For eight years, Rickie Bell attended Xavier University while working full time as a Cincinnati Public Schools janitor.

        That hard work will pay off this morning, when the Evanston man receives his bachelor's degree in elementary education at the Cintas Center on the XU campus, one of 1,212 students receiving diplomas.

Hyde Park Elementary Principal Maryann Bernier stands with Rickie Bell at a surprise party for him by the teaching staff. (Ernest Coleman photos) | ZOOM |

        A second-shift janitor for a decade, he attended XU part time during the day and divided nights between Kilgour and Hyde Park schools.

        Children know him as Rickie but when he became a student teacher at Kilgour, “They switched to Mr. Bell. Kids are smart. They catch on.”

        Students also knew him as a parent. Two of his children - daughter Rikki, now 14, and son Kareem, 13 - went through Kilgour.

        “The students love him,” Principal Mary Ronan said. “(In class) they respected him and they'd vie for his attention.”

        Now Hyde Park students may know him as their teacher.

        Mrs. Ronan said Mr. Bell is a hot prospect: black, male and prepared to teach elementary school. While she had no openings, Hyde Park Principal Mary Ann Bernier ""jumped on him back in January.”

        “I have never seen anyone with a more positive attitude,” Mrs. Bernier said. “The kids and staff love him. He never gives up. Just look at how long it took him to get his degree working as our night custodian.”

        Mr. Bell is weighing his options and hasn't accepted Mrs. Bernier's offer yet. However, he is aware of the added value of his race and sex in today's teaching profession.

Mr. Bell gets a hug from Hyde Park teacher Marie Paddock. | ZOOM |

        “It's a big plus,” he said. Before this, “I haven't been in demand for anything.” On the other hand, those innate characteristics won't make him a success if he doesn't perform.

        What stuns classmates and others is learning his age: 45. He looks half his age.

        “I was a late bloomer.”

        Mr. Bell met Jeannie Helm in junior high, married her after Withrow High School in 1974, earned an associate degree at the University of Cincinnati and knocked around before joining the Navy in 1982.

        Mrs. Bell stayed in Cincinnati with their first daughter, Ericka, now 27 and a chemical engineer, while he sailed from Norfolk, Va. When he re-enlisted and was stationed in Naples, Italy, she and daughters Ericka and Rikki joined him. Kareem was born in Italy.

        After eight years in the Navy, Mr. Bell decided to look for other work and and returned to Cincinnati and its public schools, where he had been a janitor.

        “Cleaning up after people is not a joke,” he said. He relied on skills he learned as a Cincinnati preschooler.

        “My mother would clean rich white people's houses and give me jobs to do. My mother gave me my skills at cleaning. I've been doing it all my life.”

        Mr. Bell is the youngest of 10 children. An older brother, Jimmie, an English teacher at Withrow, urged him to go back to college. So did Jimmie's wife, Sherry, who teaches second grade at Parham School, and a niece, Ruthenia Jackson, principal of Millvale School.

        Mr. Bell listened and concluded, “I'd be great at this. Lots of people told me that. I could make a difference.”

        In addition, his years with the mop would count toward his pension, a teacher's starting salary is about $5,000 a year more than he makes at the top of the scale as a janitor, and he could double his teaching salary in seven or eight years.

        Ruthenia Jackson urged him to go to nearby Xavier, citing its strong academic reputation and relatively small classes.

        Mr. Bell was not a star student and when he needed help, it was there. The fourth time he took geometry, teacher Sheila Doran provided the tutoring that finally got him through.

        His talent, Mr. Bell said, is persistence, not academic brilliance.

        “I always wanted to be smart but I was average.”

        Mr. Bell said he “never felt ashamed” in his janitor's uniform, dealing with his children's Hyde Park and Mount Lookout classmates. “We're all serving, even custodians are serving.”
       

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