Weber State College Comment, October 1989, Page 4 Custodial ‘Supervisor Larry Field, custodial supervisor at Weber State, helps one of the mentally handicapped adults in a special state work program. Field works with the adults every weekday evening. assists hen Larry Field showed up for his first night at work as custodial supervisor of six adults with severe mental handicaps he was a bit apprehensive. “They were all sitting on the lawn in front of the building, and I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into now?’” Field said. The mentally handicapped adults had problems ranging from chronic depression to schizophrenia, and Field, the custodial foreman at Weber State College, had agreed to supervise the cleaning crew at the pleading of mentally handicapped | Maggie May, coordinator of the Utah Supported Employment Program for the Weber Mental Health Center. “Larry was wonderful,’ May said. “He walked in and started working with six chronically mentally ill adults and the program was off.” That was three years ago, and May, who is Field’s sister-in-law, said that even though Utah has offered employment programs to the physically handicapped for a number of years, when she and Field first began there were no such helps for adults with severe mental handicaps. “Before we even knew what job coaching was, Larry was doing it for six of our people,” she said. Job coaching is designed to put caring supervisors with those who have chronic handicaps, she said. In this particular case Field supervises the six adults who clean the Human Services Building at 2650 Lincoln Ave. weeknights for three hours. “It takes a great deal of patience. These people have had a break in their lives and need confidence. That’s why they need someone with patience and understanding,” May said. “It’s tough sometimes especially when they’re hearing voices,” Field said. “When Doug first came he was a basket case—hair down to his knees, wouldn’t talk and heard voices. Sometimes he would ask me to call up the voices and ask them to stop talking to him.” But despite their handicaps, most of the adults perform well and many have gained personal confidence, the two said. Field hired two as workers in the Weber State custodial department, one got married, and one even earned a college degree, they said. “They’re just people with problems, like we all have problems,” Field said. “I’ve developed some very close relations with them.” May said, “I have learned so much about what a person needs to do to maintain these people, and I’ve learned by watching Larry. He’s just made the whole program.” Each of the adults is responsible to be to work on time and is allowed to pick an area to clean, Field said. The workers take pride in the jobs and are seldom, if ever, late or absent, he noted. “A lot of reprimand comes in the form of a joke. They know they’ve been rebuked, but it’s not threatening,” Field said. “They respect Larry, and a lot of them see the importance of maintaining the building. They take it seriously. They have a responsibility,” May said. Field noted that the building is inspected periodically, and any cleaning problems noted have been minor. Recently the contract for custodial services for the building was renewed for two years, he said. “I’ve never been sorry for my involvement. You get a lot out of it, and you just have to give a little, tiny bit,” Field said. Seti cal eee = _ isis nit ea ES Pa eR Se Pe Pe aac See eae Duck disquiet The official mascot of Weber State is the Wildcat, but the ducks of Weber State enjoy more popularity than the small mountain cat could ever hope for. Nobody noticed, for example, when the small shrubs surrounding a statue of the Wildcat were trampled, but the day after. the Standard-Examiner ran a photo of water drained from what’s referred to as the duck pond the college was swamped with calls from worried Ogdenites. “People have been calling all morning,” said Colleen Grimshaw of the college’s information booth after the photo appeared in the StandardExaminer. “They're concerned that by draining the pond we’re hurting the ducks,” Grimshaw added. One caller even volunteered to bring up a “kiddie wading pool” as an interim device until the pond was refilled. But Dean Hurst, assistant to the president and former vice president for college relations, said there is no need for people to get their feathers ruffled. The draining was only a temporary thing to allow for cleaning and repair of fountain equipment, and enough water still ran through the pond to keep the collegiate fowls happy. “They’re the best-fed, best-cared-for ducks around,” Hurst said. The ducks eat algae that grows aplenty on the bottom of the pond, and people supplement their diet with enough bread stuffs to keep the flock ; Ducks are an ingrained part of Weber fat, he said. “They’ve gotten so choosy that sometimes they won’t eat what people bring,” Hurst said. The pond is really a retention basin to catch runoff from the college and surrounding neighborhoods, but Robert Ladd, a former WSC employee, thought ducks and geese would add aesthetic value, so he brought a half dozen ducks and geese from his farm to the college, Hurst said. And ever since then others have followed suit. “People sneak up at night and put their Easter ducklings that have grown into big ducks that messed all over the lawn into the pond,” he said. “We have some four and five generation Easter ducks.” The college also sits in line with ~ flight patterns for migrating ducks, “and every now and then a goodlooking female duck will entice a lazy mallard to stay on.” At one point the flock size swelled State and enjoy more notoriety than the official college mascot. to about 100, which surpassed arbitrarily set enrollment limits for the quackers, and the college sent a small story to the newspapers asking people to adopt a duck, Hurst said. “For some reason people have a strange attraction to ducks. I had calls from all over the United States. One guy in Oregon called and said he would adopt a duck if we would send papers certifying it was in a healthy condition,” he said. The college also tried one year, to use the ducks to feed a large number of families who were without food during Christmas time. Live ducks were delivered to local relief organizations, but no one had the heart to do in the birds, and, not knowing the origins of their would-be feast, the people returned the birds, as gifts, to the college, said Hurst. “A kinder providence prevailed,” he said. Since then the flock has leveled off at about 25. Because the birds tend to wander, the college has added “Duck Crossing” signs to warn motorists, so very few are killed by automobiles, Hurst said. “The biggest predators of our ducks is dogs, but we don’t have much trouble with even that,” he said. One year, however, a man did bring his hunting dogs to the pond to get them ready for duck-hunting season. “Our campus police asked him to leave,” he said. The geese have not been so protected. Geese are, by nature, more aggressive and when one “goosed" a faculty member and others started attacking students, employees and campus guests, they were removed to a local farm, he said. But Hurst noted that, as of late midnight, donors had brought a few geese back into the flock.