|
By Roger Shuler
Richard Brent stands on the roof of UAB’s Biomedical Research Building II, looking over the security barrier at the street scenes five stories below. The view would put a knot in the stomach of anyone with even a hint of acrophobia, but Brent and his crewmates on the UAB high-rise window cleaning unit do not seem to be fazed.
It was a different story 25 years ago, when Brent started out in this line of work. His crew was installing windows on top of the Daniel Building on 20th Street South downtown, using a swing-stage scaffolding system anchored to the building’s roof. “That was going to be my first time on a stage, and the other guys on the crew took me right up there to see if I was going to make it,” Brent says. “I was hanging on the edge of the building, trying to step out on the stage. There wasn’t but a foot to go, and the guys were laughing and saying, ‘Go ahead, turn loose.’ But I wasn’t wanting to let loose. Once my foot hit that stage, I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Brent was 24 years old then, and he quickly got over his fear of heights. Now he joins Russell Hallmon and Mike Parker in cleaning windows for all nonhospital facilities on the UAB campus. “We are responsible for 120 buildings,” Brent says. “That’s a lot of glass.”
Dangerous Curves
On a clear spring morning, Brent and Parker are securing two heavy-duty lines that will lower Hallmon to clean the windows of an incropping in the Biomed II building. Brent and Parker shake their heads when they talk about some of the special touches that architects put on buildings. “An architect’s dream can be a window-cleaner’s nightmare,” Parker says.
He points to the ledges at the top of the Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, one block to the northwest. “Those ledges look pretty,” Parker says, “but when we are cleaning the windows, they take us two to four feet away from the building.” That requires the use of a suction cup that attaches to the glass and brings the window cleaner within reach.
A few buildings on campus can be completed in less than a day, but most are washed over two weeks. A few take about a month to complete. “The School of Dentistry Building, the Worrell Building, and the Boshell Diabetes Building are probably the hardest ones,” Brent says. “Whenever a building over 30 years old is remodeled, the air conditioning and electrical work have to be put on the roof, and it can be difficult to maneuver around all of that.”
Dangling above the city, window cleaners develop a special bond. “One of the other guys might aggravate you sometimes on the ground,” Brent says. “But when you’re up in the air, he’s your brother. Your life is in his hands and vice versa.”
As the director of Facilities Support Services at UAB, James Williams supervises a wide range of specialized employees, including commercial cleaners, construction crews, gardeners—and the high-flying window team. “They have a unique skill,” he says. “I don’t think they have any fears. Any time we have work that is more than 10 to 20 feet above the ground, they can get it done.”
Brent points out that many of UAB’s newest buildings are 10 or 12 stories high. “Most people are not going to get out there and do that kind of work,” he says. “A lot of people will go ladder high, or maybe up a couple of floors. But when you step off on that board and look down and there’s nothing but you and concrete, a lot of people say, ‘Uh uh.’”
Sunrise in the Lab
 To take advantage of cooler weather in the summer, the window washers start work at 6:00 a.m.; by then, Carla Dawson is well into her day at the McCallum Basic Health Sciences Building. A building services specialist, Dawson starts at 4:00 a.m. and works until 12:30 p.m. Her domain is the third floor, where research in cell biology is one of the prime activities.
Dawson has worked in the McCallum Building for most of her 12 years at UAB. She quickly adjusted to working around chemicals and beakers and the other essentials of laboratory life. But one element took some getting used to. “There are rats in cages in the labs, and I used to be afraid of them,” Dawson says. “But now I see them and it’s, ‘Well hey, good morning!’”
Cleaning the restrooms is usually the first task for Dawson. Then come the carpet and tile floors, plus dusting. “I like to strip floors,” Dawson says. “That’s my favorite part of the job. Stripping is something we do periodically, but we buff the floors on a daily basis. I just love that fresh waxed look.”
But Williams says Dawson’s role goes well beyond cleaning. “The people in the McCallum Building know and love Carla, and that is so important,” Williams says. “If a customer needs something or has a question, they know they can go to her.”
Foundations from the Past
While Dawson mostly works inside, Sharon Johnson focuses on maintaining UAB’s public face. Johnson is an outside construction supervisor, and on this bright morning, she is leading a team that will install bollards (vertical posts that block vehicular traffic) on 15th Street South.
Campus Services and Grounds once was a man’s world, but that has changed. Johnson is one of three women in the department, and all are team leaders. “Women who like to do this kind of work, in what is traditionally a male field, are usually very good,” Johnson says. “They are passionate about their work.”
There’s no telling what Johnson and her crew might find whenever they dig on the UAB campus. “Recently we were working on the Campus Green,” Johnson says. “We had to dig down quite a bit, and we came upon house foundations. The houses had been gone for some time, but the brick foundations were still there.”
Tim Sullivan, manager of Campus Services and Grounds, smiles when he hears that story. “We find artifacts all the time,” he says, pointing to a railroad spike on his desk. “On another occasion, Sharon and her group were excavating 15th Street, which would become the Campus Green. When the asphalt came up, they ran into a railroad bed that ran down the center of the street. We don’t think it was a streetcar line, based on what we know about the city’s old streetcar system. We can only speculate that it was a coal or iron-ore system that came off the mountain. The rails had been removed, but the ties were there, embedded in concrete.”
Sullivan has been at UAB for 26 years now, starting on a temporary basis a week after he graduated from John Carroll High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from UAB in 1990 and has a deep appreciation for what lies under the surface of the 340-acre campus.
“You often hear it said that UAB’s tradition is relatively short,” Sullivan says. “But we are built upon the generations that came before us. For example, the block that now holds Bartow Arena once was the site of a Catholic church. That history is part of our history.
“You have to remember that UAB was built as part of one of the country’s largest urban-renewal projects. That makes management of our campus quite complex. But it also gives it a richness because we are growing our vision upon the visions of three or four generations before us. Those people laid foundations where we are now building, and that infrastructure is still there.”
Growth Industry
Sullivan oversees a department of 28 people—21 in Grounds and seven in Services. They work out of the Campus Services Facility, which is north of the main campus, at 3rd Avenue South. One advantage of that location, Sullivan notes, is the smell of baking bread from the nearby Merita Bakery.
The department’s 16 groundskeepers are perhaps its most visible employees. Their work ranges from mowing, blowing, trimming, and pruning to assisting with picnics and other special events. “They’re our first line of defense, the ones you see every day,” Sullivan says. “They work in a particular zone on campus, and the group leaders take in information and relay it to us about the service and horticultural needs of the university.”
Those needs have grown much more sophisticated over the past 20 years, and Grounds supervisors Rick McKee and David Lovell deserve much of the credit for that, Sullivan says. UAB now has 69 sites for flower displays.
“Before 1988, there were no flower displays on campus,” Sullivan says. “But Rick McKee has a wonderful talent and a high degree of creativity. He put the first flower on this campus in 1988, and Stan Chesser, our director at the time, let him run with it. And David Lovell does an outstanding job as our turf-grass
manager. Twenty-five years ago, the grounds department here mowed weeds. But these days, we mow turf. A trip down University Boulevard is a testament to the work that David and his team do.”
Sullivan encourages all of his employees, as they travel about campus, to connect with the broader UAB community. “We meet so many talented people who are part of our mission to heal and teach and conduct research,” he says. “It’s a wonderful existence because of that social aspect of what we do. To be a small part of the greatness that goes on around here is very satisfying.”
|
