In the most critically-acclaimed movie of the 2013 Film Festival (the movie that won five awards including “Best Picture), Head Angel Gabe Bakale gave a lazy guardian angel named Alby (played by Jackie Gately) one last chance to help a person before he was reassigned to the mailroom. To make the scenes between Bakale and Alby realistic, co-director and Art Director for the movie “Alby” junior Ashley Waldron painted a room at Plimpton completely white to represent a fictitious Walpolian heaven. However, Waldron didn’t do this alone. While this plot was filled with the fiction of angel wings and poofy clouds and number one dream goals, there was a very real guardian angel behind “Alby” who never made it onto the credit of the movie.
Similarly, with every Walpole High School event — Film Festival, School Dances, Graduation, Sports Banquets, Foreign Language Awards Nights, the Walpole Labor Day Road Race, MSTCA Division II Relay Meet, SEMASC Conference, Dance Company performances, “Love Rides the Rails,” Pops Night, MCAS, “Seussical,” or any other event, one guardian angel has for the last 14 years made sure that each one of these events was successful: Allan Mansfield Brown Junior.
At the conclusion of this year, Al Brown will step down from his position as Walpole High School’s Head Custodian to replace the retiring Rich McCarthy as a janitor at Johnson Middle School. While Mr. Brown does not plan to officially retire for another four or five years, he wants to downshift to Johnson Middle School — a job that does not have the same physical demand as the High School (especially in terms of after school events).
Mrs. Janet Ferrara (the main office secretary who Al Brown once nicknamed “Squirrel-bait” but who in recent years has changed her nickname to “Sparkles” or “Sparkie”) summed up the school sentiment about his departure the best: “I’m sad. [His departure] is a big, big loss to the high school.”
From secretaries to teachers, from call-list all stars to class presidents, Al Brown has impacted many individuals throughout the community — throughout all interviews for this article, every interviewee (and even people who were not directly asked) had some small story about Al Brown’s kindness, generosity, or tomfoolery.
For “Alby,” Mr. Brown provided tarps, extension cords, paint trays, and other supplies to Ashley Waldron to help her create the set. For the Walpole Labor Day Road Race, Mr. Brown was the first person besides the Race Directors to show up in the parking lot to help set up.
“He does anything for anybody: he jumpstarts cars, shovels driveways, helps with all events, delivers packages directly to teachers, et cetera,” Ferrara said.
While his diligent work ethic is one of his most appealing characteristics, his personality — specifically his amiable playfulness and self-deprecating sense of humor — is truly what distinguishes him.
If teachers or students arrived to school early enough and enter through the main entrance, Mr. Brown always offered a friendly “Top of the morning!” as he raised up the American flag in front of the school or as he slid his shovel across the front steps or as he picked up trash leftover from some ill-conceived senior prank.
Even on the morning of Graduation or 11PM after Mr. WHS, he still joked and genuinely appeared to be content.
Ferrara said, “He genuinely enjoys the student population.”
Besides his friendly demeanor, he is renowned for his sense of humor. When fellow Walpole High graduate Kathy Wiggin retired from her long-standing stint as the Principal’s Secretary, Mr. Brown gave her a “treasure box of mementoes for her dedicated service.” This treasure box (which was actually a dirty, cardboard box) included dirty socks, used pencils, pencil shavings, old key-chains, and random trash — each item accompanied by some inside joke between Wiggin and him. This facetious gesture truly demonstrates his playful sense of humor that continually cheered up the high school community.
Brown (or “Sugarbear” as his Rebel teammates nicknamed him) is someone who historically encapsulates the school community as well. A 1971 graduate of Walpole High School, the second oldest of eight children, a wrestler and lineman for the football team, he moved to California after graduating from Walpole. On the West Coast, he met his wife (who the community knows from Al’s words as “the long-suffering Marie Brown”), and they had two children: Sean and Tanya. In 1997 however, the Browns returned to the area, and Mr. Brown returned to Walpole Public Schools as a janitor. By 2000, he had become a janitor at the high school under Head Custodian Gary Cimeno, and by 2003, he had replaced Mr. Cimeno as Head Custodian.
Next year, Dave Wood will replace Mr. Brown as Head Custodian; however, it will be a long time before the legacy of Allan Mansfield Brown Junior is forgotten by the school community.
