Hi Kay Lee,
Thank you for thinking that my story would help others. I would not have lived this long if I did not have a Great Big Wonderful Savior, Jesus. He has stopped the attacks on my life over several decades. If you are interested in that part of my story just ask and I will tell you one that will curl your hair.

Serving Him by serving you,
Bob McKenzie

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To all the wives of prisoners
Friday, January 28, 2005
By Bob McKenzie

My wife and I were married a long time ago. Then after ten years and a wonderful daughter she got the bug that she might have more fun outside the marriage. She was attending a school to learn how to do CPA work. I guess the guys there had other thoughts and caused her to want to leave the nest.

After a few months of counseling she decided to leave. We tried to reconcile and I lost my job and her hours were cut in half. We had one choice and that was a job potential in Reno. We were living in the San Jose, California area at the time I accepted the job in Reno and we packed up and moved to Reno.

I thought that this might help the marriage, but it didn't. She is an alcoholic and started drinking and decided that she would move out. She moved and I kept our daughter. She hooked up with another guy and after a while they got married. They got divorced soon after. The guy was an alcoholic and gambler. He was gambling all the money they made away, after he got through drinking most of it up. She got tired and left him. She moved in with another couple and took care of the wife. The woman had cancer bad and was going to die shortly. She ended up marrying this guy and started a new life.

All of the time we were apart I could not find another woman. God had brought us together, but we did not obey His rules. We had sex before getting married and that was the thing that caused the marriage to fail. We both knew this. I took all the responsibilities of the fall as I was an older Christian and knew better. I was the one that lead her to Jesus. We are not proud of what we did and have repented fully for it.

I did have some strong leanings towards a couple of ladies, but nothing ever developed. I realized that one of them, at my church, was sent by God to keep me from getting married.

My wife's present marriage was getting quite shaky and soon it was on the rocks. All the time we were apart we both had strong ties to each other. She tried to make me feel better about the divorce by telling me things that did not happen.

As things went from bad to worse, and she started drinking seriously. She had moved out from his house once and moved back in.

One day she was taking our daughter and her girl friend for a ride. She would, when there were no other cars on the road, let them take turns holding the wheel for a short moment. As it would happen the girl friend was in the middle and just grabbed the wheel and said it was her turn. She turned the truck right into the path of an oncoming van. My wife tried to grab control of the wheel and over corrected. Now they were going off the road on the right side. She over corrected again and now they were going off the left side.

The driver of the van was not watching the road and did not see her. A guy behind her said he thought she had the truck under control then the van hit her full front on. She was moving about 12 MPH when it happened. The van had to be speeding when he hit them. Their truck had its' frame bent it was hit so hard. The van was totaled.

In the van was a family of five. Mom, dad, two boys and a girl. The boys were evidently rough-housing and the mom was going to put a stop to it. She didn't have her seat belt on and I do not believe either of the boys did. The mom got killed instantly and one of the boys died a couple of days later in the hospital. The little girl had no injuries and the other boy had minimal injuries.

The boy that died was in the same room that our daughter was in. She got a broken arm and a facial cut from above the hair line down to the bottom of the chin. Her right eye had a crushed socket and she had other abrasions and cuts and bruises.

The girl friend got a broken arm too and some cuts and bruises. My wife got a broken ankle and severe cuts and body bruises. She also had internal bleeding.

When the doctor took her blood for a Blood Alcohol Test, (BAT), and did the test, he admitted in court that he screwed up doing it. Her attorney was and still is a flake. We could not get a hold of him before the trial and he did nothing to help the situation.

The prosecuting attorney, assistant DA, was out to make a name for himself and "set an example" (very vindictive action) with her. She got sentenced to two ten year terms for DUI and deaths.

After she had been in prison for some time, we decided to get remarried. We both had the idea at the same time. I would take our daughter down to see her a couple of times a year.

They placed her in a prison in Las Vegas, 500 miles south of Reno. It was a long drive and I am not as young as I use to be. (By the way, I am 29 and a half years older than my wife.

To make the story a little shorter, we were married in May 13th, 2004 at the woman's prison, (Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facilities, SNWCF), in Las Vegas, Nevada. We still have not received the marriage certificate. I finally had to pay some more to get it. So my recommendation is that if you get married, get your copy of the certificate immediately or have some close friend get it after the ceremony.

In the month before we got married I almost died. I had heart failure and kidney failure. I was in the hospital for nine days. I lost around 45 pounds from the time spent in it.

She thought maybe we should postpone the wedding, but I said no. We went through with it and had a plain marriage along with another couple that did too.

