In a small office tucked back behind Yay! Cafe lives our resident superhero. From ice on the parking lot to shelves being put up in classrooms, Gibbons has a lot of maintenance, and one man behind the scenes does it all. The real-life superhero of Gibbons is Mr. Michael Warren. 

His official title is Facilities Repair Coordinator, but his impact on our school goes much deeper than that. 

“I deal with the majority of all repairs in the building. Whether that’s fire inspections, toilet breaking, glass windows breaking,  doors not working, whiteboards, phone, hotels, or anything affixed or mounted to the building that can break,” he said.

An average day for Warren consists of coming to school early to make sure everything is ready for the staff and students. 

“I usually make a little lap around the building,” said Warren.  “I’m visually inspecting things, and I can quickly spot if something is hanging off the wall or a light burnout, too. And then I typically have some things from the previous day that I wasn’t able to do based on the kids being in classrooms. I try to hit those spots very quickly while the kids aren’t here.” 

Warren’s journey to Gibbons is not the typical one.

“I started as a youth director. I oversaw some after-school care sites, some before school, some summer camps, and then transitioned to overseeing the whole summer camp aspect. So I had semi-staff and about 400 kids that I oversaw,” he said. “I had transportation for a little while, so bus drivers, and then after doing that for about 11 years, I transitioned to overseeing a facility of a building, and then I took over another facility as well, so I had two buildings. But I managed the whole facility on, so from repairs to relationships, to security, to IT.”

Unlike most staff members, Warren’s experience with Gibbons didn’t just start two years ago when he began working here, but goes back to 2007 when he attended Gibbons as a student. 

“Working here now, it’s a bigger school, so there’s a lot more kids here than there were when I was here. You see a different side of things,” he said. “Like, you don’t talk about the finances of the institution, I don’t hear about that as a kid, right? All the fundraising that goes on, like, you don’t hear about all of that.” 

Even though not many people know about Warren, he still finds a way to be connected to the Gibbons community through his freshman advisory. 

“It’s got 14 kids, so that’s been really cool to be able to connect with students in a different way other than facilities,” he said. “Sometimes in facilities, you get stuck in a fast-paced world of fixing and solving problems to the next thing. So now I get a little bit more time with the kids that I truly deserve.” 

 These kids in his advisory feel just as lucky to have him. 

“Being in Mr. Warren’s advisory, I couldn’t see myself being anywhere else. He’s a really fun guy,” Udeozo said. “He has a lot of care for us, he gives us activities to do every advisory. I see other advisories being really boring, but ours has a life to it.”

Warren, being our resident “fast-paced problem solver,” has found an array of problems to solve with solutions that are unconventional and skills that are hard to come by. 

“YouTube is a great resource nowadays,”  he said. “So YouTube, watching technicians do it,  when I was very, very young, I liked to tinker and take apart things and see what works together.”

He has two kids who may follow him in his footsteps as a Gibbons alumnus. “My son already loves to come up here when kids aren’t here and helps change light bulbs, and plays in the gym, and rides around on the Gators a little bit,” he said. “It would be cool for that to happen, for them to have an opportunity to be a part of this community.”

The effect Warren has on the Gibbons community is sometimes hard to describe. Nnamdi Udeozo tells how he sees Warren’s effect in our school. 

“Walking into the class, I just thought that he was going to be like a regular teacher, nothing special, just run of the mill, but as I got to know him more, I realized that he’s a really great guy and everything he does for the school is noticeable. You might not know it’s him, but seeing how clean our areas are and seeing all the things he puts up for different events and stuff, you know that someone put the work in, and that was Mr. Warren.” 

In the years that Warren has been involved in our school, from student to educator, he has maintained the Gibbons spirit. 

Mr. Mike Curatolo, the Director of Facilities at Gibbons,  said that Warren has a “very good heart to him,” adding he was “very kind to everyone, and very pleasant to be around.” 

Warren hasn’t changed very much throughout the years. He is still a kind person, but his role at our school has changed. 

“He’s done an incredible job since he came on two years ago, making sure that our facilities are even better than they were before,”  Curatolo said. “He’s helped with a lot of different projects around Gibbons. He’s got a great attitude and a friendly demeanor, which makes him continue the Gibbons spirit around campus.”