Mr. Peterein

Some stories you hear at a young impressionable age stick with you, mold you. One for me was a tale of when President Lyndon B. Johnson in the late 1960’s was inspecting the operational setup at NASA. As he was walking through the halls LBJ viewed a janitor who was cleaning with a mop in his hand with the intensity of the Energizer Bunny.  The President walked over to the janitor and told him he was the best janitor he had ever seen. The janitor replied, "Sir, I'm not just a janitor, I am helping to put a man on the moon." This man had a purpose. He saw the big picture.

I attended Crystal City, MO High School and graduated in May 1975. In all four of my years of attendance Mr. Charles  Peterein was a fixture in the hallways. He was the janitor. I learned from Mr. Peterein that all work matters.

Our teachers and administrators taught us, and taught us well, the academic knowledge found in textbooks. But every school needs that blue collar guy who models personal responsibility - devoted to the most mundane of tasks through the dignity of honest work. Mr. Peterein was that guy. He had a lot of energy—good energy, positive energy. Just a person you wanted to be around.

If we accept the operational definition of leadership as the effect one has on others, then for me, Mr. Peterein rated among the most powerful leaders in the building. And he did it while pushing a broom, toting in the belt loop of his blue jeans a huge ring of keys.

I have heard God called the great janitor of The Universe. If true, then perhaps the problem when things don't work is we keep looking for some guy wearing a tie, instead of the man with all the keys.

One of my Crystal City uncles knew Mr. Peterein well. While I was a high school student, he told me he had no doubt Mr. Peterein could take a car completely apart and flying solo, put it back together. Give him all the materials, my Uncle Pete said, and Mr. Peterein could single-handedly build a house in the backyard. Practicality is a good thing.

An online obituary I found stated that Mr. Peterein liked to tinker with clocks. When you take a clock apart, there's little screws, and pins and wheels with spokes. If you fail to put all back in correct alignment and order, that thing ain't gonna work. Working with clocks is a skill that requires patience as a virtue.  It implies self-control and forbearance.

Mr. Peterein passed away in 2020 at age 95. He was active and engaged until the end. He was honored as the Grand Marshal for the 2019 Herculaneum Veterans’ Day Parade. He was born in 1925 in Sicely. He was a part of the last wave of the Italian immigrants who were so significant in the building of Crystal City. He raised three sons and three daughters and lived to see his great-great grandchildren.

Mr. Peterein was a Poster Child for the Greatest Generation - us Baby Boomers Parents and Grandparents - who tamed the Great Depression and whipped the Axis Powers. He was a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Asiatic Pacific Theater during World War II. Along with his 30-year employment with the Crystal City Schools, Mr. Peterein worked as a dairy farmer. He was a member of Sacred Heart Church in Crystal City, a charter member of the ROMEO club, a 63-year member of American Legion Post 554 and a member of VFW Post 3777.

When each day the bell rang signaling the end of the school day, Mr. Peterein could be found, push broom in hand, leaning against the hallway wall outside of the Wood Working Shop. It was a chaotic daily ritual, the equivalent of catching the last helicopter out of Saigon, students sprinting down the crowded halls bound for the freedom of the parking lot. I often stopped to speak with Mr. Peterien. He had an unhurried cool and a lightness of being that made him popular with students, a quiet man in a noisy place.

Mr. Peterein loved to talk about CCHS Hornet sports. His sons Mike and Bob were football teammates. He always wanted to know how practice was going; is the team ready for Friday night. At the start of my junior season, I was mulling over dropping myself from the basketball team, not sure where I fit in. Mr. Peterein told me, “don’t do it. You will regret it.”

Those of us who came of age in Crystal City in the 1960’s and 1970’s can appreciate the omnipresent glow of 1961 CCHS grad Bill Bradley’s basketball halo that lit the town. Bradley had been an All-American at Princeton University. He scored 63 points in a NCAA Final Four game playing for an Ivy League team. He was a Rhodes Scholar and the captain of the 1964 Olympic Gold medal winning USA basketball team. What hometown would not be button busting proud of such a favored son?

At the time of our talk, 1973, Bradley had just earned his second NBA World Championship ring as a starter for the New York Knicks. 

I don’t recall the exact words, but Mr. Peterein encouraged me to be like Bradley. Here is a paraphrase of our conversation as I recall it: Bradley doesn't have a lot of color, but he's a great defensive player and a heck of a team player. And he seldom makes mental mistakes. His job is do what needs to be done to help the Knicks win.

I now realize Mr. Peterein was imploring me to not only emulate Bradley, but by example, also himself - show up quietly each day and work hard and everything will sort out fine.

I didn’t really want to quit basketball, I just needed an empathetic adult I trusted to validate my effort. It did all sort out fine. For most of my adult life I have chased a bouncing basketball. My life would be much different today if not for that sage advice given to me over a half century ago by the school janitor. The result, a 52 year and counting detour. That was Mr. Peterein, unassuming but unforgettable. He didn’t roar like a lion. He spoke softly and in measured terms—and thankfully on that long ago day I listened.

As we age, change sneaks up on us. In the 1970’s, I had an Afro hair style roomy enough to sleep six. Now, I use a razor in place of a comb, transitioning my look from Billy Preston to Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3. On a morning so clear you can peer into your past, it is nice to reflect back on these somewhat now dim memories of a good man who impacted my development at an age when I can truly only now savor its value.

It takes strength to clean up after others. Mr. Peterein did it with grace.