From Poverty and Prison to Education and a New Life - Martin Terrell

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[Music]

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Hi and welcome to Author Conversations again with Chris Dabs as usual.

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Now this episode is presented in association with SLM books.

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My guest today is Martin Terrell, whose writing explores childhood, opportunity, race, identity, and the experiences that shade pass for life.

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Martin grew up in Cincinnati and circumstances very different from the professional world he later entered.

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Education became what he calls his compass, eventually leading him into journalism and a career supporting universities and students.

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His books include without a compass, unseen scars and your only innocent ones.

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And today I want to concentrate more on the individual behind the books rather than the individual plots of each book, if that makes sense.

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So Martin, welcome to Author Conversations. It's lovely to have you here.

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Thank you Chris. I don't often get a chance to talk about me, how I wrote the books, why I wrote them.

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And what made them so special in my life? Well, so thanks for having me here.

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No, no, not at all. I think it's going to be fascinating to find out about you.

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As you say, you've written three books and they've all got, well, I tell you what, you're going to explain what they're about.

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There's no point people listening to me say that. But before we get to the books, what I want to do is I want to try and find out a bit about you.

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Okay, so here's a question for you. Who's the boy who eventually became that man sitting opposite me there all the way across the pond in Florida?

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Who was that boy? Were you, were you, you're gougacious? Did you have fun? What were you like?

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Well, I didn't initially have fun. I was kind of, my mother was my, the key to my life, okay?

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And she and I were together for two years before she married my stepfather. And when she married him, she shared me with him until she was 12 years old, when she died.

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I was just, I felt I was lost. And my stepfather was a good man, I guess, to my sisters who were born after my mother and he married.

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And I loved him and they love me. And they never knew I was their stepbrother until later on later in the year because I was their big brother.

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And as a big brother, we had a special relationship. But it just happened that as my stepfather and I as I grew older and in the ghetto, young boys seem to think they're men when they're not.

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And as I got to be 13 and 14, I felt that I could take care of myself. And especially I worked at the ballpark when I was 14. And I made some money on my own.

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And that showed me that I could make money and I could save money, I could spend money and do things that I needed for myself. And my stepfather, he gambled, he drank, a matter of fact after my mother died, he drank himself to death.

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He had an apartment, my sisters went to the orphanage. And he had an apartment and there was a fire here. Drank himself a cigarette said the apartment of firing the smoke unit.

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But before that he and I had had a couple of bikes between us. Deaf kid was going up to pass in a stepfather. And that's happened particularly in the ghetto.

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So I never very, very as a young kid, but I wasn't very happy. However, that's young kids want to, you know.

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I think that's the problem isn't it. You know, you get into some step sort of situations or families and it can be tricky. And it sounds like yours was what was tricky.

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But you, you know, you were an entrepreneur, right? You made your money, you did your things, you say that you grew up too quickly. But do you think that that helped you in later life? Because you know, you say that without education, you could see three possible directions for your life really.

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You could see poverty, right? Prison or drugs. I mean, when did education stop being just simply going to school and become part of you? Is it where your compass kind of thing? Did that come much later?

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Yes, because I did. I spent some time in jail, okay?

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That was part of who everybody in my neighborhood was at that time.

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The guys in our new and my neighborhood, they had two, two roads. They were going to prison or coming from prison.

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And the guys who escaped that went into the US service. They became army guys. These were the guys who were succeeding. I had an opportunity to look at the role of education.

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So when I went into a foster home, that was my key to get out of the place where I was born.

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In the foster home, my sisters and I, after they got out of the orphanage, of course, I didn't go to the orphanage because I was 16. You were growing mad and together.

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I stayed in the streets. I did some things I had not done and I survived, okay? But after they got out of the orphanage, they went to the foster home.

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The police saw that, it was too young to be in the street, so I was forced to go on the foster home. But in the foster home, in the sixth grade, we took a test and IQ test.

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And my IQ test said, "Well, you should be going to a high school or college prep high school." So I sent me to a college prep high school.

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The kids there, their parents had college degrees. And the kids were expected to get college degrees. Many of them were Jews, many of them were not.

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They were at school when they expected to go to college. If they was angry with them, they didn't expect to go to college. Their parents said they were going to college.

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So this was a new door that I had not seen before. And they had different expectations at the school.

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That was required for four years. I felt it for the first two years, and I had to go to some school to do it. However, they had something that I loved.

