Lighting up Linton: thank you, WVCF

Correctional Officer Lisa Ball steadies a ladder for offender Noah “Smiley’ Warren at Humphreys Park in Linton.

By Andrew Christman

From now until sometime in January, Linton’s Humphreys Park turns into a festive, sparkling holiday wonderland with the help of Wabash Valley Correctional Officers and their work crews from the facility.

Officers Rick Swan and Lisa Ball, with their mixed crews of nine minimum-security level Wabash Valley offenders, will spend about two weeks hanging lights and decorations around the park, creating a twinkling winter spectacle Linton residents have come to count on each year.

WVCF Public Relations Officer Richard Larson said the officers who run the Labor Line Crews are not only very good at their jobs but are very good with the offenders themselves.

“Ball knows her crews so well,” Larson said. “She is extremely good about safety and security and she has developed such a rapport with the crew, they are always eager to do whatever she instructs them to.”

Ball has worked for the Indiana Department of Corrections for over 25 years and with Labor Line Crew offenders for about 19 years all over Greene County, Knox County and Daviess County.

“We are also putting up lights in Bloomfield, Jasonville and Odon,” Ball said. “This is pretty much the last project we do every year.”

Ball and her crew, as well as crews run by other Correctional Officers Swan and Brian French, complete many area community service projects in a year, including clean-up duties, curb painting, working on Habitat for Humanity homes and maintenance at the Shawnee Theatre in Bloomfield.

The crews work seven days a week, rain or shine, and the offenders seem to enjoy the work outside the walls.

Late last September, Ball’s crew spent a week at Linton’s American Legion Park, clearing trails, painting, removing trees, stripping and waxing the floor of Legion Park’s ‘Jim Workman’ shelter house and fixing the Legion flagpole.

Thursday, offenders Charles Corbin, Noah “Smiley” Warren, Anthony Thompson, Brock Sage, Mickey Tosti, Stephen Grady, Timothy Meek, Zandariah Hill and Ryan Meyers were hard at work, and all wore smiles on their faces.

By Patti Danner Offender Mickey Tosti repairs lights on a reindeer.

Offender Tosti smiled the biggest as he worked in a shelter house, untangling yards of lights to string and repairing malfunctioning lights on festive snowmen, reindeer, candy canes and bunches of holly.

“I’m getting there,” he said. “Merry Christmas, everybody.”