Michael Thomas finds purpose in connections, craftsmanship

For Love Creek Elementary fireman custodian Michael Thomas, life is what you make of it.

“I enjoy my job, mostly for the kids,” Michael said. “I try to come to work every day with a smile, and on the days that I don’t, kids help me out with that.”

Dispelling the notion that fireman custodians are geared up to battle fires in school, Michael said the title harkens back to the days when school custodians shoveled coal in the furnace to heat the building.

Today, the term refers to a custodian who has completed training in the operation of boilers and central heating plant systems, and is second in command to the chief custodian.

As a child growing up in Annapolis, Md., Michael’s playground included the Naval Academy campus, where his mother worked and whose midshipmen took on roles as his big brothers. 

These mentors brought him on submarines and to visits with the Blue Angels, pilots of the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration squadron. Michael once wore his big brother’s stripes in the mess hall, where confused midshipmen saluted him before catching on to the fun.

“There wasn’t much I didn’t do there,” he said with a smile. “I got to do so much with them. I like to think I’m passing that on. I didn’t have a dad, so they played that male role in my life.” 

“If I can do that for these kids, that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “My wife calls it paying it forward; I call it being me.”

Known by the kids as Mr. Mike or Santa because of his white beard, Michael has mentored several students over the years while working at the Sussex Consortium and for the past two years at Love Creek.

“I never thought about it as mentoring. It’s just passing on knowledge,” he said. “I don’t tell them what to do. I just help them along.” 

Now that he’s the Love Creek Santa, students want to help him in the cafeteria. 

“They sign up to sweep and get a pencil for helping,” he said. “It’s a blast. They all want to do it.”

Michael mentored one student, Logan, for years and still keeps in touch with him. The pair even learned they shared the same birthday. A friendship with another kid, Carter, bloomed over a love of football.

“Now we just talk and enjoy each other,” Michael smiled.

He connected with yet another student, Casey, when they both wore superhero shirts one day – she was Wonder Woman and he was Superman. So, they started wearing superhero shirts every Friday and would hunt each other out so they could point at their shirts.

“For one-and-a-half years, we did it every Friday. It got so I left a shirt in my locker in case I forgot,” he said with a chuckle.

In recognition of his work with children, he was named the Creative Mentoring Mentor of the Month for the State of Delaware in January 2023. 

“If you want to know what kind of person you are, hang out with a kid for a little while,” he said. “Make their day and have fun.”

Michael spends a lot of time in art teacher Forest Allread’s room, where he helps students with mosaics, an art form he took up about 10 years ago after seeing a mosaic flag displayed in a tile store. 

“It didn’t look so good, so I got some tile, made a flag and brought it in for them,” he said. “They took theirs down and put mine up. It was the first thing I made.”

The fledgling mosaicist chose to create a Pittsburgh Steelers coffee table top as his next project, the perfect addition to his Steelers man cave that boasts a themed pool table, dart board and foldable beer pong table he also built.

“I collect things all the time. Anything you can name, I have it in Steelers,” he said, counting off ketchup bottles, Band-Aids, cereal boxes and, of course, plenty of Terrible Towels.

Asked what his wife thinks about the 30-by-30-foot sanctum, Michael said, “That’s my room, so we don’t have an argument about that.”

However, a 3-by-6-foot ceramic kitchen island countertop he created featuring signs of the zodiac took about six months to complete.

“My wife wasn’t too thrilled with that,” he said with a little shudder and smile.

Michael met his wife Linda through mutual friends after moving to the Cape Region to open and run an Athlete’s Foot store in the outlets. They’ve been married 26 years and have two children, Michael and Mikayla, who both went to Cape schools and studied abroad for six months while seniors.

Mikayla works in conflict resolution for a Virginia firm, and Michael is a paralegal studying to become a lawyer, who also speaks Spanish and French. Linda, a longtime kindergarten teacher at Shields Elementary, is now an itinerant preschool teacher for the Cape district.

As a young adult, Michael cared for Oscar fish, and after he bought his house, a pond was the next step.

“I’ve always had animals,” he said. “We used to have a little zoo in the basement when the kids were little.”

After a lot of research, he constructed a 15-by-15-foot octagonal koi pond with straight, not sloping, sides to make it harder for animals to wade in and scoop up a fish. The 4.5-foot deep pond is 18 inches deep in the shallow feeding area and covered by a net to keep birds out. Michael even built the filtration system, saving about $500.

“It’s nice to sit on the deck and listen to the waterfall,” he said. “It’s fun to make stuff. It gives you something different to do with your mind all day.”

When he does decide to sit and take a rest, it’s usually to watch football or educational shows about animals, or to take a trip with Linda to Ocean City, Md.

“I do spend my fair amount of time on the golf course,” he admitted.

While Michael never thought he’d be a school custodian, the career choice has proven to be fulfilling in many ways.

“If you’re having a bad day and a kid smiles at you, you know someone actually cares about you,” he said. “My philosophy is you should enjoy what you do every day. If I’m not enjoying it, what’s the purpose? Seeing these kids’ smiling faces makes it all worth it.”