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Wednesday, March 20, 2002

By Mary Niederberger

Kenny Bloch, a Bethel Park School District custodian for 27 years, has a well-deserved reputation for working hard at keeping school buildings looking good.

But during the past year at Neil Armstrong Middle School, where he's worked for the past three years, he's gone above and beyond the normal call of duty.

While the students were away on their summer break, he spent every Saturday and Sunday in the building painting a mural in the cafeteria that depicts the school and its grounds and students.

He stood on scaffolding and a ladder and used water-based paints to create the scene that now adorns a cafeteria wall.

"He would always be here," Assistant Principal Janet O'Rourke said.

Bloch said he was inspired to try drawing and painting last year when he saw some kids painting in the cafeteria." When he started to doodle, he discovered a hidden talent.

The mural wasn't his first art work at Neil Armstrong. Before he attempted that, he drew school scenes for teachers and administrators to hang in their offices. He first drew them in pencil, then colored them with markers.

The scenes generally include the school and students, and they resemble frames from a Charlie Brown cartoon. One has Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and Woodstock milling around with school children.

It's obvious from his work that Bloch observes and enjoys the children at the middle school. In one picture, he drew a boy walking home with his coat hanging off of his head. In another, he created a girl who appears to be dancing with her book bag.

Among other pieces of his work at the school are a picture of a German castle with knights on horses that he drew for a foreign language teacher's classroom and a mural drawn on cardboard that covers the length of one wall in the room where health is taught. The mural depicts scenes of a pond and pasture and a trail and shows various seasons of the year.

Sometimes he includes real characters from the school. In a scene of the outside of the school that he drew for Principal James Willison's office, he drew a caricature of Willison standing outside with students. In the mural on the cafeteria wall, Bloch put his boss, Bill Cahill, on a tractor on the lawn.

Bloch has received permission for a second mural for the cafeteria. It will include a police dog and an antidrug message for students. He plans to paint the second mural on his own time.

Willison said he wasn't surprised at the intensity with which Bloch approached the artwork because it mirrors the intensity with which he does his job. "He never stops working."

Mary Niederberger is a free-lance writer.