Doyle was an alcoholic and Sheila was a drug addict when the Park Forest couple met in a bar in 1979. The Buckners married the next year. They’ve been in and out of jail ever since.
It’s not what you think.
Shortly after the couple wed–and “after an extremely bad weekend,” Doyle said–they found religion, sobered up and have devoted themselves to prison work ever since.
Their two-person mission has grown over the years with support from their church, Christian Life Fellowship in Monee.
Every Friday night, a dozen or more parishioners lead services at the Cook County Jail, the Cook County Department of Corrections’ sprawling Chicago facility. For two hours, they dance, sing and pray alongside as many as 70 inmates in a concrete chapel.
In general, the climate in Illinois prisons and jails is warming toward church and other religious volunteers, members of the Monee group said. They, in turn, think their support is needed now more than ever at a time when crime and drug use are up and the public’s tolerance for lawbreakers is waning.
“I know that these people need help,” said Victor Saunders, a parishioner and volunteer. “Sure, they say the system is helping them, but it isn’t helping them; it’s corralling them.”
Like the Buckners, Saunders, 42, had his own rocky past. Raised in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, he was a member of the Latin Kings gang and served a year in a U.S. military prison in Korea. That background makes it easier to relate to inmates, he said.
“I talk their language. I understand what they’re going through,” said Saunders, a machinist who visits the Cook County Jail and a few state facilities regularly with wife Carmen.
Saunders, of Chicago, is also the south suburban group’s keyboardist, infusing the sterile jail setting with foot-stomping, hand-clapping gospel music. On a recent Friday evening, about 65 inmates clad in the requisite tan uniforms trickled into the chapel. Several stopped to hug the volunteers before sitting down on concrete pews.
The first part of the service was given over to music. A guard stood in the back, hands clasped behind him, as most in the chapel danced and sang. Then three ex-convicts, all men the Buckners met through prison outreach and have since taken in to live in their home, stepped to the podium to talk about how their faith has helped them rebuild their lives.
Inmate Scott Stodola, with 29 months served and three more months to go for his role in a double murder, nodded vigorously as he listened. The slim, mustachioed man said he began attending services about two years ago to pass time. Like other skeptical newcomers, he sat in the back pews at first. As the weeks passed, he began moving up. Now he and the Buckners have become friends, with the couple even accompanying Stodola’s parents to his court hearings.
“What these people are teaching, it’s brought my family back to me,” said Stodola, 26. “It’s brought me happiness in this facility, joy peace.”
Stodola is what church volunteers call an in-house minister. He studies the Bible with other inmates, counsels them and helps the chaplain, Rev. Richard Jones.
Jones, for his part, appreciates the outside support. Other religious groups visit regularly at Division 9, which houses 1,200 men. The aim, the chaplain said, is to match certain prisoners with sponsors who help them with housing, jobs and other matters when they’re released.
The Buckners, both 49, are part of that plan. Doyle, a tall, animated man with a deep voice, began visiting jails in 1983 after hearing a prison chaplain’s address at a prayer meeting. Sheila joined in a few years later.
She is one of several women who visit the Cook County Jail each weekend. Some men’s divisions are too rough for women, the couple said, but the inmates and employees at Division 9 have welcomed them.
The volunteers believe the husband-wife aspect, uncommon in many prison ministries, sends a positive message.
“It shows them that they can possibly have this, too,” Sheila said.
The Buckners, Saunders and other church volunteers lead services at several prisons, including state-run centers in Joliet and Pontiac and the women’s correctional facility in Dwight.
While public opinion polls show growing intolerance with criminals, reflected in a push for stricter sentencing laws, members of the prison ministry expressed empathy for inmates.
“All I see is a bunch of young men that just made the same mistakes that I and a lot of other people made. They just got caught,” Sheila Buckner said.
Their work has made a difference, she believes: “We have seen firsthand how their lives have changed. They’re working, going to school and becoming productive citizens.”
To that end, the Buckners just launched Pinnacle Cleaners in Park Forest, an industrial maintenance service that ex-convicts will help run, said Doyle Buckner, who also works as a welder operator at a metal tube mill.
“We are trying to get the message across that there is more to this place than jailhouse religion,” he said. “I believe there would be much fewer jails if the church was doing its job.”
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For information on the prison ministry, call 708-534-0883 or 708-534-2918.