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And that was English. And whatever they had for English, anything that they had for English or political science, I just choked to it.

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That was my love. I can realize it. But that was my love. And I did that exceptionally well. But doing my third year there, this was before my stepfather died.

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So he decided to get married. And since he was married, he was a complete family. So the county allowed him to take my sisters and I back from the foster home, back downtown to the girl.

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Then, then, in my college, I was a clever experience. However, I had been off the chew of college in here. And he couldn't take that from me.

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I went back downtown with him. And I was bitten and smitten by a desire to get an education. So go up to the library and sit up there and read and read.

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And nothing, there was nothing stronger in meaning getting an education. And I was able to do that to get out from under his...

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If I finally was able to get out and get free from him and through going back, going to wherever from there.

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Oh, I got an opportunity to get into Ohio University by getting arrested. And the boys prison...

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They had a college program. And I was in the college program. And that's how I got into Ohio University. That was the beginning of my education.

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That's powerful stuff. I was unstoppable. One... I never knew who my real father was. But one thing he made me was an intellect. Because in school, I was unstoppable.

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And I never realized that until I went to one of his high school, I never realized it until then. And then the thing is...

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Well, I hadn't been able to see... Is that... Once you get to a point, or once I had gotten to a point, did you realize that there are things that you didn't have?

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And you want them so bad, you have people on the other side that say, "Hey, man, here, take my hand. I can help you do this."

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I didn't realize that I didn't get home. But there were people, as I started trying to reach out, they said, "Hey, come here, come here, man."

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I can help you. And it happened to me all along.

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I went to Ohio University, I had... Prior to that, I had been using drugs. So I got a job as a chief counselor at a drug center.

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I went to Ohio State University. And now... Because I hadn't... My time was... It was a drug use. I was fortunate enough to get a job as a drug counselor there.

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So I've been working there three or four years. I'm going to Ohio State. And because I had for previous drugs, and then going to court for drugs, just using...

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I'm going to my apartment one day, and the police swoop down the ground, and do the part walk and take me to jail.

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And I said, "No arrested. I seen what for." I said, "For burry." I said, "Why haven't we committed any burry?" I said, "Where's the light?"

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We know you got in previous wrecking. So we are led to cop to something else. I want to go to college, and you won't have to.

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I said, "This school, I see, but I'm on a jury trial." I said, "No, I knew I wanted to do a trial." I said, "You got a tree respected, you know?"

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I said, "I'm on a jury trial, man." So we didn't have a jury trial. I had a jury trial, and then we got to maximum sentence.

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Because it had a previous wrecking. So we gave him that six to 24, which was the max for burgery.

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But Chris, prior to that, and I had done a few things.

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I marched on the grave in Selma. I had been in Cleveland when they burned it down, but to meet the people who were trying to survive there.

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I've been there with those people because when I was at Ohio State, I was a member of the Black Student Union.

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And there, I was a member of the African Liberation Support Committee. And we were raised in money to send the Africa to help the nations who were trying to get out from under colonialism from the British.

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I was involved in those situations. And I was trying to deal with situations where people were trying to get on their feet.

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And even though I've been using drugs prior to that, I hadn't gotten on a track where I felt that people should stand up and fight for their rights.

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Not only their rights, but other people who get their rights. And when I went to prison for something I didn't do, I said, "Well, this means that it's not the time to cry."

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This is what they did to me over the white folks. That's...then wouldn't help me. It was a time for me to say, "Hey."

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It's not about what they did to me. It's about what do I need to do for me, so citizen.

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So Ohio University had a program with Chalacothe Correctional Institution. I said, "Well, I've been to college. This is what I need to do. I need to get me there college for a better."

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And I've gone into that program. It says I had a 62 or 5 year sentence. I got into that. And at the same time, I'm a proposal for a Black culture and history group.

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There were three high as hallways trying to do that. I turned into director of prisons. I said, "Well, there was a JC program. Got it approved. We had a Black culture and history group."

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I stayed in that for all five years. Work with the Black culture and history group. After the first year, we will go out every month to three of the universities in Ohio, the Shares of Black History.

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The Taylor students said, "Look, we're in prison. Some of us go up and up here, but we're here. You're in college. Stay in college. You don't want to be in prison. You don't need to be in prison because you're getting an education.

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Then we will go out to our three colleges and preach that. We do it then to one idiot escape while we walk in and then he ended up over there."

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Okay.

