Merry Thankgivemas

Let me begin by writing that I hate that God continues to chose to allow the lies and liars to still be unexposed and that I have spent 13+ years incarcerated. I do not like living as chattle caged behind concertina wire and fences.

That being said ... Today may have been the best week, and the best day, I have had while incarcerated. It ALMOST felt like living in the free world. The week began with a visit from my best friends, my true family, my brother and sister actually. I enjoyed catching up as well as some real chocolate (since when does an Almond Joy cost $4 - gosh darn tariffs? Unfortunately, our canteen now only sells knock-off dollar store Keefe branded chocolate bars). At work (I am still teaching and facilitating the CareerTech Career Readiness program 40 hours a week) our newest cohort is off to a great start. I work for a wonderful boss who is so easy to get along with. She trusts me to do what I do and to represent her and the program well. As the content creator for our online Dunn Dispatch, I put the final details and finishing touches on the December edition this week. It is so fulfilling to be able to have this creative outlet. I enjoy working with the various writers, contributors, and photographer to produce this extremely well received and high quality publication given the limitations of my resources. This week Senator McIntosh delivered the November edition to both chambers of the state legislature as well as the desk of Governor Stitt. The Leviathan pushed me in my workouts this week to the point of needing ibuprofen every day :-) Today, at Celebrate Recovery® Inside, we had a phenomenal day. We had our regular meeting from 9-11 where we had a time of worship, watched Saddleback lesson #9 on Inventory, handed out recovery chips, heard a powerfully moving testimony from Curtis Rouse, and spent time in our Step Study groups. The room was almost maxed out with 66 participants in attendance (between discharges and moves "up in security" we've lost 8 men this week, but we also had 4 men in our "newcomers" group). Due to the generosity of the Saunder's Family (of Saunders Family BBQ Sauce), Steve Lewis, and the Southern Hills Baptist Church in Tulsa we were able to provide our Step Study participants a delicious Thanksgiving lunch after class was over. The Saunder's family provided 4 large smoked turkeys, green bean casserole, sweet corn dressing, a fresh broccoli salad (my personal favorite), pistachio fluff, pumpkin pie, rolls, and a drink sleeve to each of the men whom regularly attend on Friday. In total we served 80 meals and had plenty of leftovers. This does not happen on most yards. We are so blessed with a compassionate Warden (J. Cultrera) and Religious Programs Director (R. Bell) who sees value in addiction recovery and supports our addiction recovery efforts. There was so much food we offered 2nds and I was able to hold back enough so that our step study leaders could enjoy some more for supper. We even brought the turkey carcasses back to our dorm to pick clean. Offering a meal on the yard can be dicey. Men get butt hurt and angry if they are not invited, but I had the foresight three years ago to institute a 75% rule: you have to attend seventy five percent of the meetings/step studies to participate in special events. This has helped alleviate so much conflict. It leaves little doubt about whom qualifies to participate.

