By Fr. Ted Kalamja, S.J.
Dear Editor,
J.P. Arguello’s column “Watching the Super Bowl in the big house” in the Maroon Feb. 12, 2010 deserves a good comment.
I’ve been a chaplain at the Orleans Parish Prison for the last 25 years and I know exactly what Arguello was talking about and what he experienced.
Most of these young prisoners come from many valleys of death: drugs, alcohol, poverty, sex outside of marriage, single parent (mothers) families, fast money, and education that in no way prepared them for normal life in this society of ours. LETTER TO THE EDITOR
They have no way to fit in, no skills, no hope. When a young man has reached 16-17-18 years and reads at an average 4th grade level, what is he supposed to do?
And yet as Arguello (himself a prisoner at the time) watched the Super Bowl with these basically deep down, beautiful people — these “thieves, drug addicts and thugs.” He writes, “It was great.” He was able to see and experience their basic deep down human beauty — “as they banged on bars, bunks and walls, shaking the entire building and shouting ‘Who Dat.'”
Arguello has a gift to know beauty when he sees it and here’s hoping that some day and in some way he would return to minister to those young men who are in such great need and with him many other young women and men at Loyola.
We are all blessed with such young people as Arguello.
Fr. Ted Kalamaja S.J.
Chaplain Orleans Parish Prison