Of course the devil did not want this to happen as he tried to kill me again. I got food poisoning a couple of days before the wedding and was vomiting every day several times a day. As we have a Great Big Wonderful God we got married!

Now she has been moved further south to Jean, Nevada. I guess it will take another half hour to get there now. We are hoping for her to be moved north to Silver Springs about a half an hour from us. We could drive over there in a short time and see her more often. (She got moved to Silver Springs! :) Now the trip is only an hour and we make it every month.)

The phone calls would be a lot cheaper too. We are now paying around $185 a month for phone calls. MCI strikes again! We get to talk a half an hour each on Saturday and Sunday and we share a half hour on Wednesday. The phone bill may be down by almost $100.00 now (PTL).

Now it would not be so bad, but I am on reduced Social UnSecurity and have no medicare 'part B' to pay for doctors. The stay in the hospital will cost me over $16,000 total, with all the doctors and other services included. I am paying each at a rate of $20 - $35 a month.

Then last September I got rear-ended. I am still suffering from that crash. I had been run down by a woman driving a camper around twenty five years ago and have a bad back from that one. Now my neck has been snapped back and I have spinal problems. I have three ruptured disks in my neck.

My body is a mess as far as physically. I also have the wonderful problem of a very high threshold of pain. In plain English I do not feel it! When I can feel pain I know that my body has been violated very badly. And to make matters worse I have an extremely high tolerance to any drugs. They do not work either. I could never get drunk and morpheme does not work. None of the other pain killer drugs work and when I had surgery I held up the operation for almost an hour. I would not go under and they wheeled me out of the surgery room, did surgery on someone else and wheeled me back in. Still not out, I think they gave me some more knock out drops.

I have a history of drugs, not working on me. Unless I am given a triple dose, forget that I was given anything. It is hard to get doctors to understand this. I have to be very careful when having a doctor work on me.

Well now that you have read my story I guess you are wondering how I feel about marriage and prison. So here goes that part:

I would go through all of it again to be married to my wife. Even knowing that we may not see each other, privately, again for many years. We know and love each other very deeply and both would do it again. She and I have a Great Big Wonderful God and He watches over us on a daily basis. We have placed our complete trust in His decisions.

We keep in contact, by phone and mail. I love to send her cards telling her how much I love her and she does not have to worry that I might cheat on her.

We have a complete relationship and trust each other. We found out a long time ago that to have a great marriage both must be willing to give at least 60% and only expect 40% in return. In this manner we both get more than we expected and of course end up giving more than we planned.

Being married to an inmate makes your life more meaningful. How, you ask? We have found that now we both have to work at our marriage to keep it a marriage. If we put aside anything that we should be doing we feel bad about it, real soon. We seek ways to show our love for each other and that keeps us both very busy. We confide with each other and share our weekly happenings. To have a marriage in this manner is a challenge to both of us. More so to the one outside. But it is one that I and her are willing to take.

Do I recommend it to others?

Each person must take an inventory of your lives, both of you. Then you must try to see what the challenges might be, as it is not going to be easy. This is for sure. But if you can handle it, with a lot of help from a close friend, (our daughter is one of the biggest helps there is for us), then after you have looked at all of the problems that might come up and you feel that you can really do it, go ahead and get married!

Contrary to a popular belief that "Love will see us through", most people do not realize what real Love is.

If there is a chance that you might have more problems or difficulties than you feel that you can handle, hold off till a later time.

You will find that there are things that will happen that will test your mettle. We have found that the world does not like what we did. We have always gotten much flack about the age difference. But did you know that it is scripturally OK? When Ruth married Boaz, and Ruth is in the line of Jesus, he was a generation older than her! A generation, biblically is approximately forty years.

I would get bad comments from Christians, but when I asked them if they had read their bible, they would have to admit they hadn't. So I taught them the story. We never had any trouble with the secular world about our age difference.

When I was a child I thought like a child, but when I grew up I didn't forget what I learned, so I am able to get down with the littlest child and have fun playing with them. My wife was able to communicate with the older generation too.

The best thing I can offer to you is; "You need to keep the lines of communication open and honest!" As the bible says; "Do not let the sun set on your troubled life." (My paraphrase)

I am open for questions from anyone. I will try my best to give my support and honest answers to all. If you have a question or comment please contact Kay Lee and she will forward your comments/questions to me.

Serving Him by serving you,
Bob McKenzie

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FOR THE FAMILIES: The Unforgotten Victims
 
  Kay Lee
  kaylee1@charter.net