While the meal was delicious (my stomach is so shrunken I have eaten small portions all day long) what really has profoundly affected me today was the sense of "family" that I felt. I have not felt that since being chained and dragged away from my own birth/marital/church/school/scouting family 13 years ago. I have long given up on reconciliation and restoration with my past family/friendships/acquaintances: even my own children. Only 4-5 people from my past have stuck with me (and I will forever be grateful and loyal to them). I will always and forever consider my nephson a part of my new "family". His mutual friendship, love, respect is what started this change in my outlook on institutionalization vs acceptance. But he's been out the gate for five months now*. However, even before he discharged I started allowing myself to genuinely care for a few other people. And then a few more. And then a few more. But I have always felt like Captain Picard - I kept (I keep) that dispassionate stoic social distance that is seemingly required due to my age, my teaching position, and my ministry leadership position. But on days like today, I really feel connected to the close inner circle of the CRI® leadership team that I have so carefully built and developed over the past two years. Tonight, as my Step Study leaders and I were picking over the carcasses, frying up the turkey skins, and enjoying the few pieces of left over pumpkin pie I squirreled away it just seemed like we were all family for a few minutes (the only thing missing was the sound of dominoes rattling on a glass topped wrought iron table). We reflected on the day and the men who we are serving as step study leaders. We spoke of the enormous blessing that Rich Bartlett, Steve Lewis, SHBC, and the Saunders family are.....and for a minute or two, I was no longer incarcerated. I was part of a brotherhood of men whom just lived, worked, ate, worshiped, and served together. For a minute this place could have been a college campus, a monastery, or a men's retreat. I love that. .....and..... I hate that. I will not be given over to an institutionalized mindset but I will not be at "home" here either. However, I certainly loved feeling what was reminiscent of family today. As a bonus, this afternoon I received a brand new pair of Levi jeans from my brother (#YHLN). I also unexpectedly received two new USA Today crossword puzzle books from my Dad and Mother! It was like Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled in to one day. Days like today give me hope for the future that I can be part of a new family for the last third of my life. I don't know what that will look like IRL, but I am certain that if I maintain my core values, remain authentically transparent, and open myself to all of the possibilities the Lord brings my way that my sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties will be as productive, fruitful, and enjoyable as most of the first two thirds of my life has been. * In the 5 months that CMcD has been back in the free world the Lord has blessed him so much. His success gives me, gives so many of of hope. Aaon has been a great employer. He has his drivers licence. He own a car and scooter. He is set up in an apartment. He is active in CR, Life.church, and volunteering to serve others this holiday season....and even more great things are in store.

Happy Birthday Dad

 Happy Birthday Dad

Abby Zwerner

 Today Abby Zwerner was awarded $10 million dollars due in part to the inactions of her assistant principal, Ebony Parker.

More than a decade before Abby Zwerner was shot by her six year old first grade student I was forced to face a very similar situation at Skelly Elementary in Tulsa, OK. In 2009 I was in Ebony Parkers shoes. However, instead of doing nothing to protect my teacher, Brooke Rowland, and her other first grade students, when six year old Jaylynn Hilley was stabbing students with sharpened pencils and slicing at Brooke with opened scissors I reacted immediately and quickly extracted him from her classroom. Upon further investigation I discovered that this behavior had been occurring for weeks, but neither our school counselor, nor Brooke Rowland herself, had not brought it to the attention of the two administrators. That morning, when Mrs. Rowland hit her classroom call button to declare an emergency, I took decisive action. In following up on the egregious inactions of counselor Myrtha Mikel (a 60+ year old black woman who was a Tulsa Public Schools DEI hire and wannabe administrator whom resented a younger white boy whom she now had to report to) and issuing her a warning to "do better" she retaliated against me by turning into a "Karen" and creating a simple lie that resulted in my eventual arrest and conviction. While Myrtha Mikel eventually recanted her lie and admitted at trial to creating a false narrative to retaliate against me and have me removed from Skelly Elementary so that she could continue to be utilized as a pseudo administrator AND even though my jury heard her admit to lying, admit to commuting perjury in pretrial hearings, and admit to encouraging others to file a false police report, I still found, still find, myself incarcerated. One of those people Myrtha Mikel encouraged to file a false police report was teacher Bella Mendoza. As an administrator I was having to repeatedly admonish Bella Mendoza for placing rocks in the door jams of exterior school doors creating unsecured points of entry for anyone whom might want to breach the building. The final straw in her future employment was the 12 inch long knife she left on her desk, unattended, in a room full of six year olds. She too was a DEI hire for Tulsa Public Schools (a 30ish Latina). While she too eventually recanted her lie and admitted at trial to creating a false narrative to retaliate against me and have me removed from Skelly Elementary so that she would not be fired AND even though my jury heard her admit to lying, admit to commuting perjury in pretrial hearings, and admit to encouraging others to file a false police report, I still found, still find, myself incarcerated. Assistant District Attorneys Jake Cain, Sara McAmis, and Amanda Self, with the approval and endorsement of Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kuenswieler, manipulated and marionetted my own son (Brandon Yerton aka Brandon Henderson aka Brandon Webel) into telling such magnificent and well constructed lies to the jury that they didn't know what the reality of the situation was, and I still found, still find, myself incarcerated. If this trial was happening today, if I had even one juror whom would hold out for more than 13 hours to seek all of the truth, my life would be so different. The lives of my parents, former wife, and estranged children would be so different. One day God WILL set the record straight and everyone WILL know the truth. And maybe, if it happens soon enough, my manipulated son and I will both be collecting $10 million dollars from Tulsa County for the ways the DA's office manipulated his then immature 17 year old brain into believing he was somehow a hero and a victim. Maybe, as he gets older and gains adult insights, he will step forward with the truth and begin to set the false narratives straight ...

