B & G

BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS employees: the people who keep Dartmouth's 90 buildings and 175 campus acres looking beautiful and working efficiently. For me, there has always been something fascinating about this almost separate and frequently unrecognized segment of the College. There are also the contradictions: a whole cadre of people who work with their hands in the midst of a place that prides itself on the training of minds. The realities of bluecollar work - punching a time clock, the noon whistle, a union, collective bargaining surrounded by an ivory tower. Anonymity juxtaposed against dedication. Nameless laborers, electricians, painters identified around campus by what they wear or how they look - the fellow with the faded green crusher or the guy missing his front teeth. The people who have worked for the College for 20 or 30 years and still are not listed in any sort of directory, frequently better known by their skill than by their name.

I have wanted to photograph B & G for a long time yet it has always been a bit like entering forbidden territory. I was once a student at Dartmouth and, despite the friendliness of most of the custodians who see students on a daily basis, I recognized even then a healthy irreverence among some employees for the frequently frivolous student lifestyle. This is understandable if you are the person who must come in before dawn on a football Saturday to pick up the litter from the previous night's carousing. Secondly, as a woman entering the B & G shops in McKenzie Hall, I found myself in what may be Dartmouth's last almost exclusively male club. Although there are several women custodians, there is just one woman in the traditional trades, grounds crew, or labor force. In McKenzie, there are lusty pin-ups; the presence of a woman tends to curb blue language and tobaccospitting.

Nevertheless, photograph I did, in McKenzie, the steam plant, and other B & G outposts. As with people everywhere, there were some who would talk all afternoon and others who would simply nod. Some people told me their own stories, others stood by as their co-workers or supervisors filled me in. Almost everyone confessed to working at the College "too long," and a few professed to having flagged down Eleazar when he came upriver.

I heard how the College has chosen not to refill positions as older employees retire, despite increases in the size of the physical plant. I also heard of the number of jobs contracted out and the frequent maintenance that these jobs often require. Mostly, though, I heard ' a tremendous amount of pride in the work that Buildings and Grounds people do for Dartmouth.

Andy Woodward has been hanging out at the steam plant since he was a boy and his father worked there. Woodward began working at the plant after his service in the Navy 36 years ago. When he started, there were 13 people on for just the day shift; now there are only 13 for all shifts. By title a master mechanic, Woodward does all the routine maintenance work - large jobs are contracted out. Of the 13 steam-plant workers, most have been, there for at least ten years and three for over 30 years. As one supervisor summed it up, "Once you make it past the first year, you're here forever it's like your wife."

Lucy Furman has been the custodian in North Mass dormitory ever since women came to Dartmouth ten years ago. Her office in the basement may be the only custodial office at the College with a welcome mat on the outside and enough coffee cups for a few visitors on the inside. One student confessed, "I've lived in a lot of dorms and Lucy's the best janitor I've seen. She's like a mother to us all it's great.

Chet Wilmott, a 25-year College veteran, generally works on refrigeration and cooling units, but each fall he supervises and hoses the initial ice-making at Thompson Arena. The floor is literally hosed down as the cooling units are turned on. The final three-quarter-inch-thick ice will be a result of five hosings and one painting via the Zamboni. During the winter, the arena will be hosed down about once a week.

Rod Richardson (top left) has been working at the College 26 years as a Class A electrician and all along it has been on high-voltage wires. During the time these pictures were taken, a break had occurred in one of the cables from the steam plant to the transformer. Since all the controls are located near the cable, drilling down to the cable must be done with small electric drills - a very slow process. Once the problem is determined, the inch-thick copper cable will be replaced with the assistance of an outside electric company.

Charles Handel (top right) is a steamfitter, a 12-year veteran of the plumbing shop — one of the few shops that has more employees now than when he started. Most of Handel's work is insuring that the steam lines work efficiently - getting enough heat to a far-off dorm without overheating a building in the center of the campus. Currently, he is rerouting the steam lines to accommodate the new Rockefeller Center.

Geneva Conrad has been stapling and stitching Dartmouth cushions for years, ever since her husband, a B & G carpenter who specializes in repairing furniture, brought home the stitching for her to do. When the College established an upholstery shop three years ago, Conrad was, with some logic, hired to work there. The only woman employed in a McKenzie Hall shop, she usually labors in unruffled solitude except for the company of the television soaps she tunes in each afternoon.

As one of two masons on the staff, Stu Fraser (top left) is part of a dying trade at the College. In addition to his masonry work, Fraser is president of Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, a position he has held for 15 of his 29 years at Dartmouth. Fraser also farms part-time at his home in Norwich, where he and his wife are raising 40 sheep and a dozen beef cattle.

One of the two shrub workers at Dartmouth, Leonard LaFlam (top right) laments the increased use of plantings around College buildings without a specified shrub program. Most of LaFlam's work is simply trying to keep up with the maintenance of shrubbery around campus and the College's rental properties. Originally an independent landscaper, LaFlam began working for Dartmouth six years ago, grateful for a chance to work with shrubs. During the winter, he shovels snow - "one of the less appealing parts of the job."

"When I started 30 years ago, I was the only tin-knocker [sheet-metal worker] at the College. Then they added another fellow. Now he's retired, so I'm the only one again. After I leave, I imagine they'll contract the work out," comments Ralph Manson. Here, Manson is remaking a door for a freight elevator at the Inn. "Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't have just gone out and bought a new one but this will be better in the long run.

Rudy Coutermarsh figures he made a mistake 26 years ago when he started painting for the College and walked right up on the swing stage (those swinging boards, attached at the roof, that hold painters and window-washers at above-ladder heights). "Not many who'd walk end to end without holding on. I told them I wanted to work as an electrician or plumber. They told me they'd let me know if anything came up. I guess they haven't had any openings since then."