Following the Battle of Britain in 1940, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave one of his most inspiring speeches of World War II. During it he reminded his countrymen of the sacrifices made by young soldiers who were outnumbered four to one, but somehow managed to fend off a ferocious attack by German airmen and preserve the United Kingdom’s sovereignty.
In the speech, Churchill uttered the famous words, “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.”
That’s how Third Street Promenade maintenance supervisor and Churchill admirer Edward (his friends call him Eddie) Greenberg would like people to remember him and his crew of 15 dedicated employees, who scrub approximately 1 million square feet of sidewalk each day to keep the city’s world-renowned shopping center a desired destination.
Greenberg moved to 12th Street and Wilshire Boulevard from Montreal, Canada, when he was 7. For the last 23 years, Greenberg has risen before the sun to watch over “the crown jewel of the city.” Much like a proud parent, he is always willing to take that late-night phone call when something goes wrong.
It’s often a thankless job — and certainly a dirty one — but for Greenberg, 63, it’s rewarding in more ways than one. Not only does he get pleasure from watching tourists sit on a sparkling bench or take a sip from a recently cleaned water fountain, but Greenberg says he also beams when he sees one of his employees evolve from a brash and sardonic malcontent into a confident adult with a strong sense of self worth.
“Eddie is the best supervisor on any job I’ve ever had,” said maintenance worker Linwood “Woody” Fenderson as he steam-cleaned the sidewalk near the Ye Olde Kind’s Head pub. “If you have any problems, and I mean anything, you can come and talk to him. He’s down to Earth and gets down to business, and always with a great attitude. I could have transferred to other departments, got other jobs, but for 10 years, I’ve stayed right here. And it’s because of the environment that Ed creates. It’s all about mutual respect and taking pride in what you do.”
Last Friday, the Daily Press followed Greenberg as he toured the downtown area with his colleague Susan Trier. The two shared stories of how he shook former President John Kennedy’s hand as a teen, and the few years he spent organizing farm workers with civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.
“I guess I just got caught up in the moment,” Greenberg said of his time with Chavez.
He also talked about his personal life, reminiscing about the day he gathered up enough courage to say hello to one of his silver-screen idols, Dean Jagger (the two eventually became good friends before Jagger’s death in 1991), and the time he rescued a 14-year-old runaway, helped her kick a drug habit and adopted her as one of his own.
But mostly, Greenberg spoke about the love he has for his job, his dedicated employees and the Promenade, his home away from home.
When did you start working for the city? “I started working for the city in 1977. And I’ve done various jobs. I’ve worked for the streets department, working with jackhammers and on dump trucks. I’ve worked for the waste water department, and I’ve gotten a heck of an education. Getting calls at three o’clock in the morning for $5 an hour, that’s an education. And I’ll tell you the honest truth. I feel that guys like Elvis with all the riches in the world, you need to do a job like this to really appreciate what you have. Because if you don’t learn humility on this job, you have to look inside of yourself for some kind of boosters to keep you going, because you see the best in people and the worst … You also get to learn a lot about your employees. When you call someone at three o’clock in the morning, you see who people are and what they do.”
You must really love your workers. You talk about them as if they are the whole world.
“They get trashed a lot because people don’t really see that we have some extraordinary qualities. At lunchtime, you never hear any lewd conversations — not that they’re angels — but you listen to people who want their kids to get a better education, to get farther than they did, and I try to bring philosophical thoughts. ‘Do you know how much money the Promenade makes? Do you know this is the crown jewel of the city?’ We are not just maintenance. We are service people. If I see someone looking at the (Promenade) directory, I say, ‘May I help you?’ I mean don’t just go by. These are our customers. Help them get where they need to go.”
You take pride in mentoring young people who come here.
“I feel that’s my achievement. I love to get people into the workplace who are macho at times because they have low self-esteem, and when you finally work with them and they find out the more you know, the less you feel you know. You turn them into somebody they never thought they were. They keep me grounded as well. I know being a supervisor is an awesome responsibility. It’s not an ego trip … It’s a collective leadership is what I would call it.”
