and at that time hart island was open to journalists and to academics and so i decided that. i was just going to get there. and it just so happened that that. was the very 1st day that these inmates had ever been on hard outlets. and these are young man convicted mr me interests like train style john staying breast feeding the so you know they're not felons or anything like that they're young men that couldn't afford a good lawyer. or i used to live in red hook that was one of the bad neighborhoods but about to return only brooklyn. new york city was crazy in 89 is crockery and stuff like that in him we used to so we'd n n n drugs and stuff like that in our world of getting caught with possession and i went of going to regular order for a little bit of time. in those days it was it was a zoo you can get anything you get a night for a any day needs one great one term the guy had a gun in there it was like like. gladiator school every day and so when i got short short means that you're going home you don't have a lot of time left in your stack and they gave me a job in a hard t

i 1st heard about hart island when i was working on a story about a formerly homeless man he had lived in the tunnels underneath penn station and i think. there was there's a photographer who photographed his little the little house he had made himself there and because of her work he'd been rescued he'd been given a home and that he'd been found dead in that home and he was going to go to heart island. and it was there was such sadness at the idea that this man who had finally achieved a home of his own was going to be dispossessed it was going to be one of the multitude in these anonymous graves. i'm a new yorker and i believe that new york is more than you know the old idea of the city on the hill new york is really what america is about. and there is a tragedy inherent in a big metropolis and. there are all these stories of the chance has gone by the mistakes of a bad childhood bad choices or just bad luck. that's something that any great metropolis contends was. but there's something more here. that you could have a loving family a career money set aside. and you could still end u

i 1st heard about hart island when i was working on a story about a formerly homeless man he had lived in the tunnels underneath penn station and i think. there was this a photographer who photographed his little the little house he had made himself there and because of her work he had been rescued he'd been given a home and that he'd been found dead in that home and he was going to go to heart island. and it was there was such sadness at the idea that this man who had finally achieved a home of his own was going to be dispossessed it was going to be one of the multitude in these anonymous graves. i'm a new yorker and i believe that new york is more than you know the old idea of the city on the hill new york is really what. america is about. and there is a tragedy inherent in a big metropolis and. there are all these stories of the chance is gone by the mistakes of the bad childhood bad choices or just bad luck. that's something that any great metropolis contends was. butt.