Virginia teacher shot by 6-year-old awarded $10 million in civil trial

 Nov 6 (Reuters)

By Brad Brooks Nov 6 (Reuters) - A Virginia school teacher who was shot by her 6-year-old student in 2023 was awarded $10 million in damages by a jury on Thursday, concluding a negligence lawsuit she brought against a school administrator. AbigailZwerneralleged that an assistant principal at the Newport News elementary school where she used to teach ignored multiple reports that a firearm was on school property and likely in the possession of the boy who shot her in January 2023. Police said the boy had taken the 9mm handgun from his home and carried it to school in his backpack. The boy removed the gun once in his classroom and fired a single bullet atZwerner, hitting her in her hand and chest.Zwerner, who evacuated students from her classroom even after she was shot, has had five hand surgeries and still has the bullet lodged in her chest. Lawyers for Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal at Richneck Elementary where the shooting took place, argued during the trial that she could not have foreseen the shooting. Zwerner'slawyers argued that Parker had been made aware of reports by fellow students that the 6-year-old boy had brought a gun to school, and that she did not act quickly on that information. Parker faces a criminal trial next month on charges of child abuse and neglect. Deja Taylor, the mother of the boy who carried out the shooting, was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2023 on federal charges of possessing a gun while using a controlled substance and of making a false statement while purchasing a gun. The trials, along with those of a handful of parents of school shooters in recent years, could set a precedent on the degree of responsibility that parents and school leaders have when it comes to school shootings, which have plagued the United States in recent decades.

Happy Birthday Mom

 Happy Birthday Mom

Day 4800

 Night has passed into day has passed into night has passed into day 100 more times. The past 100 days have, once again, sped rapidly by. One of the major highlights of the past 100 days was the Celebrate Recovery® 5K run that I was allowed to organize mid summer. After jumping through many many hoops and a rescheduled date due to a freak August rain delay, we finally were able to run on September 5th. That morning at 4am I was awoke by thunder. The only rain clouds on the radar for the entire state were hovering over Taft, OK. Luckily, it was more sound and fury than precipitation. When the yard opened at 8:15 am everyone assembled at the athletic field as I had envisioned. Registration went smoothly. Everyone put on their bibs and we started the event. The last person crossed the finish line just before count time. The event was envisioned as a way to attract attention to our Celebrate Recovery® weekly meetings. Many thanks to our faithful sponsors for stepping up and making this event possible (1)(2).

