Forever a wolf

REDKEY –– To Ventura “Bennie” Moreno, Redkey Elementary School is like home.

Maybe that’s why she’s been working there more than four decades.

“It’s a place that you can come and be relaxed,” said Moreno, 83. “I don’t even call it work –– I just enjoy being here. Never knew the time was passing this fast.”

She left school after second grade to work with her parents in the cotton fields of Arkansas. Through the off-season, they often resorted to food stamps. Bennie and her husband, Alfredo “Fred” Moreno, moved to Redkey in 1952 after hearing about factory job openings. She was 17 years old and spoke little English.

Bennie and Fred Moreno raised five children, three of whom were born in Redkey. She never worked anywhere long-term while her children were young, instead opting for summer factory positions or similar jobs.

In 1976, Moreno’s daughter picked up a custodian job at the elementary school while her husband was stationed in Germany. Before moving with her husband to San Diego a few months later, she and Moreno stopped by the school to give her resignation. Moreno jokingly offered to fill the space.

That was 45 years ago.

“I was just kidding,” Moreno recalled. “(But) that’s how I’m here.”

Compared to working in the fields as a child, tasks like cleaning toilets and sweeping floors are a breeze to her.

“They call this work?” she said. “I almost sometimes think, why should what I get paid for what I’m doing? It’s just like being at home and cleaning.”

At the end of every year, when asked if she would be returning to her job come the fall, she always said yes. She rarely gave it much thought.

“I didn’t even think, I just, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’” said Moreno, who, with Redkey teachers helping her study, earned her GED in 1995. “And that’s what I did. I just love doing it.”

She now laughs at the memory from when she first moved to Redkey and passed by Shambarger’s Restaurant. 

“I didn’t read very good –– I didn’t speak very good English,” she admitted.

And so she mistook the sign for the word “hamburgers.” She sent her husband inside to get her a burger. (They did fulfill the request.)

She later worked at the restaurant for about two or three years and helped assemble the “Sky High” strawberry pies.

After spending time in the fields, working at factories and making sweet treats, Redkey Elementary became her home away from home. At one time, she put in 12-hour shifts at the school from early morning until evening. Lately she’s been working in the afternoon and evening for five hours, which is an hour longer than her previous four-hour shift. (The extra hour is to account for additional sanitation methods used to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak.)

Principal Rex Pinkerton has worked with Moreno for three years. He said it will be hard to find someone as devoted to their job as she is.

“She’s always very concerned about the quality of work she’s doing,” he said.

The school is home to Moreno, and she treats –– and cleans –– it as such.

The staff, which are like family to Moreno, are what prompted her return to the school each year. Now, she’s ready to spend more time with Fred, who has been retired for 22 years. She’s also getting knee surgery soon.

“Everybody’s gonna miss her in some form or fashion,” Pinkerton said, adding her work ethic and dedication will be missed.

Elementary teacher Shelly Miskinis walked in to the teacher’s lounge Thursday and started to tear up when she learned it was Moreno’s last day. She’s worked with Moreno for 35 years.

Others also stopped by the room during Moreno’s interview to wish her a happy retirement.

“No goodbyes,” Moreno chided one coworker as they hugged. “Just ’til later’”

Later, a few tears came to her own eyes as the weight of her last day began to sink in. She likened the feeling to a high school senior’s last day of classes.

Appropriately, she was wearing her tie-dye Redkey Elementary School t-shirt.

“I will be a Redkey Wolf forever,” Moreno said.