Pictured, from left, Larry Hood, Rob Mallon and Randy Halleran served many years in the Waterloo school district as the summer paint crew. Their tenure as painters adds a little color to the history of Waterloo schools. (Sean McGowan photo)

They went through thousands of gallons of paint. They painted every room of every school building on multiple occasions. They laughed, joked and watched their friendships grow more times than they can count.

Now, the Waterloo school district summer paint crew consisting of Larry Hood, Rob Mallon and Randy Halleran is bidding farewell to color splotches and accent walls.

The decision for Halleran and Mallon to retire was made public when Waterloo school superintendent Brian Charron read Halleran’s retirement letter to the school board last month. Hood retired from painting in 2011, with Mallon and Halleran officially retiring at the end of this summer.

“Rob and I are ready to NOT climb up and down countless ladders daily, hang on for dear life from rocking scaffolds 25 or more feet up in the air, carry multiple 50-pound boxes of paper … and any other jobs that needed to be done,” the letter states.

Halleran told the Republic-Times he enjoys creative writing and thought it would be nice to say “thank you” to Jack Latchem, Waterloo school district building and grounds director, along with the district.

Pictured, Larry Hood and Rob Mallon (on the scaffolding) work to put lettering on Gardner Elementary School in 2011 before the start of the school year. (Kermit Constantine photo)

The crew started out as a six-man effort in 1995 before dwindling down to three the following summer. According to Hood, he decided 2011 would be his last year for painting because of a surgery he had done on his rotator cuff. That left just Mallon and Halleran for the past six years.

Hood said the district was able to save a lot of money employing the paint crew, while the summer job served as a good source of additional income for the guys.

“It was pretty nice — they would say, ‘Talk to this teacher and see what paint she wants,’” Hood said. “And we’d go out and get the paint and do it. It was a good summer job for a teacher.”

Halleran, Hood and Mallon originally took on the painting gig while employed as teachers in the district to keep them busy in the summer. But the job turned into much more than painting over the years.

“Physically, the hardest job we had was moving stuff from the old high school to the new high school. I blew out my knee that year,” Mallon said.

Hood said maintenance workers created a makeshift ramp to slide heavy boxes down the stairs of the old high school, which made the challenge more bearable. 

“We were on call for whatever — digging the asphalt when it was 110 degrees,” Halleran added.

“Spreading the mulch, that was always a favorite,” Mallon chimed.

Regardless of the struggles this crew faced, Latchem noted that the three consistently came in and did a quality job.

“They’re going to be hard to replace,” he said.

Latchem said he will look to do the same with hiring teachers on to paint over summer break. But as Latchem indicated, the retiring paint crew was one-of-a-kind, for a number of reasons.

“(Rob) and I liked to listen to blues music, and the principal at the time, Gary Gordon, was not a blues man. So he came barreling out of his office and said, ‘Turn that Bo Diddley junk off,’” Hood said, adding he had a lot of laughs through the years.

Unfortunately, as Halleran shares in his letter, “All good things must come to an end.”

“Thank you Waterloo District #5 for recognizing our talents and then being kind when you found out we didn’t really have any and let us continue anyway,” the letter reads.