At the Presbyterian Outlook’s office in Richmond, Virginia, I have access to copies of the magazine from the current issue back to 1938. There are also digital archives; for an old guy, I’ve learned to navigate them pretty quickly. It makes sense for me to be the procurer of the Outlook’s monthly feature “From the Archives.” Each issue of the magazine has its own theme and focus, and for the archives feature, I look for pieces from past years (and decades) that resonate with that month’s theme.
For our June 2025 “Loneliness” issue, I found a letter published in a 1989 edition of the magazine. It came from the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, Louisiana, and was written by an inmate named J.D. Parrish. He told of being confined to a small cell 23 hours a day, where, he said, “the loneliness is a very tangible thing, and at times becomes quite unbearable.” Mr. Parrish wrote that he’d recently become a Christian, making “life behind bars more bearable due to my belief in the Bible and my acceptance of God’s Word. Still, the days are filled with loneliness that cries out for contact … (T)hrough desperation … I write to you … seeking correspondence … ; a letter from anyone would help morale and dissipate the loneliness which has become my constant companion.”
I am an inmate at Louisiana State Prison. At present, I am housed in a maximum security unit where I am confined to a 6-by-9-foot cell 23 hours of each day. At times, it becomes very difficult to get through a single day in this solitary atmosphere. The loneliness is a very tangible thing, and at times becomes quite unbearable.
Recently, I became a Christian, and life behind bars has become more bearable due to my belief in the Bible and my acceptance of God’s Word. Still, the days are filled with loneliness that cries out for contact with individuals other than those confined within this prison.
So, in my time of loneliness, and through desperation, I write to you in hopes that you might find the space in your publication to print my letter seeking correspondence.
A letter from anyone would help morale and dissipate the loneliness which has become my ever-present companion.
J.D. Parrish
Angola, Louisiana
Our managing editor, Dartinia Hull – noting the notoriety of the prison in Angola and Mr. Parrish’s “old school formality” – took interest in what we might learn of his story: had anyone answered his letter? Might Mr. Parrish, imprisoned or free, still be alive? Could we find him? Would he talk to us?
When we re-published the letter last June, we asked if any Outlook readers from 1989 had written to Mr. Parrish (no responses as yet). In our subsequent research, we could not always be certain that we were learning about the same J.D. Parrish who wrote to the Outlook 36 years ago, but pieces seemed to fit together.
Dartinia uncovered an online archive of a 1985 appeal made in Louisiana by J.D. Parrish, age 44, in which his defense asserted “that 60 years at hard labor, without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, is constitutionally excessive on the grounds that such a sentence will effectively require him ‘to be locked away for the rest of his life.’” His offense is listed as armed robbery, and the appeal was denied.
I used Mr. Parrish’s inmate number from his letter and learned he’d been transferred from Louisiana to Georgia, where he’d been released on supervised parole in 2015. Meanwhile, Dartinia found a 2016 obituary for J.D. Parrish, age 77, of Lyons, Georgia. The short notice said he had worked in landscaping and died in a hospice facility in Vidalia, Georgia. The notice included his membership in Normantown Baptist Church, which I contacted. A friendly administrator there could not find anyone who recalled Mr. Parrish.
The obituary’s virtual guestbook had a single entry, reading:
So sad we never met again. Thought of you often. Started looking thru public records and found your obit. It has been so many years since we first met. God rest your soul. Rest in peace, Buddy
We matched the author to a Facebook account that hadn’t been updated in several years, and a Messenger inquiry to her went unanswered.
So for all our gumshoeing, the most we know about Mr. Parrish is from the letter with which we began: he was incarcerated in a notorious prison and kept in solitary confinement. Angola, which, according to Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell in The Life and Legend of Leadbelly was “as close as anyone could come to slavery in 1930,” has maintained its reputation for squalidness and abuse despite nearly a century of directives to reform. In the wake of 2025’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Department of Homeland Security partnered with the state to open an immigrant detention center there. In a place that Dartinia told me continued to run “neck and neck with the Parchman prison in Mississippi for cruelty,” J.D. Parrish somehow discovered his faith. He was lonely, and he reached out for connections and companionship. He hoped to find those things in however he imagined the Presbyterian Outlook’s faith community.
I can remember my congregation in 1989, and I can think of at least two of our since-departed saints who’d likely have written to Mr. Parrish the same day they read his letter. How many times was that replicated among the Outlook’s readers? Keep in mind: this was decades before anyone wrote about the “sin of empathy.”
By being willing to be vulnerable and ask for help, Mr. Parrish gave the Outlook‘s readers the opportunity to minister. To any within the reach of his words, he opened a path for sharing kindness, compassion, forgiveness, fellowship, hope, and love. He also offered a mirror for reflecting his newly found faith on his correspondents — and back.
Maybe empathy can, on some level, live inside us on its own, but our faith calls us to share in letting it loose. Some 36 years ago, Mr. Parrish gave our readers that opening. From a dark and forsaken place, he reached out in faith and hope. He offered the opportunity for ministry to the least of us. For those who may have followed through and written to him, Jesus taught it was as if they were writing to Jesus himself.
Here in the winter of 2026, and perhaps of our souls as well, I hope I can learn from Mr. Parrish’s openness to sharing his vulnerability, and I hope my ears and heart are open to cries like his.
