From warden to chaplain

Paul Poyser finds the good in everyone, even hardened criminals

by Walter Crockett

In this frustrated world, the lust for power forces its way down to even the most innocuous levels of social intercourse.

Members of sports leagues, school committees, zoning boards, coffeehouse committees, library boards, college faculties, and neighborhood crime watches take up the lance and shield and sally forth on political crusades like an army of would-be kings and queens who can't find any more prestigious battlegrounds on which to run amok. Sub-committee appointments become holy grails. Sewer easements become killing fields.

So when Paul Poyser left his job as prison warden in Framingham last year to become a humble prison chaplain in Shirley -- and took a $25,000 pay cut in the process -- he was clearly cutting against the social grain. Poyser was profiled on Chronicle and written up in the local papers: Man forsakes power. Man forsakes money. Man forsakes private office and private bathroom. Is this guy nuts, or what?

As it turns out, Poyser wasn't quite forsaking power. And he wasn't forsaking prestige; he figures that he's doing the most important job on earth.

With all due respect, says Poyser, "Everything you do one day is going to be nothing. It's going to be burnt. It's going to be ashes under your feet. There are eternal consequences to what I do. What I am doing is going to last forever -- and that is gratifying!"

So before this column turns to ashes under your feet and mine, let us examine the life and times of Paul Poyser in an effort to see just what kind of power trip this subversive character may be on.

If you want a heart-to-heart with Paul Poyser -- or any other chaplain in the state's prison system, for that matter -- the quickest way to set it up is to get yourself arrested. The slowest way is to ask for an interview. This you do by phoning the state Department of Corrections in Boston and asking for the person in charge of public relations. Then, after you've rung his line unsuccessfully a whole bunch of times on a whole bunch of different days, you trick the receptionist into revealing that his answering machine doesn't pick up until after 20 rings.

In Kafka-esque slow motion you get the interview cleared with the PR man and the superintendent of MCI Shirley. Then you drive up to rustic Shirley, hang a right into the prison grounds, pass the fearsome new maximum-security area under construction, and arrive at the fearsome old medium-security facility, its abundant rolls of razor wire glittering in the sun. "What kind of animal gets locked up in a place like this?" you wonder.

You don't get to see the animal lock-up. That happens only on "Media Day." Instead, you're led to a conference room with a big oak table, where Poyser's supervisor, Carol Higgins, sits in on the interview. It's all a bit too Big Brotherly for your average reporter/columnist, who is accustomed to courting his sources in private.

But when Poyser begins to speak, the atmosphere lightens instantly. He's a black man, 54 years old, with just a hint of Jamaica in his soft voice and a trace of India in his sharp features. Poyser was born in Panama, and he has the sort of Babylonian heritage you might expect from that continental crossroads. His father's family was East Indian and African, by way of Jamaica. His mother's parents were Panamanian Spanish and German. Poyser grew up in a country filled with men in uniform.

"I saw how well they looked, how well they lived, how much money they made, the nice cars they drove," he recalls. "So I said, `You know, I'd like to be a soldier someday.'"

He came to the United States by himself in 1962 at the age of 18 with that express purpose -- and Uncle Sam was happy to oblige him.

"Shortly after I arrived, I received a letter from President Kennedy welcoming me to the United States. It said that as an immigrant I was entitled to all of the rights of citizens, excluding the right to vote. About three months later I received my draft letter."

Poyser loved the military. He collected seven good-conduct medals and a Bronze Star with a V for valor in Vietnam. While in the service he earned a bachelor's degree in psychology with a concentration in counseling. And when he retired in 1982, he landed a job as a correctional counselor at MCI Lancaster. "We did everything a correctional officer would do," he says, "counsel them, shackle them, return them to higher security, count them." He felt right at home in the prison system's paramilitary organization.

But Poyser, a Seventh Day Adventist, has spent most of his life with the sword in one hand and the cross in the other. In the Army he sometimes acted as assistant to the pastor, and while working in Lancaster he studied for his bachelor's degree in theology at Atlantic Union College. He left the prison after a year to get a master's in divinity in Michigan. Two-and-a-half years later, Paul Dickhaut, the superintendent at Lancaster, asked Poyser to return as assistant superintendent.

"I said, `I'll try it for one year, and if after one year I find I'm more of a liability than an asset, I'll resign.'" Poyser lost 28 pounds in the first six months, as he struggled to learn prison management and prepare the facility for accreditation. But after six years he knew the job inside out, and he was promoted to superintendent of South Middlesex Correctional Center in Framingham. That's the kind of promotion it usually takes 15 years to get.

Poyser ran SMCC for four years, but although he was making close to $60,000 a year and loving every minute of it, he wasn't getting any closer to his ultimate goal, the goal he prayed for daily, "to get into a direct pastoral line of work." One Sunday in church he heard that one of the parishioners had received a pastoral position with just a bachelor's degree. "I remember going home and praying, `Lord, how about me? I have a master's degree!' "

Two weeks later, two pieces of paper came across his desk, one after the other. The first was a pay raise as superintendent. The second was a job posting for a chaplain's position at MCI Shirley. "It was kind of like God saying to me -- I know God doesn't talk like this -- `You've been praying for this. Either put up or shut up.'"

Poyser checked with his wife, Genoveva, and she left the decision up to him. Besides the sacrifice of power and perks, the Shirley position meant about $25,000 less per year for a family that gives 15 percent of its yearly income to the church. ("You can't outgive God," Poyser says.)

But he took the job, and he adjusted to it. Now he spends his days leading Protestant services and Bible study in Spanish and English. He counsels prisoners in their cells and in their infirmary beds. He doesn't look up their criminal records, and he doesn't ask what they're in for.

"People have value," Poyser says. "Even when they have committed a gruesome crime, in the eyes of God people have value. It's like a coin: even though it slips out of your hand and rolls down in the gutter with all the muck and the mire and the filth, it's still a silver dollar."

There is nothing complicated about Poyser's philosophy on reducing crime. It all comes down to three words: "Understand God's will."

"This is very important," he says. "A better understanding of God, who He is, what He wants, what He expects of us, as revealed to us in the Bible, will help inmates to have better lives. To understand God, that is to really address the core of the issue, in misbehavior, crime, violence, drug abuse, sexual abuse . . .

"This is really the motivation behind my transfer. I feel that everybody needs to know the Lord. And the greatest work on the planet is helping people to connect with God."

So don't worry about Paul Poyser's sanity. He hasn't stopped worshipping power. He's just worshipping a higher power. In his eyes -- and perhaps in His eyes, if you're a believer -- he's got the best job on the planet.