By Cynthia Billhartz
Of the Post-Dispatch
If there is an afterlife, Isaiah "Fireball" Jackson is likely flashing a
snaggletoothed grin right now and feeling a smidgen proud.
The orphan-turned-convict-turned-artist, who was shipped around most of his
life like a box-car full of toxic waste, is finally getting a second chance at
proving, posthumously, that he was worth something after all. After 64 years of
hard, dismal living and a rapid decline to death, his dream of having his
artwork exhibited has come true.
On Friday, the Vaughn Cultural Center, which is part of the Urban League of
Metropolitan St. Louis in Grandel Square, began staging an exhibition of
Jackson's work. It will be on display through Oct. 31. His work will be
auctioned off on Oct. 29, and proceeds will benefit Project COPE, which helps
prisoners assimilate back into society.
Jackson, a once legendary baseball pitcher who squandered a chance to play in
the major leagues, learned of Vaughn's plans for the exhibit shortly before he
died of liver cancer earlier this year.
Kim Love, division operating officer at the Urban League, met Jackson only
once. But he was struck by how remorseful the quiet artist seemed.
"The one thing I remember is that he was very regretful that he had wasted so
much of his life," says Love. "He was looking to start a new life as an artist.
He kept saying he wanted to leave a legacy. It weighed on him real heavy."
Most of Jackson's paintings deal with either Western or Afro-centric subjects.
The Western ones include renderings of an American Eagle, an American Indian
and a still-life of cowboy gear. The Afro-centric art ranges from portraits to
surreal renderings with references to religion, slavery and prison. One
painting depicts the head of a black male wearing a crown of thorns and a small
key on his forehead. He is surrounded by pieces of chain-link fencing and hands
either in hand-cuffs or being pierced by spikes.
Thomas Sleet, a local artist who also works as a media developer at the
Missouri Historical Society, helped Love hang Jackson's pictures at the
cultural center.
Jackson's brush strokes display a certain naivete that reinforces the fact that
he was self-taught, Sleet says. But he's intrigued by Jackson's subject matter.
"The first impression is that they're the result of deep introspection," Sleet
says. "It seems to me that he uses his surreal imagery to illustrate certain
philosophies or conclusions he reached as a result of that introspection."
Love, who admits he's no art critic, is impressed by the quality of Jackson's
work. But more than that, he feels it speaks volumes about the human spirit.
"He had a rough life," Love says, "but there was something inspiring and
repenting despite the path he took."
A shaky start
The path Isaiah Jackson took through life is sketchy. Most of us have family
members who remember the continuity of our days and years. For Jackson, there
was no such thing. Friends he made along the way have pieced together snippets
from a few official documents, personal memories and the stories Jackson told.
They know for certain he was born on Jan. 17, 1940, in Osawatomie, Kan. But
Jackson always told people he was a New Year's baby.
When Linda Schroeder, executive director of Project COPE, got ahold of his
birth certificate late last year, she pointed out that he wasn't born on New
Year's.
"Oh, I know," the soft-spoken Jackson sheepishly told her. "It's just more fun
that way."
Jackson was the fourth of five children born to a preacher and his wife. When
Jackson was 3, his mother got tired of his father's abusive ways and walked out
on the family, Schroeder says. Soon after, his dad dumped Jackson and all but
one of his siblings in an orphanage. A younger brother went to live with a
relative.
Bill Clark, a retired major league baseball scout in Columbia, Mo., met Jackson
years later while volunteering in the prison system. He says Jackson ran away
from the orphanage and was sent to the State Industrial School for Boys at
Topeka where he stayed until he was 17. Upon release, Jackson hooked up with
his older brother, Moses.
"(Jackson) was out a matter of weeks when he and Moses were nailed on armed
robbery and got 10 to 21 years" in the Lansing State Prison in Kansas, Clark
says.
A blown chance
According to Schroeder, what happened in Lansing provided Jackson with the one
and only bright moment in his life and his first chance at redemption - a
chance he blew.
In the 1960s, she says, when the Department of Corrections wasn't so
overcrowded, it allowed outside people to come in and compete athletically with
prison teams. It was there that Jackson picked up a baseball, and within a few
years, had honed his pitching skills to the point where he'd become a legend
known as "Fireball" in baseball circles, both inside and outside prison.
Clark, who was a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time, heard about
"Fireball" Jackson and made arrangements to meet with him under the auspices of
coaching him in weight lifting.
"The warden wouldn't let scouts come in to see him," Clark says.
