Tim Bazrowx
Picture of Tim, courtesy of Terri LeClercq.
Memorial by Terri LeClercq
Retired Writing Specialist, University of Texas School of Law
Tim’s long-time writing correspondent
He was a thinker and a writer and he’s dead. He died making virus masks for Texas’ First Responders despite five kidney failures. He died at Hospital Galveston on April 23, 2020.
Tim wrote to me (and myriad others) beginning 2006, describing prison conditions. He also wrote about his inhalant addiction, his Viet Nam experiences, failed marriages, and lost freedoms from the addiction. While in prison, he earned college degrees and wrote novels and published short stories describing both conditions and the lives lost to addiction.
Years ago, he wrote: “When my kidneys started failing me, I was thinking of taking the coward’s way off this ole planet, but I can’t stand to think that I didn’t leave any type of legacy in this world—no kiddies, no wife, no nothing. I prayed to God although I was mad as hell at Him, and found a way to leave this legacy and found a way back to Him again.”
That legacy is a superb collection of short stories, some published and many out there circulating from magazine to contest. With his prize money, he was able to buy a typewriter and a continuing supply of ribbons. “Writing surpasses these bars in prison and I am able to soar outside these fences and past the gun towers and tell my story that I hope will someday bring about changes.” He had a new manuscript out with a good friend to type, “Cowboys and Spaceships.” Creative, insightful, provocative—and now perhaps never published. One of Tim’s stories was published by the Marshall Project. When his death was announced, they memorialized him, including excerpts from several of his stories.
Tim spoke as often as he could to new groups of people incarcerated, describing his own addictions and the price he was paying. Studying the legal system, he learned what had happened to him in the courts, and what options he might have had to break the addictions instead of being locked in a cage. He graduated from Blinn College despite those bars; he graduated from Lee College. He took correspondence courses and received an honorary degree in Theology and Divinity. He studied to become a paralegal, helping a blind man with a Blackstone course.
His death is a waste of intelligence, remorse, thoughtful teaching. His death was preventable.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not begin group testing until May 10th or so. They are testing the very people who were constricted into the shop to make masks for those Outside. They didn’t get masks. Tim’s sewing schedule increased weekly, as the announced quota kept rising. Already medically insecure, he obviously got tired. In his last days, friends had to help him up the steps each time he went to medical and returned.
He was scared: “I can’t afford to get this stuff like anyone else in this world. No one wants it. But after all this time trying to get my life back together, we have this killer waiting to attack and it is these stupid folks that won’t pay heed to the warnings that will end up killing us needlessly.“
He had been turned down in April for parole, despite having served more than 30 years. “Why doesn’t the parole board stop handing out five-year set-offs? We’ve done what was required.“ He did that, and more. He died.
