This week, while processing a batch of older correspondence, we came across a letter from someone who had been part of Adopt an Inmate from our early days as an organization.

His name was Maurice.

As we routinely do when encountering older mail, we checked the agency locator where he was housed to confirm his location and custody status. Instead, we found Maurice listed as deceased.

Maurice had been incarcerated for decades. In the short biography he once shared with us, he described himself as a Vietnam-era Marine, an artist, a sculptor and a former interior designer and furniture builder. He had pursued extensive education while incarcerated. He also wrote that he had no family left outside after his eldest sister died during Hurricane Katrina.

Maurice sent us a handwritten note after being matched with an adopter:

“Adopt an Inmate: I love you. Thank you for ending my despair and years of loneliness. Yes! I have been contacted and adopted by one of your earth angels!”

The joy expressed in that handwritten note was real.

For someone who had spent nearly four decades in prison and believed he had no family remaining, being chosen by another person — even simply as a correspondent — meant that someone outside knew his name. Someone was expecting his letter. Someone had made a deliberate decision to see him as more than his conviction and identification number.

Now Maurice is gone.

Maurice died in federal custody on July 14, 2022. We do not know the circumstances of his death or who, if anyone, was able to claim his remains and mourn him in person.

It is difficult to contemplate how many people die behind prison walls after years or decades separated from family and community. Some are buried in prison cemeteries. In some such cemeteries, graves have historically been marked only with prison numbers rather than names. The sentence ends only because the person’s life has ended, and the institution that confined them becomes the last community to handle their body.

Whatever Maurice’s failures — and like every one of us, he had them — he was more than the worst thing he did and more than the number assigned to him.

He was a veteran.
An artist.
A craftsman.
A brother who remembered the sister he lost.
A man who received a letter that interrupted years of loneliness.

Maurice was here.

And today, we are saying his name.