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But, while I was there on Black culture and history group, the mantra at that time, Chris,

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with any bright who was getting an education and getting disengaged through the Black Panthers in California, the mantra was, each one teach one.

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That meant, "And you were a blind person with a college education. Your job wasn't to get rich. Your job was to teach those who did not have an education.

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That was your function. That was your goal. So, which is, me and the right culture group, my job was to take the political science and the other things that they needed to teach them to my group in prison.

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And first, it started off within the diaspora and the executive group. And they liked it so much that the other members started coming.

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My goal was to teach them to look, "Man, you gotta go back to your community and you will be productive. You gotta get something here while you're here. You will be conscious of that. But you can't get into the trade thing.

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But you gotta go back and let the people know that you can vote and let those guys in the city council knew that you can help them get elected or not get elected. You have things to do.

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But while we're here, your job is to keep the peace and you keep anybody else from messing with you and from messing with anybody around you. And the funny thing happened, Chris.

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One of my rules was, and then I had changed my name to Latif because many of the brothers, especially Islamic brothers, felt that Christianity had been used to enslave them.

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Christianity had been used to make Africans really come over here except things like, "Obey your masters and stuff like that."

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And to discard their original religions so they put that aside. So, "Okay, I adopted Islamic name Latif." So that's who everybody knew he was. As Latif.

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So one guy who was in our group knocked an old guy down and took us, we wore a tall bushes. Took us tall brush. Knocked a guy down.

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So I sent a guy from the group to visit him and told him, "Gas, I tell him to bring our cub whisper to him. I want him back."

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And I refused to do it and got into a fight with the guy that I sent. I'm giving this hand. And finally, the guy and the guy broke his arm and stuff.

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So after a few weeks when he was back, I worked in the prison library. Then I was walking down past the library and he came behind me, hitting me with a steel thing, thinking that he could kill me, but he hit me wrong.

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And went to the hospital and they decided to send him to another prison. He kept and told me, "We don't want any accidents to help him to him."

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But it didn't hurt me. But it's shown that we were serious about humans. You do not hurt people and you do not hurt old people. And I meant that.

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Once they wanted to riot, then rioting would hurt a program in this month. If we were going out once a month to New College, one riot, they wanted food, better food and all this garbage.

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We were getting food. And the guy who lived on a ranch with us, he had a bicycle gang, a white guy, and I knew pretty well.

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I talked to him, he was on my range and we talked. He had all the refurbisness in the prison. And I knew he didn't want to riot, it messed up his money.

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I said, "Man, I mean, what is he going to do to your business?" I said, "I know you don't want to riot." I said, "Your economy might go on out."

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I said, "Key on this riot business." So we made a deal. These guys, many of them worked in production way. They did the financial and different kinds of things.

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I said, "Let's have a small town, not a riot, have a small town." And I said, "We meet with the staff once a month. Give some things that we can talk about. Meet with the warden and the staff. Come to some certain greener things that we can."

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That's what we had at monthly meetings. We had a workshop down first, the workshop, the riot.

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So that's the kinds of things we were able to do. But during the time I was still going to school, they had an opportunity to graduate with honors.

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Something happened that hadn't happened before. Or how in university offered me a full graduate scholarship, above my parole, to the script school and journalism.

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And one of the favorite English professors, he started on at math. He said, "Morning have you ever talked about graduate school?"

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I said, "No." He said, "Well, I'll talk to the exam. I'll talk to the gerian." So we talked to the warden and said, "Yeah, it would be great if you could do that."

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And we got to the gr. of passing. We got to four graduate scholarships to the Hollywood University. And there was the beginning of my career.

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So you got there. You got there, didn't you? But it was in a roundabout way. Wow. That's...

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It affects me in terms of making me really think about what happened to you, the way that you grew up, all of those kinds of experiences.

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If you hadn't done those things, what would you have done? Is the question, "Would you have been able to just continue with your self-education?" Or did prison actually become the making of you, if you know what I mean?

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It's crazy to think like that, I guess, right?

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Yes.

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I'm being very fortunate. I think... Yeah, I think I'm not agreeing that you've been fortunate, but I am agreeing with you thinking that you've been fortunate.

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Do you see for me? I think there's a difference there, isn't there? You know, you earned that in terms of your demeanor, the way you are, the way you act, the way that you help others, I think.

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I'm not saying that you earned it from the universe or something like that, but maybe you did, I don't know.

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But I think that, on a lot of occasions like this, I always think people make their own luck. They say they're lucky and all that sort of thing.

