A GLIMPSE INTO THE LIFE OF SOMEONE WORTH KNOWING.
Every morning, after I return to my dorm from my first class of the day, I find a woman tidying up Jefferson Hall. Sometimes she’s wiping down tables in the common room. Other times, she’s fluffing up the cushions on the couches. Jefferson Hall is where her workday ends each day. It’s the last dorm on campus to get spruced up.
I’m not sure what made me want to talk to her. Maybe it was her always friendly face. Maybe it was that she was always in the background of my life, doing important work, and not I or any of my classmates knew her name. Maybe it was I wanted to let her know she was being noticed. Either way, I decided to pull her aside and ask her for her story.
* * *
Her name, it turned out, was Lisa Stone.
Lisa Stone
The 46-year-old is shorter than most of her co-workers but strong in stature. Her green eyes glitter through her clear specs and align with her tiger-colored hair whipped up in a homespun handkerchief. Her voice is sweet like sugar cookies, translating an aura glowing with yellow rays, welcoming and enveloping me like the sun. She is shy, soft-spoken, and bashful—at first—but when coaxed from her shell, it is like talking to a best friend.
Stone was born in Arlington, Virginia, but grew up in Manassas. She currently lives in Lake Anna, driving a one-hour commute to work. Stone went to grade school in Manassas Park, but never attended college.
“There was never an opportunity for me to go to college. No one ever tried to focus me in that direction,” Stone said.
Stone dropped out of high school her sophomore year but made a comeback when she received her GED in 2012.
“I felt rushed when I was taking classes for my GED. I took books home and found that history was my favorite subject. I always wanted to learn more,” she said.
Though, when she thinks about what she would have done in college, the answer is clear.
“If I had the opportunity to go to college, I would be a history major because I just love old buildings,” she said.
Instead, she found work at the The General Store, a restaurant near campus, where she worked for 15 years.
“I knew most of the customers that came in. They worked at UMW. All I kept thinking to myself was that I should be one of them,” she said.
Then she heard about an opening for a housekeeper at UMW from a friend and started last November. It quickly became a job she loved. She feels like she is contributing in some small way to the educational experience. Sometimes, it makes her wish that she went. But mostly, she prefers to stay focused on the present.
“I think to myself just get it done,” she said. “But I enjoy tidying up and making improvements. I even like the smell of the cleaners, but what I love the most about my job is making a difference by keeping things clean. I should have been here a long time ago.”
Stone uses her break time to chat with her co-workers or go out to lunch with them, but she also enjoys interacting with the residents.
“One time a student gave me a bag of popcorn as a present,” she said.
When she gets home from work, Stone takes a breather from cleaning and goes outside to do the yard work. She takes pride in her vegetable garden. Other than cleaning, she has an array of interests. She is partial to seafood and often has cravings for crab legs. When watching movies, she especially likes comedies. One of her favorite movies is “Bridesmaids.” She also has a soft spot for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. On the weekends, Stone tries to catch up on housework, or she will go to an occasional family gathering at a cookout or a bonfire.
Most of all, Stone enjoys being around her family. One day, she scrolled through her phone, showing me digital memories of loved ones. Her phone was a family album. Her 28-year-old daughter Jesse and 20-year-old son Josh were smiling on the living room couch, but it was her half-pit-half-lab dog named Sunny—short for Sundance—and six-year-old granddaughter Alyssa that stole the show.
Stone had her daughter Jesse when she was seventeen, but at age twenty-one Fate arrived. That’s when she met her husband David.
“The first time we met he said he would marry me. I thought he was crazy,” she said.
For months, the two kept in contact. It helped that Stone was friends with David’s two sisters.
“One day I was on the side of the road and my car broke down. My daughter and I got a ride to the local Fastmart. All of the phones were down, and my only option was to walk inside a local pizza pit to make a call. When I walked through doors, there he was talking with his friends, one of them just happened to be a mechanic,” she reminisced.
From there the relationship flourished.
Lisa Stone is one of UMW’s hidden jewels, leading a valuable life worth exploring.