On a humid Tuesday morning in June, Freddie eases the Gerry Lane Dealership shuttle – a small SUV – toward the service bay to pick up a customer who needs a ride to pick up his rental car. He changes the Sirius XM channel to Watercolors, a smooth jazz station that he loves. It’s playing low enough to calm the customers who climb into the passenger seat with broken cars and frayed nerves.
“It’s like elevator music,” he said. “But it really calms people when they’re with me because they are usually in a bad mood about their repairs.” Freddie is one of the dealership’s three shuttle drivers. He works from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday and drives 20 or 30 miles a day, sometimes as much as 100, ferrying people to rental counters and back to their repaired vehicles. He always sends them off the same way: “Have a blessed day.”
On this morning, the customer – dressed in a purple polo shirt and Yankees hat – is visibly frustrated about the time he is spending getting his car fixed.
Freddie asks him how he is doing, the man replies: “I’ve had better days but no use complaining about it.”
Freddie acknowledges the frustration and chats with the man about work, his grandson, and the headache of servicing a car. When the customer gets out of the car, he apologizes for being so negative.
Freddie smiles and said, “All of that will disappear when you’re in your rental car.”
It’s a small moment of kindness and compassion but for Freddie that’s where integrity and trust are built.
“I was a trusty at Angola for 22 years,” he said. “Getting this position at Gerry Lane was special to me, and doing a good job is important to me. It feels good to be trusted. I don’t think I could go through life and not be depended on.”
When Freddie was initially promoted to shuttle driver from porter, he said he barely knew his way around Baton Rouge. He had grown up in New Orleans, spent 33 years in prison, and had only been home for a short period of time when he found himself standing in a gas station, asking the attendant for directions.
He credits Parole Project with helping him learn how to use a cell phone, how to open a bank account, avoid scams, get a Social Security card, and navigate other basic life skills after decades away.
“I couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “They stuck with me shoulder to shoulder.” But learning how to navigate GPS was a different learning curve. “I learned as I went,” he said. “There was no time to experiment. I just picked it up as I went.”
Freddie has been working for Gerry Lane Dealership in Baton Rouge for five years now, long enough that it feels like home. He first met the late Gerry Lane at Angola. Freddie, who made belts in his spare time to sell at the rodeo, offered him one and advocated for his future.
“If I get out, can I get a job?” he asked. Lane told him yes.
In October 2021, he walked into Gerry Lane and asked for the job he’d been promised. Gerry had passed away but his son, Eric, hired him on the spot. He has been a welcome addition ever since, said Chad Chapman, the service director and Freddie’s supervisor.
“He’s an absolutely wonderful person to be around,” Chapman said. “Bringing your car to get serviced is kind of like going to the dentist. We are the dentist. But Freddie is like the hygienist, the one who asks about your family, and about how you’re doing. We all love him around here. Our customers love him. Even my family loves him. He’s really and truly an awesome person.”
In 1993, Freddie was sentenced to life without parole. In 2016, his sentence was commuted to 99 years with parole eligibility. He was paroled five years later and walked out of Angola on July 15, 2021. Freddie first started as a porter, then was promoted to a shuttle driver when a position became available.
He said he loves his job, especially talking with the people he drives, a complete change from what he felt like when he was released from prison and crowds, highways, and bridges scared him.
“I left in the late ’80s,” he said, recalling the difficult transition he had returning home. “Now it’s 2021. Cars flying everywhere. I bought this brand-new truck, a red Sierra 1500, and was afraid to drive it.”
Freddie grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the oldest of 10 children in a single‑parent home. Born on Decatur Street in the French Quarter, he remembers it as a “tough neighborhood,” but also as the place where he learned to cook, care for his siblings, and grow up long before he was ready.
He attended Catholic school, then St. Augustine High, where he played football “for a minute.” He also discovered that he liked English class. He grew up quickly after becoming a father when he was 15 years old and married young. To support his family, he took whatever work he could find, often lying about his age to get a job. When a supermarket discovered he was only 17, they fired him.
He bounced from job to job until he enlisted in the military in 1973 during the Vietnam era, not to fight, but to support his family. Stationed in Italy, he sent money home and finished his tour, but when he returned, “things weren’t the same.” He was angry, restless, and didn’t like to listen to authority. His ego took over and his marriage fell apart.
Back in the Ninth Ward, a fight on a corner changed everything. Freddie was convicted of first‑degree murder and sent to Angola.
The deepest wound came a few years into incarceration when his youngest son died at 22. Because Freddie worked hard, took multiple classes, and had just made trusty, he was allowed to attend his son’s service. Shackled, the guards removed his cuffs so he could say goodbye. “Everyone gathered around me,” he remembers. “It was emotional.”
He keeps in touch with two of his sisters and his 90-year-old father who lives in New Orleans. He also has five daughters and countless grandchildren, all successful, all living their own lives. He unselfishly and graciously respects their boundaries, understanding that he wasn’t there for most of their lives.
“They hardly know me,” he says, “but they’re doing good. I thank God for that. When they allow me to be there, I’m there. I show my love, and then I go back.”
Freddie is at peace and appreciates every day. He’s been in a relationship for a couple of years with a woman who enjoys watching mysteries, dramas and true crime stories and going out to eat. Their favorite restaurants are Goodwood Grill, PoBoy USA, Frank’s Restaurant, and they love the apple fritters from Mary Lee Donuts. He is proud of the man he is today and excited about future milestones – including being able to vote again on July 15 – and he believes success is simple.
“Taking care of your business and working hard, that’s being successful,” he said. “And taking care of the people I love.”
