I opened this year with a column in the Sun Sentinel about the Dozier School for Boys. As 2025 closes, I find myself back there again — not to reopen wounds, but to finally close a chapter that has followed me my entire life.
The film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s “The Nickel Boys” brought Dozier back into public view. For many, it was shocking fiction. For those of us who were there, it was a mirror held too close. I was at Dozier in the late 1960s. Whitehead’s plot is imagined, but the atmosphere he captures — the fear, the silence, the brutality — is not.
Last year, something happened I never expected to see. The Florida Legislature acknowledged the harm done at Dozier and approved a $20 million compensation fund for survivors. Divided among all survivors, the payments are modest. The recognition isn’t. After decades of being dismissed, the state finally said the words we waited for: We believe you — and we were wrong.
That acknowledgment stirred a memory I’ve carried for more than 50 years — one tied to Christmas, a season that promises light even in places that work hard to extinguish it.
Christmas 1967 is the clearest memory I have from my time there. Scenes in “The Nickel Boys” made me remember those days, especially those involving the White House, the cinderblock building where they separated us out for horrific punishments. After I was caught running away, they beat me there and tossed me into a concrete detention cell. They called it “time to think.” I called it torture: a diaper pail for a toilet, a thin mattress, no talking, complete silence. I could barely hear Christmas music drifting from the cottages — a reminder that mercy existed somewhere, just not where I was.
Then on Christmas Eve, the director opened the door and simply said, “We are letting you out of detention.” It was late in the afternoon. I was not going to be alone on Christmas Day. The White House sat on a hill, separate from the rest of the campus, and he walked me outside and put me in the back seat of a state car for the ride back down to the cottage.
Inside the cottage, there was a small Christmas tree with a few donated presents underneath it. Someone handed me one with my name on it. Inside was a thin silver pendant featuring Saint Dismas, the “good thief” crucified beside Jesus. I didn’t know much about saints, but the gift felt like a quiet acknowledgment that even a boy who had been beaten, locked away and forgotten could still be seen.
That moment taught me something I still believe: Kindness does not vanish, even in the hardest places. It survives in small, unexpected ways — a director opening a door, a donated gift placed under a simple tree, a reminder that grace can reach even those who doubt it still exists.
I began this year writing about Dozier. Ending it with this memory feels like setting down a weight I’ve carried for a lifetime. The film, the Legislature’s acknowledgment, and that long-ago Christmas have given me back a voice I didn’t have as a child.
Christmas is real. Its light breaks through — even in the darkest places.
Ray Watford spent January 1967 to May 1968 at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. He lives in Hilliard, Ohio.
