Every Tuesday in a room off the gym at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, inmate 133505 becomes more than just a number.
That’s when Pamela Jorge forgets her cocaine conviction and belts her voice out in song.
“This is the only time that I ever feel heard,” says the 29-year-old, who has spent much of the past 16 years behind bars.
Tuesdays are when Jorge and fellow inmates rehearse for a choir called “Sophia’s Sisters” — one of many programs that make Denver Women’s less of a warehouse than most Colorado prisons.
Together, the group of convicted drug dealers, car thieves and forgers makes a noise so joyful it’s easy to forget the grim context.
“Dona nobis pacem,” (Latin for “bring us peace”), they sing in a soft, sweet round of the song of the same name.
Indeed, lyrics take on new meanings behind five electronic gates and layers upon layers of razor wire.
“Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name. Lord, I can’t go back home this-a-way,” sings Veshelle Howell in her rendition of “Five Hundred Miles.”
At 45, Howell is on her third stint behind bars for drug dealing, car theft and fraud. She speaks matter-of-factly about her father’s murder and the time she arrived at Denver Health and was thought to have been dead on arrival.
“I’ve been lost for what seems to be a lifetime,” she says. “This choir is the first time I ever tried to really make a commitment.”
Alto Dannie Thomas, 50, started singing as a child in the Georgia church where her father was bishop. She worked as an R&B nightclub performer before getting caught selling dope in 1990 and again in 1998. Having lost touch with all but one of her eight kids, she says she sings to cope with the pain.
“Miss Kitty,” as Thomas is known, has silenced a cafeteria of chatty prisoners singing “White Christmas” during the holidays. She is partial to the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” which she crooned to her kids as babies.
“Time goes by so slowly,” she sings, then stops.
“I had no idea what those words would really mean to my family,” adds Thomas, whose next parole hearing is in April.
Choir is a discipline, which is why corrections officials accommodate the group every week. It also can feed the spirit. That’s what prompted Kerry Kurt to found the group in 2007 as part of “Unbound Grace,” her women’s ministry. The name “Sophia’s Sisters” draws from the ancient Greek concept of wisdom.
“We’re trying to ground these women for lives beyond these walls. We’re trying to give them back their voices,” Kurt says.
Arguing that “felons should be part of the conversation” at next week’s Democratic National Convention, Kurt worked for weeks trying to arrange a performance for Democrats.
“We got squashed for security reasons,” she reports.
Instead, Kurt settled last week on a smaller audience at the New Beginnings Cathedral of Worship in Aurora.
Five Sophia’s Sisters who were cleared to leave prison grounds took their places in front of about 70 congregants, nervously adjusting the shiny blue robes they wore over their yellow prison T-shirts. Then they began their song, “This Little Light of Mine.”
“I’ve got the light of freedom,” sang Howell with a smile that she had not cracked in three weeks of choir practice.
“I’m gonna let it shine,” answered Jorge in a soprano that was proud and strong.
If only you could have heard them, unbound and as close to flight as human voices can soar.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
