Father David Link sat in the restorative justice class at The John Marshall Law School on Nov. 3, listening as students discussed working with troubled juveniles and how they had sat in on cases occurring at the 26th Street and California Avenue courthouse.
Each student shared a different story: observing court procedures, participating in hands-on events for Pro Bono Week, and consulting with Chicago teens whose school participation had been affected by obstacles outside of class.
“I admire those of you working with youth,” Link said. “They still have time to turn their lives around.”
Link, a chaplain for seven different prisons throughout northern Indiana, interacts with criminals six days a week, and doesn’t always take that seventh day off. He serves 12 different faiths, and he assists offenders through Purposeful Living Units Serve, a re-entry program for inmates.
He is an unusual priest, as he casually admitted to the students and Professors Michael Seng and Sheila Murphy. “I’ve been on a strange, strange path,” he remarked.
Link has five children and 14 grandchildren, and is a former lawyer and professor. After law school he went to Washington, DC to work for the Kennedy administration, trying cases while Robert Kennedy served as attorney general. He soon joined Winston & Strawn, a large Chicago firm that has since established international offices, where he was quickly made a senior partner. He next joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School in 1970, teaching primarily tax law, and became its dean in 1975. He was founding president of the University of Notre Dame Australia in 1989.
Link began seminary work approximately ten years ago and acknowledges that throughout his career as a lawyer, a professor, a law school dean and a university president, nothing has been more satisfying than being a prison minister.
“Want to make six figures?” he rhetorically posed the question to his audience, “I can show you in a week. Want to change people’s lives? That’s going to take a lifetime, and you learn it on your own.”
In his life, he has interacted with Nobel Prize winners, presidents, activists and civil rights leaders, and holds four doctorate degrees—“‘and now you’re talking to criminals,’” Link recalled his late wife’s comment when he embarked on his ministry work.
Link says nothing in his career, however, has been more satisfying than being a prison minister. As chaplain he works with all age groups and all ranges of offenses—from juveniles who don’t understand what they did wrong, to those on death row who aren’t getting out of prison.
“I love what I do. My job is to give them hope.”
Known as “Doc,” he talks with inmates on a regular basis, and delivers news from their families, sometimes sad news, such as the death of a loved one.
“I had to tell one inmate his mother was killed,” he paused, “by his father. We talked about it, and when I got up to leave he asked, ‘Could I get a hug?’ I’m not even supposed to shake their hands—they could hurt you. But this guy needed a hug. His mother was a drunk and his father was a drug addict, so he’s probably asked for one before and this may have been the first time he’s gotten it.”
At the end of the class session, he brought his story back to the students’ involvement with troubled teens—“it’s your presence, that someone cares enough to sit and talk, that makes a difference to them.”