Over the past 100 days I have also earned my OHSA-30 Hour Construction Certification (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) as well as my EPA Universal License (Environmental Protection Agency). Both of these designations will allow me to easily find a $30+ hour job when I am discharged. Recently, several of my CareerTech Career Readiness and our HVAC/R graduates have been hired at Aaon in Tulsa and are earning solid middle class living wages with full benefit packages that are allowing them to rebuild their lives. Thank God for second chance employers like Aaon whom see value in the person and do not judge individuals by the label that some overzealous prosecutor and overreaching archaic legislation slapped upon them. Keenly aware of my penchant for writing, another highlight of the past 100 days was an invitation the Warden extended to me to create a yard e-newsletter. After a month of rounding up writers and creating templates, the inaugural edition of the Dunn Dispatch was uploaded to our tablets on October first. Today I submitted the November edition for approval and publication. It has been so well received and appreciated by the residents as everyone can now receive the same information at the same time on their tablets instead of the drip, drip, drip of unreliable rumors as they leak their way across the yard. I accepted his invitation as I believe that the more community that can be fostered here, the less hectic, hostile, and hopeless the lives of the men that are forced to reside together becomes. It is in this sense of community that healing from the issues that contributed to their incarceration can be pro actively dealt with as 1000 of us live together in very proximity to each other. I typically do not play video games. I never have enjoyed them (with the exception of Atari's Adventure in the mid 1980's). This spring and summer a new game was offered on our tablets called Dysmantle. Everyone was talking about how much fun it was to play. Each morning there were multiple conversations revolving around the progress they had made the day before. I started to feel like I was missing out on an integral aspect of our shared cultural experience. The game only cost $6 so I downloaded it to my tablet. I was instantly hooked and simultaneously frustrated. I am not a natural gamer. My frustrations with dying over and over and over again resurrected my use of a few certain words that I thought that I had buried. It took several weeks of playing, but I finally finished the storyline to my satisfaction and immediately deleted it off of my tablet .... only to resurrect it recently and replay the storyline with the knowledge and experience that I had acquired from the first round. It has been much more enjoyable this second time around as I experience some of the finer nuances and design features the content creator's have built in.

Navigating a life of proactive personal productivity has been one of my key survival tips on this incarceral journey. Over the past 18 months I have had my passport stamped with a visit to Celebrate Recovery® every Friday afternoon. Spending time ministering with other like minded men at CRI® continues to be one of the most important parts of my week(3). Prison is already a place where Oklahoma shrouds its addicts, conceals its houseless population, and hides away it citizens with mental health issues. It is from this group of men that we try to encourage hope, health, and healing from life's hurts, habits, and hang-ups. It is not always easy, smooth, or pretty during our Friday meetings. I am so proud to work with dedicated Step Study facilitators who patiently led their share groups using talk therapy and cognitive behavior tactics to help each participant find the mental, emotional, and spiritual relief that they are seeking. Goodness knows how much we men need to be able to share about the things that have happened to us in our lives so that we can heal from them. Unfortunately, OKDOC (in fact our state in general) does not value investing the time and resources necessary to help individuals in emotional and mental distress recover from their trauma. This is true for OKDOC, true for Oklahoma public schools students, true for Oklahoma veteran's services, and especially true for those with both diagnosed and undiagnosed mental issues and cognitive decline. I praise Jesus for Steve Lewis, Rich Bartlett, and the Southern Hills Baptist church in Tulsa for seeing those needs and for standing in those gaps. Graciously, in between session #2 (November 2024 - July 2025) and session #3 (September 2025 - March 2026) of CRI® our sponsor, Steve Lewis streamed Season 5 of The Chosen for our graduating participants and as as way to attract the attention of potential new participants. Over those five Fridays we served 125 pounds of pop corn (+1200 bags) and 10 gallons of coffee to 750+ viewers. Many of those attending these viewings have become our session #3 Step Study participants. One of the final scenes of the final episode absolutely broke me down. In the scene, as Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the viewer is shown a cut away of Joseph coming to comfort the adopted son that he raised. As the father reaches out to run his hand through his sons hair and bring him some comfort in his most pain filled moments I could not help but well up as that is all I long for too. I just want to be comforted with a father's embrace. To have my head rubbed. To be told with actual real life words by my parents how proud they are of me, to use that actual P-word, would mean so much to me: epecially being told how proud they are of how I have handled myself in prison would really be reassuring, but that is a fantasy that I gave up on a long time ago. I also see myself as Joseph in that scene just wanting to embrace my own children (#YHLN) and let them know how much I love, truly cherish, and desperately miss each one of them #YHLN.

