After a 13-year career, Gary Harris, a janitor at PHS, will retire on June 30. He will leave a lasting impact on the students and teachers at PHS because of his efforts to go the extra mile for students, as well as to ensure that PHS recycles properly.

Growing up in Newark, Harris began working part-time supervising young kids at a recreation center at the age of 16. As he got older, he took on a number of other jobs, such as working at a luggage company and as a crossing guard. The job which prepared him most for his time at PHS, though, was his job at a paper recycling company, where he learned the intricacies of recycling for over ten years.

Harris prides himself in his job, beginning his shift at 2:30 p.m., a full hour before it is supposed to start, and ending it after 10:00 p.m., hours after his colleagues have finished. Part of the reason why he stays so long is that he meticulously sorts through the trash bags of other janitors to take out the recycling, a process that other janitors are unwilling to do. In fact, his boss sometimes has to make him leave the school so that he can go home. However, with his past work experience, he feels obligated to do this, despite the amount of time investment required.

“I do the little things that other people won’t take the time to do… I take time out to do stuff like that. To me, it’s not a big deal. My boss will get mad because I stand there when it’s ten o’clock at night, and I’ll be in the main office or the library with a stack of about 1000 books. I stood in till the a.m. last year when [students] had to take the PSAT… I was tearing them out, pulling staples out, and separating the paper,” Harris said.

Throughout Harris’s time at PHS, one major problem he’s noticed is that the students and faculty are not recycling. To resolve this issue, he proposes a simple, yet clever solution to encourage recycling.

“We should really force people to recycle,” said Harris. “I can’t make everyone do this… but it would help. It would make it much easier for [the janitors] to recycle [properly]. But I can understand the simple fact that if you had a big garbage [bin] or a small blue one with a little hole, you’d naturally throw your garbage away in the big one. The main aim is [to have] the ones where you push the thing [that] swings back. Those would be perfect.”

Leaving behind a legacy of love and kindness, Harris will miss the close relationships he has made during his rounds each night. Following his retirement, he hopes to be able to spend much more quality time with his grandkids and close family. He also wants to watch more sports, and a variety of movies including dramas, mysteries, and sci-fi.

“I’m not going to miss the job so much, but I am going to miss the people that I met here. I know almost every principal and every custodian here. I’m going to miss a lot of students because I remember when I first met them, and it makes me feel good to see [them]... going to high school… then college,” Harris said.

Harris’s dedication and motivation to help others has left an impact on the PHS community and how it deals with different types of waste. Although many students may not know about Harris, his efforts to promote recycling have caused an increase in awareness throughout the school.

“PHS is relatively cleaner than most other schools,” said Sawyer Quallen ’24. “[There] is an abundance of recycling bins throughout the school and inside classrooms, making it more convenient to recycle. With limited resources on our planet and community, we should make a stronger effort to reuse and recycle. Our actions dictate our future, and how we choose to use our resources greatly affects it,” Quallen said.

For the past 13 years, Harris has made close friends in the Princeton High School community, not only with staff, but also with students who he has met over the years. He also shows that it is the little things in life that make a difference in the world, such as recycling properly. Harris’s time working at PHS sets an example for hard work and being kind to others, even when it may require more time and effort.

“I’m just one of the many custodians that work [at PHS],” said Harris. “[But] I try to do it the best I can.”