Ex-Convict's Success Attracting Attention

WALLA WALLA - This is a success story that just turned 30 years old - the remarkable turnaround of Bob Stanfill.

Stanfill's life is not news to many Walla Walla area residents. But in an NBC Nightly News piece expected to be broadcast this month, the nation will get a glimpse of ``the ex-con who made good.''

``I never expected to live until I was 35,'' said Stanfill, now 59.

And with good reason.

Stanfill was a thug. He was a thief, a robber, a burglar, a violent man. He committed hundreds of crimes and was in and out of reformatories and prisons in several states in the 1940s and '50s.

But this ex-hoodlum has transformed himself into a successful businessman, husband, father of two sons, one-time city councilman and a respected member of the College Place community.

Stanfill is proudest of what he calls ``the Lord's will''- in 1979, he was offered a job as cosmetology instructor at the Washington State Penitentiary barber school.

There, his record shows, he has given some convicts an incentive to stay out once released.

Stanfill's life of crime began early. He stole things from his mother's purse, then he took things from a drugstore, and before long, thievery became a habit.

For years, he blamed his parents and the lack of togetherness and direction in his family life.

``But when you reach a certain point, you can't really blame anything on your early childhood,'' he said.

By age 9, Stanfill was dubbed incorrigible. He spent time in the Kansas State Orphanage, reform schools in Colorado, an institution in El Reno, Okla., and the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

In 1956, he headed for Seattle and what would be his last crimed - an armed robbery in the University District. He was caught, and later sentenced to the Washington State Penitentiary in February 1957.

He did some soul-searching after a Seattle prosecutor threatened to seek a life sentence for Stanfill as a habitual offender. ``It made me ask myself, `Where are you going to spend the rest of your life?' '' Stanfill said.

He started taking prison Bible courses and decided he wanted to live a normal life. For three years, he received encouragement and counsel, and ``began to realize what I had done to other people was wrong. I had never thought about it before.''

He acquired a skill - barbering - and met his future wife, Bunnie Gilman, who visited him in the penitentiary.

They were married in September 1960, a few months after Stanfill was paroled 30 years ago.

Stanfill opened his own barber shop, Bob's Styling Salon, in College Place in February 1961.

In 1970, he was elected to the College Place City Council.

``Being reelected in 1974 was very critical for me. It showed I had reached my goal of being accepted into the community,'' Stanfill said.

Then the big opportunity came, he said. Wayland DeWitt, then president of Walla Walla Community College, and education coordinator Gabe Joseph asked Stanfill to return to prison as a teacher and try to convince his students there is a better life.

Stanfill's approach seems to be working. The rate of barber school students returning to the penitentiary after release is about 7 percent, much lower than the 60 percent recidivism rate for the general prison population.