MANSFIELD — Larry Stewart never got to attend the giant pumpkin contest that bears his name.
But his daughter, Sgt. Ruby Waltz, believers her dad would be proud to see the way it brings people together.
Mansfield Correctional Institution hosted its fifth annual Larry Stewart Giant Pumpkin Challenge on Wednesday.
It all started with a conversation between Waltz and her dad.
“We were coming out of COVID. Morale was really down. Everybody was just over it,” said Waltz, who has worked for the Ohio Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for more than three decades.
“I was talking to my dad about how bad morale was and he said, “Well, why don’t you challenge the other institutions to a giant pumpkin show competition?”
Waltz grew up near Circleville, which hosts a pumpkin-themed festival every year.
Waltz’s father died two weeks before the first contest in 2022. Her coworkers surprised her by naming the event in his honor.
“I bawled like a baby,” she said.
Wednesday’s contest concluded with a lunch for correctional employees, who enjoyed chili and homemade pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie, made with fruit from MANCI’s community garden.
“The institutions are spread out statewide and being given the time to be able to come up and do something like this, that’s a privilege,” said Bryan Ray, the maintenance director at Lebanon Correctional Institution.
“I think it gets people pumped up about stuff, and we get to meet people that we wouldn’t normally meet.”
Winning pumpkin was a whopping 311 pounds
Four institutions entered pumpkins this year, possibly because it was a bad year for growing due to heavy rain.
Waltz said there are typically between six and nine prisons that participate, though she’s invited prisons statewide to compete.
Mansfield Correctional Institution took third place with a 55-pounder. Ross Correctional Institution’s second-place pumpkin was a whopping 84 pounds.
But there was no doubt from the beginning who the winner would be.
It took four men, a small net and a forklift to move the prize-winning pumpkin from Lebanon Correctional Institution to the scale for its official weigh-in.
Ray grew the 311-pound beast with help from several inmates at Lebanon.
“I was in that patch every day,” Ray said. “I had one (inmate) that had never grew anything and he was pretty excited about it.”
Gardening allows inmates to develop skills, give back to the community
Most prisons that compete involve inmates in the growing process. They help with planting seeds in the spring, weeding the beds and rotating the ripening fruit to prevent rot.
Waltz, who runs a community garden at MANCI, said growing vegetables gives incarcerated individuals a sense of pride.
“The inmates are really enthusiastic about it. They are very actively involved,” Waltz said. “They’re learning to take care of something besides themselves.”
Waltz said some growers have taken the loss of their produce personally.
“When something happens to the plant, they actually cry. I’ve had them cry on me because their plant didn’t make it,” she said.
MANCI donated more than 7,400 pounds of produce grown in the community garden to Matthew 25 Outreach Center this year.
Jeff and Michelle Theil, who both work at Ross Correctional, said developing gardening skills inside the prison walls can help inmates find a sense of community even after they leave.
Jeff said growers aren’t stingy with advice and will even share seeds with their competitors.
“People leaving incarceration need a community,” Michelle added. “You learn so much from pumpkin growing — not just growing pumpkins, but life lessons.”
