Imagine you’re 5 years old, and one day your dad doesn’t come home from work. You ask your mom what’s going on and she says, “Daddy’s going to be gone for a while.” You wonder: Is he OK? What happened? Why did he leave me?
This is a daily reality for thousands of California children whose fathers—or mothers—are incarcerated. And many of those children, due to lack of money or transportation, won’t get to see their parents while they’re serving time.
“So many families are broken apart by incarceration,” said Sister Theresa Harpin, a Catholic nun who works at Nativity of Our Lady Catholic Church in San Luis Obispo. “The kids are being raised by relatives—grandparents or aunts and uncles or siblings—or they’re in foster care. And it’s really hard for them to see their mother or father.”
So in 2006, Harpin helped found a Central Coast chapter of Get on the Bus, a nonprofit organization that offers children free transportation to prisons throughout California so they can see their parents. Harpin is Get on the Bus’s co-regional coordinator, along with CeCe Lane, for the Central Coast. Together they coordinate the annual Father’s Day event at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.
At the event, the children and their fathers are served lunch by Get on the Bus volunteers. They also spend time playing games and doing arts and crafts, and pose for photos with their dads. At the end of the day, each child is given a “keep in touch” kit complete with stamps and stationery, a boxed dinner, a blanket, and a special surprise: a new teddy bear and personal letter from Dad.
“It really is such an amazing experience and reunion,” Harpin said. “The only way I can describe the event is like a wedding; there’s so much joy.”
This year, 19 buses will travel to the CMC from as far away as Santa Rosa and San Diego to reunite 500 children with their fathers.
Harpin said her organization had to expand the event over two weekends (June 5 and 12) to accommodate all the participating families.
To ensure the event is a success, Harpin and Lane have the help of approximately 500 Central Coast volunteers from several local churches, Mission College Prep and St. Joseph high schools, and other organizations. The volunteers help run the event at the prison by greeting the buses, leading the children and their accompanying guardians through security, and serving food. They also host hour-long receptions at local churches following the prison visit.
In a recent interview with the Sun, St. Joseph teacher Elizabeth Gregory said the event is a good example of outreach for her students.
“Our kids don’t realize that there are other kids out there who don’t have their parents [living with them]. They don’t even get to see their parents,” Gregory said. “I really love this program because it helps you educate [the students] about restorative justice and helps them develop empathy.”
And from a religious standpoint, she said, it even fulfills scripture: “Matthew 25 says you should visit people in prison. But how many people really do that?”
This year, the club worked with Santa Maria’s St. Louis De Montfort Catholic Church to raise money to pay for transportation (it costs about $5,000 to $6,000 to sponsor a bus) and collected donated teddy bears and other supplies. All Get on the Bus events and materials are paid for by grassroots donations and fundraising efforts.
The Get on the Bus cause is especially close to St. Joe alumna Ciara Main’s heart.
“I know how the kids feel. I’ve been through that myself,” she said.
Main, who served as the club’s president until graduating from high school in May, said she likes the program because “it really focuses on the children, and it serves as a motivator for the parents.
“People don’t understand that, yes, the inmates deserve to be there for whatever they did, but they should be able to see their children,” she continued. “It’s important the kids understand that it’s not their fault that their dads are [in prison] and that they don’t feel abandoned
by them.”
Contact News Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 10-17, 2010.