Ashleigh Smith
Art Director
It’s 5 a.m. You’re sound asleep, warm in your sweats and wrapped in a fleece blanket. You won’t be heading to physics class for another five hours. But somewhere in Lewis Hall, third floor, Pam Brooks is busy cleaning your classroom for the coming day.
Your alarm hits 9:30, and as you wander to the bathroom, Brooks is cleaning the mirror, putting the finishing touches on her streak-free shine. She smiles as you walk in, offers a “Good Morning” and asks you how your night was.
At 1 p.m., long after you’ve gone to class, after the last bits of toothpaste and crumbs are gone, Brooks finally heads home.
Brooks is a member of the McDaniel housekeeping staff who not only takes care of her buildings but takes care of the students in them. She calls it “mom advice,” adding that “everyone needs it once in a while.
“I ask how their day is going. If there’s bad weather out I warn them,” says Brooks. “If they have a sad look on their face, I try to cheer them up. Lots of students open up to me very easily,” she adds. “I start talking like they’re my kids.”
“She’s always taking care of us. She’s more than a custodian. One time we left our door open and she talked to us for like 20 minutes,” says Sophomore Rachel Smiroldo. “You can talk to her about anything. I’ll be sad if she ever leaves.”
Smiroldo adds, “She’s kind of mom-like.”
“Pam enjoys being the mom away from home,” says her friend and supervisor, Kay Jones. “If it’s icy out, she’ll tell them to be careful. If it’s freezing out, she tells them to bundle up.”
Brooks is known not only for her friendly demeanor, but she is always trying to reach out to students by helping them feel comfortable in their dorm.
“I try to do little things for everybody. Last year I put out bathroom rugs,” says Brooks. “To give it that ‘home away from home’ feel.”
Some residents recall how Brooks left them a present just before winter break. “She asked us to leave our favorite kind of soap,” says Sophomore Colleen McLaughlin, who resides on the third floor, “and she’d make it into detergent for us. Even the girls who didn’t leave her soap, she made us detergent anyway.”
Jones says, “Pam treats the students the same way she would want her own kids treated away at college. Pam’s attitude at work is great, friendly,” adds Jones.
Brooks says she enjoys getting to meet and to talk to the students. “It’s been a lot of fun,” she says. “I’ve met a lot of nice kids and a lot of nice adults. You’re still all kids to me.”
Brooks also admits what the campus all knows: being housekeeper for a dorm full of college students is not always glamorous.
“Some of those rooms are disasters,” she says. Brooks recalls when a student in Garden Apartments left food in the fridge at the end of the year and unplugged it. “We thought something died!” she exclaimed.
She has also encountered the classics: used condoms, moldy food, messy toilets and showers, and other “lovely, gross stuff.”
Brooks, however, is no stranger to bodily fluids. She has been a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and firefighter with the local fire department for about 13 years. Brooks volunteers in her spare time, which is during the evenings and the weekends, by monitoring her scanner for 911 calls.
Her experiences have ranged from cuts and bruises to heart attacks, where she finds herself “doing chest compressions all the way to the hospital.” Brooks has also been present for car accidents when they have cut victims out of their cars.
It can be pretty nerve-wracking to have to be cut out of your car. “I find in those situations,” says Brooks, “a woman’s voice is more soothing than a man’s, especially if it’s a child.”
One of her most important pastimes, however, is spending time with her family. A resident of Taneytown, Brooks is the mother of three children, ranging in age from 15 to 23. Currently divorced, she also shares two others with her boyfriend.
Brooks started her job here after she left the Westminster Rescue Mission. Jones, who had known her for over four years, encouraged her to apply, and she has been here since. She currently plans to remain long enough to send her youngest to McDaniel.
Brooks says she finds her housekeeping hours convenient for balancing family life. “I’m home when everyone else gets home.”
After work, Brooks likes to “go home and take a nap,” but then she does laundry, makes dinner, or works around the house, doing much of what she does in ANW.
She says she grew up knowing she wanted to be a “housewife and a mom.”
To Brooks, the residents of ANW are just an extension of her family. “I always wanted six kids,” says Brooks. “Now I have a whole building.”