‘Neu’ Libraries For State Prisons

[Commentary] A few weeks ago I rode in the backseat of a car on drive from Carroll to Anamosa with Art Neu and his brother Charles — both sons of the longest serving mayor in Carroll’s history.

Art, a Carroll attorney, is on the State Board of Corrections. Now working on a book in Miami, Fla., Charles is a history professor who chaired the Brown University department.

Some things you learn right way with the Neu brothers: They argue and banter as much in their 70s as they likely did as youngsters in Carroll. And they are extraordinarily well-read. Often this blends and they fight about books.

One of Charles’ closest friends is the accomplished writer, Larry McMurtry, author of “Lonesome Dove” — which I believe should be required reading for every man who wants to be a man in America.

Once in Anamosa, the brothers Neu and I toured the prison. It was my third time in the maximum-security prison and Charles’ first. Art, as a longtime member of the board, has been to all of Iowa’s prisons a number of times and even some out of state on fact-finding trips.

Charles Neu asked to see the Anamosa prison “library,” which amounted to little more than a closet of old paperbacks.

“There’s a good many things we’re proud of,” Warden Jerry Burt said. “The library is not one of them.”

Charles Neu said he believes there is much rehabilitative power in books.
“They could reflect on their lives and examine them,” Neu said. “It deepens their lives in so many ways.”

“That’s pathetic,” he added as we left the library.

Now enter Charles Neu’s wife, Sabina de Werth Neu. She read the Iowa Independent account of the prison tour and talked with her husband about the experience.

A native of West Germany who grew up as a refugee child after World War II, Sabina tells me that she’s seen enough pain, poverty and suffering to last a lifetime — all before the age at which she could legally drive over here in the states.

Today, she is a psychotherapist and, like her husband, an avid consumer of books.

Sabina raised an interesting idea: We should do something about these prison libraries, make them better. After all, most of the inmates aren’t going to die in prison. They’ll be out in the general population. She believes there is enormous redemptive power in books.

Good point, I added. Why not take advantage of the wordplay with the last name Neu, and advocate “Neu” libraries for the state’s prisons? They would honor Art Neu, a former widely respected lieutenant governor and dedicated Board of Corrections member, while improving opportunities and rehabilitation for inmates.

A blend of private and public money could be involved in such a venture, with a vision and program that the Neu family is far more qualified to develop than this columnist.

“Recall the books that you read as an adolescent or young adult, especially when you felt nobody understood you,” Sabina said. “Think of what effect they had on you. Remember the immense pleasure it gave you, submerging yourself into a story, places, the lives of people, who became alive on the printed pages. And how those stories affected your life, then and later, and helped you to understand the world and the human condition better.

“While the inmates have to give away months and years of their life, whatever their crimes demanded, I believe it is our moral duty as citizens outside the prisons to help in every way possible to help rehabilitate the  95 percent who will be released one day, so they can join life with the rest of us.

“The printed word between the covers of a book is one way to help the forgotten and disappeared. We can all donate books from our own homes, to help what after all are our brothers and sisters, to heighten their awareness about life, open new horizons, make them feel less alone as they read about lives of others gone before them.  After all think about the effects books have had and still have on your own life.”