After 38 years apart, a father and son celebrate Father's Day together

NEW ORLEANS — This Sunday, Malcolm Stewart and his father will spend their first Father’s Day together in almost four decades.

“I didn’t have a Father’s Day,” Stewart said. “It was a blank date, you know. In my mind I just thought he was going to die in jail.”

His father, Malcolm Alexander, was convicted of rape in 1980. He was sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole. But Louisiana inmate number 93124 was innocent, and DNA evidence finally proved it. Last February he walked out of prison, to his family and freedom, after 38 years behind bars.

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“It’s like that first taste of candy, and you realize how good it is,” Alexander said. “As long as there was a breath, I always thought there was a chance.”

He said it’s been a hard life without his family.

“You’re living without love,” he said. “There is no love in the institution.”

As for Stewart, he was just 2 years old when his father went to prison.

“You go to your friend’s house and they have their dad and it’s like, ‘Wow man, I wish I had that,'” Stewart said.

This Father’s Day, he will — after a lifetime of prison visits and phone calls to a dad who never deserved to spend one minute behind bars.

“My dad’s here, it’s Father’s Day. I’m very happy, you know what I mean? It’s a new beginning,” Stewart said.

When asked what it feels like to finally sit side by side after 38 years, Stewart said there’s “no rush.”

“There ain’t nowhere to go. We made it where we wanted to go,” Alexander said.

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It’s easy to think Alexander may feel bitter after all this time, but he has a different outlook.

“I can’t thank God with an angry heart,” he said.

“There’s not time to even think about nothing negative, being mad. None of that. There’s too much joy in our hearts to worry about that,” Stewart said.

It seems this family has one word in this year’s Father’s Day card: gratitude.