Last week I vowed to spend more time highlighting the good things in the world. And this week I read a story about someone worthwhile receiving recognition that made my whole week better and I’d like to share it with you. Let’s just say Texas has been impressing me more than expected this week.

The Custodian Who Got a School

For 39 years, Marilyn Hampton worked as a custodian for the Aubrey Independent School District in Texas. According to the district’s superintendent, she did far more than clean. She bought and delivered school supplies for kids who needed them, helped students study for tests, and taught everyone around her about kindness, hard work, and perseverance.

Last month, the district surprised her at a school board meeting. As People reported, the superintendent asked Hampton to roll out a red carpet (apparently this is something she’d done a lot as janitor for various events), but this time the carpet read: Marilyn Hampton Elementary School. They named the new school after their beloved janitor! It took her a few seconds to realize what she was looking at, and then she broke down in tears. The new school, previously known only as Elementary School Number Five, opens in August 2027.

In an age where millionaires and billionaires are desperate to buy up naming rights so their names aren’t forgotten, it is incredibly refreshing to read about a district doing something we should all be doing instead: recognizing someone for a job well-done, no matter what their position.

She’s Not the Only One

Once I started looking, I found that stories like this exist all over the country, and each one makes me smile.

In Swedeborg, Missouri, the school board voted unanimously to name its elementary building the Claudene Wilson Learning Center after a custodian who’d worked there more than 30 years. Wilson also drove the bus, fixed what needed fixing, and comforted kids who were crying. The board president had ridden her bus as a child, and his son rides it now. She reportedly doesn’t love attention, but the community decided she was getting it anyway.

In Fort Ann, New York, the school dedicated its transportation building to Jimmy Paige, who at 89 has driven a school bus for 59 years and is still doing it full-time. His response to the surprise ceremony was a thank-you and a polite refusal to give a speech. And in Arkansas, the Star City district named its transportation facility after Brames Jackson, who started driving a bus in 1964.

We’ve got a similar story in our community. At Park Elementary School in Cross Plains, WI we had a custodian named Rodney Esser who the kids all loved and called Mr. Peanuts. He’d been working at the school for 61 years after the school was built right on the land his family owned. His send-off included a big party and a meeting with Wisconsin Governor, Tony Evers. Not too shabby for someone who you could tell really loved the job! Maybe they’ll someday change the name of our elementary school too?

None of these people were famous. None of them were running the district. Most of them didn’t even want the recognition. They just did good work, consistently, for a very long time, and thank goodness someone noticed.

But What About the Rest of Us?

When you’re a manager, recognizing people is part of the job. You see the work, you know the context, and you have a platform to say something. Most good managers take that seriously.

But what happens when you retire, or when you were never a manager to begin with? I’d argue it’s still part of your job. Recognizing those around you is part of being a decent member of any community. The people who keep things running (the custodian, the bus driver, the support rep, the neighbor who always shows up) rarely have anyone whose job it is to tell them they matter so they need to hear it from us.

How To Effectively Recognize Someone Worthwhile

You don’t need a building to name. Here’s what I’ve seen work.

Write a quick note to someone’s manager, and copy the person. When I was a manager, this was one of the most effective things anyone ever did, and one of the best things I could do for others. A short email to a person’s boss, copying them, does three things at once. It makes the recipient’s day. It gives their manager a specific example they can use to say thank you and argue for promotion when it’s performance review time. And it creates goodwill in every direction, including toward you. It takes two minutes and costs nothing.

Make the compliment specific. “Great job!” is OK. But “You stayed late to help me fix that problem, and because of you, my event went off without a hitch” is the kind of thing people remember. A simple formula: say what you saw, say what it made possible, and say thank you.

Send a handwritten card. In a world of instant messages, a card with a real stamp and your actual handwriting stands out. People tend to keep them and people tend to remember them.

Dedicate your work to someone. We can’t all name buildings, but we can dedicate a project, a talk, a book, or a piece of work to someone who made it possible. It’s a lasting way of saying that this person mattered.

Say it out loud, in front of others. A public thank-you at a meeting, a team gathering, or a family dinner carries extra weight, because it tells everyone else what good looks like.

Make It a Habit

I’m not suggesting we all start campaigning for buildings to be renamed (although, honestly, I’m hoping we get a couple things in Washington, DC straightened out next year). What I’m suggesting is that noticing good people and telling them is a small habit with an outsized return. It costs us only a few minutes, but it can make someone’s day, or even change how they see their own work. You’ll get a burst of satisfaction and so will they. In fact, the person whose day it might make could be yours.

Marilyn Hampton once thought of herself as a failure because she didn’t go to college, according to a news report. Four decades of showing up kindly for children later, a school will carry her name. That’s the power of recognition. The district could have let her quietly retire, but they didn’t and now generations will remember her for her support and kindness.

So this week (maybe right now), pick one person and tell them, specifically, what they did that mattered. I bet you already have someone in mind who deserves an overdue thank you.

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I’m thinking about writing more about the good in the world. If you have a story of someone who deserves recognition, or one you’ve recognized yourself, I’d love to hear it in the comments.