Teaching The Trade
Working in a maximum-security in-plant has its challenges and rewards.
By Mike Llewellyn
A YOUNG kid, 10 years old, is wandering the halls of a local Boys Club when someone motions to him from beside a set of closed doors.
"Hey," says the stranger. "You want to see something pretty neat?"
The kid shrugs apathetically and walks over. But when he looks past the doors he sees one of the oddest sights of his young life: a noisy old platen press and, working quietly beside it, busily making adjustments, an even older man with a wooden leg.
It's the summer of 1952 in Milwaukee, Wis., and Darryl Ruprecht has just been introduced to his trade.
Ruprecht is now a graphic arts teacher at Wisconsin's Green Bay Correctional Institution, doing his part to imbue his wayward students with a sense of pride in an old and noble craft. He is also a long-time member of the International Publishing Management Association (IPMA).
Ruprecht has been married for 35 years ("To the same woman!" he exclaims), and is the proud father of two grown sons, one of whom has two children of his own. But in the summer of '52, he was just a kid who chanced upon a way to make a quick buck, working a new job beside peg-legged "Old Clem."
"The first thing I did was set a business card for myself for fun," he remembers, "and when I got home—there was a salesman who lived next door—he asked me how much to print him some."
Five dollars for 1,000.
After his neighbor got a few friends on board for their own dirt-cheap cards, Ruprecht had more money than a 10 year old could know what to do with.
He was hooked, and the graphic arts trade guided Ruprecht through high school, where he studied art, and on to Milwaukee Technical College to earn a degree in printing. He got his sheepskin and his handshake as bombs were falling over Vietnam.
"Nobody wanted to hire me because they figured I'd just be drafted," he says.
To solve that problem, Ruprecht enlisted, and was soon sent to Germany to work as a lithographic cameraman for the Army Corps of Engineers. He landed a high-security post printing maps for the U.S. military.
After leaving the service, Ruprecht survived the volatile economy of the mid-1970s plying his trade at a number of union shops until, in 1978, he answered an ad in a local newspaper seeking a teacher for a position at what was then known as the Wisconsin State Reformatory.
He didn't have a teacher's certification at the time, but that wasn't as important to the prison's administration as his stock of experience in the industry. After all, he'd been at it since he was 10.
"I went over to fill out an application, and when I left I said to myself, 'That's my job,' " he recalls. "And I've been here now for 25 years."
Printing In The Big House
On the books, Ruprecht may be a teacher. But the graphic arts program at Green Bay Correctional Institution is an in-plant, and Ruprecht's got the IPMA membership, plus the CGCM certification, to prove it. In fact, because the state doesn't pay for trade association memberships, he pays his own way and considers it a tax write-off.
"[IPMA] is extremely important," he says of his longtime membership. "It's my way of keeping up with the trade."
Handling jobs for the prison itself, as well as a number of gratis jobs for local non-profit organizations that could not otherwise afford printing, Ruprecht isn't exactly milking a cash cow. The in-plant gets a meager infusion from the institution's general budget, and Ruprecht is left to his wits to put together the rest.
"I've got a rep in the [local IPMA] chapter as a scrounge," he says with a laugh. "If somebody's getting rid of something, I'll take it—ink, film, anything."
The scrounging has paid off, and added to some friendly politicking with the warden's secretary, Ruprecht has landed his classroom two Macintosh G4s, two A.B.Dick 8820s, a Hamada 700 and a small arsenal of scanning and bindery equipment.
Staff Worth Keeping An Eye On
Operating all of it are the 13 to 15 inmates who run the in-plant at any given time. It's not easy to forget where he's working, but Ruprecht says there's no cause for worry.
"I have an orientation class, and I put across really well that I'm not here to baby sit; I'm here to teach you my trade," says Ruprecht, who was honored as one of nine local "Everyday Heroes" by the Green Bay Press-Gazette in 2001 for his efforts.
Still, precautions must be taken—like the vigilant oversight of X-Acto knives and hand tools. But problematic students are rare because no one wants to risk losing his assignment in the in-plant.
As Ruprecht sees it, the whole point of his class is to teach lost and broken men the self-respect that greets a job well done.
"When a guy comes to my class, he's got a clean slate," says Ruprecht. And in return for this favor, he opens cards every Christmas from now-successful printers who were once within his care.
