Lady of the lunchroom

Denise Brown is Washington state’s best lunch lady.

She’s also the best lunch lady in Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Brown, 48, is a lunch lady in the kitchen of Rogers High School. She received the 2006 Heart of the Program award from the Washington School Nutrition Association on July 31 and later went on to win the regional award from the School Nutrition Association.

“Kind-hearted is always the word I use for Denise,” Diane Hardesty, manager of Rogers’ kitchen, said. “She makes work a pleasant place.”

Hardesty nominated Brown for this award. In order to win, the employee can’t be the kitchen’s manager, has to be certified by the School Nutrition Association and has to be nominated by either a peer or a boss.

They are the employees who go the extra mile and show interest in young people. They have good work attendance and participate in professional growth and training.

“She’s a really neat lady,” said Gail Andrews, president of the WSNA. “She has been very in tune with her students.”

She added that Brown goes out of her way to make the kids at Rogers feel special.

“Each one of these kids are my kids,” Brown said. She stressed that if it weren’t for the students at Rogers, she wouldn’t have her job.

She wakes up at 4 o’clock every morning and comes in to work at 5:15. She and the other women of the kitchen meet for coffee before their shifts start at 5:30.

She spends a half an hour watching some of the students in the lunchroom in the morning before classes and hits the kitchen to prepare lunches for all of the students.

But her job is more than just serving up food. She’s a friend to the students when they need one.

On the first day of school Brown has been known to comfort lost and scared students and show them the way to class.

She gives the kids smiles and thanks them for coming through her line. One of the students gives her a hug every day.

Many of the students give Brown their school pictures, which she keeps in a scrapbook at home. She is always amazed at how much the kids grow up during their four years at Rogers.

The students also remember her and give her a hug when they see her out and about town, even after they graduate.

“The kids love us,” Hardesty said. “We feed them and don’t discipline them.”

Brown didn’t always work in the Rogers kitchen.

A Spokane native and a graduate of North Central High School, she worked in the dry cleaning business for a number of years before she started working in the kitchen at the Convent of Holy Names.

She loved working there, but she and her husband, Herman, needed her to get a job that paid more.

Brown heard about working in the kitchens at Spokane Public Schools and applied for the job.

“I wish I had done this years ago,” she said.

Since then, she has taken many classes to aid her in her job as a lunch lady.

She’s taken basic nutrition, safety and sanitation classes and interpersonal relationship classes.

And it’s not only the kids that keep Brown happy with her job.

“I love the women I work with,” she said of the 12 other women that work in the kitchen. “We’re a family, we bond well.”

Brown received several certificates, pins and ribbons as part of her two awards. She also was written up in the Washington Apple Press, the official publication of the WSNA.

“I was kind of in shock,” Brown said of when she learned of the award. “I thought it was a joke.”

The principal of the school, Carole Meyer, also honored Brown by having a special pin made for her.

“I thought that was pretty special,” Brown said.

Brown has no plans to move on to other employment.

“I’ll be here until I die,” she said. “As long as my health is good.”