Ryan Golding, now 46 years of age, owns Mastaler Cleaning Service in Brattleboro. His office is adjacent to WTSA's with glorious views out over the Retreat Meadows and The West River.
He had done well at BUHS. He graduated in 1996 and remembers in his senior year listening to all kinds of adults asking “Where will you go to college?” But he knew he really liked working during summer vacations for his Dad’s cleaning service: sweeping hallways, cleaning bathrooms and carpets, mopping floors and window cleaning at what was then The Midtown Mall and other businesses in a Brattleboro he loved. He worked a few summers before graduating with the lead cleaners who were working for his father, Jack Golding, who owned the cleaning service. (Golding had purchased it in 1973, a Brattleboro business started in 1938 by the Mastaler Family.)
Young Ryan also loved the natural world, and thought he might train as a park ranger. After BUHS he travelled around the US and “saw a bazillion national and state parks, loved every minute of being in some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country, but going to college was always in the back of his mind. That was what the adults in his world were asking him about.
“So when I got back from my travels, I got back in my Jeep and drove to Paul Smith College in the Adirondacks. I took the placement test but I didn’t feel I could function in college, or if I even wanted to. Would I fit in? I panicked. Within a few hours on that campus, I realized this college thing was not for me. I got back in my Jeep and drove home. That summer I relocated to Manchester VT and worked in the restaurant industry. Two years later I received a call from my mother, who at that time purchased the business from my father, asking if I would move back to Brattleboro to work full time for the family business.
“I knew I had a family business back in Brattleboro that I knew needed my help. I knew from my work summers for the cleaning company that I really enjoyed the work and the camaraderie with the employees.
“Now here it is, 2024. After years of hearing the question, ‘Where did you go to college?’ I find myself and my wife Heather Frantz (from Easton PA, a graduate of Lesley College in Cambridge, MA and a behavioral consultant in the school system in town) with two high school kids of our own. Our son Silas is a sophomore at BUHS- all into school and sports - and daughter Macie who graduated in June, 2024. She’s now working at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital to see whether or not she wants to become a fully trained nurse. Our kids say – “Dad didn’t go to college and he’s very happy with his cleaning business. Mom DID go to college and she’s happy with her work…” They see both options – college or not – as good options depending on what each of them likes to do. That pleases Heather and me just fine.
“The strength of this way of thinking about college education gets confirmed when I talk to friends of mine from BUHS who did go to college. Some are very happy, but others are struggling to find work they like AND they’re burdened with huge college loans. That’s why we encourage our kids to follow their own hearts. For me, I chose work. One thing working has meant for me is that I was able to buy my own home here in town when I was 24.
“We have fifteen employees now. Within reason, neither age nor gender matters when we hire. We care about employees’ references, what others who have worked with them before have to say about them. We need reliable, dependable, honest, hard-working people. After all, many of us work in an office after a business closes at the end of a workday and we’re the only one’s in the place. We also keep around 200 homes clean. We need employees who can keep a house or office key secure, who can clean to high standards, are disciplined, self-directing, trustworthy, who can show up on time, and be constantly reliable. While I work a couple hours a day to keep on top of the office work, I’m also out in the field doing manual labor. And I don’t tell employees where to work. I describe a new job and let them decide who will take it on. And employees stay with us for years: Rick Perkins 25 years, Melissa Hade 22 years, Roger Gorton 15 years, Heidi Heir 12 years.....
“We keep our work within a ten-fifteen mile radius of Brattleboro so we don’t have too much travel time. And after years of working a good part of weekends, I’m not doing that anymore. Every winter now we four travel as a family to the Caribbean for a week: St. Martins, Jamaica…… And we love to cook as a family, to take daytrips; we love to bake, read......
“And where did this whole approach to life come from? My Mom and my Dad. My Dad was the businessman as well as a great Dad. My Mom has a heart of gold. She taught me to treat my employees the way I want to be treated. Mom knows people and now I do too. My brother Trevor joined the family business full-time 9 years ago and has been a big part everyday operations too.
“Yes, our business is about vacuuming, mopping, dusting and carpet cleaning, window washing and cleaning bathrooms, and through it all we assure the privacy of our clients when we’re the only ones in their offices at the end of a workday.
“But what we learned from our Mom is that, in the end, it’s all about people: our employees and our customers and our community. Every day we see our crew as well as the people we work for and their homes and families and businesses. We know our employees and their families. As our Mom says, “It’s all about PEOPLE.” Macie is working at BMH. We wonder what our son Silas will do, but he’ll decide in good time."
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.