Gastel retires after 28 years at Bigfork schools

For most mothers, picking up after their own children for 18 years is enough cause for complaint.

Shirley Gastel has spent the last 28 years cleaning up after thousands of Bigfork students, but you’ll never hear her fuss about it.

“My love of kids has kept me going,” Gastel said. “Seeing them every day, you really get to know them.”

At the beginning of June, Gastel, who has spent the majority of her career working as a custodian in the Bigfork School District, hung up her cleaning rag for the last time.

After her daytime custodian position was eliminated in the wake of district-wide budget cuts, Gastel decided to take the district’s early retirement incentive.

The change, she said, is bittersweet.

Although she is looking forward to spending more time with friends and family, Gastel said it is difficult to leave behind her second family — the students and staff at the Bigfork schools.

“The Bigfork School District has really been my second home and my extended family,” Gastel said. “I’ll leave some memorable times there.”

After moving to Bigfork with her late husband, Bob, in 1982, Gastel immediately began looking for a job in the school district.

“I’d worked in schools all my life, and I thought, ‘I’ve just got to work with those kids,’” she said.

She spent a short time volunteering as a note-taker during school board meetings, where she became acquainted with administrators and board members.

“It was a foot in the door, anyway,” she said.

Eventually, she received the custodian job offer she was after.

“I bugged the heck out of them until they gave me the job,” she said with a laugh. “I was really happy to have it.”

She started out as a night custodian at the high school. After the district constructed a new elementary and middle school building in the late 1980s, Gastel was transferred to that building, where she performed light maintenance and custodial duties on a year-round basis.

Eventually, her job description evolved to include daytime duties at both the high school and the elementary and middle school. As a full-time day custodian, Gastel was responsible for cleaning all of the restrooms and shower rooms in both buildings, along with “whatever else they needed done during the day,” she said.

“I was a busy lady, running back and forth from both schools,” she said.

Gastel enjoyed interacting with the high school kids, many of whom knew her by name and stopped to chat with her during passing time.

“That was neat, because I started getting really acquainted with the high school kids,” Gastel said. “I got to see a different side of them.”

Two of those students were particularly special to Gastel — her grandsons, C.R. and Doug Leisinger, who graduated from Bigfork High School in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

Even though she felt “blessed” to be able to watch her grandsons grow up, Gastel never wanted them to feel burdened by her presence.

“I tried to stay out of their way, but it was sure nice seeing them every day,” she said. “I never missed anything they were involved in.”

The boys, who also lived next door to their grandmother during their childhood years, thought Gastel would retire as soon as they had both graduated. But she enjoyed her job too much to give it up, and she said she probably would have kept at it for a few more years if the district had not eliminated the position.

But always one to look on the bright side, Gastel said she is excited to do all the things she never had time for during her nearly three-decade-run with the Bigfork School District.

She plans to spend more time walking, bicycling, working in her garden and dining at her favorite lunch spots, the Echo Lake Café.

“I’ll stay busy with friends and family,” she said. “The list of people I would like to do things with is getting longer each day.”

In addition to her grandsons, that list includes her daughters, Pam Leisinger and Carla Gastel, and her son-in-law, Charles “Chick” Leisinger.

Though she is still recovering from an emergency appendectomy that she had at the end of May, Gastel is eager to get out and enjoy her first summer of retirement.

“I’m a free woman now,” she said.