Texan Mosaic

Editor’s note:  Students in COMM 1318 Photography 1 supplied the photos for this story.  Their names are on their photos.  Students in COMM 2311-601 News Writing contributed to the story by reviewing quotes and offering a lead. Featured photo by Garrett Nowlin/COMM 1318

On any given weekday, you might spot SPC Groundskeeper Norma Mendoza working outside on the Levelland campus. 

“I love the outside,” Mendoza says.

On this particular day in September she is wielding a weed eater and broom to attack the flower beds near the new science building.

In a quieter moment, Mendoza says she’s excited to get a new brick. 

What she’s talking about are the bricks that show SPC employees’ names and years of service. They are placed as pavers into the sidewalk in Founders Plaza on the Levelland campus.  Employees are eligible to start getting them after 30 years of service.

Mendoza already has several. Her next one, her last, will show she’s been at South Plains College for 50 years. Human resource officials confirm she is the employee who has the most years of service at SPC.

She plans to retire in January.

She admits she’s seen a lot of changes over 50 years’ time.

“Overall, like our working equipment, oh, man, it’s so easy now,” she says. “We have a lot of equipment to work with. When I first started we didn’t hardly have anything. We had an old truck and maybe one scooter.”

When Mendoza started at SPC, she says she didn’t think about how long she would stay. 

“I didn’t know there was a college,” she says, “until ‘75 when I came to look for a job.”

She says her job duties change every day. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Every day is different. That’s why I didn’t want to be a custodian because everything’s the same.”

Mendoza says she and the other 10 or so members of the outdoor groundskeeping crew will start putting up Christmas lights in October.

According to SPC Grounds Supervisor Brian Gerstenberger, the grounds crew is responsible for anything you see if you walk outside of a door on a building onto the outside property anywhere on campus.  That includes everything from grass, trees, and flowers, to buried lines and brick projects.

Gerstenberger has been Mendoza’s supervisor for 12 years.

“Grounds guys have come and gone,” Gerstenberger says, “but she’s pretty much stayed here since I can remember.”

Gerstenberger says Mendoza will be hard to replace.

 “One of the things that Norma has a very good knowledge of is our annual flowers and the flower beds,” he says.  “So, she kind of typically takes over that and takes care of that.”

When asked what she will miss about SPC when she retires, she answers without hesitation. 

“The kids,” she says. “Because I help a lot of them. I’ve helped them in any way I can with food, with anything.  I take them home with me if they need a place to stay.”

In 2015 the Lubbock Avalanche Journal published an article about Mendoza’s 40-year celebration at SPC. The article explains Mendoza donated thousands of dollars to the SPC Family Scholarship and opened her home through the years to assist dozens of SPC students who lived miles away from their own families.

“Christmas time,” Gerstenberger says, “she brings in 4 to 10 kids into her home that don’t have a way or place to go for Christmas or Thanksgiving.  She serves them.  She’s a very strong, good- hearted person.”

Mendoza is the only woman on the SPC outdoor grounds crew.  She’s worked with David Gonzales for more than 20 years now. He calls her a “hard worker”.

“She already knew a lot when I got here,” he says. “And she’s always thinking about what needs to be done.  She pushes me a little bit.” 

Mendoza admits 50 years is a long time.

“But I don’t feel like I’ve been here that long,” she says, “because I enjoy being here.”

In fact, now that she is approaching the end of her career, she has some advice for those who may be just starting their own.

“If you’re going to go look for a job,” she says, “be sure that you’re a blessing to them and not just going there and try to make the money and wait for the weekend or whatever.  You know you have to enjoy what you do.”

 While it may not seem like it’s been 50 years this January, the bricks in the Founders Plaza will tell a different story.  She has plans for where the last one will go.

“They make you two,” she says, “so I built a fence at my house and right in front I put my 30, 40, whatever bricks that I have for the years. I told my daughter that way nobody’s going to throw them away or they don’t know what to do with them. They’re going to be in my fence all the time.”