The guardians

Clemson University is a busy place with more than 35,000 students and employees. The hustle-and-bustle has an ebb and flow to it, like a living sea. Waves of activity oscillate between classes, school days and semesters. The campus never sleeps, but there is a serene time between night and morning when the University is as close as it gets to being still. When even the birds are quiet.

These are the hours the University belongs to the custodians.

Their day begins in the dark, at the 4:45 a.m. “Safety Growl” meetings in Freeman Hall and the Central Plant building, where they check in with each other and conduct safety training before dispersing into the predawn coolness to start their shifts in one of the 126 buildings (and counting) on campus. The work is done this early because it’s the only time the buildings aren’t full of students and professors.

“I like the instant gratification of cleaning,” says custodial staff member Pamela Jaques, who is responsible for offices in the historic Trustee House in West Campus. “There’s good days and there’s bad days, of course, but I love the people I work for, and I like the hours.”

Jaques, whose daughter, Jessica Justice, also works in Facilities custodial services, often comes in even earlier than most, at 3:30 am, so that she can return home to care for her ailing mother. By the time she finishes her shift, the sun is up, and the squirrels are out. She loves watching them scamper and play as she walks back to her car, greeting students as they set out to the first classes of the day.

“I always say ‘Good morning’ to them,” says Jaques. “You might make someone’s day. You never know. At first, some of them look at me like, ‘Stranger danger!’ It takes me a while to break some of them down. But when you see someone every morning, you learn their faces, and you get to know them.”

Defining care

If you look up “custodian” in a thesaurus, its synonyms include “protector,” “defender,” “guardian,” and “champion.” Likewise, the efforts of these team members extend far beyond the offices and classrooms they maintain, as does their sense of responsibility.

Wanda Smith, an operations manager for custodial services, has been at Clemson for 32 years and says she takes great pride in the work and feels a meaningful kinship to the students and staff she serves.

“You never know who you may affect and in what manner,” she says. “I have four kids and whenever they go off to school, I hope somebody will take care of them like we try to take care of the students here.”

Smith herself is another example of how Clemson’s custodial staff spans generations. Her mother, Roxie Knotts, worked in Lehotsky Hall for 26 years. Knotts retired in 2003, and Smith still runs into professors in Lehotsky decades later who remember her.

“Custodians take ownership of their area once they’re in it,” says Smith. “That was my mom.”

The custodial team also encompasses generations amongst itself, with the current staff running the age gamut from millennials to Vietnam veterans.

Relationship building

Reggie Hawthorne ’90, M’94, director of custodial and recycling services, says his employees embrace a lofty set of ideals.

“The people on my team truly are what makes this University,” says Hawthorne. “But I wouldn’t say that a custodian starts the position feeling that way. It’s a job, and they commit to taking care of their building. They don’t know that they are in a position that can change someone’s life.”

But relationships with their co-workers and clients changes that for many, he says. “They come to know what’s going on in their clients’ daily lives and how they feel, and that’s the point when the job takes on a different meaning. You might not think of a custodian as an ambassador, but that’s exactly what they become.”

Smith says she can think of innumerable instances where the relationships between her staff and their clients have endured for years, even decades.

“I got a phone call last year from a graduate who was looking for a custodian that worked here probably 15, 20 years ago,” says Smith. “All the students who lived in his residence hall were having a reunion, and they wanted him to be there. That kind of thing happens all the time.”

Hawthorne, who started at Clemson as the manager of Clemson House and has been with the University for 32 years, says the 198 custodians on his team are a humble bunch, unsurprisingly, and thus don’t tend to broadcast themselves as stewards of the Clemson Family — so he makes it his job to sing their praises.

“As director of this program, I know how important their jobs are and how important those relationships are,” he says. “I see it time and again, like when students introduce their favorite custodian to their parents. That kind of says it all, doesn’t it? And I know a million stories like that.”

At the end of the day, custodians are the caretakers of our most sacred spaces, putting a warm human touch onto hard surfaces. And besides, somebody has to wake up the birds.