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It's not that you've going down and tried to do it, but it happened, right? So you found mentors, people believed in you.

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You preached to students, you were honest and you were really sort of... But from what you were saying, you were absolutely passionate about passing things on and passing things up and stopping people from ruining themselves as it were.

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But not once, if you said, "Cool out of the ghetto" or whatever other thing that you might want to say, you know, like that. You haven't said anything like that. You've just been super positive so far in terms of as much as you could have done.

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I'm not saying it was all a bed of roses. Of course, as we would say here, a bed of roses.

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Okay, so after that, you did your graduate school, incredibly, you know, in the roundabout where you got there. How old were you at that state?

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I was almost within, oh, that's great, the 60 years. Well, I went to graduate school. I was older than most of the graduate students.

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I was in my late 20s, you know, later on in the one and two.

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And how long were you in prison for? Because, you know, that's important to know. And the sixth year.

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Right, so you did six years, right? So you managed to navigate all of that. A bin, you know, you did your calling, is it? Well, I really, right?

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I graduated when I was 28. I got my degree when I was 28. Right. And then you went to after that, you went to do the journalism, right?

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Yeah. Right. So, okay, fantastic. So, okay, let's move on to journalism then.

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So, I understand you once wrote obituaries for the Cincinnati call and post, right? And this is where I think you kind of also figured out that you really loved discussing other people's lives. Right.

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And, you know, I was going to ask you really, was writing always there, part of you?

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You know, while you were building this professional career. Well, I was a kid. I was always writing, and I neighborhood.

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And then north and Cleveland, they had the calling post newspaper and Cincinnati had a subsidy and Cincinnati calling post.

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And I had an opportunity to write the obituaries. I don't know how I got it, but it was really just covered the black neighborhood.

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And I could, like I said, I went to the high school and for the people with the high IQs. I handed high IQ.

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And Tom was able to write the obituaries. And who would think obituaries was fun? Well, in other neighborhood, people wouldn't call it grads or anything, but I can get churches.

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And I was like, if you were on the Usher Board or in the choir, but in our neighborhood, if a person was on the Usher Board, then it was a big deal.

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So when they died, I could write to Sister Onlead, when she died, it was on the Usher Board for 20 years and Mount Charles.

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And it did this and that and that. And when they were sprinting, the people in the neighborhood would see that. And it would be important. She would be important.

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And then was big. You know, and the people would cut down and put that in the Bible and save it. And you know, I had made her important.

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And to me, you know, my no bitch away was a big deal. I had gotten that from my neighbor.

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And so that's the thing, isn't it, right? I mean, so you know, it's not a bit writing obituaries or orbits where you want to call the journalists, you know, for public figures, but they were public figures, but in your neighborhood.

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So they were, as you say, a big deal. And so you helped to, you know, if sister Mary, whatever was in a something for 20 years, she'd have known lots and lots of people.

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So yeah, you helped to make her life matter amongst everybody else's. And I think that that that's actually really, and I love the way you put that as well.

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Because I think we sometimes just see obituaries as buff, you know, just it's in the back of the paper or whatever it is. And you know, especially as a national celebrity or not necessarily celebrity, but you know, someone well known.

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But someone that matters, yeah, I can see that. I can see that. So you, and they, sorry, go on.

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So that's running has always been something to me that could do something for people.

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You know, like today, since I have written some books that are noticeable, you know, I get calls from some of these kind people.

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But you know, they call me and say, oh, you did this for your legacy. And you can do that. So you know, we want to make a movie. And all, you know, I'd say, man, I have a legacy. My family is my legacy.

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I don't want to make a movie. I made a year's old. I'll be dead before I make a movie, you know, get off my phone. You know, that's not what writing is for.

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You know, right to make money. You write to share some of what you learn. And you write. So, so, so people can feel and see and share.

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Guess what's my food.

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Well, and yet it took you so long, didn't it? To actually start writing the books because they came much later, right?

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So what made you reach the point where you felt that all these experiences and stories you had to put them down on to a page? What made you do it in the end?

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Well, I have had questions that they, to get me as a professional, as a professional, I had the opportunity to see many things.

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Like, I worked at three universities.

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I've seen students accomplish so many things. I had an opportunity at Americans, or the most generous people on this planet.

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I've gone to conferences, fundraising conferences, people conference from England, from Germany, from other places.

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They do not understand our private citizens want to support education like Americans do.

