Oral History Interview of Lisa Whitney Stackpole

Collection

Identifier: CN 731

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

• Title: T1: Oral History Interview with Lisa Whitney Stackpole

• Date created: November 4, 2022

• Level of description: Item

• Identifier: T1

• Physical description of original: Digital .wav file

• Minutes: 127

Content description: Parents; religious background of the family; thoughts about God as a girl; ceasing to pray; her conversion when attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison through a Campus Crusade meeting; reaction of family; her university education, including courses in Correctional Administrations; teaching junior high; Chuck Colson’s autobiography, Born Again’; writing to Colson; beginnings of Prison Fellowship (PF); first impressions of Colson; “Watergate and the Resurrection;” Colson’s correspondence; Fellowship Foundation’s prison Bible study; early Washington Discipleship Seminars; growth of PF activities; the personality of PF; beginnings of in-prison seminars in Oxford, Wisconsin; Gordon Loux; joining PF fulltime; her spiritual life at the time; coordinating in-prison seminars; changes in PF in 1978; pen pal with a prisoner on death row; in-prison seminars around the country; reflections on prison chaplains; coordinating Washington Discipleship Seminars; Federal inmates only at Washington Seminars; purpose of the Washington Seminars to develop Christian prisoner leadership; visits of the prisoners to churches and schools; impact of the program; training volunteers to work with prisoners from different backgrounds; the need of volunteers of different theological beliefs to work together; becoming Wisconsin field director; Al Chase; recruiting volunteers in local churches; working with the state chaplains and developing retreats; sources of volunteers; fundraising through prisoner walkathons; the Wisconsin Religious Practices Advisory Committee (RPAC) and the religious needs prisoners, including non-Christians; the Angel Tree Christmas program for prisoners’ children; resolving tensions between field staff and national office; best parts of the job; meeting her future husband Jerry Stackpole, PF’s New Jersey director; changes in PF over the years; her retirement from PF; Prison Fellowship’s strengths and weaknesses; prison ministry during the 2020 COVID epidemic

Dates

November 22, 2022

Creator

Stackpole, Lisa Whitney (Person)

Biography

Full name: Lisa Whitney Stackpole

Birth: 1952 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Family:

Parents Ed and Bertha Connolly Whitney

Siblings Sister Larise and brother Will

Marital Status Married to Gerald F. Stackpole (1938-2013)

Conversion: At a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting while a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Education: 1971-1974 Bachelor degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Sociology with a minor in history. Took several Correctional Administration courses; 1974-1975 Took graduate courses in education at the University of Wisonsin-Madison

Career: 1975-1978 Taught junior high school for three years in public schools in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; 1978-1985 Joined staff of Prison Fellowship as in-prison seminars coordinator, later as coordinator of the Washington Discipleship Seminars and created training materials for volunteers; 1985-2005 Prison Fellowship state director for Wisconsin, based in Milwaukee

Extent

1 Sound Recording

127 Minutes

1.87 Gigabytes (WAV file)

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Brief Description

Oral history, interviewed by Robert Shuster, in which Stackpole describes her family background, her conversion, and her work with Prison Fellowship first as a volunteer and later as a staff member at the national office and then as state director for Wisconsin.