danielle
05-22-2003, 07:49 PM
Inmate finds photographs lost by northeast Alabama woman
The Associated Press
5/22/03 3:04 PM
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Photographs of Norma Bankston's late daughter, once thought hopelessly lost, are coming home.
Cedric Nixon, an inmate worker at St. Clair Correctional Facility, saw a picture of Jamie Bankston on Wednesday in a Birmingham News article about the missing photos. It reminded him of several dozen photos he had seen in a prison bus.
An unidentified inmate worker apparently found the photos while picking up roadside trash and put them on the bus, which takes prisoners to collect litter along Interstates 20 and 59 in east Alabama.
Nixon, a 22-year-old from Montgomery who has spent seven years in state custody for robbery, showed several of the photos to maintenance department employee Jean Gortney and maintenance supervisor Thomas Cornish. Moments later, Gortney telephoned the good news to Bankston.
"She immediately broke down when I told her we had found them," Gortney said. "That's a ... million to one chance that something like that would have happened."
Bankston, who lives in the Jackson County community of Bryant, agreed.
"It's like a gift from God that I didn't think I would ever see again," she said.
Jamie Bankston died of a blood clot last year at age 22, about a week before she would have graduated from nursing school. In March, Norma Bankston and one of Jamie's friends, Karla Mullins, went to Panama City, Fla., to get a daisy tattoo like the one Jamie had on the base of her back.
They took a photo album Jamie had kept in recent years to show the artist what the tattoo looked like. But on their way back home, Bankston's car broke down. While she and Mullins went for help, someone broke into the vehicle and took some of its contents, including the photo album.
When Nixon saw Jamie Bankston's photo in the newspaper Wednesday, he remembered the photos he first saw about a month ago in one of the prison detail buses. They weren't in an album, but Bankston said they couldn't have come from anywhere else.
Gortney mailed six of the photos to Bankston. She took the rest of the photos, which were damp, and spread them out in the maintenance office to dry. Gortney said she and her husband probably will take them to Bankston's home this weekend.
Bankston said she plans to send Nixon a card of gratitude. Nixon said he feels good about the way things have turned out.
"I just feel like I did a good deed," he said.
The Associated Press
5/22/03 3:04 PM
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Photographs of Norma Bankston's late daughter, once thought hopelessly lost, are coming home.
Cedric Nixon, an inmate worker at St. Clair Correctional Facility, saw a picture of Jamie Bankston on Wednesday in a Birmingham News article about the missing photos. It reminded him of several dozen photos he had seen in a prison bus.
An unidentified inmate worker apparently found the photos while picking up roadside trash and put them on the bus, which takes prisoners to collect litter along Interstates 20 and 59 in east Alabama.
Nixon, a 22-year-old from Montgomery who has spent seven years in state custody for robbery, showed several of the photos to maintenance department employee Jean Gortney and maintenance supervisor Thomas Cornish. Moments later, Gortney telephoned the good news to Bankston.
"She immediately broke down when I told her we had found them," Gortney said. "That's a ... million to one chance that something like that would have happened."
Bankston, who lives in the Jackson County community of Bryant, agreed.
"It's like a gift from God that I didn't think I would ever see again," she said.
Jamie Bankston died of a blood clot last year at age 22, about a week before she would have graduated from nursing school. In March, Norma Bankston and one of Jamie's friends, Karla Mullins, went to Panama City, Fla., to get a daisy tattoo like the one Jamie had on the base of her back.
They took a photo album Jamie had kept in recent years to show the artist what the tattoo looked like. But on their way back home, Bankston's car broke down. While she and Mullins went for help, someone broke into the vehicle and took some of its contents, including the photo album.
When Nixon saw Jamie Bankston's photo in the newspaper Wednesday, he remembered the photos he first saw about a month ago in one of the prison detail buses. They weren't in an album, but Bankston said they couldn't have come from anywhere else.
Gortney mailed six of the photos to Bankston. She took the rest of the photos, which were damp, and spread them out in the maintenance office to dry. Gortney said she and her husband probably will take them to Bankston's home this weekend.
Bankston said she plans to send Nixon a card of gratitude. Nixon said he feels good about the way things have turned out.
"I just feel like I did a good deed," he said.