No matter faculty, staff or student, all members of the University of Tampa community followed a unique path that brought them to this school. Despite race, creed or occupation, it is our stories, however unexpected, that reflect the diverse journeys of us all.
Take Willie Patton for example. Patton was born and raised in Tampa, Fla. Her grandmother raised Patton’s six sisters and one brother in a big house in Bellman Heights, the neighborhood where she still resides.
“She was my role model,” Patton looked up and said. “Addie Lee Coleman, she was beautiful. I miss her.”
Her grandmother was born in Alabama, then moved to Georgia where she had Willie’s mother. She then came to Florida where she worked as a nanny for white families, ironing, cooking and cleaning.
“One of them was so nice,” she recalled. “She would give my grandma food and she’d give it to us and we were so thankful.”
She said that they often relied on the generosity of strangers. Her neighbors would save bottles for them and all of her siblings would go door to door with a wagon collecting them so they could trade them in for money and get themselves something to eat.
“We were poor and we still poor,” she smiled. “At the time I was angry. I learned how to ride a bicycle by using my friend’s bicycle; we couldn’t even afford a bicycle. Now I understand it was more important to keep the family together, roof over our heads and have food.”
She recalled times that she would go to the ice skating rink with her family and watch others skate for fun.
“It’s a curse being black.” She paused after that. “No it’s hard it really is, but it made me a strong black woman.”
She began telling the story of her life of hard work. “Well see, I worked in the fields. I started when I was about 8-years-old, picking tomatoes, oranges, potatoes, any kind of fruit.”
Even though her mother “didn’t have time for kids” she still had control over them. “My mother would pull us out of school for two or three weeks at a time to go work in the fields. Sometimes we’d go up to Virginia and pick strawberries. We’d take a school bus and live in these ‘camps’.”
She said she saw everything there, people being beaten up, stealing, fighting, and raped. “Then, we’d be two or three weeks behind in school and then people would look at you and think you’re stupid, and the teacher asks you a question and you don’t know. It was hard. That’s why I quit school when I was about 13 or 14. I just got tired of it.”
It was in the fields where she met her only husband. They got married when she was 15 years old and he was 23. They divorced later because he was “one of the crazy ones.”
“Now looking back, I don’t think it was love,” she said. “I wanted to grow up so fast. See, I never had my own bed, even when I was a teenager. We’d share a small bed and you’d wake up with someone’s arm on your face.”
Patton started working as a housekeeper at the University of Tampa back in the 1980s for about eight years. For a decade she held a factory job operating a machine that packaged thousands of loaves of bread a day. She came back to UT after the closing of the Wonder Bread factory more than two years ago. Before that she worked two eight-hour shifts peeling shrimp to support her family.
She said, “I’m a jack of all trades. I’ve done a little bit of everything.”
Patton starts her mornings Monday through Thursday at 7 a.m., cleaning bathrooms in Urso, Austin and Vaughn’s first floor.
“You know I never really thought about counting [how many toilets she cleans],” she said. “I just don’t want to start thinking about how many I got to do, just rather go and do it.”
Later she said she cleans 75 bathrooms in four days during weekdays. “Every dorm has about two maids, sometimes if one doesn’t show up you got twice the work.”
On Saturdays she drives about four miles to get to campus at 8 a.m., sometimes to learn that she’ll be doing all of the work alone. She admits, “Truthfully though I’d rather do my work by myself.”
Patton empties the trash, disinfects, sweeps and mops in McKay, the security building and Stadium.
“I love my job. They call me a clean freak,” she said, laughing. “I just love the smell of clean, boy it smells good.”
Everyday when working she wears a blue uniform with a white undershirt. Under that, blue gloves, and black pants with black shoes all provided by UT. “That’s a blessing,” she remarked. She also wears a back brace, “Otherwise my back hurts from bending down and with it I can work up a storm.
“When I was being brought up I used to say I’d never clean anybody’s toilet when I was grown. Be careful what you say,” she said as she flushed down the toilet bowl cleaner, “Because now I love it.”
Students walk by and see her blue uniform and yellow cart. Her eyes widen when she says hello to them while she mops. “I love my students,” she says. “If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have a job. And when I’m not around they say ‘I’ve missed you!’ I see my students more than my family, so they are like my family.”
Patton is a mother of three, two girls and one boy; a grandmother of 14 and a great-grandmother of 15 children, the youngest being 6-month-old twins.
“I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like to,” she said. “I hope to retire in maybe five years, hopefully, and work with children here [at UT] for a couple hours a week in housekeeping and as a temp cook.”
She lifted her shirt slightly and showed me the back brace she wears to work to keep her back from hurting. She said, “I’m getting old, I’ll be 59 in January.”
Brittany Moulden can be reached at brittany.moulden@spartans.ut.edu.
I remember this lady! Very sweet soul…n she does treat you like family.
Thank you for this article. I agree with Mrs. Patton, our students are
like family and without the students we wouldn’t have a job.