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01/18/2017 07:00 AMMany people who find themselves too busy to do good works in their spare time at least try to be a positive influence in their day jobs. Rudy Torre, who works at Jeffrey Elementary School, more than succeeds at that goal.
In her email nominating Rudy as Person of the Week, the school’s principal, Kathryn Hart, wrote, “Rudy Torre is the head custodian, and spending time with him is a reward for many of our students. Rudy dedicates his time to helping students in grades K-4 by involving them in various tasks such as setting up for special events, cleaning up chairs, and working on special projects with individual children. He reads to the students, dresses up for special events, and still manages to keep the school in good condition. He is truly a positive role model in our school who goes far beyond maintaining the facilities.”
We’re quoting Ms. Hart because Rudy is so reluctant to talk about himself. He says there are many other staffers at Jeffrey who should be profiled before him.
“I know the credentials of some of the individuals here that deserve to be Person of the Week more than I do,” he says. “I’m just a regular guy, you know?”
But he’s a regular guy who makes an extra effort when it comes to the children at Jeffrey.
“Every morning,” he says, “I try to get to the buses. Every morning I get greeted, like ‘Mr. Rudy, how are you?’
“I get some high fives, some slaps, handshakes. They’ll show me something if they’re bringing something in.”
For the school’s Read Across America event last year, Rudy put on a big black hat and dark glasses and read from the children’s book The Custodian from the Black Lagoon. For the book drive, which had a nautical theme, he dressed up as a pirate. (He already had the beard.)
“I try to get as much involved as I can here,” he says, “and I feel honored that they ask me.”
As Ms. Hart wrote, for the students, helping Rudy is a reward.
“I try to involve the kids as much as I can,” he says. “You know, some kids may want to get out of class a little bit.
“So I try to get them out of class to give me a hand setting up chairs, breaking tables down, just helping out during cleanups and setups during the day when I’m here.”
Rudy spreads his attention around judiciously.
“After a while,” he says, “you get to know who’s having a good day, who’s having a bad day, who might need an extra hello, you know, a little pat, ‘What’s going on, how are you?’”
Rudy tries to brighten people’s days with humor. He got into the habit of giving a big daily sendoff to the cafeteria workers, in the manner of a smarmy game-show host.
He would stand on a milk crate and say something like “Hey, ladies, you did a fabulous job today, from the home fries to the pizzas, to the chickens, to the desserts, and until tomorrow…” Then he would blow a big kiss, saying, “Mwah!”
The kids in the cafeteria began to demand that Rudy give them a similar sendoff, complimenting them on how well they had done during lunch.
“To bring smiles and laughter into people’s life on a daily basis,” Rudy says, “that’s self-gratifying in itself. That’s a reward in itself for me.”
But Rudy, who has been at Jeffrey a little more than two years, knows that his job isn’t all fun and games.
“My official job here is maintaining the building, keeping it safe as can be, clean as it can be,” he says.
He credits the night custodians, led by Rick Richau, also known as Mr. Rick, with making a big contribution.
“They’re great at what they do,” he says.
Rudy brings the same positive attitude to his part-time job, as a housecleaning porter at the Grimes Center, a rehabilitative-care facility on the St. Raphael’s campus of Yale New Haven Hospital, where he used to work full-time.
While there, he tries to cheer up the patients. He especially enjoys working on holidays.
“People need to hear laughs and jokes,” he says, “whether it’s the holiday such as Thanksgiving, and you go in after they’re serving lunch, and you say, ‘What’s going on? How’s the steak?’ I know they have turkey.
“It’s knowing who needs to be cheered up,” he says.
If Rudy is cleaning a patient’s wheelchair, he might tell him, “I’m going to go pimp it out. I’m gonna put some lights on, gonna Armor All the wheels, put a new air freshener on, you know, make it look nice for you.”
Rudy’s two jobs overlapped when a Jeffrey colleague was in a Yale New Haven Hospital recovering from hip surgery.
“I found out where she was and gave her a little rap on the door,” he says. “Because she’s a fan of Elvis, I just gave her a little ‘Suspicious Minds.’ She was in awe.
“Her daughter and her grandkids happened to be in the room,” Rudy adds. “They were a little taken aback.”
Rudy repeatedly mentions the importance to him of family and friends.
“All through trials and tribulations in life,” he says, “my mother is truly the rock. She’s a rock. You know, when I’m not around, she’s there. When she needs me, I’m there. When my cousins need me….Family and friends—that’s what it’s all about.”
Rudy, 48, was raised in New Haven and East Haven. His mother worked in the office of an OB-GYN; his father was a carpenter by trade.
Rudy attended both Catholic and public schools. After high school he went to work for H.B. Ives, a hardware manufacturer, in the company’s factory in the Wooster Square neighborhood.
“I started there when I was 18,” he says, “worked myself up, within a year became the youngest lead man there.” (A lead man, he says, is more or less a supervisor.)
After Rudy had worked at Ives for 22 years, the factory closed.
“I would probably still be there,” he says, “but fortunately things happen for a reason. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to start at St. Rafael’s and start a career there, apply that knowledge that I had there to bring here, along with my supervisory skills.”
Rudy started working for Madison as the night custodian at Daniel Hand High School, hoping to become a head custodian at one of the public schools. While applying to work for the town, he kept bugging the then-chief custodian, Maurice Masse.
“He probably got tired of hearing me call,” Rudy says. “I kept calling and calling.
“I guess being overpersistent does work,” he says. “If you want something bad enough, you have to dream, and you have to go after your goals.
“Maybe it’s just a public school,” he says. “Maybe just to some people it’s a job. It’s not just a job for me. It’s more than a job to me.”
When he’s not working, Rudy, who lives in East Haven, likes to spend time with his relatives.
“My family is strong,” he says, “We’re a very functional, nonfunctionable family. It all comes together. We’re a typical Italian family. We’re all close.”
Asked what the family members do when they gather, Rudy says, chuckling, “Eat. Basically, as you can tell, I don’t miss too many meals.
“We catch up on things,” he adds. “You tell stories. We laugh.”
Every year, Rudy says, his mother leads a family-wide clothing drive. They distribute the clothes before Christmas on the New Haven Green.
Rudy prefers not to give too many specific details about his family life, partly because singling out relatives could be a problem.
“If I mention certain ones,” he says, “because I come from an Italian family, they’ll get a little upset because I left somebody out.”
That aside, everything he says about his personal life is positive.
“I can’t overextend how important family and friends are to being supportive of my work ethic,” he says. “When I’m working on holidays, we’ll celebrate the holidays the day after or the day before. Everybody—we all come together.”
Rudy gets a similar feeling of support from the students at Jeffrey, both inside the school and out.
“I’m not saying that I’m the greatest,” he says. “I’m not saying I’m this most famous athlete, but you know, I walk into let’s say a Dunkin’ Donuts, or I walk into another school, I feel like a rock star. ‘Hey, Mr. Rudy! What’s going on! There’s Mr. Rudy!’”
His grown-up colleagues at Jeffrey make him feel the same way. One year, he says, his name was left off the monthly list of staffers’ birthdays. Nonetheless, when he walked into his office on his birthday, it was fully decorated for the occasion.
“They wished me happy birthday,” he says, “and the statement I made that day is ‘Every day for me here at Jeffrey is my birthday.’
“Happy holidays? Every day is a happy holiday for me.
“Happy new year? It’s a new year every day to come in here to work.”
To nominate a Person of the Week, contact Tom Conroy at t.conroy@Zip06.com.