What the scout saw that day in prison was impressive. "Fireball," he says, had
an "above average major league fastball and unbelievable velocity that could
have beat the best semi-pros and ex-pros in the Midwest at the time." He also
remembers a quiet, sensitive man, who nonetheless bristled with confidence when
it came to pitching.
Jackson was eligible for parole, so Clark got him out in the fall of 1963, and
brought him first to Columbia, where Jackson painted apartments for the Housing
Authority.
"He had to learn to count money and how to buy things," Clark says. "We put him
in an apartment with a woman who fed him all his meals and basically was like a
mother to him, because he was like a child. He'd never faced the world. He had
no idea how to behave."
During this time, Jackson also began painting pictures and entered several
pieces in an art show sponsored by the Columbia Art League. Clark says they
were well-received.
Elizabeth Vega runs a nonprofit organization called La Loba Life Services that
helps dying people reach closure in their lives through writing. Vega worked
with Jackson during his final days, and he told her that, during one of his
stays in prison, he remembered his fourth grade art teacher handing out
pictures to color. But Jackson had an urge to do something different. So he
flipped the paper over and began drawing on the other side, unaware that the
teacher was standing over his shoulder watching. Instead of admonishing him for
going against her word, however, she told him, "Isaiah, someday you will be a
great artist."
In March 1964, Jackson left Columbia for spring training in Florida, then moved
on to pitch for the Reno Silver Sox of the Class A California League. His
record for the season was 7-10. The gambling Mecca was a place of overwhelming
temptation for a man with little discipline or street smarts.
"Here's a guy who had no contact with the real world for the first 24 years of
his life, now he's in Reno," Clark says. "Quite frankly, he had no chance. He
wound up within a few days of every payday with no money. Other players knew
when to quit. He didn't."
The Pirates had signed Jackson to a 10-year contract, but he skipped out on the
team three days before the season ended and took a bus back to Columbia. Bill
Clark gave him $20 and that's the last he saw of Jackson for years.
Jackson bought a pistol and robbed three taxis. He was arrested and sent back
to the state penitentiary in Lansing.
"Why he did that, I don't know," says Clark. "Maybe he felt like he couldn't
cope with the outside world."
Back in prison
According to the National Baseball Congress, Jackson was voted Most Popular
Player in 1965, 1966 and 1967 in the Kansas State Tournament even though he
threw for the Lansing State Penitentiary team. Earlier this year, he was
nominated for the organization's Hall of Fame.
When his time at Lansing was up and Jackson was paroled, he again committed a
burglary, this time in Missouri, and ended up in the Missouri State
Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Clark saw him there occasionally during the mid
'70s.
Upon finishing that term, he hooked up with his younger brother, Granville, who
had also recently been released from prison. Almost instantly, the two found
trouble - only this time, the consequences were worse than ever.
They were involved in either a burglary or a holdup in Kansas City during which
Granville was shot and killed, says Clark. He's not sure if the victim or the
police shot Granville, but Jackson was charged as an accessory to murder and
was returned to the state pen on a much longer sentence.
At some point during this stay, Jackson called Clark's wife, Dolores, and asked
her if she'd send him money to buy art supplies. She did.
He would tell Kim Love years later that he'd read numerous books on how to
paint and that he "had all the time in the world to practice." Sometimes he
also taught his fellow prisoners to paint.
The Clarks acted as Jackson's liaison to the outside world, helping him sell
paintings here and there for $40 or $100 each. Those he didn't sell, they
stored for him. Prison officials also entered several of his pieces in the
Missouri State Fair art show where he won several ribbons. Jackson and Dolores
Clark often talked about how he would establish himself as an artist once he
got out.
Soon, Jackson's confidence in his painting grew to the same level of hubris he
had in pitching baseballs. He often wouldn't sell pieces because he felt the
price being offered wasn't right.
"I'd say, 'Fireball,' you're not going to get it. You might as well sell 'em,'"
Bill Clark remembers. "He wanted $500."
Clark was amazed at how upbeat and optimistic "Fireball" was even when he was
denied parole over and over again. It was, no doubt, optimism fueled by the
notion that he'd one day be a successful artist.
A confident artist
About a year ago, Jackson was moved from the state pen to the St. Louis
Community Release Center - the first step in gaining parole. A former inmate
who knew Jackson put him in touch with Schroeder at Project COPE in St. Louis,
which provides transitional housing for prisoners as well as a team of mentors.
Schroeder was struck by two things when she met Jackson. First, was his
appearance. He looked gaunt and sickly with a mouthful of really bad teeth.
Second, she was struck by his confidence in his artistry.
