Marilyn went to be visitor for those at IWP who had no visitors, but they only allowed her so many (there were some rules even she couldn't work around), so she went up to me, twice her height and less than half her age, and said 'you need to become a prison visitor.' Let's just say I wouldn't know as many convicted murderers or as much about professional prostitution as I do if it weren't for Marilyn. It's all gone now (and the prison as well has been moved out of the Near Eastside), but in those last days of Central State the long halls still held some lonely remaining residents, and she assumed my first December working with the church youth I'd want to take them to the asylum. When it was time to take Christmas gifts to the state mental institution, Marilyn went. She'd been to Alabama & Mississippi a couple decades earlier to join with Martin Luther King in talking to voting registrars about their limits on God's grace as well as federal voting rights, and large men with unholstered weapons and barely leashed dogs hadn't slowed her down, so a few sidelong glances from the back pews weren't going to give her pause. The point was this was not someone the community in general was sure they'd forgiven, even though she'd served her time. I hadn't been there much longer beyond my first visit with her to the Indiana Women's Prison (IWP) when she brought a pretty notorious recent inmate to church, someone who had committed murder and. When it was time to make God's promise of redemption a practical reality, Marilyn just went.

Weapons last day on earth