'Hey, Willie!' Students at Butler Elementary have a janitor who’s always on call

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

The lawn tractor, the one with the snow−removal blade, wouldn’t start in the bitter cold. No matter. Willie Campbell clears the sidewalks the old−fashioned way, with a shovel and some effort. 

The last thing he would want is for someone to slip and get hurt, so he has been shoveling and sprinkling salt at Butler Elementary since 6 a.m., an hour before he is scheduled to start work as head custodian. 

The wind chill factor is 18 below zero and icicles form on his eyebrows, but Campbell’s outlook would be no different if it were 75 and sunny. After making sure the front steps are cleared, Campbell enters the building near the principal’s office. 

School hasn’t yet started, but as he adjusts to the warmth inside, his name is called — the first of hundreds of times he’ll hear it that day. The voice is tiny, barely audible. 

​“Hey, Willie ...” 

Campbell doesn’t yet hear it. 

“... I need you.” 

Campbell looks up to see 7-year-old Thomas Brinkley, sitting at the top of the steps near the office, still wearing his coat, wool hat and backpack. 

“There’s water on the step,” Thomas says, pointing a mittened finger. 

Campbell takes a rag and soaks up the “water,” which turns out to be spilled soda. 

“You don’t want me and my brothers to slip, do ya, Willie? You don’t want anyone to slip in my school,” 

Thomas declares. 

Then the truth sneaks out, the real motive behind the “Hey, Willie.”

Thomas is having friendship trouble. 

“That’s three friends that broke up with me,” he tells Campbell, who has knelt down to listen to the heartbreak that has reached elementary-school proportions. 

“What happened to John?” Campbell asks. 

Thomas admits he’s been playing with Zoe more than John, so his friend said he didn’t want to play with him  anymore. 

Campbell offers some sage advice: “Although he said that, you know what? He’ll be back to play with you.”

“Zoe likes me, and I like Zoe,” Thomas says. It’s quite simple to him. 

Campbell explains that Thomas’ other friends want him to play only with them, but they’ll eventually miss him and want him back in their group. 

“I told them, ‘If you don’t want to play with me, you can’t come to my house and play games when I turn 8,’” Thomas says. 

Campbell tries logic again. This time, Thomas seems hopeful that he’ll make the right decision. 

“Bye, Willie.” 

Campbell frequently serves as a counselor, an adult who will listen and steer kids in the correct path. 

“They come to me and they say, ‘He don’t want to play with me no more.’ I give them some advice. I tell them, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. But you go back out there and play with someone,’” Campbell says. 

Campbell has worked at Butler for 11 years, answering calls for help from both teachers and students. The adults call for him on his two-way radio, the “step−saver” he straps on each morning so he’s never out of touch. The students use the face−to−face approach: “‘Willie, my zipper’s stuck.’ ‘Willie, I got a knot in my shoelaces.’ ‘Willie, I left my belt at home.’ I’ll take care of it. Whatever they need, I’ll do it,” he says. 

His philosophy, no matter where the request originates, is “always a yes, never a no.” There’s just no sense in agonizing over what’s actually in his job description. Campbell is there to take care of everything: the kids, the teachers, the principal, the building. 

“Sometimes I talk to them in their classroom. I’m just a role model. I’m not just here to pull chairs,” he says. 

But the appreciation is reciprocal. If Campbell needs some help moving chairs, all he has to do is ask a teacher, who will offer her entire class to make the chore go quickly. 

In fact, Campbell takes pride in being able to deflect some problems from principal Phyllis Cheaney. He enjoys a friendly relationship with parents, many of whom were introduced to him by the students. 

“They say, ‘Mom, I just want you to meet Willie. I can ask him anything. I can pull him aside and he’ll help me,’ " Campbell says. 

It’s all in the way he speaks to them, Campbell says. He doesn’t “rat them out” to the teachers when he catches them doing something wrong, but he lets them know their behavior is unacceptable. Of course, he believes the same 2 percent of the student population is responsible for most of the problems. 

Often, when a student has gotten in trouble for misbehaving, parents request that their children “work off”their punishment with Campbell. No problem. Campbell puts them to work for a few days. 

It doesn’t seem like much of a punishment, considering that students volunteer left and right to help Campbell and the rest of the staff during lunch. Between delivering forgotten cartons of milk or silverware, Campbell stands near the kitchen where the trays are cleared, reminding students to put their spoons in the proper container. As always, he is pleasant and polite. 

“Thank you. Appreciate it. No line-breaking, no line-breaking. Thank you. That’s the way you do it. Good job.”

Everyone wants a high-five. Campbell spends a lot of his day giving high-fives to students in the hallways. 

The rock salt he had so painstakingly spread on walkways and steps early that morning comes back to haunt him during the day. The salt tracked in with the snow leaves milky stains on the tiled floors and stairs. 

First he heads to the gym before class to make sure all of the puddles of melted snow are mopped up quickly — anything for safety’s sake. As he mops stairs, teachers give him sheepish looks, apologizing for stepping on his freshly mopped steps. 

“Come on down,” he says. “That’s what they’re for.” 

The building is spotless, thanks to Campbell and a crew of night workers. The floors shine. There are no cobwebs, even in the highest corners. A clean building instills pride in the students, Campbell believes, so they are more likely to help keep it clean. 

Campbell is 51 years old, although his age is usually estimated to be much younger. He’s “just like a kid” at heart, though, especially when he’s spending time with his 6-year-old son, Lacorey, who attends Wilcox Elementary. His wife, Mary, works in the evenings, so after school it’s just the two male Campbells, playing basketball, going to the park, tossing the Nerf football. 

Campbell, raised on a farm in Mound Bayou, Miss., was a well-behaved child, minding his father’s rules. 

​“If he asked me to do something, even when I was a teenager, whatever he wanted me to do, I did it,” he says, noting that he even tried to influence his six siblings. “I tried to tell my brothers and sisters, ‘The only thing you’re gonna get is a whoopin.’ Just show respect.’”