Senior Connections Senior Connections Mar 2019 | Page 12

Rod Bell shares happy memories
of 40 years at Humphrey
Elementary in Waverly
JAN ENGELHARDT
Correspondent
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The Center for Senior Behavioral Health provides
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the quality of life for our older adults and their families.
The polar vortex cancelled school at Humphrey El-
ementary in Waverly Jan. 29, leaving the halls empty
and quiet, but, despite the brutally cold weather, Rod
Bell was there to watch over the building as he has
done for nearly 40 years. Bell said simply, “This was
my building.”
However, Feb. 1, Bell began a well-deserved retire-
ment from his work as a custodian with the Howard
Lake-Waverly-Winsted School District.
Sitting in the lunch room, Bell recounted how he
was hired by the HLWW schools in the summer of
1979 as a grounds keeper, a job “which I never actu-
ally did,” he commented.
Instead, he worked the summer to help get Hum-
phrey Elementary ready for fall classes. That summer
position led to Bell’s longevity within the district.
Bell has seen generations of students and staff pass
through Humphrey Elementary. “So, I’m on my 4th
principal and my 6th superintendent,” Bell said. “Ac-
tually, one of the paras who works here, her husband,
he was my helper, my summer help when he was 16,
and now he has a daughter who is a junior in college
... I had a little girl say the other day, ‘My dad remem-
bers you.’”
According to Bell, the best part of his job has been
his relationship with the staff.
the quality of life for our older adults and their families.
Avenue South / Litchfi eld, Minnesota 55355 / www.meekermemorial.org
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Senior
– Rod Bell, longtime elementary school custodian
“I never felt I wasn’t appreciated ... I’ve become
part of a family, per say. I never kept myself off to
the side ... I don’t eat lunch at my desk. I’m in the
lounge ... The kids come and go, but a lot of the staff,
you see them for years. The camaraderie, we have a
lot of laughs here ... a lot of bantering ... I don’t feel
like work for them. Like I told Jen (Principal Jen-
nifer Olson), ‘I feel like I work with you, instead of
for you.’”
Bell’s upbeat personality and his generosity with
his time explains why he will be so sorely missed at
Humphrey.
“They’re all worried now about who is going
to make the coffee in the morning ... The guy who
is going to replace me, he doesn’t drink coffee, he
doesn’t make coffee, so who’s going to make the cof-
fee? They’re just little things, you know, that you do
... When they ask for stuff, I go, ‘OK.’ I don’t say,
Quality
Care
&
Quality of
Life
Hospital [phone] / Center for Senior Behavioral Health [phone]
612 Sibley Avenue South / Litchfi eld, Minnesota 55355 / www.meekermemorial.org
12
‘There isn’t a day you come here that
you don’t laugh.
I thought that was pretty important’
Connections March 2019
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