Kenny Torres-Navaro: Someone You Should Know

It’s easy to see results at Exeter, but sometimes it is just as easy to miss the hard work put into achieving those results. Whether it be in the classroom, studying after school, drilling a sport, or keeping the campus clean, everyone has to work hard at what they do. Custodian Kenny Torres-Navaro, affectionately known as Kenny, reminds us of the effort and work required to keep Exeter clean and functioning.Torres-Navaro works as the custodian for Ewald Hall and Gould House, and previously worked in Peabody, Williams and Browning. He has been working at Exeter for six years, and has a tough daily routine. “Every day I come in at seven o’clock, go through the dorm and take out the trash, do the vacuuming, clean the showers and do whatever needs to be done in there,” Torres-Navaro said. “I organize things in the dorm, kitchen area and when I’m done, I just keep moving on to the next dorm.”“My day starts at seven and ends at four,” Torres-Navaro said, acknowledging how grueling a day can be. “It’s a long day, especially in the winter time because of snow issues. We have to stay till six or seven at night, and we come in at six in the morning...Sometimes we get called in to shovel snow. Something happens, and we get a call and we gotta come in and do whatever they ask...The worst time of the year is the winter time because we gotta shovel all the buildings around campus, from start to end.”Yet even in the winter, Torres-Navaro finds his job very enjoyable and the kids respectful. “I don’t have problems with them because I bring myself to the kids,” Torres-Navaro said. “I was a kid before so I’m like c’mon, give them a break. A lot of the kids will come up to me and say ‘good morning, how are you feeling, is there anything you need, can I help you out?’ We talk and joke around, sometimes we take five minutes and play ping pong. I think the kids have a lot of respect for me, and I do the kids, too.”Torres-Navaro finds supervising the students in his dorm a nice way to build a relationship with both the kids and their parents. “I do it because the kids don’t have parents here, and by me doing this, I’m like an active father, I can keep an eye on the kids, and the kids an eye on me. It’s back and forth like that. The parents return and ask me how their kids are doing and I tell them how their kid was all year round. The parents are really good to me and we have a nice relationship.”The kids, too, appreciate Torres-Navaro's sociable nature. “I’ve known Kenny for three happy years. He doesn’t act like faculty… he acts like an equal and messes around with us and overall he’s a fun guy,” upper Jad Seligman said. “He’s always chatting and helping out beyond necessities. The last day of winter he took time out of his very busy schedule to come and have a long talk with me.”Senior Mickey Chao also finds Torres-Navaro's presence to be a real asset to the dorm community. “Kenny is very kind with all the students around the dormitory. He is both our dormitory's custodian, and a friend. He'll often chat with us when he sees us around the dormitory, and is a very approachable guy.” Like Seligman, Chao appreciates Torres-Navaro's hard work. “He's quite busy with his job throughout the day, but he never hesitates to chat,” Chao said.Besides the students Kenny meets in the dorms, members of faculty also value his contributions to the dorm. “I hardly knew Kenny before he came to work in Ewald. I had only talked to him a few times, but I had already noticed he was full of personality. I just had to hear his contagious laugh to know that,” dorm head of Ewald North, Fermin Perez said.“I am sure that Kenny comes across as a person full of sense of humor for students, but also as somebody who wants to make the dorm a good place and have things in order by making students collaborate with him.” Perez personally appreciates Torres-Navaro's positive presence in the dorm. “Kenny is a sensitive man. He has a big heart. He likes to chat and share things about his life as a friend would do. And in my case, he mostly communicates with me in Spanish, which let me see a very natural aspect of him.”Dorm head of Ewald South Kevin Bartkovich shared his thoughts regarding Torres-Navaro's amiability, echoing Perez’s praise. “I met Kenny in my first year at PEA, which was five years ago. I remember sitting down at his table for lunch one day in the Dining Hall. I still recall how kind he was to me, a new employee, and we continued to greet each other in passing around the Academy,” he said.Bartkovich also commented on Kenny’s good will and lightheartedness. “A year later, when Kenny was assigned to Ewald, I felt like an old friend had come to work here. He is consistently cheerful to all he sees throughout the day, brightening our day with his willingness to chat and have a good laugh.”“At the same time, he holds the dorm to high standards of cleanliness, and he lets the boys know when they are misbehaving,” he said. “He wants the Ewald boys to grow into responsible men, and he brings this across to the boys without being harsh. Everyone likes Kenney, and everyone treats him with respect. He is a valued colleague to me, the dorm head, and he is a fatherly influence on the boys. I love having him in Ewald.”Peabody dorm head Ahmed Jebari appreciated Kenny’s consist good attitude in and around the dorm. “The students liked Kenny a lot and they felt comfortable talking and joking with him. He knows most of them by name. He was very friendly with them, but also told about his job and if they were issues that he felt needed to be dealt with.” Jebari also expressed his disappointment when Torres-Navaro left Peabody. “Everyone in Peabody misses him a lot and when I see him around campus he always asks about the dorm, the students, faculty and my family. In his free time he comes sometimes to our apartment and we talk about many issues.”Whether on the scene working to clean up a dorm or chatting away with students and faculty, Torres-Navaro remains a dedicated and friendly member of the Exeter community. As upper Luis Verdi said, “He spends a lot of time with the dorm and is a very nice guy. He is definitely someone worth getting to know.”