Meet Charles “Tarzan” Raby
The very identity of my triple crown hiking adventure is linked to a man who has resided for over 30 years on death row in a Texas prison. His name is Charles Raby. There are many similarities between the hiking and prison communities and that may be a topic for a future blog. But, for now, one of those similarities is a tradition of bestowing nick names. His fellow inmates call Charles “Tarzan”. Getting to know Tarzan is a complicated endeavor. To a large extent he is a product of his upbringing.
Poverty was a hallmark of Tarzan’s childhood. His father abandoned the family when Tarzan was two years old. His mother worked as a waitress and suffered from mental health disorders. He and his sister were well acquainted with Texas Child Protective Services, bouncing back and forth between living with their mother and being placed in the “system”. The instability of his youth led to a strong need for belonging. When his sister was placed in foster care, Charles lost the most important social connection in his life.
Tarzan witnessed or experienced first hand drug and alcohol abuse, violence, misogyny and child abuse from early on. At one point as a child he was made to wear a brick around his neck for a week and on another occasion he was forced to chew and swallow an entire wooden pencil. In his early teens he found himself homeless for a time. None of his extended family would open their homes to him. He learned to fight out of necessity. His formal education foundered. His street education flourished. By age 17 he had fathered a child. That was the same year he was hospitalized with a shotgun blast to his abdomen during an altercation. Prior to his murder conviction he had already served two periods of incarceration for robbery and battery.
There are those who say that in this country we are blessed with self-determination and that this is the land of opportunity. If a person works hard they can become whatever they want like a character out of a Horatio Alger “rags to riches” novel. Reality speaks otherwise. Our prisons are disproportionately filled with people from impoverished backgrounds. Tarzan is among them.
Why should I, or anyone for that matter, show concern for someone like Charles even though he is innocent? For starters, through it all he has maintained a sense of honor. His mother died while he was incarcerated and he still deeply loves her. He harbors no ill will toward his sister or anyone else who has turned their back on him. He blames no one but himself for his plight. He has demonstrated that he is fiercely protective of children. To his detriment he refuses to “snitch” on anyone. He has embraced his fractional Choctaw heritage and has made efforts to learn the language. He has learned to read; something that never happened during his checkered time in the public school system. But mostly I believe that Charles, for once in his live, deserves a chance.