
CORLEY: Mm-hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: And I went over to his apartment in southwest Washington, and I brought along a copy of the book. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but he made me feel very comfortable, and we ended up talking for hours.
CORLEY: Howard, the story - you talked a lot about the impact that your grandmother had on Edward. But what about the impact you think he may have had on her?
Mr. PARNELL: Well, I think that he became, you know, one of her dearest friends. I also think that, you know, in a way, she saw this as the crowning achievement of her life's work.
CORLEY: Uh-huh. What did you learn about your grandmother from their relationship?
Mr. PARNELL: Well, the thing is, you know, their relationship began right about the time that I went off to college in Boston. And I knew my grandmother as an old retiree, somewhat eccentric, sort of poetry spouting and someone who would, you know, make the holiday meals.
But through the letters, I got to know, you know, I got to see a much more complex person. And I think in some ways, you know, Edward elicited a lot of that from her. And through reading the letters, I learned a lot more about her career and her day-to-day life, about her passions. I feel like I became closer to her somehow through reading those letters and her exchange with Edward.
CORLEY: Do you keep in touch with Edward King?
Mr. PARNELL: I do. I do. Actually, I talked to him last night. We've gone to Wizards' games, you know, we just sort of kicked around.
CORLEY: Hmm.
Mr. PARNELL: So…
CORLEY: All right. So you do keep in touch, and he's…
Mr. PARNELL: We do keep in touch. Yeah.
CORLEY: So your grandmother's friend has become your friend.
Mr. PARNELL: Yeah. That's what's happened.
CORLEY: Hmm.
Howard Parnell is executive director of digital media at member station WNYC, and he joins us from the NPR bureau in New York. He is the author of this week's Washington Post magazine article, "The Rescuer." And you can find a link to the story on our Web site at npr.org/tellmemore.
Howard, thank you so much.
Mr. PARNELL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.