What are some of the most memorable things you’ve seen over the years?
“I got a call — this must have been 1980, 1981 New Year’s eve — I was blasted out of bed by a phone call that I should come down to parking structure six, that somebody had placed a small pipe bomb in one of the bathrooms. It had gone off and didn’t hurt anybody, but it had pretty well wiped out that entire lobby. It wasn’t a big enough explosion to take the building down, but when I got there it was awesome. Quite a sight. I saw smoke, fire, graffiti, just, you know, something that represented to me man’s basest instinct. Fumes were toxic, the elevator door was burned. It was just a mess.
“At the last Democratic convention here, there were protesters who were thinking of coming down to the Promenade and start some trouble. So I confronted them and said, ‘You don’t want to trash this do you? You know all you’re trashing out are fellow workers just like you are. We’re proud of what we do here. Can you just be a little honest and modest about this? You could hurt us very badly and the city.’ They went through quite civil.
“The worst thing I think I’ve ever seen was the farmers’ market tragedy … I hope I never see anything like that again. Ten people were killed, a tiny infant. It was awful.”
How do you deal with the homeless who camp out at the Promenade and in some of the alleys at night?
“Kindness is sometimes lost, but when it blooms, it blooms a hundred times over. If we go over here at six o’clock in the morning, we may see some homeless that are really aggressive. But if we say to them, ‘Hey Bob, how you doing?’ or, ‘Hey, Lucy, you’re looking good today. I like that new hairstyle,’ you get a whole different dignity type of thing than if you just go in hostile, “I’m the city man, get up and move.’ By just asking them for their help in, say, keeping the bench they’re sleeping on clean, you have no idea how much that works. You need that dialogue. You have to look at them as human beings, and things will go right.”
What are your thoughts on the homeless situation we have here in the city and on the Promenade in particular?
“Well, every once in a while I’ll come down here on Sundays and walk around. I like to mingle with the local businesses because they do a lot for this city. I do see a lot of homeless and the sight is sometimes unseemly with all the trash bags … It’s an unattractive problem, and it takes a lot of money, and God knows people who are working their tail off can’t make enough money to get a decent pension or right health insurance. So where’s the money going to come from to help situations like that? From a social, visual and security type of thing, if I was a parent coming down here with my kids that would cross my brow.”
Don’t you ever get frustrated when you clean something, say the bathrooms, and then 15 minutes later, it’s dirty again?
“Never. If it wasn’t dirty, we wouldn’t be in business. Let’s say you were managing one of the high-end hotels, you know people rent the room and leave a mess, the bed sheets have to be changed. That’s the same thing we feel. Our attitude as a crew is welcome to our world. We are going to clean it for you and make it as pleasant as possible. We realize it might get trashed out in five minutes and people will say it hasn’t been cleaned today. I hear that all the time. We just try to be patient, find ways to make it last longer. The worst thing we could do is limit the use and not make it a customer-friendly place.”
Often times maintenance is overlooked and is placed at the bottom of the totem pole. Is that true for you?
“Oh yes. We have to fight for everything we have. Often times the politicians will vote for something that affects us, and they never come down to see what the effects of that decision are. They’ll spend millions of millions of dollars on trying to create this unique shopping environment, but then they won’t spend an extra couple of thousand of dollars to keep it maintained. So I get in fights sometimes, but you have to. You have to lead with your convictions. Otherwise, how can you ask others to follow you if you don’t stand for anything?”
Any thoughts on retiring? “Not yet. I find that my intellectual side is not diminished. I’ve got plenty of stamina, and I have one of the best attendance records. Sixty-three hasn’t caught up with me chronologically yet. It’s just a number on a piece of paper. I feel full of vim and vigor. Look at the boys who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. They wanted to live just like anybody else, but they did-n’t get to the top by running away. They got to the top because they knew whatever sacrifice they gave, it was for a good cause. If you are climbing up your own mountain of success and you decide it’s too hard and give up, you fail yourself. If you do that, what are you going to tell your kids? How are you going to inspire them?”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 13, 2006. Read the original PDF.