Keeping it clean

Often, the least acknowledged stand unassumingly as the most influential. Custodians, the least acknowledged of the least, rarely receive recognition and often become the shadows of our school. They speak when spoken to “just do [their] job,” as one explained. Their elusiveness seduced me into writing this story. I wanted to know their story.

Judy Stubblefield

Meet Natalie Louis.

Born and raised in Acworth, Louis watched the Acworth-Kennesaw area wallow in racism and witnessed it rise to social liberation. “Those times were  bad,” she says. “I was born around the time when blacks were just able to move up in the world. I crossed the line.” After 25 years of working with Corporate America, life led Louis to custodial work with Cobb County School System where she has remained for eight years and counting. “It’s a job and pays good money.” Though content with her current occupation, Louis says a profession in cooking or fashion remains a forgotten dream of hers.

Judy Stubblefield
Meet Alex Landing.

Nostalgically enchanted by being submerged in a time capsule from her teenage years, 22-year old KSU senior  Alex Landing marvels every day at North Cobb’s transformation since she graduated in 2011. Four years later, Landing proclaims Melanie Shelnutt’s psychology class yielded the greatest impact on her life. She is now a soon to be psychology major and history minor. Working as a custodian in addition to being a full time student, Landing’s mother, and fellow NC custodian, remains her greatest inspiration and motivation through it all: “Man, my mom—I love that woman. She is literally the strongest person I know in every sense of the word. My mom was a single parent and, for pretty much my entire life, she worked two jobs. No matter what, she always made sure that I was happy.”

Judy Stubblefield
Meet Wayne Banks.

Meet Wayne Banks, head custodian and proud father. With roots deeply set in NC, his workplace bears more sentiment than most. “My whole family went here,” he says.  Banks’ wife and two oldest kids are North Cobb alumni and now his youngest is currently attending. North Cobb “feels like home” for him.  Banks has been working at North Cobb for 17 years now and Banks’ wife works at Kennesaw Elementary. In his words, Banks’ kids were “screwed from the beginning.”  “Well, my kids sure hate [that I work at their school]” he says, laughing. “Everything they did[/do] in elementary and high school, we know about.” Before working as a custodian, Banks worked as a manager at the local Kroger until he decided he “had to make a change.” “My kids were growing up and I wasn’t even there to see them,” he said. “When you work in retail, you work all night and and sleep all day—you’re grouchy.”

Judy Stubblefield
Meet Pam Kennedy.

Like many of our custodians, Kennedy, too, has lived in the Acworth area all her life, experiencing 60 years of Acworth and all of its progressive glory. However, her story travels further back in time — to a time most of us only read about in history books. The beginning of the desegregation stands most prominent in Kennedy’s memory:

“I was one of the first to integrate Awtrey middle school. When it first started they didn’t send us all at one time. They sent us in groups and I was in the first group. The teacher, the kids–the majority of them were very prejudiced. They did nasty things to us in class.”

When asked if she could recall one of the worst experiences during that time, Kennedy  explained: “Yes I can. It was in seventh grade. I had my history teacher Mrs. Cunningham—I will never forget that name. We all had a school project and mine was on the plantations and cotton fields. While I was up in front of the class, I noticed the kids were snickering. Her desk was behind the platform where we had to stand on. I sort of turn my head and cut my eye to the side. She was laying down on her desk laughing behind my back. To this day, it still sticks in my mind to the point where I can see her and just envision the whole thing as if it were happening right now.”

She also played a major role in subsiding  racial tensions during her attendance at North Cobb. Kennedy was on the biracial committee created to ease hostility and instigate communication between the races: “A lot of students were not satisfied with the school theme song. Then, the theme song was ‘Dixie.’ There was so much controversy going on that we came up with theme song the school has now. Everyone agreed on that song so that’s where it comes from.”

Judy Stubblefield
Meet Tania Cueves

Meet Tania Cueves, the selfless and motherly Tania Cueves. The Mexico native says her number one dream is to give back what America gave to her.  Before residing in America for 22 years, Cueves lived in an orphanage pre-adulthood. [Though, as a journalist, the logical thing to do would be to ask about her life before the orphanage and how and why she got there. Cueves retreated at my mere mentioning of the subject, so I chose to not ask her and to respect the sensitivity]. She simply expressed that America offers a better life and an abundance of opportunities. Cueves prides herself on her two teenage girls: “Everything I do is for them. My oldest daughter attends this school and sometimes kids make fun of the fact that her mom is a custodian But, I tell her all the time: It doesn’t matter how high or how low your position is, we are all the same.”