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May 05, 2008 09:06 am
Last guard out at Alcatraz
Jim Albright worked as a prison guard through the last four years that Alcatraz operated as a federal penitentiary. He escorted the last inmate, No. 1,576, off the island on March 21, 1963. He's told his story in a new book, "Last Guard Out."
By Mark Bennett
CNHI News Service
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Jim Albright figured he was just turning off the valve to a broken water pipe.
The sound of running water caught Albright’s attention near the end of his shift at Alcatraz. A fellow guard unlocked the dark utility corridor in Cell Block B so Albright could investigate. Albright spotted the spewing faucet, crawled across the top of the cell block, closed the valve, climbed down and went home.
The situation seemed mundane to Albright, with one exception.
Blankets — “those damn blankets,” as they came to be known — had been draped around the top of Cell Block B by an inmate assigned to paint and clean the area. The prisoner, Allen West, convinced an Alcatraz lieutenant the blankets were necessary to prevent paint splatter and dust from falling down to the cells below. In reality, the blankets shielded months of elaborate work by West and three other inmates to attempt the most infamous prison breakout in U.S. history. Albright and other officers complained the blankets breached security, and that West’s veiled activity posed a risk. They were overruled.
“Escape from Alcatraz” became a blockbuster Clint Eastwood movie.
But that moment in 1962 could’ve become a real-life drama for Albright when he climbed atop Cell Block B to shut off that busted pipe.
West and cohorts Frank Morris, John Anglin and his brother Clarence Anglin could likely have been working on their escape route, behind those blankets, when Albright accidentally interrupted them.
“Were they up there [hiding] when I was up there?” Albright wondered, again, last week. “I was lucky, ’cause I could’ve ended up dead. If I would’ve found them, or they found me, they would’ve killed me and gone out right then, because the jig would’ve been up.”
Instead, Morris and the Anglins, most likely, ended up dead, having drowned in the treacherous, cold waters of San Francisco Bay on June 11, 1962. They’d put dummies in their beds to fool guards, climbed through those vent holes into that utility corridor, over the cell block, up the pipes to another vent in the ceiling, onto the roof, down a drain pipe, and into a crude life raft made of raincoats. Their bodies were never found.
West couldn’t fit through their carved-out vent holes, and got left behind.
Albright fared much better.
He survived that predicament and others during his four years as a guard on Alcatraz. When the Bureau of Prisons closed the notorious facility on March 21, 1963, Albright escorted its last inmate off the island. He stayed there longer than the other guards, two more months in fact, because his newborn daughter was being treated for a foot condition at a San Francisco hospital. Finally, on June 22, Albright and his family left too, with the key to the main gate and lots of memories.
He was the “Last Guard Out” of Alcatraz. The 73-year-old Terre Haute man used that phrase as the title of his new book, released this month by AuthorHouse. Albright worked 26 years for the federal prison system, moving later to Marion, Ill.; Petersburg, Va.; Terre Haute and Milan, Mich. But those four spent on Alcatraz, from 1959 to 1963, stand out. In fact, Jim and his wife of 53 years, Cathy, enjoyed living on “The Rock.”
“I would’ve done my whole time out there, had it not closed, because we liked it,” Jim said, leaning forward in a recliner in the living room of their home near Prairieton.
Cathy, holding a picture of Alcatraz with the Bay Area in the background, smiled. “We got to see a view that most people don’t,” she said.
Life on ‘The Rock’ was good
Indeed, the Albrights could see the Golden Gate Bridge from their apartment building on the 22-acre island, which 150 prison employees shared with 260 of the most malcontent inmates in the country. Yet, the employee families’ quarters were so securely separated from the cell house, the wives and children seldom saw a prisoner.
“It never really bothered me,” Cathy said, recalling the close-knit relationship she had with other guards’ wives.
“We didn’t even lock the doors,” Jim added.
Alcatraz had a church, a post office, a store, a hospital, and a ferry boat operation that went to shore 16 times a day. Their young children, Kenny and Vicki, grew up there. Their youngest daughter, Donna, was the last child born on Alcatraz while the prison was in operation, on March 10, 1963.
As idyllic as the view, facilities and accommodations were, the job of securing those inmates was anything but that. Few federal convicts were sent directly to Alcatraz. The majority got transferred there from other prisons because of they refused to follow rules, committed extremely violent acts while incarcerated, or posed escape risks.