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How they graduate and want to, like an England date. They support people. They help people. But Americans have a different feel for helping people watch the graduate.

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I feel I've talked and met those people in gotten the sense of their feel for those people.

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And they've shown me some things and I hadn't seen in my part of America. I've learned that.

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But I've learned from students for all of the world who come to America as graduate students.

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I want to particularly met from India.

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My son, he still writes me, I'm 80 years old. How long has that been, my son? How long?

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That was like 13 years ago when I was a man. Nice. With a man. It's, can I? The people that I met are, when makes me, I wrote one of my books.

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I had an office on Wall Street, which is a big deal. The most people called Sassware, all the money. But I wasn't down there. With money I was down there.

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It offers with, you know, Ningo, down. It's not in Ningo College, but I was raising money for them.

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But a corporation that had given them an office on Wall Street. So, yeah, I had an office on Wall Street, but 29 Ningo College.

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And I wrote in one of my books, yeah. I have a leather briefcase. I wear a Brooks Brothers suit.

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And I have an office on Wall Street. I say, but the guy is on Guest Street, if he saw me now, would say, "Is my square up?"

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I say, "Yeah, I square it up, but it'd be scoring to the joint." You know, I become one of the others.

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And, yeah, it's different. It's about making that change. I made the change in the internet world.

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And I've seen that there is something worthwhile in helping people become someone.

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I was able to do it just to raise the money. And there are a lot of people who want to help.

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And in my last, in Stonebrook, after learning at Ohio University, how to raise money and beer from the raise of them.

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My boss moved the floor and they said, "I can't trust him by the time he was president of the foundation."

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And he said, "Come down here and watch me to be my second." And he, Ohio University, he saw me coming from prison, as one of our students.

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So, me from coming from prison, and he wanted me to come down there and be in his second in command, as he could trust nobody.

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So, he brought me down to Florida and now I'm sitting in a meeting here with the foundation board.

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And so, familiar, when the head on this game looking at me, I went to him. I said, "Chef, you've made me who I am."

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And he just heard I was calling to run watch me to go to lose the end of one watch me going. And then I said, "I can do it."

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I said, "You need me who I am." He said, "That's why I've got you here. I want you to be whatever you can be. This is a great guy. He's there now."

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I want you to be whoever you can be. He said, "Go." I said, "But I'm not good at budgets since day." He said, "Go where you can go. I'll send you my budget. You just make it over."

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So, you have to do.

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So, I turned down both jobs in Atlanta and in Louisiana because I got into the point where I could command the sound of the various friends in it that they couldn't pay.

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So, he said, "We got a job offer from New York that you should look at. I said, "I don't want to go north and make some dictionaries. I want to stand this up."

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So, you should look at this. It's okay. But New York would get you, but they're all for your six figures.

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And they were doing that in the cell. So, I'm going to tell you what they had. They had never done a capital campaign before at this school.

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So, I told Jeff, "I said, "He never done a capital campaign." I said, "They will be as a campaign coordinator and vice president."

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He said, "That's what you need to be. That's what you need to be. That's them, my."

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And this was when I went to the first campaign coordinator and I went from there. I thought that was going to be my last job.

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But I wanted to New York and to the Manhattan to work for New York as a swanman from the gaterobe to Manhattan. It's this and all the...

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So, after all of that, after I retired, I said, "I'm going to write about this." That's because it was a long stretch that I learned in that machine of some of this.

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That's when I started writing. I said, "Don't I have enough to shoot with all this?"

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This is inspiring, isn't it? I mean, it really is. And you had that... You had... It was Jeff, I think you said, "Was it your mentor?"

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But that was... Jeff.

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Yeah, great. Good, but you know, Jeff is your mentor there, obviously, helped again to push you in the right direction.

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And then when you finally retire, you do the thing that you've done for which is writing, right?

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So, I mean, you've written three books. I guess we ought to start talking about the books as well, now, right?

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So, we can do that very quickly. Well, not very necessary very quickly, but what...

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Unless, of course, you have something else to say that isn't to do with the books yet.

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I'm not trying to rush you. Seriously. I mean, I think that now that you've retired and you've now moved to Florida,

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do you still work with the community, basically? Do you work with black communities there? Or do you work with every community, really?

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We're here. We're in an assisted living facility. My wife needed some help, so we moved down here.

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And we're here in an assisted living room.

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We're... Hang on.

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Nope, hold on a second. We have to stock up with it recording again.