"He sat here and told me how he was gong to make his fortune with his artwork
and I thought, 'Yeah I've heard that before,'" she says. "Many (ex-offenders)
have unrealistic dreams about how they're going to make their fortune and
conquer the world."
When Schroeder expressed her skepticism, Jackson's inmate friend backed him up.
"You've got to believe him, he's not exaggerating," he told her.
Schroeder was duly impressed upon seeing Jackson's work, but insisted he get a
paying job anyway. He reluctantly agreed and took a job cleaning offices in
Earth City. For that, Schroeder accepted him into Project COPE. She set Jackson
up in transitional housing and introduced him to a small team of mentors from
the St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. They would become his advocates and closest
friends until he died.
One of them, Wes Boshart, who is also development director of Project COPE, was
forced to pause several times during a recent interview as he tried to suppress
tears over Jackson's death.
Since age 3, Jackson had lived outside an institution no more than two years.
So Boshart remembers how experientially deprived he was. Boshart and the others
had to teach him the simplest of tasks, like how to put on a seat belt. Jackson
once tried to converse with an answering machine. He was slow to realize that
it wasn't responding because it was a machine.
"And of course cell phones, the first time I handed him mine, I had dialed his
probation officer and, without thinking, I just handed it to him. He wasn't
able to deal with it at all," Boshart says.
Jackson was sometimes deeply embarrassed by his inability to deal with new
things.
He remained confident in his artistic abilities, however, and continued
painting and shopping his art around to local galleries. He also began looking
for a place where he could live on his own that had a studio.
Death comes quickly
Jackson started complaining about not feeling well. Schroeder referred him to a
number of free clinics, but he never went. Eventually, the once-robust
"Fireball" grew gaunt and weak, and couldn't clean offices anymore. His eyes
mysteriously turned yellow.
That's when Boshart and his fellow Mennonites stepped in. In early June, they
loaded Jackson in their car and took him to the Community Health in Partnership
Service, a free clinic for the uninsured. A nurse there scheduled a doctor's
appointment for Jackson the following week. He never went.
Within days of the missed appointment, Boshart drove Jackson to the
Barnes-Jewish Hospital emergency room. Doctors there told Jackson there was
nothing they could do for him; his Hepatitis C from years of drug use had
progressed into liver cancer. They told him that he had two months, at most, to
live.
Schroeder says Jackson took the diagnosis calmly. Doctors set him up with a
visiting nurse and a social worker and sent him home. Within a week or two,
Jackson's health had deteriorated to the point where BJC Hospice was called in.
Finally, on Monday, July 26, 2004, Project COPE and hospice workers decided to
check Jackson into Grand Manor nursing home.
Both Vega and Boshart spent a lot of time with him in the following days. They
surrounded him with his beloved artwork and Vega was finally able to deliver
good news: The Vaughn Cultural Center would hold a one-man exhibition of
Jackson's work.
On Friday, four days after entering Grand Manor, Boshart arrived to find the
artist in a semi-conscious state. His eyes were fixed in an unfocused stare,
and he wasn't speaking.
"I talked to him all day as if he was aware," Boshart recalls. "The only
response we got from him is, we'd ask if he could blink and he did."
Boshart reminisced with the dying artist about the time they'd spent together,
the things they'd done and the things they wanted to do but never got done.
And even though Jackson wasn't a religious person, Boshart talked to him about
seeing God and going onto another phase of life - a phase that could only be
better than the one he'd just passed through.
A few hours after Boshart left, during the early morning hours of Saturday,
July 31, 2004, Isaiah "Fireball" Jackson died.
What might have been
It's hard for those who knew Jackson to sum up his life.
Elizabeth Vega thinks he was an inspiration. His perseverance and efforts
toward redemption, she says, are the legacy he left us. "If a man in prison can
create this kind of visual beauty, how much more could we make out here in the
free world?" she asks.
Boshart has mixed feelings. He knows Jackson did bad things, and he doesn't
blame that on anyone else. But he also believes Jackson was dealt a shoddy life
and that he did the best he could.
"He didn't have a lot of opportunity, he didn't have much education, he didn't
have a family to speak of, and yet he was able to create and be creative way
more than I will ever be," Boshart says.
To this day, Bill Clark firmly believes Jackson was fundamentally a good
person. And he prefers to think about what Jackson's life could have been had
he been given a fair shake from the start.
"He probably would have been a major player in the world of men who might have
been," Clark says. "If he'd been born in the right place in society he probably
would have been a major league pitcher. And he probably would have been a major
league artist."
Reporter Cynthia Billhartz
E-mail: cbillhartz@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8114
