It’s 4 a.m., and most of the Marquette community is sleeping. Before the sun starts to rise, Felicia Milam is already hard at work. She’s Johnston Hall’s own morning sunshine.
Milam has been a custodian at Marquette for the last 14 years. She split her time between Carpenter Hall and Johnston Hall until last year when she was transferred to Johnston full-time.
Milam says she enjoys working at Johnston because of the community it provides. So enjoyable, she even says cleaning the first two floors and basement from 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. is the preferable way to start to her day.
Ask anyone in Johnston and they’ll know Milam. She’s the shining face many see as they exit the newsroom in the basement after a long, exhausting production night for the Marquette Tribune.
It’s something people person Milam, cherishes. The students are her favorite part of the job, after all.
“My favorite thing is seeing a lot of different faces freshmen year. I build a bond with a lot of students when they first come through those doors,” Milam says.
When she’s not working hard in Johnston or at her second part-time job at Menomonee Falls High School in the afternoon, Milam adores hanging out with her family.
And luckily for Milam, all three of her daughters live in the Milwaukee area. The four of them rarely go a single day without seeing or talking to each other.
Milam joked that “when you see one of us, you see all of us.”
Italy, a 4-year-old girl, also has Milam’s heart. It’s her first grandchild from her oldest daughter. She loves watching her daughter with Italy because it’s like looking in a mirror and seeing herself, Milam said.
Milam recently relocated to the Greenfield area, where she lives with her youngest daughter and her husband of 5 years. But luckily for the Marquette community, she won’t stop the commute to Milwaukee anytime soon.
The big family of faculty, along with the students, is what keeps Milam around. It keeps her around so much so, that she says she hopes to be welcoming students to a clean and friendly Johnston Hall for many years to come.