This article was written by Jonah Edson who is a freshman in the chronicle club. This article was written in appreciation of Tammy Hoermann and her hard work.
One fall afternoon, a student pushed through the front doors, sunglasses on and coming in late from a doctor’s appointment. Tammy was quick to respond.
“Good morning! Just getting here?” Tammy asked. She took their name and sent them on their way, a note in hand.
Tammy Hoermann is the lady at the front desk, taking attendance and letting in teachers/staff who have forgotten their keys. Tammy has worked at U-32 since 2005, which adds up to around 15 years! Two of those years have been at the new placement of the front desk.
Last year, while the doors were always open, Tammy said she was always a bit cold. Tammy said her days can be chaotic. She has to take all the attendance, look at the parent emails about absences, take all the phone calls, and let people in and out of the building.
At times, this can be stressful, and the school provides a ton of distractions. High school students that want to leave the school have to sign in and out with her, and more often than not, they need parking passes to get things from their car that they forgot.
Tammy likes to interact with all the students. “Even the ones that get in trouble have their good moments,” she said. She’s seen students outside of school that have said hi to her and she has interacted with students who have graduated and recognized her.
Tammy has an associate’s degree in business and came to work at the school because her daughter was a student here, and her husband was on the construction team. She liked the idea of having the summers off, even though she sometimes works at daycares. “I like kids,” Tammy said.
Her daughter graduated in 2009 and now lives in Massachusetts, and her husband, unfortunately, died a few years ago. In the past, she camped frequently with her husband. This last summer she had to tow her camper all by herself. “I didn’t die!” she said.
She now lives alone with her cat, Zoe, and her dog, Maisy. Zoe is a COVID cat, meaning Tammy adopted her during the epidemic. She’d meant for the cat to become a companion for Maisy, who’s a basset hound.
Despite the chaos and variety of challenges at school, Tammy makes sure she’s very polite and can be grumpy at home all she wants. “They know,” she said, when talking about her cats, and the fact that they seem to understand when she’s grumpy.
