When you are young, you always think about what you will do in the future, but no matter what job you end up having, if it was part of your plan or not, it will always teach you valuable lessons about life.
“You don’t have to settle on one thing until you are ready, you have plenty of time,” Leah Brunton said.
Brunton has been working for 12 years as a custodian for the Wentzville School District. Throughout her time as a custodian, she’s seen kids grow up and make something of themselves. She creates this bond with them and she does get emotional to see these kids become the future.
“I have a bond with a lot of the kids here, a lot of them like to hang around me all day long, I don’t know why,” Brunton said.
Yet even though she’s seen many kids come and go, she still remembers the young familiar faces of certain kids.
“There are kids here I remember from when I worked at Green Tree,” Brunton said. “I remember them but they don’t remember me. It’s bittersweet to watch them grow and become something.”
Even though the job may seem easy, it’s not exactly what it seems to be. There are struggles like any job you get.
“One challenge here is that a lot of the students have a lack of respect for what we do,” Brunton said. “They destroy things thinking it’s no big deal, someone else will clean that up. You’re getting ready to leave high school and go to the real world, people will not clean up for you at your job. But the majority of kids are good. I like to mess with them, they have good humor.”
So yes, the lack of respect is a struggle and unfair to have to deal with, but it’s not just that.
“It’s a very physical job, and I wasn’t used to a physical job, so that was a major challenge,” Brunton said. “People think it’s easy, until we get some of the students, and they see it entails a lot of work.”
The good thing is that Brunton is able to work with other people and it makes the job a bit easier to deal with, like her co-worker Matt Boswell.
“Some days it’s fun to have another person, other days you can be on your own, it’s always good to have another person with you,” Boswell said.
But besides her comforting bond with students, and the challenges, like everyone else Brunton had this image of what she wanted to do. She was going to do nursing in which at some point she did go to college and got her associates degree, However, as time went on and realization hit, she settled down to “this isn’t for me.”
“I did not continue on that path. I realized after working in the hospital that it wasn’t for me, wasn’t my forte. I wasn’t going to risk life to not get paid enough, so I came here and worked here since.”
But since having this job, she has been able to have her two daughters graduate from Liberty, and see them become something amazing in which she’s proud of them for. She’s a grandmother now and is just happy with what she is doing.
“I had my kids, I went to college, had several jobs, I mean I’m 44 years old. I didn’t start out here,” Brunton said.
She also offers some more advice to people who might be questioning what to do in the future, or who might be deciding on what to settle for.
“It’ completely fine to not know what you wanna do yet. You have plenty of time. You can graduate high school and decide to go on a year-long backpacking trip in Europe before you decide to go to college, and that’s the beautiful thing about being young is, you have all those options in front of you. You don’t have to settle on one thing until you are ready. You have plenty of time. I went back to college when I was 30. You can make something really amazing out of yourself. You could be the first first woman president for all you know. Don’t ever say you’re setting your sights too high, cause there’s no such thing.”
Listening to Brunton, she was so wise with what she was saying and spoke with understanding, which I wondered how she gets through days that might seem tough. What is that something she tries living by?
“I try finding laughter every single day. I try making somebody else laugh. I feel successful if I’m able to do that,” Brunton said.
So even though this job might have not been what she expected to be working as, she is amazing and such a hard-working person, who strives to bring happiness, and be a beautiful person at Liberty.
