Radio Mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

RADIO M IRROR Why Warden Lawes Raised His Daughter in Prison but Old Black Joe. was her nurse and personal bodyguard. He was a lifer, and he has been dead for several years. In all her life, Cherie has never had a woman nurse, nor one who was not a prisoner. One of her earliest memories is about Old Black Joe. Somehow or other, he and another of the house servants quarreled and engaged in a rough-and-tumble fist fight. Warden Lawes punished them by putting them both into the "cooler," or solitary confinement. Cherie can still remember her rage and disappointment at being deprived of her beloved nurse. In all her four-year-old dignity, she marched to the Warden's office and demanded that her father release Joe from the cooler immediately. He didn't do it, but he did the next best thing — explained to Cherie why he couldn't, and sent her away satisfied that he knew best. Never once, throughout her childhood, did Warden Lawes give any of the convicts who came into daily contact with his daughter a hint that he considered the care of her a greater trust than — for instance— the cleaning of the rooms in the house. To see that all went well with Cherie was simply part of their job. He never cautioned any of them particularly as to what should or should not be done, but left details to their intelligence and good will. He believed that it was most important not to give the impression among the men that any fear as to Cherie's welfare had so much as crossed his mind. 1 asked him whether anything had ever happened, during Cherie's childhood, to make him regret, even momentarily, the (Continued from page 30) decision he had made. I was prompted, I suppose, by the thought of how simple it would have been for unscrupulous prisoners, desperate to escape, to use this trusting child as a means of doing so. "No, never," he said. "If anything had, I should probably have sent her away to school. But on the contrary, as time passed I grew more certain that Cherie was benefiting." By the time she was six, and ready to start attending a private day-school in Ossining, Cherie was running through prison gates as she pleased. They were all open to her. Between meals she liked to drop into the commissary and talk to the men there. In the afternoons she'd attend the prison baseball team's practice, and the members of the team showed her how to pitch a ball and steal a base. They made her their mascot, and the military drill corps made her its honorary colonel. IN a prison as large as Sing Sing, she couldn't know everyone, but she knew an astounding number of the men by their first names or nicknames. To her, as they are to Warden Lawes, they were all "the boys." I don't believe the word "convict" has ever passed her lips. On afternoons when some particular friend of hers was scheduled to leave (another word not in her vocabulary is the verb, "to release"), there might be a farewell party for him at the Residence, with Cherie on hand to say good-by. That, incidentally, is a custom Cherie continues even today, although she is much busier now with her school work and doesn't have as much spare time as she used to. Four years ago the old Residence inside the prison, which had stood for more than a hundred years, was torn down, and the Lawes family moved into a new home, just behind and a little to the south of the cell-blocks. Arrived at high school age, Cherie began attending a private school in Scarborough, a few miles from Ossining. Today she is in her second year there, but she still finds time to go into the prison almost every day, to toss a baseball now and then with the team, to play the piano once in a while in the prison orchestra. One of her particular friends is Alabama Pitts of baseball fame, who used to raise silver foxes when he was in prison. When Alabama returns to Sing Sing this fall, to play on the ball team, he will be a guest in the Warden's house, for he is one of Lawes' best friends, too. Many more of the friendships she formed with the men who served their terms and left have endured. Every Christmas, and on her birthday, she receives scores of cards from these men, from every part of the country. Many write to her regularly, just to tell her how they are getting along. Some even return to Sing Sing, drawn there by some odd desire to revisit the scenes which may have marked turning-points in their lives, and they never fail to call on her, just as they call on the Warden himself. Young as she is, she has developed her own philosophy of the social problem represented by Sing Sing and other penal institutions. It is based on the Warden's own beliefs, naturally, yet as she gave it to me, sitting on the terrace of her home Iftf-YOU WILL BE MORE BEAUTIFUL with SUPPOSE YOU FOUND you were less beautiful than you could be . . . and then discovered a way to new loveliness . . . wouldn't you act— and quickly? Of course! Well, ordinary rouge certainly doesn't give you all the beauty you could have. It gives that "painted, artificial look". Now let's see about Princess Pat rouge. You've a good reason to change to Princess Pat — if it can give you thrilling new beauty. And it does because it's duo-tone ... an undertone and an overtone make each shade. It isn' t j ust another rouge, but utterly different. When you apply Princess Pat rouge it changes on your skin! Mysteriously, amazingly it has become such gloriously natural color that no one can tell it is rouge. Do you want that? Color that seems actually to come from within the skin, like a natural blush. 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