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Hang on. Hang on. Okay, yep. So, sorry, you moved down to Florida because your wife needed some assistance in an assisted living community.

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Yep. Yep.

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We're going... Do you like it there, I guess?

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Yeah, we... Yeah, it's okay.

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But before we moved here, we moved north Carolina, we built a house there after my retirement.

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And moved into a community. It was a new community. Everybody who moved there, built a house.

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So, everybody was new. And you knew people not from where they worked. If somebody moved there, you knew them from who they were.

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You knew that they worked here and they worked there. You knew them from...

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My name is Mike. You knew them from who they were. So, everybody was new. And everybody in this...

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It was a great community, you know, like I was selling some one today. If somebody had just gone a lot and were moving in,

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we would ask them like, "Do you have a dog?" And they would say, "I didn't tell you that you couldn't move in unless you have a dog."

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And it was then that mom...

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Yeah, exactly. Yeah, how many people went out and bought a dog, right?

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So, there was that community. We loved it there.

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Until, you know, the doctor said, "Maybe you better move into an assisted living community."

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So, we're here now. But we loved it there. I was in a group of us, man used to meet once a month to solve the problems of the world.

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And as you see, we were failures.

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You can't blame yourself for that, Marcy. It's all right.

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You're a failure, is it? No, it's quite amusing. Okay, right. So, I think what we're going to have to do now is to really kind of...

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We've really run over time and we're running out of it. I'm afraid with our conversation today.

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But I mean, tell me about the books. Tell me about it. Rather than me asking you, you know, what did the stage change?

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My first book... Tell us about the books. My first book was without a compass, because that's the one that was...

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had me wrapped up the most. And it told everything of what was important to me at the time.

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And it's got all... when made my life, not just my mom, but in our neighborhood, most of the people came from the south.

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And everybody in our neighborhood became a part of me.

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The pilot, the woman from the island who made pies, navigate in Jank, the bomb, who would come up the street pushing his cart, singing...

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"A right, right below."

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And he would fix things in the house where my mother, where a father would be at work. But more importantly than that, he got me my first bicycle, because my father couldn't get one.

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And it took me to the job yard where he would sell his stuff. And he said, "Junior, do you think the dad would mind if I help you get a bike?"

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Because I used to tell him, "I must say, never gonna... I wish I could get a bike with my daddy."

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It's a junior, junior, junior, thank you, dad. I said, "No, never gonna." He said, "We'll come with me."

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And never gonna trip me to the job yard. I said, "Never gonna."

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He said, "Just people go, I said, look at all the roughly he took me and found a frame from a healthy and a healthy as a road bike."

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I said, "Never gonna. All that is is a frame. It's a junior." That's what life is like. It's a frame. And your frame is good. All you have to do is get to rest.

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So we looked at them. Danny found two wheels, two good wheels. And he found a seat from a roll-fast and a roll-fast.

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It's like a big Christian. He put the roll-fast on it. So we had two wheels. They were kind of good. But we had a frame that was good.

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He said, "I'm gonna take this." I said, "How much you could have said don't worry about it?"

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So he bought it. I think he paid $2 for it. They would took that to seat, to frame, and then we got some more healthy food.

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He said, "Now all you need is some good time. So maybe you dad can get that."

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We took it home. My mother saw it. They said, "I'm gonna get to you some times." And my father was ashamed. Never getting it. He had gotten it. So he bought me some good times.

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Now, Navigator was the kind of person I could talk to. Nobody would know what navigator, and I talked about, but navigator.

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So that's the kind of people that are in this, called, "Ponelavy Navigator Gym, my best friend, Jim's mother, they had 12 kids. His mother didn't make any difference.

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I was out there playing with Jim and his mother would say, "Junior, get in here it's time to eat." I said, "I'm going to eat when you get in here."

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So I would have to eat, so I would be 13 of them. These people were all friends of staff.

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And that's the cell was raised by southern people. And everybody around there was like, if I was being bad, they would smack me on my butt and make me go home.

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It's the ghetto, but everybody in the ghetto is your family. See, so you could run. People talk about the ghetto, but in the ghetto, if something was asking you, "There's not from the ghetto."

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You could run and you could knock on any door because you were from the ghetto. You knock on any door and get in and get away from who was asking you.

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And if you were from the ghetto, to get away from something, and trying to explain that in this book, then I talk about my mother's funeral and my brother's death and my sisters living in the orphanage.

