A Look Back, And Up

"Gratuities were accepted as if they were his due," U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey noted at Rowland's sentencing in March 2005. He went off to federal prison as inmate 15623-014, in Loretto, Pa. After serving 10 months, he got out last year and began his court-ordered community service, wondering what to do with the rest of his life. He has no illusions about his image nowadays. "I'm still radioactive in places," he says. He is a political pariah riding along in this dusty gray Chevy Blazer with his dog.

And that is how, at 50, Johnny R has come to have no people.

The Big House . . . the First One

At this moment he is giving you the Humiliation Tour. Driving slowly through Hartford's tony west end, he coasts to a momentary stop in front of a three-story mansion, fronted by forbidding gates. "990 Prospect Avenue," he says, pointing.

He lived here for all 10 years of his governorship. A 19-room Georgian Revival Colonial, the Connecticut governor's residence includes a library, a sunroom, nine fireplaces, nine bathrooms, and the inviting shaded terrace on the side of the mansion where he announced on live television his resignation.

"I was pretty composed," he remembers. "The tears had come before. . . . I was numb by then. What I remember is how surreal it felt. . . . I heard myself talking, but it was like I wasn't there. It's like you're hovering over your own body, like you're dead. It's like being at your own wake."

Except he wasn't being buried. China frequently executes crooked officials. In America, corrupt politicians do their time and keep living. Every so often, a once eminent officeholder like former California Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham heads off to prison, and another one, like Louisiana Democratic congressman William Jefferson, gets indicted on charges of bribe-taking. Rowland seemed destined to join that long line of august felons like Spiro Agnew who disappear from public sight after their disgrace, preferably to warm climes with an abundance of golf courses.

"Whatever the hell happened to that guy?" is the standard refrain of obituary readers at the end of such men's lives, proof of a bitter consolation: that they'd found the refuge of obscurity. But Rowland, who had children in Connecticut schools and few prospects outside his home state, was going nowhere.

"I couldn't do that -- I didn't want people to think that I was running away," he says. " . . . I'm not gonna hide my head in shame. Look, I knew a lot of good people were disappointed in me. I wanted to redeem myself. . . . I need contact -- it's that A-type thing, I guess. I'm the ultimate extrovert."

'My Arrogance Was Huge'

He estimates that half the time he works for free nowadays. A couple of days a week, he speaks to Connecticut parolees and addicts about how to look for jobs and get their lives back on track, a personal practice he took up while still behind bars. Sometimes he counsels people awaiting imprisonment for offenses like tax fraud and Wall Street illegalities, though, he adds, he gets a well-heeled drug offender now and then. "I try to assure them that they're going to be okay and safe; that I got through it and they'll get through it, too," he says. "A couple of years ago, somebody who'd been through it all talked to my wife and me before I went in. I'm just returning the favor."

But he needs to make money, too. That's not always so easy. He has traveled to Rhode Island to lecture high school athletes about the importance of ethics, and to North Carolina to speak to the John Locke Foundation about his own failings and what he calls the "culture of arrogance."

"It's all hand-to-mouth right now," he says. "I'm making about $60,000 a year. I don't need a lot -- I only want to pay my bills. I just talk to people -- companies, organizations, whoever wants me. I tell them what happened to me, and how they can best avoid those kinds of problems. People cheat on expense accounts or cheat on how their section of a company is performing. It's conscious avoidance, I call it -- which means people pretend not to notice."

He can guess what people will say when they hear all that.