The J-TAC (Stephenville, Tex.), Vol. 159, No. 9, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 6, 2000 Page: 9 of 12
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April 6,2000
The J-TAC
PAGE 9
Beloved custodian at Perm's
basketball arena to receive degree
By Michael Vitez
Knight-Ridder Tribune
When Dan Harrell applied to
the University of Pennsylvania
at age 46, he was asked to take a
composition class to prove he
was Ivy League material. The
first assignment: write about a
favorite place.
The young woman on his left
chose Paris in the spring; the
one on his right the slopes of
Aspen.
"I've never been out of
Southwest Philly," Harrell
recalled, "and I'm thinking I'm
in trouble."
He decided his favorite place
was the john.
"Do you know there are 50
different names for it?" he said.
"It's a great place to check out
the horses for the next race. Your
boss can't find you there. I
wrote four pages, and I got an
A."
On May 22, after 10 years as a
part-time student, Harrell will
receive his bachelor's degree.
He will graduate surrounded by
people who revere him as a
Penn institution — not only
because of his academic
achievement at age 56, but
because of the love he lavishes
on a fabled floor and the stu-
dents who play on it.
Harrell is custodian of the
Palestra.
Once a day, sometimes twice,
he mops the hardwood in one of
the most celebrated arenas in
college hoops. He has spent, in
sum, an eternity on one knee,
scraping gum. And when he
doee^his job right; the floor sings
to him with the squeak of sneak-
ers.
With a toilet brush in one
hand, cleanser in the other, he
scours the locker rooms. Not
once in his eight years there, he
brags, "has there been a case of
athlete's foot."
Dan Harrell also is a custodi-
an in the larger sense of the
word. He looks out for the ath-
letes, scribbles notes of support,
gives them rides and good-luck
charms, asks about their grand-
mothers, advises them on class-
es to take — and, through his
pursuit of a dream, inspires
them.
"I think he's the greatest Penn
success story," said Cynthia
Johnson Crowley, who played
basketball at Penn in 1952 and
has since been a fixture at the
Palestra. "There isn't anything
he won't do to make your life
better. And in return, it all
comes back."
Fran Dunphy, the men's
coach, calls him "kind of a hero
of mine."
On graduation day, Harrell
will dye his six-foot-wide dust
mop red and blue, Penn's col-
ors. He will tape photographs of
his mother, father, and brother
Frankie, all of them gone now,
to the back of the mop, and
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Walk to collect his diploma.
"The mop/' he said, "rep-
resents where I'm from."
At 4:55 a.m. on a March
Tuesday, the day of the big
Penn-Princeton double-
header, Dan Harrell parked
his 1980 Caprice Classic
with the rusted roof right at
the Palestra's back door, the
best spot in the lot.
Inside, everything was
dark. The only sound was
Big Daddy Graham talking
sports on all-night radio.
"I leave it on for the spir-
its," Harrell said. ;
The Palestra opened in
1927; some believe that ghosts of
former players and fans reside
there. "I've seen them plenty of
times," he insisted. "Their faces
are misty, and they remain in
view only long enough so you
know they're there."
Harrell, 6-foot-l and a husky
240 pounds, went about collect-
ing his supplies. He carried a
boom box to the scorer's table at
mid-court and popped in a CD
of Irish tenors. The same lulla-
bies his mother sang when he
was a toddler filled the arena.
Championship banners hung
from the rafters. Dawn filtered
through the skylights. The spir-
its retreated to the shadows.
Harrell grabbed his dust mop
and started sweeping.
He lives just three blocks from
the rowhouse where he grew
up, near 67th and Elmwood. His
six daughters are sweet on him,
/
but joke that he does not take his
work home with him.
"He's never picked up a
towel, taken out the trash, cut
the lawn, or even picked up the
remote," said his third-eldest,
Debbie Cianci. "He has the
remote handed to him."
"But," added his wife, Regina,
"the Palestra sparkles."
After graduating from West
Catholic High School in 1961,
Harrell went to the mail room at
General Electric. "In those days,
maybe only one kid in 10 went
to college," he said.
He worked at GE 20 years,-
moving up to marketing. But in
1981, everyone in his office was
laid off. He dug ditches for a
plumber, processed support
payments for Family Court, and
tended bar.
"I was down, drinking too
much," he said. "I had to get a
goal."
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In the late '80s, he found work
at the Wharton School — in
housekeeping — and soon
moved to the Palestra. To
Harrell, who had been going to
Big Five games there since he
was a kid, it felt like home. He
learned that, as a university
employee, he could enroll for
free in the College of General
Studies, providing he qualified.
Penn also would pay part of
his daughters' tuition. That is
how he put Melissa and Jackie,
his fourth and fifth, through
Penn State.
"I owe this place a lot," he
said.
He waxed poetic: "When you
get the floors clean, and you
come in here, it's like it was the
first time when you'd walk into
Connie Mack Stadium and see
that sea of green grass — a
beauty-ful thing."
Students across the nation are
carving out new homes on web
by Billy O'Keefe;
Campus Correspondent - Columbia
College
Just about every day, Nathan
Marting slips out of his dorm
room and into a bondi blue vir-
tual living room he's created for
himself on the Internet.
Marting's home page
(http://www.public.iastate.ed
u/-nmarting/homepage.html)
is one of thousands on Iowa
State University's campus
servers. Its centerpiece is
Marting's resume, but there are
also family photographs and
bios and all sorts of information
concerning the Chicago Bulls,
the Weather Channel and
Garnavillo High.
"Sure, it goes in all directions,
and some guy in Italy may not
care too much about my fami-
ly," said Marting, a junior. "But
I enjoy doing it, and I'll keep it
up as long as I can."
Contrary to new wives' tales,
not everyone is out to raise
money or hell on the Internet.
For every Amazon.com trying
to solicit business, there are lit-
erally millions of personal
home pages that would like just
a minute or two of your time.
Many — if not most — are
maintained by college students.
School administrators have
greeted students' rights to do
more than surf the Internet on
campus with excitement and
extreme caution. That because
students are posting controver-
sial pages all the time and, more
recently, clogging campus com-
puter networks by trading and
posting massive collections of
pirated music, software, games
and movies. But the availability
of student Web pages, in the
eyes of students anyway, is to
colleges and universities what
air conditioning is to cars: a nice
bonus in the past, an essential
today.
Natalie Hamilla, whose site,
"Natalie's '80s Page,
(http://www.personal.psu.edu
/users/n/x/nxhl58/) is one of
more than 26,000 student home
pages residing on Penn State
University's servers, said that
even the simplest home pages
make for good practice - ancl
that students need, this practice.
This new necessity is what
most motivates schools, beyond
all the risks, to include personal
pages for their students.
"Just like schools want the
best books and materials and
the best instructors, this is just
another way to get ahead," said
John Zimrrier, an administrator
for Northwestern University's
student pages directory,
"Pubweb," which encourages
students to experiment "on a
modest scale," as noted on the
site's main page.
Don't underestimate the
weight behind that "M" word.
Schools voluntarily play the
honor game with students ,
because their technical staffs are
often too small to monitor every
link and every move on every
site. But those in charge, via the
front page of the server arid/or
student handbooks and other
literature, make their message
loud and clear : You may be our
student, but that doesn't mean
we agree, endorse or allow
what you're saying.
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The J-TAC (Stephenville, Tex.), Vol. 159, No. 9, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 6, 2000, newspaper, April 6, 2000; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth141976/m1/9/: accessed April 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Tarleton State University.