Former inmate imparts lessons

One day during his 20-month prison term, Thea Som realized it was time to change.

"I woke up and looked in the mirror and said, 'I'm not going to take this any more. I'm going to live life with a passion. I'm not going to live life so paranoid,'" Som, now 24 and a youth outreach worker in Springfield, told a group of students at the Florence Learning Center yesterday.

He spoke as part of a school-year-long effort by the Veterans Education Project at the center, which is an alternative public school for high school-age students.
Rob M. Wilson, project director, said speakers are brought in who provide a wide perspective on the effects of war.

"We want to bring in voices from our community, men and women who have gone through hardship and challenges, made some pretty serious mistakes, confronted violence in war and on the streets and come through the experience with insight and lessons that can be valuable to young people to help them develop better critical thinking skills," Wilson said.

Som told the students how he once beat people up and sold drugs, and how after he was released from jail, he was picked up by immigration authorities who imprisoned him for another two years.

He was threatened with deportation to Cambodia, a country his mother fled from to a refuge camp in Thailand where he was born. He knows no one in Cambodia.

In this country, his mother had never told him what had happened to her in Cambodia, how she watched as his older brother was shot in front of her. He learned this after his incarceration, when he interviewed his mother to learn about her life.

Som said he "grew up in silence." Filled with anger, he barely managed to graduate from Amherst-Pelham Regional High School and got arrested repeatedly. Finally, he was sentenced to 2½ years in jail, 20 months of which he served.

When he got out, he was a changed person. In jail, he had begun to write about his experiences and became involved with the Performance Project, a theater group made up of present and former inmates.

"I used to be scared to show how I felt. I didn't want to be vulnerable. People were going to think I'm soft," said Som, who works for the Anti-Displacement Project in Springfield and lives in Amherst.

Students at the Florence Learning Center told Som about their own experiences that relate to his. In interviews, they said his experiences put their lives in perspective.

"It makes you look on the positive side. When I'm having a bad day, I think that guy had it way worse than I did. It changes everything around," said Rich A. Morin, 18, a student at the center.