By T.J. Marshall

Admired members of San Quentin’s expanded community, Willis and Linda Rice said goodbye after 25 years of fellowship and service.

“We’ve been to a lot of prisons all over America,” said Mr. Rice. “But San Quentin will always be our home joint.”

Married 58 years, Mr. and Mrs. Rice have brought music, fellowship, and humility into almost every state prison across the country. For the last 25 years, their charitable efforts have become program staples for the SQRC community.

“The memories that we carry from here will always be in our heart,” Mrs. Rice said.

Sunbeams illuminated SQ’s Chapel A and more than 100 parishioners, some with tears in their eyes, as Mr. and Mrs. Rice said goodbye at their last Sunday Mass. They moved out of the state at the end of 2025.

Mr. Rice is a retired Air Force fighter pilot of 22 years. He said that one day his wife, a classically trained musician, approached him with a premonition, “I feel a calling to go on the road and praise the Lord with my harp,” she told her husband. “That was more than 35 years ago,” he said.

The couple hit the road to answer the calling in the early ’90s, and since then Mrs. Rice’s angelic piano and harp melodies have reverberated in churches and been heard by parishioners all over the world.

“Playing in the churches opened the doors into the prisons,” said Mr. Rice. “At one point we were doing 50 concerts in 50 days twice a year,” said Mrs. Rice.

For decades, the two carried their message of faith, hope, and humility to thousands who otherwise might not have had a chance to experience such altruism.

Mrs. Rice said that people began to refer to her as the “harp lady” and her husband the “harp carrier,” as he escorted her and her big blue 47-string instrument into prisons.

In 2000, after a decade on the road, their faith-driven tour landed them at San Quentin. The couple said that after two and a half decades attending both the Protestant and Catholic services. They now consider the facility’s chapel their home church.

“We renewed our 40-year and 50-year marriage vows here at San Quentin,” Mr. Rice said.

In 2014, the Rices expanded their presence in the prison beyond the chapel. Mrs. Rice started teaching a humility class, as well as giving piano lessons to those in the Arts in Corrections program.

“Linda didn’t just teach our humility class, she exemplified it,” said SQ resident J. Dorsey.

Before Death Row disbanded in 2024, Mr. Rice said his faith led him to bring the word of the Lord to the condemned residents there. After an extensive vetting process, he began to lead fellowship groups on The Row in East Block.

The Death Row chapel, situated at the end of the cellblock, was a converted shower area the size of two small bedrooms reinforced with grade steel panels. An always-present armed guard walked a raised gun rail that circled the space. 

To the front of the chapel was a secure area with a podium for his Bible and from there, behind a screened panel, he lead the fellowship, bringing the word of the Lord to less than a dozen men at a time.

For his flock were three old wooden benches bolted to the floor and three black isolation cells at the back for segregation. Officials separated the men based on gang affiliations, crimes, and other factors.

Mr. Rice said that bringing fellowship to those isolated from the rest of the world gave them a chance to foster a sense of purpose, a connection to the rest of humanity.

He added that it is important to see people for who they are now and not to define them by their worst moment in life.

“Some of those men have been living in society’s shadow for more than 30 years,” he said. “I wasn’t there to judge them. I was there to help them build their personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

After decades of community service, the married couple of nearly six decades said it is with mixed emotions they are moving out of state. “It’s like leaving our family,” Mrs. Willis said.

Since finding each other on the first day of college in 1965, the couple said they built a life together that has always centered around their faith.

Mr. Rice said the foundation of a solid union starts with Christ at the top. He believes that by focusing on something greater than oneself, the relationships throughout a person’s life will continue to strengthen and grow.

“If success is measured by the care a person has shown to others, then the number of people Linda and Willis Rice have influenced makes them the most successful people I’ve ever met,” said SQ resident Michael Fangman.