Around the time Hayes was released my life took me away from New Orleans, but I stayed in touch with Gary and the other prisoners by letter and telephone. I began visiting again, although from a different town, when I returned to Louisiana. The groups I had been involved with dispersed as other lives changed as well, and there are new, more professional organizations I would volunteer with if I lived in the city. But one way and another, we have all kept working. Percy’s parole was finally granted in 2006 and I was at the hearing to speak. I could hardly believe my ears when the district attorney said his office had decided not to object. Recently a graduate student contacted me looking for Percy, saying some of his correspondence from before I met him was available in archives and was considered to have literary-historical importance. I was able to get them together. Gary was released in 2016 and I have seen him twice in Los Angeles where he lives. An academic colleague and I arranged for him to speak at Howard University. As already noted, I should soon be at a hearing for one of the Death Row inmates Beanie and I worked with long ago, and more recently I have worked with and on behalf of ICE detainees housed in my region.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 