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Highlands Today

The Preacher Is A Warden

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Rev. Robert Shannon has served as pastor to Lake Placid Greater Bethel A.M.E. since 1994 and as a warden he currently oversees some 1,655 inmates.

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By LINDA M. DOWNING

For Highlands Today

Published: September 15, 2008

The Highlands County boy who hated authority did not see prison warden in his future. But the Rev. Robert Shannon became just that in June 2008.

Shannon's mother, Lottie Owens, mostly single-parented her five boys and two girls. Robert Shannon, III, born in Sebring in 1956, did not meet his father until 1990. Shannon attended E. O. Douglas where discipline often meant "a beating with a fan belt." After integration he entered Sebring High School, now the site of Sebring Middle School.

"I was arrogant and rebellious," says Shannon. "They threw me out the whole second half of eighth grade. A home teacher came and I had to see a psychologist."

Many teachers spoke to Shannon of the abilities he was wasting. Athletic promise failed to motivate him. In the 12th grade he quit school and entered a special program in Miami where he received his G.E.D.

With no plan Shannon joined the U.S. Army. "I had too much pride to be a failure. I couldn't see myself hanging out on the street." He had left Florida only as a summer migrant worker. Now he trained out of state before spending two years in Germany.

Afterward, he moved to Tampa where he worked for a Piccadilly restaurant. He often played freestyle basketball with some of the University of South Florida's team. What he had missed hurt, but today he says: "It wasn't anybody's fault but my own."

A year later, Shannon landed a job at the Avon Park Correctional Institute as a corrections officer.

For 14 years he worked in different parts of the prison, his favorite being recreation officer for seven years where he utilized his sports skills. Then a captain called him in: "You're too good an officer to stay in recreation. If we don't do something, you'll be there the next 25 years. I'm moving you to the kitchen."

Not exactly what Shannon had in mind, but it pushed him. He gained supervisory skills and was made sergeant. While working the graveyard shift, he earned an associate's of arts degree at South Florida Community College in 1988. In 1991 he graduated from Warner Southern College with a bachelor's in Management of Human Resources.

Shannon's life changed when he began dating Gwen Knight. She let him know she could only be seriously interested in a Christian.

He crossed paths with her uncle, Allen Lewis, a street preacher, who said: "You'll be coming to see me in three days."

Shannon couldn't sleep or think clearly for the next three days, even believing "somebody's trying to kill me."

Lewis showed him biblical passages, prayed and pronounced him "saved" on June 10, 1980. Shannon married Gwen and joined Lewis in street ministry on Friday and Saturday nights whenever possible, for about two years.

When Lewis left, Shannon entered a five-year program to become an A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) minister. That plan was interrupted while he worked with Major Callahan's Action Revival Center in Lake Placid, learning "practical ministry."

In 1991 he became an Itinerant Elder, the highest ordination in the A.M.E. tradition. Shannon has served as a pastor to the Lake Placid Greater Bethel A.M.E. since 1994.

Shannon has maintained his Sebring residence while working at Hardee, Okeechobee, and Glades Correctional Institutes. His prison career advanced steadily, from Classification Officer to Senior Classification Officer to Classification Supervisor.

In 2005 he became the assistant warden of programs at the Glades facility.

This summer, he reached what the angry boy toiling in the fields as a migrant never dreamed of becoming: a warden. Shannon oversees some 1,655 inmates and the workforce responsible for them.

The warden sees no conflict with his "Reverend" title. Sometimes, to comfort a mother with a broken heart, he mentions he is also a pastor. It usually gives hope that the son or daughter will receive humane treatment.

The self-described, one-time bad, "mama's boy" now recites, like a mantra, the policies and procedures of "care, custody, and control" of human beings he understands.

Over the years, Shannon, a member of the Highway Park Ministerial Alliance, served Highlands County on the Economic Development Committee, the Heartland Workforce Board, and as vice president of the Boys and Girls Club. He hopes for a mentoring program to steer young people toward careers in law enforcement and change "the cultural concept." He dreams of bringing churches together to train people for life.

Retirement? Shannon thinks of starting a K-4th grade school, building a shelter for battered women, and writing a book on the challenges of life.

To relax, he takes car rides with his wife, and they just talk. They have raised three daughters together. To combat overload, he calls or goes to Dallas to visit his old mentor, Lewis.

Shannon is disappointed when people reject clear principles for a better life, but he remembers where he has come from. His greatest fear is that he might fail to live up to his potential in the God he trusts.

Shannon would like to meet Nelson Mandela.

"I would ask him how he kept his sanity all those years in prison without denouncing what he believed."

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