“Come on girls, it’s time to get up!” The drawled refrain that clipped at the last two words came every weekday at 6 a.m. as our housemother, Mrs. Richardson, made her way through our dormitory floor. The 11- and 12-year-old girls in her charge at President’s College, the residential high school I attended in Guyana, were usually less than charitable about being awakened this early. I was especially annoyed about being forced to do physical training at 6 a.m. and singing the song that began, “We love PT in the morning.” I hated exercising.

But we had to suck it up and get moving. We put up our mosquito nets and made sure that the sheets were stretched tight, corners mitered. We tolerated Mrs. Richardson, or “Richie” as we called her, behind her back, no ill will. My mitered corners barely passed the bed inspections.

Richie was an average, middle-aged woman who took her job of nurturing preteen girls seriously. Looking back, I realize that she and all the people who signed on to be houseparents at President’s College were actually saints. She put up with our whispers and giggles about the pieces of newspaper she used to curl her hair at night. She would appear in the morning looking a bit like a scarecrow with the newspaper pieces jutting out from all over. But her hair looked just fine once she coiffed it for the day.

Through some misfortune, poor Richie’s middle finger on her right hand stuck up in the air permanently from the middle joint. And it was the source of constant amusement for us. She was passionate about making us into decent young women, and often hit that middle-finger sticking-up hand into the other, as she began her lectures usually with the words, “It will be embedded in you.” Our eyes only focused on the finger and our minds on keeping straight faces. I have no memories of what was supposed to be embedded, but I know she believed everything she was saying.

Many of us became young ladies — began to menstruate — in our first year at PC. It was just the age. We were away from our parents, and so Richie was there to fill the space. She would take us into her quarters located at the front of the dorm, present us with a pack of sanitary napkins and have a very awkward conversation about hygiene and what this new development in our bodies meant.

I came to associate being in Richie’s quarters with one of two things. Either you had just become a young lady, or you were getting a talking-to about how decent young ladies should behave. And this talking-to only happened for one reason: when you dawdled too long in the open-air downstairs corridor after study period ended at 8:30 p.m. talking to a boy. Decent young ladies didn’t dawdle and talk at that hour of the night. The one time I dawdled, she had me in her quarters the very next day lecturing me about the imminent dangers to my good reputation.

My memories of Richie are more amusing than poignant. She was a good woman who tried her darndest to do her job well supporting a bunch of strong-willed, precocious preteen girls, making sure that we grew into “proper young ladies.”

Working in this Weber State ecosystem, I’ve learned to appreciate more than ever the many people like Mrs. Richardson who show up daily and do their jobs so well that the ecosystem hums along. These are the people who rarely get the accolades or the recognition. These are the folks who get burned out, or even deemed dispensable and replaceable. We have all had a Mrs. Richardson in our lives, or have been a Mrs. Richardson. Mrs. Richardsons will always be critical parts of shaping who we are, whether we realize it or not. For her, I’m grateful. Who is your Mrs. Richardson?

Nicola A. Corbin is a professor of communication at Weber State University, where she teaches public relations and mass media courses and directs the university’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

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