NASA SCIENTIST OUT OF PRISON

Role in protest triggered arrest

NEWPORT NEWS -- In his Mammoth Oaks home, Russell DeYoung greets you with a
Texas-wide smile and a handshake so vigorous you silently pray he'll leave
your arm in its socket.

On the couch, the NASA scientist holds hands with Pam, his wife of 28
years. Hearty laughter peppers the conversation. A copy of a newspaper
column he wrote about what he refers to as the woefully inadequate prison
education system lies on the coffee table.

It's hard to believe that only a week ago, DeYoung was a prisoner himself.

"I think it strengthened our marriage," he said of the six-month ordeal.
"It really did."

DeYoung, 55, was released last week from the federal prison camp in
Petersburg after a six-month sentence for trespassing. He was arrested 14
months ago after he went onto Fort Benning near Columbus, Ga., to protest
against the former School of the Americas.

A member of School of the Americas Watch, DeYoung said the school fosters
human rights abuses by teaching Latin American military officers about
interrogation, drug-interdiction and other violent military tactics. The
watch group tracks people it says were killed by graduates of the school,
now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

DeYoung and other local members of School of the Americas Watch scheduled a
vigil outside the Daily Press for Monday. The group wants the school closed.

A Southern Baptist, DeYoung said the watchdog organization's nonviolent
tactics appeal to him. The use of violence by some anti-abortion groups,
for example, has kept him out of that fight, he said.

"I'm a Christian pacifist," he said, "and that means I take the words of
Jesus seriously when he says: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called the children of God."

DeYoung first joined a demonstration outside the Pentagon to close the
school in the spring of 1999. He was arrested but not prosecuted.

That November, he joined another protest at the school itself and decided
to be one of the high-risk demonstrators who went onto Fort Benning. That's
when the Army gave him a letter that prohibited him from coming onto the
base for the next five years.

But in 2000, DeYoung again went to Georgia to protest against the school.
Of the 3,400 who marched onto the base, 1,700 were arrested, including De
Young. He said 65 of those people had been banned from the installation
before the protest, and the military decided to prosecute 26 of them.

Even though a guilty plea would have resulted in a fine with no prison
time, only one of the 26 protesters took the deal. DeYoung didn't. He did
six months in prison.

Those six months, he said, were both wonderful and terrible. Wonderful
because he was in prison for something he believes in. Terrible because of
the isolation from his family and the prison environment: menial work,
tedium, profanity and felons.

"You're around people that you'd never choose to be around," DeYoung said.
"I was kind of the weirdo there."

For a while, few of the Petersburg inmates trusted or spoke to DeYoung. He
said that of the 300 inmates at the camp, he was the only one serving time
for a misdemeanor conviction. He didn't mingle with other inmates in the
television rooms. Some of them thought he was a narc, but no one threatened
or assaulted him. In fact, he said he never saw a fight while he was there.

Eventually, DeYoung got to know some of the other inmates. He shared the
bunk bed in his cubicle with a man who had been in prison for 10 years on
drug charges.

The camp's library gave De Young a place to respond to the more than 300
cards and letters he received while in prison. Only one day passed when he
did not get mail, he said, and those cards kept his spirits up.

Cards and prayer.

"I firmly believe these people praying for me is what kept me out of
depression," he said.

Pam DeYoung called her husband on the telephone. She mailed him books. At
least once a week, she went to Petersburg to visit him.

"The most difficult thing is having your best friend gone," she said. To
keep her company, she got a cat after her husband went to prison.

The adjustment may have been worse for her husband. Wake up at 6. Eat
breakfast from 6:30 to 7. Work until 3:30 p.m. Head counts at 10:30 a.m.
and 4 p.m. Lights out at 9.

Every inmate had a job and earned 13 cents to $1.20 an hour in the form of
credits that could be spent at the prison commissary. DeYoung started as a
landscaper at 18 cents an hour and then took a job as the commissary clerk,
where his hourly wage more than tripled to 55 cents. He kept track of the
store's inventory and sometimes ordered tennis shoes and other items for
the inmates.

"That's one of the top jobs in the place, commissary clerk," quipped
DeYoung, whose request to teach and tutor other inmates was denied by the
prison administration. "You can go to $1.20 an hour if you stay there 10
years."

DeYoung said his job could have been done in minutes if he had a computer,
but inmates weren't allowed to use computers, so everything was done on paper.

The clerking job was far different from DeYoung's job as an atmospheric
scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, where he develops lasers and
optical systems that go in airplanes to measure water vapor and ozone in
the atmosphere.

DeYoung kept his job after taking months of unpaid leave. He was back to
work the week he got out of prison. And while he was in prison, his bosses
recognized the research work with a $1,000 award -- the same amount as the
fine that DeYoung had to pay for trespassing.

The irony was not lost on him: He is employed by the federal government. He
protested against the federal government. He was imprisoned by the federal
government, and he received an award from the federal government.

Now that he's out of prison, DeYoung said he plans to join other protesters
outside Fort Benning again later this year. But he has no plans to risk
another arrest by stepping onto the base. The prison sentence made him a
martyr, he said, and there is no reason to do it again.

"I just felt I was doing the right thing," DeYoung said of his prison
stint. "God gave me the call to do this."