Spending the first decade of my incarceration mentally, emotionally, and spiritually fighting against adapting to this place as my reality and vehemently rebelling against becoming institutionalized I finally yielded a couple of years ago. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my deep abiding friendship with CMcD is that there is a huge difference between becoming institutionalized and accepting the reality of your circumstances. Because of the great weight of the loneliness, rejection, and depression that was exacerbated by the covid pandemic I knew I had to pivot when I landed on this yard 3 years ago. Due to my desperation for a friend I could have 100% confidentiality with, my daily facilitation of our Career Readiness class, as well as my reaffiliation with Celebrate Recovery, I finally allowed myself to make a uniquely singular friendship: a friendship that saved my life. Those three decisions led to a few more friends and finally more valued acquaintances than I truly thought that I would want in my incarceral life. I opened myself up to true meaningful relationships and brotherhood. I have allowed myself to create a new family. These new relationship have restored the sanity that my life was missing. Just like Jesus taught those fortunate 12 youngsters that he directly discipled and physically interacted with on a daily basis there is true love that can be found in close affiliation with brother-in-arms. While not a romantic love or a modern "western based philosophy of machismo and physical Eros" based love, it is that much deeper authentic and Biblical "ancient eastern philisophical/phileo" based love that can fill those voids (4). Now that I have stopped fighting mentally, emotionally, and spiritually against accepting the reality that is this place, that is this time of my life, I finally am beginning to feel like myself the self I was prior to meeting Myrtha Mikle(5). My big takeaway from this past 100 days is that pain can be your prison or your passport. I have chosen to continue to see this incarceral journey as a way to navigate down the road and grow into the man I am meant to be while supporting as many other men along their journey as well. (1)1440 Promise, SHBC, Saunders Family BBQ Sauce, Boulevard Christian Church in Muskogee (2) I have a Unit D 5k fun run scheduled for December 6th and another CR end of session graduation run scheduled for March of 2026 (3) Thank you Steve Lewis, Southern Hills Baptist Church, and Celebrate Recovery® for providing the avenue that allowed this change to take place. Our CR is experiencing growing pains as our attendance has quickly jumped from 7 to 17 to 27 to 77. We have almost outgrown our meeting place. Men are finding so much healing in their step study groups that we've increased that part of our weekly schedule to an entire hour. Praise Jesus for the chains that are being broken. On Friday, October 31st the Southern Hills Baptist Church will be showing our cardboard testimonies https://youtu.be/xPwtobWBjJQ and my personal video taped message of gratitude for their sponsorship. I hope that you will be in attendance. (4) Read Day #4676 "Christopher" and #4300 "Validation". Thank you CMcD, Nordic, SC, LM, WW, and so many others whom have helped me find this new sanity, this new level of brotherhood. Thank you Steve Lewis for becoming a spiritual father. One of the ways I've maintained my sanity and fought off depression is by leaning in to these acquaintanceships and friendships over the past 100 days by playing volleyball. I am not a natural athlete. I really have to put effort into playing most sports. These guys play balls-to-the-walls sand court volleyball. I am also often the oldest guy on the court, by far. I really enjoy team sports and just playing on a team. These guys are all about the win. However, I am older and shorter and slower and refuse to dive for a hit. So, when the completion seems serious I bow out. I can only hit the ball "correctly" 60% of the time. Now that the daylight hours are quickly fading, so is the opportunity to play, so I've pulled out all together so as to honor their time, but I really miss it. Today I found myself moping around the track just wishing I could play ... and they would let me ... but the losing team wouldn't be happy ... so it seems like the right thing to do. I just really miss this time to connect, and missing playing with those guys has taken me by surprise. (5) https://ManassehEphraim.blogspot.com/myrtha-mikel-day-3338 It was 16 years ago yesterday that Myrtha Mikel weaponized a false allegation of abuse in order to preserve her employment. She was on the verge of receiving a write up. As she admitted in court three years later she lied because she was angry that she was passed over by some young white boy. She was a pissed off DEI hire who became a "Karen" before there were "Karen's".

Happy Birthday Friend

 Happy Birthday Friend