Before prison, Maurice Sykes had received a full scholarship to Delaware State University and then transferred to Bowie State University where he studied under Dr. Clarence Knight, Bowie State’s legendary music director.
Knight remembers Sykes as an excellent trumpet player who was teased by other students for failing to show up for practice. He was shocked to learn last month that his former student was wrongfully convicted on murder charges.
“I’m stunned, I can’t even put murder with his name,” Knight said. “He didn’t present himself as that kind of person.”
Sykes was housed with Virginia’s death row inmates before getting sent to a maximum-security facility in Oklahoma. Once, he saw a prison guard shoot and kill an inmate who refused to hang up the phone when the inmate’s time ran out, he said. The shooting gives him nightmares, he said.
When Sykes walked out of prison, all he owned were the clothes on his back, a white T-shirt and old khaki prison pants, his legal papers and the barber certificate he earned behind bars.
He now works at Ducie’s Barbershop in District Heights.
To relieve stress, he’ll sometimes go to the pawn shop two doors down and play on a silver trumpet. Last week he saved enough money to buy the $128 instrument.
He also relies on the guys he works with at Ducie’s Barbershop. The shop has a set of weights in the corner, and his co-workers remind him to exercise. Sometimes they play handball against the building wall next door.
“They keep me upbeat because I get depressed sometimes,” Sykes said. “I sort of shut down.” – Scott McCabe
