WIVES IN WAITING: COUNTY INMATE'S WIFE DREAMS OF STARTING SUPPORT GROUP FOR FAMILIES OF PRISONERS

JACKSON, Mo. -- Cathy Voyles fidgets with her husband's thick gold wedding band dangling on a chain around her neck. She leans against a wall in the austere second-floor foyer of the Cape Girardeau County Justice Center, waiting to visit her jailed husband.

She visits Douglas "Gill" Voyles every Saturday, making the 90-minute drive from Festus, Mo., where she lives with her mother. She's been making the trip up and down Interstate 55 for the past two months.

"The first visit is real hard," she says. "You always walk out with tears."

Her husband has been held in the new county jail on a federal charge since it opened in early March. Voyles, 45, pleaded guilty to possessing a stolen flat-bed trailer. He is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau on June 4.

For Cathy Voyles, 30, life has become an endless waiting game centered around the weekly visits to the jail.

She made friends with other wives whose husbands are incarcerated, becoming an informal counselor to them. She wants to take the next step starting a support group for inmates' families. Too often, she says, families feel they are all alone.

Kent Hall, who heads up the public defender's office in Cape Girardeau County, agrees. Hall says defendants' families often lose everything from income to emotional support. Children are uprooted, many times going to live with grandparents.

Hall said his job is to defend those charged with state crimes, but invariably he has to deal with the problems of everyday existence for defendants' families.

"We are not social workers but we wind up acting as such," he said.

Voyles wishes some organization or company would provide a meeting place where she and others could meet after visiting their jailed relatives. She and several other wives currently meet in the Justice Center parking lot to smoke cigarettes, talk about their daily existence and recount their visits with their husbands.

"I just want them to understand they are not alone," said Voyles. "At first, I felt I was the only one going through it. I felt scared, alone, abandoned basically."

Some feel intimidated

She says most of the families have no one with whom to talk. Many are afraid to open up to others. Some feel intimidated when they enter the Justice Center, unaware of the visitation rules, which vary from jail to jail.

Only immediate family members are allowed to visit inmates in the Cape Girardeau County jail, only on Saturday and only with a valid photo I.D. Children under 16 generally are barred from the visiting area as are girlfriends or boyfriends. The visits typically last 15 minutes.

There's no physical contact. Visitors and inmates are divided by a wall. They view each other through glass partitions and communicate by phone.

The Cape Girardeau County jail currently has 166 inmates, including 39 federal prisoners. The inmates are housed in seven cell blocks or pods, each with different visiting times. Voyles sees her husband during the 10-to-11 a.m. visitation period.

About 50 to 60 inmates typically have visitors on a single Saturday, said Capt. Mike Morgan, jail administrator. Visiting hours begin at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m.

As many as 30 visitors pack the lobby on a Saturday afternoon during visiting times for inmates jailed on state charges. Most of these inmates are local residents awaiting trial or sentencing on state charges.

Visits are brief

For Voyles and others, the visits are all too brief.

She has seen her life uprooted ever since her husband was arrested on Dec. 7 in Winona, Mo., where the couple had been living since their marriage in November 1999.

The latest arrest came while her husband was already on probation, having been convicted of possession of methamphetamine, Voyles said. Authorities seized the stolen trailer that he was using to make a living.

Voyles worked two menial jobs, but the bills piled up. Eventually, a Carter County bank took possession of their house, truck, a motorcycle and a Jeep.

"We lost it all," said Voyles, who maintains her husband is a good-hearted man even though she admits he has a rough exterior.

The couple has five children, all from previous marriages. Voyles moved herself and her two sons, a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old, to her mother's house in Festus in early March.

Douglas Voyles' oldest son is 24 and on his own. His 17-year-old and 11-year-old sons are living with other relatives.

"Me and the kids have had to completely start over," Cathy Voyles said. She gets by on her meager salary as a shoe-store clerk plus Medicaid and food stamps.

But her husband's plight is always on her mind.

"I go to work and come home and wait for him to call every night," she says.

In her weekly visits, Voyles has made friends with Dixie Ehrenberg of Doniphan, Mo., Ehrenberg's husband, Herman, was arrested on Oct. 29, 1999, on charges of growing marijuana in the Mark Twain National Forest. He pleaded guilty on April 21, 2000, and was sentenced in July to six and one-half years in prison.

Herman Ehrenberg has been jailed in a federal prison in Colorado. He temporarily has been moved to the Cape County jail.

"It totally ruined my life," Dixie Ehrenberg said after visiting her husband Saturday. "You find all the friends you got, they disappear."

Voyles says Ehrenberg isn't alone in feeling isolated.

As for Voyles, she says she isn't looking for the public's sympathy. "I just want their understanding," she said.