Serving life, inmate comforts the dying

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By Ann McGlynn | Monday, April 21, 2008 9:45 AM CDT | () comments

Mike Glover, who is serving a life sentence fo the 1981 murder of his longtime friend Gary Thurman, is now trying to relieve the pain and suffering of those dying at the Iowa State Penitentiary. (Kevin E. Schmidt/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

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On the day Prince Charles married Princess Diana, Mike Glover shot Gary Thurman dead.

Moaning and naked, Thurman succumbed on the hallway floor of a Clinton, Iowa, apartment building shortly after 6 a.m. in July 1981.

Glover shot Thurman after discovering his longtime friend in bed with a woman named Arnett Lee. The weapon? A .30-caliber rifle Glover bought at Target. The conflict? The affections of Lee. A bullet pierced her right hand.

Bleeding, she remembered Glover saying this as he ran away:

“I hope you suffer a long and painful death.”

Glover was convicted of first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence — life without parole.

Three decades later, Glover is spending his life sentence trying to relieve the pain and suffering of those dying at the Iowa State Penitentiary. He bathes, shaves, feeds and comforts them in the prison’s hospice.

From Kentucky to Clinton

Mike Glover was the 10th of 13 children, a military brat from Louisville, Ky. He played baseball and basketball in high school. He did not finish college but ended up playing Double-A baseball for the Clinton Giants. He was a catcher. “I like running my mouth,” he said.

Glover convinced his friend, Thurman, to move from Louisville to Clinton. The work possibilities were good, Glover told Thurman before paying an acquaintance $20 to drive to Kentucky and pick him up.

Glover and Thurman shared an apartment with Lee, working factory jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Besides their friendship, Thurman and Glover had a family connection, too: Thurman was an uncle to Glover’s daughter.

After a trip to Las Vegas in late June 1981, Glover returned to find Thurman and Lee together. A few weeks later, Glover kicked down the door of an apartment at 80½ Main Ave. and found the two in bed.

Glover contends Thurman had the gun and that a struggle ensued. Prosecutors argued Thurman was shot as he rose from the bed. In the end, Thurman lost his life. Glover was sent to prison for the rest of his.

Until then, he had never been in trouble with the law.

Taking care of each other

Sailing to Serenity is one of several state and federal prison hospice units nationwide. In Iowa, a woman named Marilyn Sales launched the units at five prisons. Three years ago, Sales requested the assistance of seven lifers at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, Iowa.

Glover agreed. He liked Sales and her feistiness. “She doesn’t blow smoke,” he said.

Sales, since retired, slipped in a videotape about the prison-based hospice program in Angola, La. She told the men she would like to see something like that in their prison. It required taking classes, reading books and the remodeling of two rooms, she said.

“We sat around and wondered who was going to take care of who,” Glover said.

Gallons of lavender and light blue paint, a couple of comforters, a few swings of a hammer and the men had their answer: They would take care of each other.

It gives purpose

Glover rises every morning at 5 a.m., the quietest time in the cell block. He does a little reading. If he turns on a television at all, it’s to public television or BBC News.

The doors to his cell unlock at 5:55 a.m. He gets ready for work, arriving there shortly before 7 a.m. He makes rounds, to see that everyone got breakfast. Then he goes about his duties: bathing, feeding, shaving and lifting. He works until 2 p.m., seven days a week for 90 cents an hour.

The work, Glover said, gives him purpose. He’s not a religious man, but a man who has “done some changing” since the day he shot his friend with a rifle.

“I’m no angel,” he said, adding that he believes “I inherited this program for some good reasons. This program kind of saved me.”

Because the hospice beds are sometimes empty, Glover spends time helping in the assisted living unit.

When an inmate is close to death, Glover is one of the people who watches, makes a log of the inmate’s decline and listens — not only to physical signs of the impending, but to what the inmate wishes others remember him by.

“They want you to know the good things they did,” Glover said. Whether the person is “a burglar or a rapist, it wouldn’t make a difference. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a person.”

When an inmate passes, Glover helps clean his body and awaits the arrival of a local funeral home director.

The first patient was one of the original seven lifers. Ten have passed in the hospice, each remembered with an angel stenciled on the wall.

“Every time a guy passes in here, I see my reality,” said Glover, 49.

Ann McGlynn can be contacted at (563) 383-2336 or amcglynn@qctimes.com.