Resident left behind legacy for stomach and soul

Linda Adkins remembers working at Roosevelt County Detention Center when an inmate in the drunk tank suddenly awakened.

“Is today Friday?” he asked. “Enchilada day?”

And then he passed out again, Adkins said.

The enchiladas were a specialty for Donna Chandler, the jail’s head chef for five years.

“They (inmates) knew every Friday was her enchiladas and Tuesday was her spaghetti,” Adkins said.

“She was an excellent cook.”

Chandler died a week ago in Lubbock. She was 64.

The legacy she leaves behind fed more than just the stomach — she fed the soul, too.

“She cared about the food she served (and) the people in the jail. She wasn’t judgmental,” said Will Banister Sr., an inmate who worked under Chandler in the kitchen when he was serving time for driving while intoxicated.

“She was a real good friend of mine in there,” he said.

Banister said he went to Chandler for advice when his self-esteem was getting a little low.

She helped boost his spirits, and now, he said, he’s been clean and sober for seven years.

“She’d tell me that I was a good person and that everyone makes mistakes, and that she could see something good in me,” Banister said on Friday.

“She just knew that I was going to make it and turn out alright. She’d make me feel better about myself … Every time I’d see her she’d give me a hug and tell me how proud of me she was. She’d make me believe in myself.”

But Chandler could crack the whip, too, Adkins said.

Despite her small stature — she wasn’t even 5-feet tall — she had an unfiltered “spitfire” personality that no one wanted to test, Adkins said.

“People just respected her because she was a good lady,” Banister said. “She was pretty old fashioned, but she did get a lot of respect in there.”

And, Adkins said, Chandler loved “her boys,” and would treat them like sons.

“She always called them her boys and got a hard time about it — we weren’t allowed (to do that),” Adkins said.

“She didn’t like what they did (to become incarcerated), but they’re your boys after a while. She’s over her boys in the kitchen, and if an officer messed with her boys she would be mad ... She was protective of them and they were protective of her.”

Despite her surroundings at the jail, Chandler would get onto inmates for using foul language and cracking crude jokes.

“You had to walk the line when you were in (the kitchen),” Banister said. “You just didn’t do that kind of stuff around her; she ran a pretty tight ship.”

Adkins said Chandler would tell inmates they needed to always put family first before drugs, alcohol and partying — and then threatened to not let them work for her again if she saw them back in the jail.

Chandler’s “big heart,” Adkins said, had an impact on all the inmates she worked with.

“She changed those guys in there, she really did,” Adkins said. “She took (the inmates) on like sons, and she always wanted them to change. They came back and saw her after they got out, several of them did.”