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And then moving to Madera, and then moving away from the ghetto. So it starts in the ghetto and then moving away from the ghetto.

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So this is a package at first book. And then after I wrote that, that's when my career really had started.

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And that's when I wrote, you are only innocent once and once is not enough. I felt that after my experience there, I wanted to like to share what going to prison was, when I had experience there.

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And then how I got out and when I had accomplished and put that against what being in prison was, and what getting out was in relation to that, how those two are related.

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To show the inequities of the justice system, that's what I was trying to portray in that. And in the meantime, showing that they're always, even when you are against the wall, that you can beat it.

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Even when you are against the wall, because at the very beginning, one of the guys was telling me, you see that?

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And the teeth, you're the last person I thought would come back to when you were out, I was out. So that hurt me when you said that.

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Because I was part of his freedom. And by me coming back in, that part of his freedom was taken away from him. That hurt me.

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So I had to let him see, I said to the man, I'm innocent man. He said, everybody in here seems to be listening.

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And I had to show him what he read. I'm going to show you this name is spoke up. You have to work on it and get yourself ready.

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So being in there, I had to show the guys, I was me. The system can be screwed up, but you got to be stand up. I had a job to do. That's what that book is about.

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And you did that. That's for sure. Right. Yeah. Well, okay. So I'm going to ask you a final question now. But I think we're going to have to have a part two at some stage and talk about your books in detail.

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And there's of course, you know, it's out there anyway. But you know, you've written your sort of the memoir, as you say, kind of social commentary, you know, deeply personal, all these things that you've mentioned.

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But the question is here, my final one, if you could speak to that younger Martin, so even before the thief, right, that younger Martin, the boy who couldn't yet see where his life was going, who was 13, who was making his, you know, a few bugs here and there so that he could, he could live his own life.

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What would you tell him about finding his own compass?

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I'm going to say, hey, man, what you got to do is just maintain, find a stream that you believe in and maintain that stream.

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Because you've got to find something that is constant, something that's constant, then we're not waiver.

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We're going to say, what's going on in your mind? It's going to go wrong. But you got to keep on.

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Whatever it is, I follow it's okay. For me, it was education. It kept me straight, even though I veered off in this, I veered.

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But internally, I had one thing that kept me going. You've got to find that one thing that would keep you going.

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Oh, man, you ever want whatever it is, it'll be yours. You want to explain it? That's it.

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Of course, that is YouTube.

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And that nowadays, I guess, and we would say that's like finding your passion or being focused on something, you know, all those sorts of things.

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There's sort of buzzwords and things. But, you know, we go to try and find something that you want to do, that you like, that you love.

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A love, yeah, a passion in life, right? So that you can keep away from the distractions.

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Yeah, what's my...

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Yeah, well, Martin, I tell you what, it's been wonderful talking to you today.

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I've learned a lot, and I'm going to go away and think of how what you've done in your 80 years,

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and the things you've seen and things you've done, the people you've helped, I think it's important as well, isn't it?

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Obviously, yeah, Martin Terrell.

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Thank you very much for joining me on all the conversations today. It's been absolutely fantastic.

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To tell everybody about your books, your books include, "Without a compass, unseen scars and your only innocent ones."

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And you can find those online to purchase an Amazon and all those sorts of things, right?

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Do you have a website or something, or do you, are you on any social media, or do people have follow you or find you?

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Yeah, she would find me.

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Martin Terrell.com sounds like a plan, all right? That's easy. Then we can go from there.

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Excellent. Well, listen, viewers and listeners, you can find more conversations with authors at author-conversations.com

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So that we can continue these sorts of conversations with people, and I think that this is it. We can learn from that message

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that Martin just sent his 13-year-old self, finding your passion, finding your focus.

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And also, a reminder here that this episode is presented in association with SLM books.

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Martin Terrell, it's been an absolute pleasure meeting you today. I hope we meet again soon to actually talk in depth about your books, maybe.

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But listen, I really appreciate you giving me an opportunity to share with you and your listeners.

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It's going to be a pleasure. I've had many interviews and no one has really let me share who I am, but you have. I appreciate that.

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Thank you so much.

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And thank you, Martin. Thank you. I've enjoyed listening, and I've learned a lot. I mean that.

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So everyone, thanks for watching and listening, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Take care, and thank you again, Martin. Have a great day.

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Bye-bye.

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If you enjoyed this conversation, you can watch more author-conversations here.

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[Music]