From USA TODAY…
Reaching out, lifting up: Prison ministry now Dungy’s priority
By Jarrett Bell, USA TODAY
BOWLING GREEN, Fla. — In many ways, it was like hundreds of pep talks and locker room speeches he’d given in nearly three decades as an NFL coach. Tony Dungy’s message was one of responsibility, of motivation, of not letting others — and yourself — down. As always, he was pointed and analytical, yet smooth and laid-back.
This time, however, Dungy’s audience wasn’t a highly paid collection of elite athletes. On this day Dungy — a little more than two years removed from becoming the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl and less than three months after retiring as the leader of the Indianapolis Colts — was in a prison yard, the Bible tucked under his left arm.
This is Tony Dungy’s new world, the one he has embraced since walking away from cheering crowds, a salary that exceeded $5 million a year and a team that was equipped for another Super Bowl run.
These are the players Dungy, 53, now seeks to motivate and help improve: men like the 500 or so felons here at the Hardee Correctional Institutition, who sat 10-deep on the grass in neat rows for an upbeat program with the flavor of a religious revival — complete with stirring rhythms provided by the prison band and gospel singers.
The audience at the optional meeting made up about one-third of the inmates at Hardee, a prison southeast of Tampa where the population ranges in age from 19 to 77. The average sentence here is 29 years; the population includes inmates convicted of first-degree murder, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and child abuse. Nearly 600 of the inmates are serving life terms.
“He could have absolutely been doing anything else, but decided to spend time with us,” said Traveguz Butler, 34, serving a 30-year sentence that extends to December 2028 for carjacking, robbery and false imprisonment. “It’s uplifting. I’m glad that he was able to lower himself down to our level.”
At a place where there are seven formal head counts each day — and as nearly two dozen armed guards kept close watch — Dungy did not merely lecture from an arm’s length. After a 20-minute speech, he was swarmed by prisoners and spent a half-hour in face-to-face conversations.
George “Big Country” Edmonds, serving a life sentence for murder, got Dungy’s autograph.
“I’ve got something to talk about for a long time,” Edmonds said. “Sometimes when people come in, they won’t even shake your hand. But he’s out here in the middle of us.”
Dungy spent six hours at Hardee, including more than an hour with inmates in solitary confinement. Then it was a trip to the work camp, where he ate the prison food for lunch — shredded turkey smothered in a bland, tomato-based sauce, cold pasta, carrots, cucumber salad and yellow cake that prisoners who quickly flowed through the cafeteria in 15-minute shifts raved was better than usual.
An afternoon speech was tailored for inmates at the work camp, who are closer to release dates than main unit prisoners and spend time working on jobs outside the prison. Mindful of prison officials’ estimates that 40% of released Florida inmates ultimately return to prison — 32.8% of them within three years — Dungy talked a lot about planning.
“How do you not become one of those statistics?” Dungy asked, adding that he found out more about the character of his football players on their days off than he did when they were at team headquarters. “When you get out, that’s when we’re going to find out if you’re searching for the Lord with all your heart.”
Dungy has made about a dozen such excursions to prisons with Tampa-based Abe Brown Ministries, dating to 1997 when he coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“The first time I came, I was so nervous,” Dungy said. “But then I saw how young and impressionable a lot of these guys are. We could sit down and talk … about life, about sports or whatever. It’s deep. The main thing is to give these guys a little hope. But this is also a gospel message. It’s changing on the inside.”
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