Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 1/30/07 Section: Opinion

Gen Rafferty poses with Greyhound Opinions Editor and English Department work-study Nick Brown. After 39 years, Gen will retire as of Jan. 31.

To most of you, I am not a quiet person. I make my opinions known, sometimes excessively so.

But Gen Rafferty knows me as someone entirely different.

In the confines of the Loyola College English Department, where I have been a work-study as long as I've been a Loyola student -- and for those of you wondering about my academic standing, yes, it's just the four years -- I am not such a vocal nuisance. I am the lowly assistant, making a measly $6 an hour, destined never to move any higher in the chain than my current title: Documentation Replication Specialist (read: I make copies).

But I would have it no other way. Because what I've gained in Gen Rafferty, in addition to a boss willing to pay me for a full hour when I only clock 45 minutes, is a grandmother.

And that is precisely what Loyola College will lose when Gen steps down as of tomorrow, after nearly 40 years of service.

Gen is one of the last people on campus to embody the old-school approach. As secretary, she believes her responsibilities stretch further than merely providing professors with class readings. As far as she's concerned, the English Department is a home, and she is its housekeeper. The collective professors and students that make up the department are a family, and she is the stay-at-home mom.

The grandmother.

Many a time she has sent me into professors' offices, water bucket in hand, and ordered me to feed the plants. Each Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and St. Patrick's Day, we devote hours to rummaging through the workroom, pulling out decorations. Christmas trees, complete with ornaments; Thanksgiving turkeys; humorously cheesy cardboard ghosts. Whatever the holiday, Gen is prepared.

Her most famous quality -- and the one that has, time and again, proven to be the downfall of the rest of the family -- is her unwavering ability to drown the department in candy. As I write this from the English Department computer, I count seven bowls of treats in the 50-square-foot space, and who knows how much more she's got in her desk drawers.

I have had many partners in crime over the years. Names like Craig Bresciani and Brendan Nowlin (some of the more notable, now-graduated English work-studies) line the walls of my memory banks. Together, we have enjoyed the spoiled life. We get paid to sit around in comfortable chairs and talk, the celebrated grandkids of Gen's ever-growing family.

Continued...

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