When Larry Neal opened up his first copy of "Unguarded Moments" at that elementary school spring recital, it felt like the end of a journey.
The book, which was published by Truman State University Press in May, is a compilation of Larry's firsthand accounts as a maintenance worker at the former Missouri State Penitentiary. He started writing the stories for the MSP newsletter "The State Pen" around 2000, sharing amusing, often humorous memories with prison employees.
His co-workers had always urged him to turn the stories into a book, but he never thought it would happen. It was his daughter, Anita Neal Harrison, who made it a reality. A managing editor at Inside Columbia's Prime Magazine, she decided to use her skills to edit the pieces into a cohesive narrative with her father's help.
And as Larry stood at his granddaughter's spring program with his first copy, which Harrison proudly presented to her father, it all hit him. The project that had always seemed like a dream to the 63-year-old retiree was in his hands, finally real.
The moment represented a culmination of the months it took to create the book, Larry said, as well as 20 years working in that limestone prison.
"It was so long coming," Larry said. "To actually hold the book and open it up and look at it was unreal."
Stories behind "Unguarded Moments'
Harrison will tell you her father's always been a storyteller.
Growing up in rural Maries County, Harrison remembers sitting around the dinner table and listening to her father's stories from work. Many of the chapters in "Unguarded Moments" were told at that table, and Harrison said they're even better in person.
There's one story that always stuck out to Harrison as a kid. One day at work, her dad took a plunger and stuck it on top of a bald inmates head, hoping to hear a "pop" sound when he ripped it off. However, the tool got stuck - it wouldn't come off, and it ended up leaving a white ring on the man's head.
"I just have these images even as a kid listening to that story," Harrison said. "I can still see what I saw even back then."
But as Larry will tell you, working maintenance wasn't always a pleasant job. He still remembers seeing trails of blood in his first few weeks, the prison floor stained red from a stabbing.
"A guy - he was a staff member but he had been an inmate there - said that when he was in there, before they left their cells, they would wrap magazines around their middle because that would pretty much turn a knife," Larry said. "They just never knew when somebody, for any reason, would try to stab them."
Larry originally started out at the prison because his late wife, Diana Neal, wanted him to get a job with the state, complete with health insurance. His first job was labor supervisor - the lowest position in maintenance. For the most part, he worked with the inmates on various projects, emptying trucks, painting cells and rebuilding walls.
After six months, he was promoted. Along with two other men, he ran the department that dealt with the stability and functionality of the prison's plumbing system. It was here that he met Ed Hanauer, a co-head of the plumbing shop who showed Neal how to bring a little levity into the prison.
Larry said Hanauer was a frequent prankster - he was known to drop ice down inmates' backs and playfully poke them in the ribs. One time, he threw chicken bones into an open ditch and tried to convince inmates it was an old graveyard.
"He was a character," Larry said. "And he really enjoyed getting the inmates fired up ... he was just a big clown."
Soon enough, Larry started pulling pranks of his own, realizing that life inside a prison could be fun. And when someone suggested he write about his experiences for the newsletter, sharing the kind of stories he loved to tell around the dinner table, he saw no reason not to.
Larry had plenty to write about - he worked many jobs in many departments throughout his time in the prison, including chief engineer.
"I started writing once every month about things I remember that had happened," Larry said. "Some of it was funny, some if it was tragic, but most of it was funny."
Everyone around the prison always told him the stories in the newsletter would make a wonderful book, but Larry wasn't sure it would ever happen.
It was a tragedy that ultimately set the project in motion.
In April 2011, just over a year after Larry had retired, Diana died after an 18-month battle with brain cancer. She was 58.
Father, daughter coming together
Diana was the woman with the "magical voice" Larry spotted singing in his church when he was 16 years old. She was the woman he started dating in high school despite their two-year age difference. She was the woman he married the day after he got back from the Navy, wanting to make it official as soon as he could.
So when the brain cancer finally got the best of her, Larry was left feeling paralyzed.
"I just lost my mind; I couldn't hardly stand living without her," he said. "The closest I've ever been able to come to describing what it's like to lose your spouse is like being ripped in half - you've got one arm, one leg and half of your head."
As 2011 dragged on and Larry continued to grieve, Harrison knew she had to do something for her father.
"I thought maybe it would be a good time to start working on this book, give him something to do in the house whenever he can't be outside," Harrison said. "And he actually found plenty to keep him busy anyway, but that was why I did it then."
Together, they started working on "Unguarded Moments," a book that would eventually be dedicated to Diana.
Harrison's main job was organizing the newsletter entries into something cohesive, using an Excel spreadsheet to list the main topics in each piece and how they should factor into the larger story. She also made sure each entry would make sense to someone who has never been inside the MSP. Larry helped Harrison throughout the process, answering her many questions about the prison.
By the time the book was complete and Truman State University Press agreed to publish it, Harrison said she had read some of the stories hundreds of times. Still, she found them amusing.
"They're funny stories ..." Harrison said. "I would still chuckle in places."
Since it was released in May, Larry has heard only good things about "Unguarded Moments." He said many people are recommending to their friends as one of the funniest books they've ever read, coming from a viewpoint that is often forgotten about in prison life.
Jason Offutt, author of "Haunted Missouri" and "What Lurks Beyond," spoke highly of the book in his blurb for the back cover. It offers a "hilarious glimpse of the penitentiary," he wrote.
"When I think of life in a penitentiary, especially one with the reputation that the pen down in Jefferson City had, I think everything is grim," Offutt said. "Reading the book, there was a lot of humor, there were a lot of funny things ... it didn't sound so miserable."
Today, Harrison knows her father is immensely proud of the book. Copies litter his house in Columbia, where he lives with his second wife, Jo Ann Neal, and he almost always has one on him.
And when Harrison sees her father smiling because of the project they both worked so hard on - like she did at that spring recital - it's hard for her to put into words how she feels.
"Proud is the first (word) to come to mind, but it's more than that," she said. "Dad and Mom both encouraged me in my writing from the time I was little, so it's pretty special now to be able to give Dad this book with his stories."