Jeff Brondel is a familiar face for the students and staff at St. Martin Catholic School.
The longtime volunteer has spent his mornings greeting them as they arrive for several years, serving as part of the Jaguar Club, which seeks to add positive encouragement to help students start their day off right.
Brondel received the Fisher Family Good Samaritan Award on Saturday. Redemption Inside the Walls and News Tribune partnered for the second year to select five "good Samaritans" who have gone above and beyond to help the Mid-Missouri area.
Brondel said there's usually about five or six volunteers at the school every morning, ready to greet the children and their families, as well as help them get out of the cars and get ready to start the school day. And that's in all types of weather.
"There's not a day that we're not out there," Brondel said.
His work with the school in St. Martins has allowed Brondel to get to know the children in the area and their families. He said he's right now working on learning the names of the new students, noting he knows about 95 percent already.
And being at the school itself just feels natural, since he grew up right next door.
"It was like a second home," Brondel said.
However, Brondel was a volunteer long before the Jaguar Club formed about eight years ago. He was always ready to lend a hand with the St. Martins Knights of Columbus and Special Olympics Missouri, noting he was at one point serving in the clown club of the Knights of Columbus.
"I love kids," Brondel said. "Just the reward of seeing a little kid's face light up."
Unfortunately, Brondel had to quit clowning around due to his health. Two decades ago, he was hospitalized for 138 days after being paralyzed by a virus. A couple of years later, as nerves were regrowing in recovery causing unbearable pain, Brondel said he found comfort in supporting the children in St. Martins, temporarily forgetting his pain while attending local games and cheering for the children he calls his own (but always pointing out which one is his actual daughter.)
And one year ago, he was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. The school children made a prayer chain with nearly 200 individual prayers.
"I sat there in my recliner reading them, just tears streaming down my face," Brondel said.
Brondel said he has always tried to live by the simple rule of treating others the way you want to be treated. And that is how he was described in his award nomination: "He is passionate in his mission to be a positive mentor for all of the children coming into the school to learn. He lives by the motto: When you die, it doesn't matter what material things you had, it's what you did for a child."
When it comes to being nominated, Brondel said he was surprised and very touched to find out it was by his daughter, who he had been in a tiff with earlier the day he found out about the nomination.
"It was a surprise, a big surprise," Brondel said, adding there's so many people in Mid-Missouri who are deserving of the award.
The other four Fisher Family Good Samaritan Award recipients are: Alicia Edwards, Connie Cashion, Chris Jarboe and Bill Graham.