Early mornings, smelly, dirty bathrooms and vacuuming; smudged doors, a large, filthy lobby and long hours of scrubbing and cleaning. This describes what Lupe Marquez experiences every day at Guenther Hall here on campus.
Lupe Marquez was born in Mexico and then moved to the United States when she was 13 years old. Marquez has worked on campus for nearly five years, cleaning up after the students and keeping Guenther Hall sanitary. She arrives to work at 7:00 a.m. every morning, Monday through Friday, and does not leave until 4:00 in the afternoon. The entire time that she is here, this hardworking woman cleans the hall. She cleans the lobbies, vacuums the floors and scrubs the bathrooms.
“Those bathrooms are spotless,” John Isabel, a sophomore Marketing major and resident of Guenther Hall, said. “I have almost eaten off of them, almost!”
Even while doing all of this hard work for the residents at the hall, the kindness and good nature of Marquez shines through.
“She is not someone who looks depressed while she is at work,” Stephen Enriquez, a sophomore Computer Science major and Resident Assistant at Guenther Hall, said. “I do not know how many times I have walked into a bathroom that she is cleaning while I hang up flyers and she is still always smiling and she will say ‘Hi, how are you Stephen?’, and when she says hi to people she always uses their name. Everyone enjoys that. It is always nice to hear.”
However, this hard work and cleaning cannot be considered the biggest service that Marquez does for the students who live in Guenther Hall. She touches the lives of every resident that she comes into contact with, hoping to brighten their day and encourage them.
“Lupe is an amazing woman,” Isabel said. “She is the closest thing we have to a mother around here. She will keep us in line but will also be there if we need to talk to someone. She is a great lady.”
There is not a resident within the walls of Guenther Hall who can walk by Marquez without receiving a friendly smile and a greeting. Even other employees of Guenther Hall are thankful for everything that Marquez does.
“I always see her around lunch time and I will sit down with her and talk to her about her day, her plans or football,” Enriquez said. “She is really down to earth and she is just a really nice person. I am really glad that we have someone like her here taking care of all of us, when she doesn’t have to.”
One learning all of this might wonder why in the world Marquez would do everything that she does for the residents who live in Guenther Hall. The answer is as touching and heart-warming as one might expect from someone as kind as Marquez.
Those who live and work in Guenther Hall with Lupe Marquez see that this one woman makes life in the hall great. These students can see how Marquez invests in them and in their lives. Without a doubt, Lupe Marquez is an unsung hero of the WTAMU campus.
