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PRINCETON: Beloved university figure Kenny Samuel calls it a career

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
At Princeton University, most people know him as Kenny, a man hard to miss for anyone who attended or worked there during the past 49 years.
Kenny, as Sgt. Kenneth Samuel of the school’s department of Public Safety is more formally known, decided to call it a career at old Nassau. Tuesday was his last day at a job that saw him look after the university, make sure its campus was safe and even help a horse get down from Cleveland Tower.
“Just being around the students, the time flew,” said Mr. Samuel, 71, last week in an interview in which he reflected on his life and career and the changes he has seen at the university.
It is no understatement to say Mr. Samuel is a beloved figure at Princeton, someone whom people speak affectionately of as if they are talking about a brother or friend, as much a fixture on campus as the statue of John Witherspoon. He was made an honorary member of five classes of Princeton graduates, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1983 and 1986. When alumni come back for Reunions, they ask about him.
“Whoever I met, it was a bond, no matter who it was,” he said of the friendships he built over the years.
Away from work, he would be the guy playing rugby or lifting weights in Dillon Gym. On the job, he would respond to any number of calls that needed his attention.
As the physical environment around him changed in nearly half a century, so too did Mr. Samuel, the man who came from someplace else to find love and build a career in New Jersey.
He is originally from Talcott, West Virginia, a small town in the southeast part of that coal mining state. He is the oldest of three siblings, who include a sister and a half-brother.
Even before he started working at the university, Mr. Samuel came to know the community during breaks from school. Every summer starting when he was 10, his mother had him stay with her family in Princeton; he had uncles and aunts living in town.
It was in Princeton that he would meet his future wife, Myrna, in 1962. By this point in his life, he was living and attending high school in Virginia thinking he would work for the FBI.
“And then when I finished high school and I found that the FBI agents had to go to college, I didn’t go to college. I didn’t want to go to college,” he said.
After graduating in 1963, he came to Princeton to live with an uncle, Robert. He and Myrna married the next year; the young couple — they were teenagers when they married — eventually settled into an apartment on Leigh Avenue and later bought a home on Birch Avenue.
His professional background ran the gamut, from working as a grounds keeper at the Hun School, later serving in the then-Borough sewerage department and holding two part-time jobs, including washing pots and pans at PJ’s Pancake House. He was the first employee of the local restaurant when it opened in town.
An opening as a security guard at the university led him to start working for the school in March 1966, one of only a handful of blacks serving in that capacity.
Life brought him to a fork in the road. He briefly was a borough police officer for two days in 1967, but had to give up that job for family reasons. Subsequently in 1969, he took a promotion at the university as a “proctor,” a sworn officer who was involved in student disciplinary matters.
“We had some nice times with the students. They really, really respected us,” he said. “We were all over the place, checking rooms and stuff like that. That was the name of the game, making sure that the students obey the policies that the deans put out.”
During his tenure, he built bonds with students that last to this day.
He was a physical education instructor for three years. He got involved playing amateur rugby at the urging of university graduate Tommy Pirelli from 1975 to 1982. He and a student, Craig Carvin, formed a power-lifting club for weightlifters; he was good enough to win national competitions in the 1980s.
“I gave them respect and then they gave me respect. We gave each other respect,” he said of his relationship with students through the years. “I think respect is a big, little word that you have to gain from a student.”
Sometimes, he would have to respond when they got into some mischief, like the time in the early 1970s when a couple of undergraduates got a horse into Cleveland Tower at the graduate college — at night. He and a supervisor, Harry Kahny, went to respond.
“They were trying to get the damm horse on the roof of the building,” he said of the students. “We got him to come down one step at a time. We took our time. It took us about an hour to get the damm horse down, because he would just stop and wouldn’t do nothin’. So we had to just bring him back very, very gently.”
It was the most unusual call in 49 years.
During that time, the university changed in front of his eyes. What was an all-male school went co-ed in 1969; there has been and continues to be all sorts of construction and growth.
But where did all the time go?
“Time went by fast,” Mr. Samuel said. “God’s been good to me. He’s given me good health. I go to church every Sunday. It’s all God.”
Mr. Samuel considered retiring six or seven years ago, but his wife talked him out of it. In recent years, he found the days getting longer. He felt the physical toll.
It was time.
And though he’s going to keep working elsewhere, Mr. Samuel wants to stay connected with the school. He said he wants to be a mentor for the football team.
At a retirement party two weeks ago, members of the university community came to pay tribute to him. It was an emotional day.
“I wanted to say more, and in my heart, I just couldn’t get it out,” he said. “Because I really don’t want to leave. I really don’t. I could just work here the rest of my life. But it comes to an end.”