Greater Tulsa Reporter BASEBALL TO HOPE: Present at the Operation Hope Golf Outing at Meadowbrook Country Club in October are, from left, former Major-League
players Tom Pagnozzi and Tom Paciorek, sportscaster Bob Carpenter and Operation Hope Prison Ministry Director Giles Gere. In 2007 Bob Carpenter was asked to emcee a benefit banquet for Operation Hope. It made quite an impression on him. Operation Hope is precisely what the name implies. Convicts getting out of prison with a bus ticket, $50 in their pockets, and no prospects can turn to it to get a fresh start on a productive life. It has two ministries in Oklahoma’s correctional system one for the women at the Eddie Warrior Correctional Institution in Taft, and one for men at the Jess Dunn Correctional Institution in Hominy. “The people who come out of them usually have family or friends they can turn to,” says Operation Hope Director Giles Gere, “but some have no one.” Operation Hope works through the chaplains of those two institutions. The inmates are given the organization’s telephone number, which they can call if Tulsa is a strange town and they have nowhere to go and don’t know what to do.
The organization can give immediate, vital help.