Thursday, December 18, 2008

Not All News Coming Out of the Florida Reform School is Bad


No one said reform school was a nice place. Bryant Middleton pointed out to reporters thirty-one crosses on the grounds of a reform school in Marianna, Florida. When boys disappeared from the school, administrators explained it away according to former student Roger Kiser.
Watch Middleton kneel by the crosses »
On the orders of Gov. Charlie Crist, the Florida Dept. of Law enforcement began investigating the burial site. Former students allege that the graves will contain the bodies of former students beat to death by school employees. Right now, it's just allegations. Nothing has been proven. Most of the administrators and employees of the reform school are dead. Former students describe beatings with a strap. Yet not all of the news coming out of the reform school was bad. One of the former students is an electrician. He learned his trade at the school and now owns a multimillion-dollar company in Baltimore, Maryland. Dick Colon even created a scholarship fund for high achievers at the very same reform school called the Arthur Dozier School for Boys.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

This place gives reform schools a bad name.

Ms Calabaza said...

Doesn't this sound like a Movie of the Week in the making?

Anonymous said...

Yup, well, that's the one thing that we got...

GregH said...

There is far to much evidence of criminal activity at The Dozier School to explain it away with one graduate having survived it and owning his own company.
The Governor wants ground penetrating radar ana full investigation of the site. How many are buried there. Are there more bodies than crosses, what was the apporoximate year of death and age at death of the corpse? Modern forensics will have no problem between identifying 1914 flu victims and murdered boys in the 1950's and 60's and maybe 1907s.
Whoever is in those graves deserves our Chritian attention. Tahnk God for the Governor not allowing this to slide. If there are guilty parties still living than they will be prosecuted.

Anonymous said...

Gage, if all the allegations are true, it was some bad sh@t. But also keep in mind, these boys were sent to reform school to be punished and shocked into becoming decent men. Many did exactly that.

Good luck wasting money on proving how these boys died 40 to 60 years ago. What is it going to change? Nothing. No one who would have done the acts alleged would still be alive or would most likely be senile now. Let it go!

Anonymous said...

Can I star in the movie? I want to be the dude that grows up to be a millionaire.

Don't you think that the imagination played havock with some of these boys... stories to scare them straight?

Anonymous said...

Kreepy swamp... boys run away, they get eaten by gators or bit by water mocosins...

If they survive and our caught, they suffer corporal punishment in the form of whipping.

Folks, that was how junior prisons were run way back then...

Anonymous said...

Yes it is... pretty much all bad news...

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said, "But also keep in mind, these boys were sent to reform school to be punished and shocked into becoming decent men."

No...they became decent men despite their treatment, and it is amazing that they did so. What happened at that reform school was heinous beyond belief.

Anonymous said...

Kind of like the chicken and the egg. Hard to decide what came first for some.

But I will say, some of the kids in reform school need to be punished so that they become shocked straight. Cruelty may have been politically incorrect, but it did work for some. You don't see reform now days in our kinder gentler reform schools.