A Reflection on my friend, Don Wallace

By Joseph Ross

I came to know Don Wallace ten years ago, when I first visited Death Row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. During my first days as a volunteer chaplain there, I realized my relationship to the men on Death Row would both challenge and change me. My friendship with Don Wallace proves to do both.

One of the first times I came to Don’s cell, at the end of a long row of cells, I saw a small, handwritten sign hanging on the bars. It read: “Fasting. No food. No conversation.” I recall walking away shocked. Who was this man who took days to fast and pray? Who was this man who took his inner life so seriously? Don treated his life on Death Row like a monastic life. And the more deeply he dove into silence and its gifts, the more deeply he changed.

Don Wallace was one of Death Row’s longest residents, and during his years there, as all of us do, he changed. On Death Row, while some become angry or unstable, Don Wallace became holy. He spent long hours reading, meditating, drawing, and when he could, playing a guitar. When I met Don, he was not the young, foolish, addicted person he had been many years before.

Time does things to people. Its effects are never the same from person to person, but time always changes people. And time brought many good changes in Don Wallace.

When Don landed on Death Row, he experienced silence and its spiritual potential. With long hours of solitude, Don developed into a person who loved silence and could learn from it. His reading caused him to ask hard questions of himself and others. His meditation forced him to wrestle with difficult questions and it gave him an appetite for real answers, not simple ones.

When Don and I spoke, I would lean against the bars outside his cell, he would lean against the bars from the inside. We discussed many topics including, politics, faith, Irish history, and music. But the most profound conversations were about the Psalms. Don immersed himself in the Psalms. The ancient poem-prayers of Jews and Christians became dear to him. He read them aloud, sometimes in English, sometimes in Latin. He read them slowly, stopping to meditate on one word or line. He loved their sounds and images. He loved that they launched him toward his own meditations. And you could see, over time, the Psalms having their desired effect on him. They slowed him down. They helped him become a peaceful, patient person. Don is a man who allows things to emerge, rather than thinking he has to demand things. His patience, his willingness to be still, taught me a valuable lesson that I’m still trying to heed: Go slowly. In time, things unfold and become what they truly are. This is certainly the case with Don Wallace.

During my years in Indiana, I often visited the Abbey of Gethsemani, a monastery near Bardstown, Kentucky. When visiting there, I often thought of Don. Occasionally, I sent him a monastery postcard. A photo of the plain stone church, a photo of a monk sitting beneath a tree in silence—these scenes always reminded me of Don. Had his earlier life been different, kinder perhaps, he might have ended up in a place like Gethsemani. The monk’s cell, while unlike a Death Row cell, is not totally different. Not for Don. He turned his prison life, into a pilgrimage toward what really matters in life.

This is the man the State of Indiana executes this week. A man who is nothing like the one who committed an awful crime so many years ago. Don Wallace changed. He is not the young, dangerous kid he once was. Because of this, the lies inherent in Indiana’s death penalty are exposed. People will be no safer with his execution. No one will be deterred from a future crime because of Don’s execution on Wednesday night. And any governor, former governor, or state representative who tells you so is lying. And they know it.

This is one of the many tragedies built into the death penalty-- it ignores change. It forever labels a person, according to one act he might have committed. And as we all know, none of us is our past. We change. If we’re lucky and holy, we change a lot.

In this, Don Wallace proves to us, something about the goodness of life. He changed. He became peaceful, kind, and loving. If only the laws of Indiana could do the same.