Haley MooreIf you walk the halls of N.C. Central University’s Farrison-Newton Communications Building sometime after 3 p.m., you’d probably run into the custodian, “Mr. Ben.” He’ll be walking with his yellow janitor cart, stopping at offices, bathrooms and classrooms.
He’ll definitely be sporting some fresh shoes — maybe some Chucks, Pumas, or Nike Dunks. If you compliment him on those, he’ll thank you and tell you that his wife and daughter buy him too many.
Then, he’ll continue on his way, quietly. His presence fills the empty halls of Farrison-Newton’s third floor.
Benjamin Lee Tyson, better known as Mr. Ben, is one of the many custodians who maintain Farrison-Newton.
Hailing from the Bronx, New York, Mr. Ben is known around NCCU as a warm presence and a great conversationalist.
During his shifts, Tyson will often stop to talk to students or faculty, or he’ll sit for a little bit in the Campus Echo and chop it up with the staff.
He’ll stop in Professor Erica Horhn’s office and tell stories about, say, his Christmas break in Spain and Italy with his wife and daughter.
“If you have the chance to travel, do it,” he says. “It’s so beautiful over there and the people were so nice to us.”
Horhn has been working at NCCU for three years. She teaches Arts & Humanities and some English courses from time to time. She has become fondly accustomed to near-daily chats with Tyson in her third-floor office.
“I love him,” she says. “So we have pretty good interactions. He definitely looks out for more than just the office, but he will come in and he’ll have conversations. I get to know a little bit about his family, and he’s very proud of them.”
Tyson is a proud husband and father to Angela Marie Tyson, his wife, and Destiny Marie Tyson, his daughter.
Destiny is a music major and a soon-to-be graduate of Spelman College this May.
“Let me put it this way. My wife and my daughter are my life,” Tyson says. “My wife, she more than a wife. That’s my best friend. And my daughter, oh my God, that’s my baby.”
Tyson has been working for the state of North Carolina for 27 years. He was introduced into custodial work by his father, who owned a cleaning business. His father and his mother worked two to three jobs to provide for seven children.
Taking after his father, Tyson has worked at a mental health hospital, and he was a custodian in South Carolina before he came to NCCU.
Horhn explains why the faculty in Farrison- Newton tend to appreciate workers like “Mr. Ben.”
“In my experience,” she says, “at least in this building, faculty are pretty respectful of the people who take care of the facilities because without them, we can’t get into these buildings, right?”
Tyson’s job doesn’t come without difficulty. Due to NCCU’s limited budget, the equipment the custodians use is worn out and well past its due date. It makes the already strenuous job harder.
“Well, we just need more money and we need proper equipment because most of the equipment and stuff that we got is worn out,” he says. “It makes the job a lot difficult, but you know, we just get by with what we get by with. And you know, just make the best of what we’ve got until we can do better. You know, hey, that’s the way I look at things, I don’t try to stress on nothing, I just do what I have to do.”
Occasionally, he’ll encounter students and faculty being snobbish and standoffish. Tyson removes himself from the classist attitudes and tries to be a role model to the students.
“You know, life is too short,” he says. “And I try to be an inspiration to the kids because a whole lot of kids is a long ways from home, and then their parents are not around. And then they need the older figure, you know, to come to when things get hard and to just talk. Some of them, that’s all they need, just talk, somebody to talk to.”
When it’s time to go home after a hard-working day, he fills his nights with music. His basement features a surround-sound stereo system, a shoe collection, a TV, and a library of vinyls and CDs. On the weekends, he loves to listen to grown folks’ music with his wife and their two dogs, George and Sam-I-Am.
“I love them. Those my little boys,” he says. “They love the music, now. When they see you go down to the basement, they know what time it is.”
Outside of the school, in his comfort zone, when the tunes are rocking and the dogs are howling, the Tysons love to dance in the basement and reminisce about the old days.
“I’m old school,” he says, proudly. As he should.
