By Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
CLEARWATER — On July 6, 1982, Ken Cooper robbed a bank in Clearwater. As he usually did, he grabbed a hostage and forced her to leave the bank with him during his getaway.
On Wednesday morning, 28 years later, his former hostage gave him a hug.
Cooper spoke at the YMCA of the Suncoast's annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast. About 400 community leaders, businesspeople and pastors packed into the Sheraton Sand Key Resort to hear from a man who spent 13 years as a serial bank robber.
The morning featured nondenominational prayers for the troops, for youths, for public officials and religious leaders. Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard, who hosts the breakfast, invited Cooper to come speak after reading his book, Held Hostage. Cooper is the founder of several Florida prison ministries.
Cooper's string of bank robberies ended in the early 1980s when a deputy shot him in the chest during a Tampa heist. He says he found God in jail: "I went into prison a free man."
He served hard time in one of the darkest places in Florida — the notorious, fortresslike prison called "the Rock," a now-demolished section of Union Correctional Institution at Raiford.
Cooper, who is now a white-haired, bespectacled great-grandfather, described how killings and rapes were common in the Rock. He lived in fear and terror — "the same that I had inflicted on other people."
After his best friend was stabbed in the chow hall and died in his arms, a depressed Cooper retreated to his cell and began to recite "that little kid's prayer," the Lord's Prayer.
Others began to pray with him. Inmates called out Scripture up and down the cell block. The guards asked what was going on.
"We're praising God. Is that okay?" Cooper said.
The guards said they guessed so; it's just that no one had ever done it there before.
The cell block "became a church," Cooper said.
Released after four years in prison, he remarried. He and his second wife founded Prisoners of Christ in Jacksonville, House of Hope in Gainesville and Mercy House in Tallahassee. Gov. Jeb Bush sought his advice when opening the nation's first faith-based prison at Lawtey Correctional Institution.
Cooper's ministries give released inmates a place to stay and help in overcoming addictions. Cooper himself was once addicted to the adrenaline jolt of robbing banks.
"Maybe some of you here are prisoners in one way or another," he told his audience Wednesday. "My prayer is that your chains will be gone."
Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4160.