“The scum of the scum,” Jim bluntly called them.
Hollywood often romanticized Alcatraz’s famed occupants. The “Birdman of Alcatraz,” Robert Stroud, was transferred off the island one month before Albright arrived. But he heard tales from fellow guards that didn’t exactly match the storyline of the movie starring Burt Lancaster.
For starters, Stroud had no birds at Alcatraz. That happened at the prison in Leavenworth, Kan. “But ‘Birdman from Alcatraz’ sells more books than ‘Birdman of Leavenworth,’” Albright said, chuckling. Stroud’s surly attitude, tantrums and constant talking and swearing earned him a dislikable reputation among his fellow prisoners and the guards. They told Albright the “Birdman” was “a royal pain in the ass.”
Some of the 1,576 men who did time on Alcatraz were friendly sorts. “They just had those warped, criminal minds,” Albright said.
“Some of them would mess with you, glare at you, wouldn’t speak to you,” he added, “and some would say, ‘Hey, boss, how’s it going?’”
Most were car thieves and bank robbers, but there were also murderers and rapists. One, who led a riot at Sing Sing prison in New York, was also an accomplished drummer, rated the nation’s second-best in Downbeat magazine.
Albright kept a decent rapport with the inmates, without sacrificing a no-nonsense professionalism.
“I guess I had the personality to get along with them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t stab you if you were in the way and they wanted out.”
Only a few left
Fate made Alcatraz Albright’s first assignment as a federal correctional officer. Jim was loading trucks for a Sealtest dairy in Aurora, Colo., when he applied for a job with the Bureau of Prisons in Denver. He expected to be sent to a nearby facility in Englewood, Colo. Then he received a letter from the bureau, asking if he’d accept an appointment to Alcatraz.
“After I got the lump out of my throat,” he recalled, the Albrights decided to take it.
They loaded son Kenny and everything they owned into a 1956 Chevy Nomad and drove to the California coast.
“As we came over the [Golden Gate] Bridge, the island had a circle of fog around it,” Jim said, “and I looked over at Cathy and said, ‘What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’”
But they found friendships, adventure and ocean scenery there. Jim, just 24 upon his arrival, was a pup among the other guards and prisoners. “At that time, the guys who worked there, and the inmates, were old, to me,” he said, smiling. “They were in their 40s. And that was one of the reasons I am one of the survivors.”
Fewer than 30 former Alcatraz employees are still living, according to Albright’s estimates. The number of former inmates is dwindling, too. Both groups, amazingly, get together for an annual August reunion of the Alcatraz Alumni Association on the island, which is now a museum supervised by the U.S. National Park Service.
“There are just a few of us left,” Jim said. In fact, the Alumni group consists mostly of the employees’ and inmates’ descendants.
Some survivors have put their memories into books. At a recent reunion, Jim spotted a familiar inmate, Whitey Thompson, selling his own book on Alcatraz. “He signed it, and gave it to me,” Albright said.
During those reunions, Albright often draws crowds when they learn he was the last guard out — the guy who worked the final chain-gang with inmate No. 1,576, the guy who locked the gate as he left on June 21, 1963, and still has the key, his uniform, records, logs and other mementos. Once they hear his stories, people usually tell Albright, “You should write a book.” So he did.
At the last reunion Albright attended, a young couple approached him. The young man asked, “Did you work there?” Jim said, yes. The guy said, “Can I shake your hand?” Jim, humbled, said, “Sure,” and then asked why?
“Because you’re a part of history,” he answered.
Mark Bennett writes for The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind. He can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.
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Key to history
Book: Jim Albright, who worked as a guard on Alcatraz during its last four years of operation, from 1959-63, has written “Last Guard Out” (AuthorHouse). It’s available at authorhouse.com for $18.95.
Niche: Albright was the last guard off Alcatraz, after the prison closed on March 21, 1963. He still has the key to the gate, which he locked.
Legends: “The Rock” served as a military outpost and prison until becoming a federal prison in 1934. An escape attempt in 1962 spawned the movie “Escape from Alcatraz.” Albright and others, though, suspect the three escapees died in the water. One inmate, Robert Stroud, became known as “The Birdman of Alcatraz,” although he never actually had birds there. Al “Scarface” Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Al “Creepy” Karpis and Arthur R. “Doc” Barker also did time there.
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