IONIA, MI - As Cole Williams worked with youths at the Kent County Juvenile Detention Center, he asked 24 boys how many of them had a father who was locked up and absent at some point in their lives.

Seventeen of them raised their hands.

Williams was blown away, and he was determined to make a difference at improving relationships between fathers and sons, something he didn't have when he was growing up.

Williams took that idea and developed a program based on his own experiences as a single father to the prison system, where it's been met with an enthusiastic response by men who are behind bars and faced with distant or strained ties with their children.

The 12-week "Son to a Father" program at Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia meets each Thursday, and takes the inmates on a journey of self-discovery on what type of father they had been and how they relate to their children now. During 90-minute meetings, the inmates talk and work toward the future.

The class struck a chord with John Murphy, an armed robber who has been in prison since 1992. A father of five, Murphy smoked marijuana, drank alcohol and used foul language in front of his children, who are now grown.

Murphy, whose earliest release date is in 2025, hopes he can use the instruction to re-connect with his adult children before and after his departure from prison.

"It's not every day you have a program like this in prison," Murphy said. "I wish we had more classes like this to help us to transition to going into the community."

Similarly, Jeff Purchase, who is due for release in nine months, said his experience with the class has brought him closer to his children.

"I see the happiness in my children and that's a better high than any drug," Purchase said.

Williams, who was 16 when his son Nate was born, is gratified by the response to lessons he learned raising his biological child and six foster children.

"We wanted to create a curriculum that spoke to relationships of fathers and their children," Cole Williams said. "Fathers are superheroes; they just don't know that they are."

As part of the program, the men write what Williams calls a "family plan" for what they want to do when they are released. Darlene Obrecht, executive director of the Criminal Justice Chaplaincy, said the group does its best to help the men implement their plans.

"The men understand the impact their choices have had on the kids and how they can have a more positive impact on them from what they are at," Obrecht said.

When Williams launched the program, he said wanted to have his son beside him, helping him with the class.

"There's this huge perception that African American males are not present, are not involved. We are absent," Cole Williams said. "Having my son come in was super important because he would be a living testament to one, our bond, but two, a living example they could have, too."

A father himself to a 2-year-old son, Nate Williams said he hopes to instill what he has learned from his own father and from the encounters with the men in prison into his own child.

"It's really shaped me and molded me into the person I am today to be able to come in here to speak to these men in prison," Nate Williams said. "I hope to be an example for the men in here, that they can work with their sons and daughters and hopefully take parenting and fathering so serious that they never want to come here again."