By Jan Ferris Heenan
Sac Bee
FOLSOM, Calif. — Jim Brown was fresh out of the U.S. Army the first time the heavy metal gates of Folsom Prison slammed shut behind him. Far from foreboding, the clanging sound struck his fancy, as did the thick granite mystique of California’s second-oldest prison. The place, he said, had personality.
Brown would clock 32 years there as a guard. He worked the watch- towers, his rifle at the ready. He walked the cellblocks, on the hunt for weapons and other contraband. For nearly half his tenure, he stood guard in the prison’s psychiatric ward, protecting the medical staff and defusing tensions among unpredictable criminals.
“People (working at Folsom) always say, ‘Well, I’m not scared,’ ” he said. “Well, you’re a fool, then. That’s how you get in trouble. Everybody in here can hurt you. You just have to be on your toes.” A gregarious, white-haired man of substantial size, Brown turns 67 next month. He retired from the prison 11 years ago, but he’s never really left. He has written two histories of the institution and serves as the Folsom Prison Museum’s operations manager.
It’s a volunteer post, but Brown works it like a job, spending approximately 50 hours a week in the museum’s cramped quarters, an old two-story house built by the mining company that formerly owned the prison land. There, he manages a multi- farious collection of historic photos and objects.
In recent months, Brown has devoted himself to an even more ambitious effort, one with a $16 million price tag: a proposal to build a 35,000-square-foot museum at Folsom Prison devoted to the field of correctional science.
“It’s not so much this place; it’s this profession, and we want to preserve a lot of the history,” he explained. “A lot of people, what they know they see on TV. They portray us as knuckle-dragging gorillas.” Known as the Big House Prison Museum, it would highlight the history of corrections, honor the men and women of the profession and help dispel negative stereotypes.
Full story: Former Folsom Prison guard has big plans for new ‘Big House’ museum