Myer “PJ” Pettyjohn
Leader and Healer
Myer “PJ” Pettyjohn, organizer and president of the only prison chapter of Veterans for Peace in recent years and the only member of such a chapter to serve on the national board of directors, died Tuesday, May 6, in Nashville, Tennessee. He succumbed to liver cancer after a short illness.
He grew up on a farm in northern Kentucky, and went to war with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam as a recent high school graduate. Experiences there left him with PTSD and the effects of self-medication. The residue of those experiences led to a killing in which he was not a direct participant, but a jury found him guilty as an accomplice and he received a life sentence.
PJ was a remarkable man. He earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctorates in divinity and counseling while in prison and used his education to benefit his fellow inmates. Many who lived in the free world also profited from their exposure to him over the years.
With assistance provided by Peter Shaw and Charlie Atkins, he developed Conflict Resolution and Alternatives to Violence programs and trained facilitators to run them at his institution. His prison’s chaplain recommended to Tennessee authorities that the programs be replicated at the other prisons in the state and, in a presentation to a regional conference, that they be widely adopted in other states because of their great effectiveness and low cost. Chaplain Dean Yancey, a good Southern Baptist, said PJ was “the best Christian I’ve known, in or out of the free world.”
He also designed and initiated programs and facilitated classes in Domestic Violence Prevention and in Parenting Skills. For nearly 15 years he had participated in his institution’s Straight Talk Panels, which offer advice to children at risk of criminal activity, in an effort to reduce the likelihood that they might one day join the prison population.
In a final letter from the hospital, PJ apologized for leaving his fellow inmates in the lurch. His cellmate of 10 years, Johnny Wright, close friend Randall McPheeters and others with whom PJ had worked to make life at Wartburg a useful and healing experience, have pledged to continue the work he commenced.
During his years at the helm of the Wartburg chapter the group sent underprivileged children to summer camp, made donations to the children’s hospital in Memphis, provided school supplies to low-income children and, later, made monthly contributions to VFP’s national office.
The members of the chapter nominated PJ to the board of directors in 1996, and the membership elected him to that high office. When a dispute arose on board positions that fall, PJ wrote in to suggest that it should be resolved by removing him in favor of another; his suggestion was rejected by the board.
He was always appreciative of support provided by his VFP comrades, including especially Phil Butler, the POW from Monterey, who understood what it meant to be confined. Alabama’s General David M. Shoup Chapter 64 adopted PJ and the Wartburg chapter when the latter group was formed. It’s hard to know which group benefited more from the arrangement.
Ed Hart