The Governor's Stick

Former Governor Dan Walker (D-Il) went to prison for bank fraud, crimes unrelated to his office. He remembers how it was in a Sun Times interview:

Initially, Walker worked as a clerk in the prison chapel. But the warden switched his job to cleaning toilets -- with daily breaks to use the rod with the words "Governor's Stick" burned into it.

The litter-picking duties were always in front of the warden's office.

"So [the warden] could point out and say, 'Look, that guy was a governor. We treat governors like everybody else,' " Walker said. "It was the middle of winter, you understand, and I was out there snapping up cigarette butts with a stick.

Walker was sent to Duluth, the former North Shore lawyer's equivalent of Siberia. He had expected probation but got 7 years. Guess he wished he'd had Robert Creamer's judge. He didn't give Governor Ryan any advice, just told him to hold his head high.