STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It is Friday morning, when we make a few American lives a little more transparent. People sit down to answer questions from people they love in our series StoryCorps. And today we will hear from Larry Hoover, who spoke with his granddaughter, Anastasia Garcia, about growing up in New Mexico. As a teenager, he'd gotten in trouble with neighborhood gangs.
Mr. LARRY HOOVER: As a kid growing up in Santa Fe, we had the Lucianitos on one side of where we lived and we had the West Siders on the other side. So on Friday nights I would fight with the Lucianitos and on Saturday I would fight with the West Side. There was no knives and no guns. It's, you know, part of growing up.
And my mother would tell me, if you don't straighten yourself out, you're going to end up going to Springer, and Springer was a penal institution for juveniles. And lo and behold, my mother was right. Thirty years later I went to Springer, but I went as a teacher. They needed a graphic arts instructor and I had my own print shop.
And at that time there was no fence around Springer, so if they ran away, they could get away real easy. But in the five and a half years that I taught, I never had an escape. We had some really, really tough little boys there. I treated them like humans, even though what they did was wrong. They were there for a reason, to learn something and to better themselves.
And I would reward them on a Friday with a barbeque or I'd take them to the movie. I'd take them in a bus without no guards. My pencil was my weapon, was my sword. 'Cause if I gave them a zero for the day, they couldn't watch TV, they couldn't go to canteen, which is the little store where they go and buy their goodies. So that was my sword.
And not too long ago I got a phone call from one of the boys there. He called me from El Paso, Texas and he says, Mr. Hoover, this is Rudy. And I said, how you doing, Rudy. He says, well, you know, I'm the manager of a press here in El Paso, Texas and we're going to open another store. Would you like to come and work for me? And I told him, oh, I'm retired. No thanks. But that to me was my reward.
Ms. ANASTASIA GARCIA: He did good.
Mr. HOOVER: I taught him good and he did good.
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INSKEEP: That's Larry Hoover with his granddaughter Anastasia Garcia. Their conversation is part of StoryCorps Historias, which is recording Latino voices around the country. And today's interview will be archived with all the others in a project at the Library of Congress. You can subscribe to the podcast at NPR.org.