Bob Onorato retires from Bristol Consolidated School after 33 years there. Coaching baseball was one of the highlights of his many years at the school. It was a special thrill when the team, which is now coached by Bobs son, Isaiah, won the championship last year. (Candy Congdon photo)
On Tuesday, June 11, the talent show at Bristol Consolidated School had a surprise ending. Principal Jennifer Ribeiro presided over a well-planned celebration of one of the school personnel who will be retiring at the close of this school year, Bob Onorato. Onorato has served the school as head custodian for 33 years.
With members of the community present for the talent show, it was a perfect time to give Onorato a special send-off. Members of the school staff took to the stage and serenaded Onorato with a fun song honoring his role at the school. Bristol School Committee Chair Dave Kolodin, along with school committee member Darin Carlucci, presented Onorato with a gift. Kolodin gave Onorato a second gift, a bouquet of roses for Onorato’s wife. Onorato took them to her in the audience.
Ribeiro gave an eloquent accounting of Onorato’s “sense of duty … from the time he chose to sleep with the boiler to ensure that the boiler would stay warm in the dead of winter … He’s a keeper and will be sorely missed.
“The other trait that really embodies Bob Onorato is his strong sense of community,” Ribeiro said. “He treats the school like a second home, and the people in it are like family to him … His love of children was visible, at the holidays especially. Many of you have seen him don his elf costume to share candy canes with the children … Bob, we can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done for the Bristol School.”
Bob Onorato as Boffo the Clown at a Bristol Consolidated School carnival. (Photo courtesy Bob Onorato)
The audience was treated to a slide show using photos the staff had found of Onorato over the years. The show included videos of fellow Bristol Consolidated School staff members reminiscing about interactions with Onorato.
There was the hilarious story recounted by one teacher whom Onorato had rescued when the door handle of the staff restroom came completely apart as she was trying to exit, trapping her inside. Other videos showed the children in groups saying what they like best about “BobO,” as Onorato is affectionately called. The children have loved Onorato’s singing to them, and his interest in them as individuals has been very much appreciated as well.
The celebration ended with the children lining up class by class to come by Onorato’s chair as they individually exchanged hugs, kisses, and high-fives with their beloved “BobO.”
Onorato was originally recommended in 1986 for the position of head custodian at what was then Bristol High School, after working as a custodian at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta the previous school year. He had been in the U.S. Army as a combat engineer, and a lot of things about the custodian job touched on what he did in the Army.
“Other custodians were here then; there were three of us,” Onorato recalled in a recent interview of his early days on the job. “At that time, custodians were required to drive the bus. You had to drive the bus in the morning and afternoon, and in the evening, you came back and cleaned the school, which made it really difficult, because you had such a tight schedule.”
When Onorato started his new job, the old school building, what at that time was Bristol High School, was still standing. “The new building began on June 20, 1986, when they tore the old building down,” Onorato said. “My primary job was to get the new school building up and running. From then on, it was construction all summer. It was kind of a nightmare at times.”
Most of the building of Bristol Consolidated School got done in July through September 1986, he said. Bristol Consolidated School had over 300 children at that time. “That was a tough summer for me … almost like trying to be a ‘Clerk of Works,’ looking out for the benefit of the taxpayers. A lot of hours. At times, I was there until 1 in the morning.
“And then it all came together, somehow, some way,” Onorato said. “Starting in January of ’87, we built that office complex and a music room and a new kindergarten. And some renovations in the older classrooms. The original elementary was built in 1952 — big rooms. We were putting 30-plus kids in a room. We moved the fifth grade up to the junior high, and they started the middle school concept. That all happened in two years, all that conversion. It kept me busy.”
Onorato is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y, but he’s been in Maine for 54 years. When he got out of the military, he bought a house in Edgecomb. His father had owned a body shop in New York and was very successful and wanted to continue working after he and his wife moved to Edgecomb to be near his son. Onorato financed an auto body shop and was a secondary partner in the business alongside his father.
Onorato next went on to work as a plant manager for a granite, concrete, and paving company in Topsham from about 1972 until 1978. He said, “I learned how to design concrete work throughout the state … We poured the reactor at the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset and worked on the bridge that goes from Wiscasset to Westport Island.”
From there, Onorato worked for several shipyards in Boothbay, laying deck and corking.
Onorato said he was determined to get out of the boat-building business, but ended up in a job at Bath Iron Works doing the same thing. “This is where the school kicks in. After I was (at Bath Iron Works) for four years, they decided to go on strike … and they had a lockout. A job came open at Great Salt Bay so I started working there and learning the duties of a custodian.”
“No. 1 is the kids always come first,” he said of being a custodian. “There’s always something they need. Even if it’s just to say hello, or a hug, or whatever. Kids really appreciate that.
Hugs by the hundreds are given to Bob Onorato at his retirement from Bristol Consolidated School. Students lined up one grade at a time so that every one of them could give Onorato a goodbye hug. (Candy Congdon photo)
“It’s been rewarding,” Onorato said of his time at Bristol Consolidated School. “I can’t say that every day the sun shines on me. We had an overboard discharge (wastewater) issue, and I had to go to school … I had to understand that. You have environmental issues you have to be careful with, so I had to learn all that, and water treatment.”
A highlight of the custodian job at Bristol Consolidated School for Onorato was the baseball team, he said. He started coaching it in 1987. “They hadn’t had a team in a long time because nobody wanted to coach it,” he said. At that time, there were only four other schools that had teams.
“We played Jefferson, Nobleboro, Damariscotta, and South Bristol. That’s all there was,” Onorato said. “You were lucky to get 10 games in. You had to supply your own umpires, and equipment was not cheap to buy in those days. And I umpired a lot, too, including Little League.”
Bob Onorato at work in March 1991. (Photo courtesy Bob Onorato)
These days, Onorato’s son, Isaiah. is coaching the school’s baseball team, the Bristol Blue Devils, and Bob Onorato serves as a “coach’s consultant.” The biggest highlight of Onorato’s time at Bristol Consolidated School was last year when his son’s team, the Blue Devils, won the Busline League baseball championship.
When asked what he will miss, Onorato said, “It would be the kids, mostly. And I like fixing stuff. I’m a hands-on guy. I don’t get upset when people say, ‘I’ve got a broken bookcase.’ I’ve built a lot of bookcases in my day. I have a woodworking shop that I put together a long time ago, and I’ve built a lot of furniture for the school.”
Onorato is not sure what he will do after retirement — maybe take a part-time job. He said he will enjoy his son and daughter and his grandchildren, who live in the area. Onorato said his job at Bristol Consolidated School has been “an adventure.”
Onorato and his many contributions to the smooth running of Bristol Consolidated School will be missed. “Bob keeps the building warm, safe, dry. We have water. The things we often take for granted but know that we couldn’t live without are managed by Bob,” Ribeiro said. “Bob just knows if something’s not quite right.”
Ribeiro said Onorato would always know, for instance, what might be wrong when the boiler was being “a little funky.”
“We have a new one now,” Ribeiro said of the boiler situation, “but, for years, he had to manage an older system, and he knew the nuances of how the system worked.”
Ribeiro added, respectfully, that Onorato “has a sense of duty.”
