At Cullman Primary School, everyone knows whom to call whenever grass needs mowing, floors need finishing, walls need painting, and messes need mending.

Lorene Howell (“The kids call me ‘Miss Lorene!’ she says) is the primary school’s head custodian on staff of only two. The second custodial staff member? “My sister in-law,” Howell laughs. “Sharon Norman Pruett. She’s been here going on two years, and she’s a good worker, too.”

“A good worker, too” implies that Howell herself isn’t shy around working up a sweat — and anyone who’s seen her in action at the primary school would be the first to tell you that’s true. “When I was a kid growing up,” says the Fairview native, “there were eleven kids in my family. We all had to get out and work on the farm. We knew what it was like to work — we used to have to go out and pick cotton!”

Howell’s not picking cotton these days, but the 62 year-old finds plenty to keep her busy on the job. After a 20-year stint working in the lunchroom for the city school system, she moved into her current custodial role at CPS — a job she’s held, and enjoyed, for the past six years.

Lots of people go to great lengths to avoid manual labor, but that’s a trait Howell just doesn’t get. Getting into a rhythm of chipping away at a task, or un-sticking a sticky situation, she says, is both satisfying and therapeutic.

“Whenever I get outside and get to weed-eating or mowing, it seems like it relaxes me,” she confesses. “I love to mow grass. But I do like it better knowing that I’m working around little kids. I don’t think I’d like my job as much if I had to work at the middle or high school! There’s just something about the smaller children that’s just sort of sweet; that makes you feel good about pitching in to help.”

Keeping to the school’s daily cleanup routine is pretty demanding: Howell says the custodial staff has only about a half-hour window, when each class is out for P.E., to sweep, mop, vacuum, and generally tidy up each classroom. There’re also plenty of unexpected cleanup ‘emergencies’ — the kind of messy, unscheduled accidents that nobody plans for. It’s a school, after all, and kids do have a way of getting sick — or just plain getting into mischief.

“Of course we clean up the dirty jobs! The throw-up, the pee, and the poop,” Howell says. “When they call, I come running. It’s not my favorite part of the job, but again, that goes back to being thankful that I’m working with small children. They’re innocent.”

Howell’s often part of the morning welcome line that helps the kids out of their cars and into the school building, a task which had made her a familiar face everywhere on campus. “Sometimes I’ll see one of our kids at Walmart and they’ll recognize me and start waving,” she says. “I’m sure their parents are standing there thinking, ‘Who in the world is that?’

“And then they’ll call out, ‘Hey there, Miss Lorene!’ — and you can see it clicking with their parents…and I just wave right back!”