Victory in Rutledge

Ten years ago Roy Thomas Hollis was in a Georgia chain gang. He had twice been convicted of robbery. He sweated with pick & shovel "muscle crews" in tough camps, wore double chains, was lashed by a vicious warden. It was two years before he was classified as a trusty and unshackled.

'One rainy day he told a guard, "I'm going home." The guard refused to believe him, laughed and called "Good luck!" as he walked away. Roy Hollis rode a log down a creek to throw hounds off the scent, headed for his mother's home in Rutledge (pop. 600).

People in Rutledge's frame stores and cotton warehouses assumed that he had been paroled, congratulated him, seemed to take it for granted that he had mended his ways. He had. He went to work on a farm, married, fathered three handsome children. He became a leader in church and school affairs, never touched liquor, always paid his bills. He told his wife of his past, and she stuck by him. But his fear of arrest never left him. Two years ago, he moved to Atlanta, where he went to work as a carpenter.

Surrender. One day last month, while fitting shelves in an Atlanta lawyer's office, he laid aside his hammer, turned and said to his boss: "Listen, mister. I'm a fugitive from a Georgia chain gang. I have been for nine years. Now I want to do something about it. I owe it to my wife and children."

Next day he surrendered. The state board of pardons and paroles held a hearing, watched curiously as dozens of the fugitive's old friends from Rutledge crowded in, listened even more curiously to the tale they had to tell:

Three years after Roy Hollis arrived in Rutledge, 1,500 citizens of the town and county, impressed by his industry and honesty, had signed a petition asking the state pardon board to lift his parole. Trapped by his neighbors' good will, the fugitive confessed. The petition was destroyed. In the years that followed, all Rutledge had protected him with silence.

Said the town's chief of police: "I saw he was trying to make an honest living. The police at Madison, Ga. knew he was an escape*--we knew it--the sheriff knew it, but none of us would turn Roy in. He proved he was a worthwhile citizen. . . ."

This week the parole board agreed, sent Roy Thomas Hollis back into the world a free man.

* Southern colloquialism for "escaped prisoner."

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