Attica's Survivors: Still Recovering From History

January 9, 2000

Attica's Survivors: Still Recovering From History

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By DAVID W. CHEN with RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

Robert Lavinski is a piano teacher in Rochester who is partial to Ravel, Chopin and Chick Corea. Arthur Bobby Harrison volunteers as a boxing coach in downtown Syracuse. George Alexander Shorts Jr. is a Brooklyn resident who has never been able to work because of his broken toes.
What they have in common is that they are all former inmates at Attica who survived the bloodiest incident in the history of America's prisons: the uprising and siege of 1971 in which 43 people were killed and more than 80 wounded.
When a federal judge proposed a settlement on Tuesday that would give up to 1,281 inmates a total of $8 million as compensation for the abuse they suffered at the hands of state police 29 years ago, it thrust the survivors into the public eye as the men behind the statistics in so many history books, movies and news accounts of the siege.
So far, many of the survivors seem to support the settlement, even though they doubt that it will heal any of their wounds from that era. But they are also undergoing a cathartic process, pondering the effect of Attica and how their lives have unfolded -- or in some cases unraveled -- in the years since.
"I do my best to forget Attica even existed," said Mr. Shorts, 63, who was convicted of robbery in 1965 and was released from prison in 1972 after his toes were broken by state troopers during the siege. He has lived on welfare and Supplemental Security Income since. "My life is kind of hard: I'm in pain 24/7. The settlement? A few thousand dollars? It will make no difference."
To plot the lives of these men, most of whom are African-American and Latino, is to hear stories about broken families and broken neighborhoods, bad habits and bad choices. Many grew up in tough neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, or Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester.
Some have reassembled their lives with astonishing success, starting businesses, nurturing families, serving their communities.
Richard X. Clark, 53, is a Queens native who grew up in foster homes, attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and enlisted in the Navy.
Six months out of the service, Mr. Clark was arrested on charges of attempted robbery and eventually sent to Attica Correctional Facility, about 30 miles east of Buffalo. Appalled by prison conditions, he became active with black Muslim political groups and was one of the leaders of the 1971 uprising.
After his release in 1972, he wrote a book, "Brothers of Attica" (1973, Links), moved to Greensboro, N.C., to give his twin sons a gentler, slower environment, then returned to New York about 10 years ago. He now works as a case manager for Phase Piggy Back, a Harlem-based organization that provides drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
"You pay your debts to society," Mr. Clark said. "A wrong was committed against us, we paid our debt, they have to pay theirs. Money cannot make up for that."
Another New York City resident, Daniel Sheppard, pursued a different course. After serving five years on charges of robbery and manslaughter, crimes he insists he did not commit, Mr. Sheppard, now 57, enrolled at Baruch College in the late 1970's to study accounting and international marketing. He also took up fencing while at Baruch, becoming highly ranked nationally in epee.
After he quit the sport, partly because of a bad back that he says started with the beatings at Attica, Mr. Sheppard sold latex rubber gloves wholesale before becoming a stay-at-home father and grandfather.
"Some people are ashamed of their pasts," he said. "I was innocent but couldn't prove it. I felt society committed a wrong against me, so I hold my head up high."
Then there is Mr. Lavinski, the piano teacher in Rochester. One of the relatively few white inmates at Attica, he was only 19 when he was sentenced on a charge of criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.
After his release in 1972, Mr. Lavinski took up a variety of jobs in upstate New York and Vermont: waiter, piano player, restaurant owner, painter, remodeler and now piano teacher.
"It made me real strong," Mr. Lavinski, 49, said about Attica. "Just the idea of getting arrested and thrown in jail just freaks me. My freedom, I really treasure that."
But other inmates have never successfully returned to society.
"They're like shells of men," said Mr. Harrison, 52, the volunteer boxing coach. "They reverted to drugs and alcohol and didn't want to face the reality of dealing with the system, because the system was the thing that screwed everything up."
Twiggs Mathis, for instance, has struggled with an assortment of addictions and arrests. A Rochester native, Mr. Mathis, 52, was sent to Attica in 1971 after violating parole for a grand larceny conviction. He got out the same year, but not before he and hundreds of other prisoners were forced to crawl naked over broken glass while at the mercy of club-wielding state troopers.
He has since drifted in and out of prison, on and off cocaine and marijuana, unable to keep a steady job, unable to afford long-distance telephone service.
"I just want to stay clean and straighten out my life and do something positive," Mr. Mathis said. "The settlement, it could help me out a lot and get me some peace of mind."
For Eddie Dingle, a Brooklyn native who served almost 10 years for robbery and homicide, the settlement is "long overdue."
Mr. Dingle, now 55, lives in the Bronx and works as a supervisor at the Addicts Rehabilitation Center in Harlem. He has come full circle: just a few years ago, he was a patient at the center, trying to end a crack cocaine addiction, come to grips with the memories of Attica and grapple with his earlier failures as a husband and father.
"I'm trying to work out stuff with this Attica thing in my head, and I'm thinking, how am I going to raise these kids?" Mr. Dingle said, adding that his sons, 34 and 36, have had their share of drug problems, too. "I didn't have a chance to raise them. I tried to smoke myself out of the pain."
Even some of those who now have jobs and are settled in their communities have been rattled by the news of the settlement. A reporter's questions about Attica caused George Nieves, a social worker who works with AIDS patients at Mount Vernon Hospital, to begin a long, emotional description of state troopers' playing Russian roulette with him, all night long, during the siege.
To this day, Mr. Nieves, who was in prison for 11 years on a manslaughter conviction, is suspicious of authority figures and occasionally afraid that his telephone has been tapped.
"When you mention Attica, a lot of things come back to me and I'm not the same person," said Mr. Nieves, who was homeless for several years in Manhattan, addicted to drugs and alcohol, before getting a boost from his second wife, and Mr. Clark of Phase Piggy Back in Harlem. "But don't mention Attica and I feel like a new person."
For now, the lawyers who negotiated the proposed settlement are trying to contact as many of the 1,281 eligible men as possible, either by phone, public notices or mail, in time for a Feb. 14 hearing before Judge Michael A. Telesca of Federal District Court in Rochester.
In all, at least 400 people are expected to file claims, said Daniel L. Meyers, a Manhattan lawyer representing the inmates. Like several of his colleagues, Mr. Meyers has been involved in the Attica case for most of his career. The lawyers estimate that 400 more may be dead, though their heirs can file a claim if they meet a series of legal requirements. About 50 are still in prison, Mr. Meyers said. The rest may either be impossible to locate or simply uninterested because of the stigma of having been in Attica and a part of the siege.
"Some people, especially in white rural communities of New York State, have said that in no circumstance would they want their names or stories to be told," Mr. Meyers said.
The settlement still remains subject to approval from Judge Telesca. And some men may present objections to the amount of the settlement. The judge will determine individual awards, which are to vary according to the injuries suffered in the siege.
But many inmates seem to believe that the settlement will be as good an offer as they can get, even though they would have preferred that the state formally admit wrongdoing for the troopers' actions in aggressively ending the siege. If that is the consensus, then the money -- which excludes $4 million in lawyers' fees -- should be disbursed by the end of the year.
"A lot of guys went crazy waiting for this payoff," Mr. Harrison said. "And they're the same guys who said, 'I'll have a drink today, because I'm getting money from the state.' Well, that day turned into 10 years, then 20 years, then 30 years. And all of a sudden, 30 years have gone by, you can't stand up, your kidneys are gone, and you say, 'What took 30 years to come to this point?' "