Cyd

As you enter the Whittemore Arena you might notice how grand of a place it is and how nice it looks. You then would draw your attention to the ice surface and depending on the day, you might watch a practice or a game. However, in the basement of the rink sits a small closet with concrete walls no windows and just a drain in the ground. This is where you can find Cyd.
Cyd is the housekeeper at the Whittemore Center Arena. She is short and scruffy with long grey hair hiding under a UNH Hockey hat. According to Cyd, “At UNH I’ve been since 1991 but I came to the Whittemore Center in 1999”. In these last thirteen years Cyd has perfected cleaning the large scale Arena.
For Cyd, her day starts early. She says, “I come in at 5 and I start in the Intermediate level cleaning the offices”. She then continues on to the rink level and cleans all of the locker rooms, benches and hallways. After she is done with that at around nine she has students who come in to help her. Jason Roach, a football player at UNH comes in everyday for four hours to clean the concourse sweeping and mopping the floors as well as cleaning the stands.
The large arena is a lot for Cyd to clean alone and the recent economy and budget cuts has not helped her. “I used to have another full time house keeper here with me but because of the outsourcing at UNH and the shortness of help she had to go to the dorms” explained Cyd. Cyd relies on athletes to help her clean throughout the week and to keep the large Arena in order.
Cyd’s life outside of housekeeping is filled with family and fun. When she gets out of work at around one, she usually drives to one of her daughter’s houses to visit her grandkids and help them out. Other than that cyd explained that she is “three classes short from an associate’s degree in art”. In addition to enjoying art she also is a softball umpire, ad avid skier and enjoyed hanging out in downtown Durham at Scoprs bar where she also cleans the bathrooms on Saturdays.
One of Cyd’s favorite activities is to scrap junk medal. With her job in housekeeper she is able to find a lot of junk in the trash which she turns into decorations. Cyd’s daughter is also an avid junk collector and someday Cyd wishes to open a junk store with furniture and miscellaneous items that are refurbished into art or daily use items. One example Cyd explained was, her and her daughter “found an old bathroom sink and turned it into a bath feeder”. They also turned an old bed into a flower bed. Cyd enjoys mixing her love of scraping junk, passion for art and yard work to make each of her daughter’s houses look unique and beautiful.
Cyd’s raspy voice and tough demeanor leads to a kind a caring women who loves people and students and truly in the job because she loves it. When asked her favorite thing to do, Cyd responded with “floors. I could do floors all day. Sweeping, buffing, mopping anything ill do it. I love to do floors”.