CHICAGO (WBBM) - Former Illinois Governor George Ryan is scheduled to go to prison Wednesday barring a last minute reprieve from the U-S Supreme Court. He’s been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for corruption.
Meanwhile, another former governor who did prison time is talking with WBBM Newsradio 780 about his experiences.
WBBM's Bernie Tafoya reports.
Former Illinois Governor Dan Walker was sentenced to seven years for crimes committed as a private citizen. He was let out after 18 months.
Walker says that, in the days before he reported to prison, he was determined to accept whatever prison dished at him and to “hold my head up”.
He says he was also determined not to have, what his father would call, a P-L-O-M attitude…poor little ol’ me.
Walker has written about his experiences in politics and prison in a book called, “The Maverick and the Machine”.
He says humiliating strip searches for drugs could happen at any time. The four words he didn’t like to hear from guards were: “Walker, squat and spread”.
As for those who would say minimum security prisons like the one he was at in Duluth, Minnesota or the one George Ryan is scheduled to report to in Oxford, Wisconsin are “country clubs”, the man who served as Illinois’ governor from 1972-76 begs to differ.
He jokes that “maybe the one Martha Stewart went to was better”.
He says he went into prison at age 65 and was given the job of being a clerk in the chapel. Walker says that when a new warden came in, he made an example of Walker, changing his job to cleaning toilets and picking up cigarette butts on the prison’s grounds.
The former governor says the warden gave him a garbage pick-up stick with the words “Governor Walker’s walking stick” burned into it.
Walker says he does not plan to contact former Governor George Ryan. He says he doesn’t think Ryan would want any advice from him.
Walker lives in Southern California now but still follows Chicago and Illinois news every day on the Internet.
He says he wishes Governor Ryan had “paid more attention to what’s going wrong with our political system”.
Walker says that, when he was governor, he issued an executive order forbidding “pay to play” politics.
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