LIVING WITH A GUEST
PEOPLE
by Frank Tankard
Abby Boone can't keep a roommate,and she has to clean up after them all the time. But she doesn't mind too much.
She has her apartment just how she wants it. A flower sits in a vase in the middle of a white table. There's a TV, a couch, a bed, some art on the walls and clean, white countertops. It has one bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, a washer and dryer and lots of pictures of her fiancé.
"it's small," she says, "but I like it."
Abby Boone, Great Bend senior, lives in a pretty typical one-person college apartment, except for two things: who lives next to her, and who lives above her.
Boone lives in the basement of the University of Kansas guest house, a stone cottage with a red roof in the shadow of
The Outlook, the white mansion on the east side of campus where Chancellor Robert Hemenway — and the chancellors before him — lives. Above Boone's ceiling, visiting dignitaries, Nobel Prize winners, entertainers, writers and other guests of the University have slept.
This is just her first semester as the house's
quests' needs.
Boone washes the guest's laundry, takes out the trash, sweeps, dusts and scrubs the toilet. Every Saturday she does a deep cleaning. The caretaker no longer has to cook, but Boone does keep the place stocked with breakfast food. She gets free rent and $8 an hour while she's working, plus $1 an hour while she's on call, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. There's always the possibility of a guest calling in need of someone to clean up a spill or a ride to the drug store.
caretaker, but she is the latest in a long line of them. The guest house was commissioned in the 1930s because the chancellor's guests (and sometimes their attendants) were taking up too much space in The Outlook. During World War II, the guest house was home to a couple of faculty members during a housing shortage. In 1952, it was remodeled and the caretaker was added to clean the house, cook breakfast and attend to the
"HE DOESN'T KEEP ME AWAKE AT NIGHT. HE'S PRETTY QUIET."
nude to the image. "It doesn't happen often, but it does happen," says Jeff Weinberg, assistant to
—ABBY BOONE,
GREAT BEND SENIOR,
ABOUT HER NEXT-DOOR
NEIGHBOR, CHANCELOR
HEMENWAY
the chancellor, who has overseen the guest house for about 10 years.
But mostly, Boone's schedule is like it was before she applied for the gig last semester. During the day she goes to class to finish her exercise science degree and sits at a desk in the chancellor's office, where she's worked on two-and-a-half years
as a student assistant.Her fiancé comes over on the weekends.
"He doesn't keep me. awake at night," she says, laughing. "He's pretty quiet."
"It's nice to have my own space," she says, "not to have to share with someone." Except, of course, for the man upstairs. She has only had one guest so far, who has lived there since August and hasn't asked for anything. And the man next door?
PHOTO/KIMBERLY WESTPHALL
Abby Boone, Great Bend senior, stands in front of the KU guest house, where she is living this semester. In exchange for free rent and a paycheck, Boone washes guests' laundry and keeps the house clean.
BE OUR GUESTS
The KU guest house, which sits east of Blake Hall near Watkins and Miller scholarship halls next to the chancellor's mansion, has served as a home away from home for guests over the years. Guests have come from as close as Junction City and as far away as Japan. Here are the bigger names from
Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Goodman, 1985
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, 1986
New York Times senior art director Steven Heller, 1991
Olympic gold medalist and KU alumnus Billy Mills,1991,&1997
5 Comedian Adam Sandler, 1993
Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu,1999
Writer
Ray Bradbury, 1997
(drew a martian on the guest log)
Today show correspondent Bob Dotson, 2000
about the last two decades
09.28.2006 JAYPLAY €09