The Janitor

The more they observed him during his first months on the job as night janitor in 1951, the more the pupils and teachers of the Edwin Markham Elementary School in the Portland, Ore. school district began to realize that there was something special about shy, quiet Horace Bixby. Because of the Depression, "Bix" had never finished college. But he had an obvious talent for science and mechanics--and an even more important knack for getting along with children. He brought them birds and fish to study and care for. He built them an incubator, a model cloud chamber and a

Van de Graaff generator, made it a practice to get to work early in order to have time for any problems the boys and girls might have. Then one day in 1954, three members of the faculty called him into a classroom and made an extraordinary suggestion. "Well, Bix," one of them said, "we've been talking about you, and we've decided that you should go to college and get a teaching certificate."

For a man of 41 with a wife and two boys to support, it was quite a decision. Bix bluntly told his wife and family, "how we'd always be broke, how we'd not have enough to eat. how we'd never take any vacation trips." He might have added, had he known the figures, that even if he made the grade by the fall of 1957, his starting salary as a teacher ($3,700) would be nearly $250 less than he would be making as a janitor. But Charlotte Bixby encouraged him to go ahead. While hanging on to his job, Bix enrolled at Portland State College, later switched to

Lewis and Clark College as a major in elementary education.

Since then he has spent his mornings studying and attending classes, this term began practice-teaching at Edwin Markham. He went to college last summer, for two years worked weekends at a service station to help meet his new expenses. But by 2 p.m. each weekday, he was once again in his khaki shirt and pants, sweeping, cleaning and polishing as if he had nothing more on his mind than being the best janitor Edwin Markham ever had.

Last week, with a B.S. assured him, Bix was invited into the office of School Superintendent J. W. Edwards, signed the agreement that will make him a full-fledged teacher in the Portland school system next fall. But for Bix, all this is only the first step in his new career. Eventually, he hopes to earn an M.A. and to specialize in teaching handicapped children. "You see," says he, "I have a boy who is practically blind. And he wants so much to be accepted as a normal boy, to do the things that are expected of a normal boy. I know what these children go through. If I can do something to help them, I'll have more than all the money anyone can pay me in dollars and cents."

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