Pagan, who lives in Pinehurst, recently was named superintendent at Morrison Correctional Institution near Hoffman, capping a 27-year career in corrections.
Cruz is a former leader in a New York City gang, the Mau Maus, whose story David Wilkerson told in his 1970 book, “The Cross and the Switchblade,” which became a movie starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada.
Aided by street evangelist Wilkerson in a high-profile murder trial involving six other teens, Cruz went from sanctioning beatings, assaults and murders to being a street preacher in his own right, ministering to young men with what Pagan called “life-controlling problems” — mainly drugs and alcohol, Pagan said. Cruz has written nine books, including “Run Baby Run,” an autobiography that has been translated into 72 languages.
Cruz and Pagan shared parts of their backgrounds, but Cruz had a rougher time of it. Both were natives of Puerto Rico. But whereas Pagan’s parents were farmers, Cruz was one of 18 children born to a spiritualist couple who read omens and foretold futures. Cruz’s parents foretold a glum future for him, finally “disowning” him and sending him to live with a brother in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that the Mau Maus came to terrorize.
Pagan (the name is pronounced with the accent on the last syllable: Puh-GAHN) moved to New York, too, at age 5, but came there with his parents, who were retiring. In their late 70s, they moved back to Puerto Rico. Co-workers from that period say that Pagan sometimes sent money to aid them in their retirement. Both parents are now deceased.
Pagan grew up in Spanish Harlem (the Hispanic barrio on the Upper East Side, extending roughly from 110th to 132nd streets east of Park Avenue). Spanish Harlem is primarily a poverty-stricken area, with street gangs of its own, but it is rich in ethnic culture and tradition.
Cruz and Pagan met in 1970 in Brooklyn, as Pagan recalls it. Pagan, then in his middle 20s (he was born in 1945) had studied at Bronx Community College but, instead of going on from there to a four-year college or university, he took a succession of jobs, finally working with Teen Challenge, Wilkerson’s program in New York City.
From 1970 to 1972, he managed the Nicky Cruz Outreach Teen Challenge Center in Brooklyn, a home for troubled youths, with 12 male residents.
But Pagan had married in 1969, to Carolyn Hope, and wanted a career outside a residential facility. He and his wife came to North Carolina in 1972, and Pagan enrolled at Pembroke State University (now the University of North Carolina at Pembroke) to study social work and sociology. “My studying social work was a direct result of my association with Nicky Cruz,” he says.
He graduated in 1974 and took a job as a correctional officer with Sandhills Youth Center in McCain. He was promoted to sergeant, then transferred to Morrison (then Morrison Youth Center, with inmates ages 18-22), where he got a chance to work in programs, rather than custody, for the first time.
Pagan became program supervisor and, later, classification coordinator at Morrison. He stayed there until 1992, but says now that few members of the current Morrison staff were there when he left.
“I have always done a lot of one-on-one work with inmates, and I’ve always done a lot of work with volunteers,” Pagan says. “ I like to put inmates and volunteers together, matching them up in specific programs. My background gave me good experience with this, because most of our volunteers are with faith-based groups.
“I would say that the most rewarding times of my career came when I was working directly with inmate contact. I still do some of that when I can — I believe all superintendents should go out on the yard occasionally, and when I do, everybody wants to talk to me, because they all think I can do something to fix their particular problems. Sometimes I can give them help.
“But generally speaking, the higher you go in the chain of command, the more distance you create between yourselves and the inmates. You’re just too busy with other things — like supervising the 275 or so employees here, instead of dealing with the 525 inmates. And that’s unfortunate, in a way.
“Now, I direct the operation as a while, and there’s satisfaction in that, too. We’ve got wonderful people here. I can tell inmates who come to me with their problems, ‘You don’t have to worry, we’ve got the staff to handle things.’ But then, I felt that I was impacting individual lives.”
At Morrison, Pagan supervised some work crews in the community and worked with the inmate Jaycee group. At Sandhills, he got inmates involved in the Hoke County Special (Olympics program.
Pagan says that in a way, he regrets the imminent closing of Sandhills Youth Center.
“After all, that’s where I began my career in corrections, and there’s a lot of sentimental attachment there,” he says. “The closing also means more work here, because we’ll be getting 324 inmates on June 18, when all the moves are scheduled to take place. And they’ll all be youthful offenders, ages 18-22, which means that in effect, we’ll have three separate groups of inmates here — medium-custody adults, minimum-custody adults, and minimum-custody youths.
“But I can understand why the closing came about. It didn’t have anything to do with Sandhills not having fences and being the most open prison unit in the North Carolina system. Basically, the reason was that Sandhills is a facility that needs a lot of work to bring it up to standard. Meanwhile, we’ve got some relatively new facilities at Morrison — a new dining hall, and a dormitory that’s not very old. The other dorms are in good shape. Closing Sandhills in the interest of efficiency was a wise move.”
“It’s important to know that nobody’s losing a job as a result of the closing. Everyone there is either transferring here or taking a job elsewhere. Only 13 correctional officers chose to come here, though, so we’ll be hiring about 20 more. We’ll also be getting some more programming staff, two new maintenance staff and one food service manager. When everybody is moved, there will be about 850 inmates — but the staff-to-inmate ratio will actually be lower than it is now. It’s an efficient move.”
Pagan says Morrison staff members are already working out standard operating procedures and developing a program structure to handle the youthful offenders.
Despite his penchant for one-on-one dealings with inmates, Pagan gradually rose in the Department of Corrections’ chain of command.
In 1992, he became assistant superintendent for program services at Columbus Correctional Center near Brunswick. Then he went to Lumberton Correctional Institution in Robeson County as assistant superintendent for program services in 1994. He was later promoted to superintendent for program services, and he became overall superintendent of the prison in 2001.
He came back to Morrison as superintendent in March, replacing Gary Miller, who became superintendent at Southern Correctional Institution in Troy.
“Our emphasis here, and throughout the Department of Correction, really, in recent years, has been on transitional services,” Pagan says. “We don’t want much recidivism, or a lot of former inmates coming back to prison. So we’re trying to prepare the inmates, as much as we can, for life back ‘on the street,’ or in the community.”
Pagan is something of a rarity in the Department of Correction.
“I’d say 85 percent of our superintendents have come up through the custody side,’ he says. “I came up mostly through programs.”
Through it all, he has lived in Moore County.
“It’s good to be back working closer to home, instead of commuting to Brunswick or Lumberton,” he says. “Now it’s just about a 25-minute drive to work.”
Pagan’s wife died in 1997. They had two sons. The older, Kevin, is sales manager in Cummings, Ga., with a company that sells telephone systems to corporations. The younger son, Danny, lives in Charlotte, where he operates his own information technology services business. ‘I don’t quite understand what they do,” Pagan says.
Pagan has one grandchild. Kevin Pagan and his wife have a daughter, Olivia Hope Pagan.
In his spare time, Pagan enjoys dancing and working in his yard. He is a member of the Moore County Area Shag Club.
He is also a member of several professional organizations and the State Employees Association of North Carolina.
Almost 100 of the 525 or so inmates at Morrison are still youths, ages 18-22. For the most part, they stay in a separate dormitory and participate in the prison’s alcohol and drug programs.
“I still enjoy working with them, because that’s what I was experienced in when I came to the department — working with young people,” Pagan says.
Pagan is not now a member of any church in particular, he says, and he has not stayed in touch with Nicky Cruz. He has had no contact with him, in fact, since leaving New York City 30-plus years ago.
“He’s still a big influence, though,” Pagan says. “He pointed my career in the direction it has taken.”
