On the blog, we feature Adria in her new job as a bagger (Being a Bagger, Then and Now), and family emails brought up some memories from Derek and Jen, as they had also been baggers as a first job. That's not the only paralleled employment in Westra family history.
Cooper got a job this year as a junior custodian at the nearby elementary school. Going in after the school day is done, and wiping down desks, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming. Looking at family history, Ate Westra was a custodian at LDS Business College. The page above is from the 1929 school yearbook. Ate was in charge of the "Y" building there. Cooper isn't the only Westra working this way ... Camden (Chris's son, also the fourth boy, same as Coop) cleans at Midvale Middle School in the afternoons.
Grandpa/LaMar also did some cleaning (and more) at the schools in his teens, from his history:
I worked each summer for the Granite School District, starting about age 14. My dad was the purchasing agent. The main offices were in a small two story building on State Street just north of 33rd South. My dad knew everyone at the school district, and got me jobs, first in the Cannery at about 25 cents per hour, and then on the cleaning crew. The crew was made up of 5-6 teachers, and 5-6 young guys like me. We would travel from school to school and clean rest rooms and dough clean walls and ceilings with wallpaper cleaner: soft pink stuff you would wipe over the surface and it would clean the dirt off. We would build scaffolding to get to the ceilings. It got quite precarious in rooms like the Granite High School auditorium. We would be way up there on the scaffold, walking a thin 2 by 8 plank, swinging our arm wildly from side to side. Then we would throw the dough at each other. Then I got jobs on the plumbing crew, installing and repairing sprinkler systems. The last jobs I had were watering new lawns as they were planted. They planted seed, which needed watering every day. I brought up new lawns at Granger High, and several elementary schools: Eastwood, East Mill Creek, etc.
Grandma/Margie mentioned that Grandma Lucille (Grandpa/LaMar's mother) worked in the schools for many years too, although she was a secretary, not on the cleaning crew. When she remarried though, her second husband Vic Burgener was over all the janitorial work for Granite School District.
Cooper learned about his ancestor Ate as he wrote up this report for his history class. One of the most basic things he learned, is that "Ate" is pronounced "Ah-Tay" ... not ate, like the past tense of eat!
