Science Hall occupants will miss colleague Mike Kreul

Mike Kreul taught some lessons in Science Hall.

They didn’t come in long-winded lectures or research papers. They were delivered with a kind word, a smile or the simple favor of unlocking a door after hours for a frantic graduate student.

The late-night denizens at the old building valued the custodian’s big heart, caring ways and dedication to his work.

That’s why Kreul’s death in a pre-dawn explosion at his Division Street home earlier this month has left a big hole in the fabric of the Science Hall community.

Faculty, staff and students who knew the custodian are amassing a collection of written memories and hope to present them to Kreul’s family. From the collection emerges a profile of a warm, gentle man.

“Late at night, Mike kept a dark, big, old Science Hall human,” wrote geography graduate student Gordon Robertson.

Kreul, 51, lived with his cat, Heavens, in the East Side home. The cat apparently took a liking to the vacant flat in his duplex.

“I must be the only person in town with a cat who has her own apartment,” Kreul told Karen Tuerk, geographic information system certificate program manager in the Department of Geography.

Tuerk says Kreul, who worked for the university for 26 years, planned to retire in four years, buy a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, and turn it into a home for abused and rescued animals.

He told Tuerk that the more money he saved, the more land he could buy and the more animals he could accommodate.

Geography graduate student Adam Grodek recalls how one night, after he finished a lecture on global warming in Wisconsin, Kreul came in and the two began discussing the topic. For at least a half hour, the two diagrammed potential changes to Wisconsin’s environmental systems based on global warming.

“While we couldn’t come to a consensus on just how great a temperature rise might be due to global warming, we both agreed that warmer weather was good, and Mike concluded that both he and his cat were in favor of the process,” Grodek wrote.

Lisa Naughton, an associate professor of geography, wrote about one night when she was standing at the building’s back entrance preparing to hike across campus in the snow and sleet.

“Mike said to me, ‘Professor Naughton, you cannot go outside when it is like this.’ He went and got me an umbrella to use that day,” she recalls. “Ever since, he has always kept an eye on me when I leave at night, just to make sure I am all right.”

Tuerk remembers how Kreul would always stop while making the custodial rounds on the fourth floor for a quick hello or to share some encouraging words. That’s a ritual Tuerk and her colleagues will miss.

“I know that every time I hear the janitor cart squeaking down the hall from now on, I will think of Mike and miss him,” she wrote.