Service with a smile
Angelette Cheek, who is the housekeeping day porter at the Kenan Center, has served at Carolina for 22 years with pride and gratitude.
People who know Angelette Cheek know they are not going to hear any complaints from her about the long day she is having.
Long days are embedded in a set routine that begins with the alarm clock blasting in her ear at 4:15 a.m.
“It’s early, but I’ve been doing it for a long time,” Cheek said. “It don’t bother me. Once I’m up, I’m fine.”
She needs the extra time to fight morning traffic for her 20-mile commute from her home in Pittsboro to get to Chapel Hill by 6 a.m. to start her eight-hour shift as the housekeeping day porter at the Kenan Center in the Kenan-Flager Business School.
“I leave here at 3 and go straight to Northwood High School” in Pittsboro, Cheek said. She works there as a custodian 4–8 p.m.
She had been putting in long days for a long time, a record of duty that makes her both grateful – and proud.
“I’ll be here at Carolina for 22 years in March,” she said, and she has worked at Northwood for 19.
Those long, steady hours made it possible for her to stand on her own feet, raise her daughter on her own and buy her own house.
She felt that same combination of gratitude and pride when she learned this spring that she had won a 2016 C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award, she said.
Can-do steadfastness
Cheek’s Massey citation is filled with endorsements by people who have gotten to know her over the years, and it is her can-do steadfastness that shines through.
Her citation reads: “Keep achieving. Keep moving forward. Strive to reach your goals. These could be Angelette Cheek’s mottos because they are what she’s done.”
Business professor Deborah Stroman, who invited Cheek to serve on the Carolina Black Caucus steering committee in 2010, described Cheek as a “hard- and smart-working employee who serves with a smile.”
Kenan Center administration assistant Amina Thorne-Morning said Cheek takes pride in her work and always supports her co-workers to the fullest. “If they need help, or just someone to talk to, she is there,” Thorne-Morning said.
Kenan Institute’s grants manager Linda Parson said Cheek had big shoes to fill when she replaced a beloved housekeeper who retired after working at Kenan Center for many years.
She handled that challenge with ease, Parson added.
“She is the first one in the building in the morning, making sure that all the entrances are open and the stairwells are unlocked,” Parson said.
When Parson commended Cheek for braving the dark parking lot every morning, Cheek responded with an oft-repeated refrain, “It don’t bother me. I’ve been doing it for years.”
