Officially, David Stough, 49, is a correctional officer at Elmore prison. All week, he wears a name tag and a uniform.

But that doesn't explain why he's back behind the gates Saturday tapping out "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," on a keyboard. Beside him, an amateur gospel band sings and sweats atop a flatbed trailer. Hundreds of men in prison whites listen for words about Jesus and forgiveness through a squealing sound system.

Brother Stough, or Pastor Stough, maybe that's the best fit, though he insists he's not a preacher.

"I consider him more of a friend than an officer," is how Joseph Twarog, an inmate-clerk in the law library, sees things.

The multipurpose man of many titles oversees the law library and general library at Elmore, a 1,200-man minimum security prison in rural Elmore County. He's also in charge of equipment and fire inspections. Stough has worn lots of hats in his long career with the Alabama Department of Corrections. But unlike even the most compassionate of officers, he returns some weekends to try to remind society's outcasts that there is a something more to this life than chow and count, fights and fences.

Committed to the Lord:

"Seven years ago, I committed my life to the Lord. I told him to take me and use me," Stough explains.

Before, he thought, "you come to work in a prison, you've got to be big, bad, tough. You've got to use all the language I don't ever like to hear. You don't have to use that language in prison," he says. "I used to drink a little whiskey, and the Lord took that away from me."

Stough's band, Heaven's Express, starts up shortly before noon in the prison's grassy yard. They set up between the chapel and the volleyball court. Sometimes Stough comes down off the flatbed, microphone in hand, for a solo. Sometimes a garbage stench drifts over from the prison's recycling facility.

Sometimes the prisoners tap their feet. Or clap and sing along.

It's this kind of connection with the outside world that gives prisoners hope, both inmates and staff said.

There's "someone out there really caring, trying to pick you up in the lowest place on the earth," said Ronnie Lee Brown, 48, who grew up in Birmingham's West End, and has been locked up for murder since he was 18.

Brown has known Stough for years, since the officer was recreation director at the prison. Stough's always been one trying to get more equipment, more activities for the prisoners.. "Just so much one man can do," Brown said.

Not all of the men on the yard pay attention. There was also a basketball game going on, and some weight lifting.

Tells them to listen:

Stough asks them to listen to the words anyway. He tells them to give their problems to the Lord. He has problems too, he says.

The singing officer has a practical side, and that's why he's so big on building up his libraries.

"If you can get the inmates education, get them away from alcohol and drugs, I feel that would be a big factor in getting them off the streets," he said.

He pushed for the creative writing class recently started in the prison.

"You've actually got a dozen convicts sitting in a prison setting learning poetry," Twarog said, chuckling.

Twarog and inmate Ogie Hayes, another law library clerk, spend most days with Stough. They keep order in the small library stacked high with legal books and help inmates research their cases.

"He has to deal with all these different attitudes of people who want it their way," Twarog says. "You've got some guys who think they're F. Lee Bailey and they deserve it all."

But Stough has a gentle, diplomatic way of refereeing convict squabbles. "I don't know if I could put my finger on what makes him, because I don't want to diminish the other officers, but he's exceptional in that he really cares about the guys," said Kyes Stevens, the director of the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project out of Auburn, and the creative writing instructor.

Among security concerns, staff shortages and money woes, education is hardly a priority in Alabama prisons.

Education important:

"I feel like I'm faced with all these brick walls and shutting doors," Stevens said. "He's not that way. He says `Let's do it,' and understands that education and musical and creative opportunities are very important in those men's lives."

Elmore's general library is nothing fancy. The floor is concrete, and there are a few metal folding chairs. But there are rows of Readers Digest Condensed Books. There are dictionaries, and encyclopedias, textbooks and some novels. Some of the books were rescued from recycling bins. Most are donated, which explains the eight copies of Wuthering Heights. The westerns are mostly checked out.

Later outside, Elmore Warden Willie Thomas sings along to a hymn about Jesus holding our hands. He remembers Stough in the late 1990s, before his faith was so strong. And Thomas can tell a difference. "I'm sure he probably has a better understanding, a more compassionate understanding, that even though these men are incarcerated, we're all just men."

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