That code was to fight back whenever he was threatened and never to squeal on anyone. Even though it got him in more trouble as the months wore on, the code was all he had to fall back on. Then Lt. Clifford Maddox entered his life.
Maddox served as part-time guard, part-time recreation director at Cañon City. Physically unimposing, barely five feet nine with glasses and a receding hairline, he nevertheless commanded respect from everyone in the prison, convicts and fellow guards alike. He had worked at Cañon for twenty-seven years, earning some leeway in his dealings with prisoners. One day he approached Ron Lyle in the yard and asked if he'd ever played on athletic teams.
“I told Maddox I had always been interested in sports but could never make the teams in high school because of my grades. I told him I had played on a semipro basketball team, and he said that's where I should start then. He let me know that in prison, everything was up to me. I had to take the first step. So, after a while, I did.”
The relationship between convict and guard didn't go smoothly at first. Ron remembers Maddox trying to get him to open up, and his own response, in effect: “Man, you're a screw and I'm a convict. I came here by myself and I'll leave the same way.”
But the guard kept prodding, and Ron kept going to practice, and before long he was the mainstay of all three Cañon City teams—football, basketball, and baseball. His performance from the winter of 1962 through the fall of 1963 is part of the record. The first basketball season, he averaged twenty-three points a game. When baseball came around, he batted .400. And in the fall, he routinely kicked fifty-yard field goals for the prison football team, the Rock Busters, while throwing touchdown passes, one for seventy yards. And it was the football team that brought Ron his first real friend in prison.
Ron had heard the name “Doobie” Vigil ever since he had been in reform school when some guys there said that when Vigil was in Buena Vista, he was the toughest guy there. Ron heard the same thing when he arrived at Cañon, but he didn't meet Doobie until he started playing football. Both six feet three and over two-hundred pounds, Ron and Doobie were the most physically daunting members of the team, and the hard-hitting Hispanic reminded Ron of some of the guys back in the projects. Maybe it was a natural that the two started immediately to build a team alliance and a friendship that managed to survive not only incarceration but release many years later.
The Rock Busters with Ron Lyle and Doobie Vigil did so well they were invited to play an exhibition game against a semipro football team called the Colorado Colts. Former Colts player Gary Snyder remembers Ron Lyle on the field that day: “We kidded around about playing the prison team at first, saying the referees should wear checks instead of stripes, and that the police wouldn't let the wide receivers go long, but after the game started and we saw Ronnie Lyle play, it was a different story. We won the game, but just barely, and afterward, everyone, including our team, voted him MVP.”
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Even as athletics relieved the generally unrelenting pressure of prison life for Ron, the high point of each week continued to be his mother's visit. She never failed to tell him how much she believed in him, and would always end their half hour with a prayer.
When Bill took word of Ronnie's prowess in the prison athletic program back to the family, they started to hope things would get better for him, but Nellie never needed to hope—she had faith in her second-oldest son.
Ron says he never has been “saved,” at least not like Bill, who “spoke in tongues” as he emerged from the holy water. “But it didn't matter, you know? My mom had enough faith for both of us.” He adds, “She made sure I believed, too. God knows I have never completely lost faith, not even in prison.” Athletics helped.
No one in Cañon City, not even any of his teammates, doubted that Ron Lyle was the best athlete among the 1,400 convicts. And for the first time in his life, Ron started to believe that he was blessed with an exceptional physical ability. But he was still angry.
“Maddox constantly got on my back, even during a game. He used to sit behind the baseball backstop and tell everyone how lousy I was. It got to me at first. I mean, here I am, the best player on the field and he's making me look like a fool.”
But slowly, if reluctantly, Ron grew closer to Maddox, or at least more dependent on his program. He remembers that the guard was “not the kind who'll pat you on the back. Instead, he'll stay on you and try to get you to do that little bit extra. It worked for me, but only after he hassled me to death.”
During football season, Maddox would hold team meetings, and Ron started to get the feeling the coach was talking directly to him as he urged the players to put out a little more. He threw out indirect messages and taunts during the games, and Ron started to get it.
“One day, Maddox had been on my back, and I told him he needed to respect me as a convict and I would respect him as an officer. I told him about my code and how I lived by it. I told him I could have brought six buddies with me, but I didn't squeal on anyone.”
Maddox mostly just listened, but Ron remembers that conversation as the first time they connected as two people, setting aside for just a little while their respective roles of player and coach, inmate and guard.
As the seasons wore on and basketball returned, there were other such moments. Ron knows now that they were beginning to understand each other, and that Maddox was not only making him a better player, but a better person. Whether influenced by the guard, or his mother, or a little of both, Ron started lending a helping hand to other inmates on occasion.
He remembers the day he noticed a young convict hiding in a corner of the gym, watching him shoot at the basket. He had seen the kid before, mostly hanging around alone, a couple of times taking guff from some of the inmates, probably because he looked so young. Ron had guessed he was still in his teens and had even thought about talking to the kid—because he knew how tough it was to spend so much time alone—but had decided against it. First rule, mind your own business.
But that morning, the kid looked so meek, standing back in the shadows, that Ron nodded at him and got a shy smile in return. He went back to shooting layups with what had become an exceptional ability to focus on the athletic task at hand, and he forgot the kid was there.
The next day, the young convict was back in the gym when Ron arrived, sitting on the floor closer to the court this time. He gave a half-wave when Ron walked over to the ball rack.
What the hell. “Wanna learn how to play?”
“Sure.” The kid jumped to his feet with a big smile, and Ron lobbed the ball to him. The second real friendship Ron formed in prison began that day. He worked out with the kid every day they both had recreation privileges, and before long they were playing on the same team, even though the kid was on the bench as a backup guard most of the time.
“He got out of the joint long before I did,” Ron remembers. “But I'll never forget the letter I got one day while I was still in prison. It was from him. He said he had married, found a job and was going straight, and that I was his idol. Nobody ever told me that before. I had such a great feeling that I had helped somebody and he appreciated it.”
Ron never forgot that feeling. For the rest of his life, he has sought opportunities to help kids that need something from him. But he doesn't see himself or want others to see him as some kind of do-gooder. “I just never got tired of feeling appreciated, of being somebody's idol.”
■ ■ ■
Ron had seen his first prison boxing match a few months after he arrived at Cañon City. Lt. Maddox had asked him if he wanted to be a part of the boxing program, but he was just starting to get into the rhythm of playing on teams and wasn't particularly interested in the rigors of boxing—not then. Not until something happened that once again turned his world wrong side out.
A little over a year after Ron entered prison, he still found it difficult to confide in anyone. He had begun to appreciate