Article by Tabitha Johnston and published in The Journal on January 29, 2026, link to full article HERE.
Snow blew onto the lawn beside him, as Kevin Mumma pushed an Ariens snow blower ahead of him on the sidewalk surrounding the Berkeley County Schools Division of Operations & Business Services building on Wednesday morning.
According to Mumma, this was the third location he had cleaned up from the recent snow storm, having finished clearing the sidewalk and pathways around Pikeside Learning Center the previous day.
"Pikeside's done," Mumma, who serves full time as the head custodian there and part time as the custodian at the board of education, said. "Everything over there is done, and over here, I just have the sidewalk and one set of steps left."
Although he had cleared away the snow around his house right after the storm, he was not able to begin doing so at either of his work sites, as the roads around his home were impassable on Monday. He saw that they had been sufficiently cleaned up on Tuesday, however, and immediately set off to work that day.
To get the snow ready for removal, he salted the sidewalks, steps and other problematic areas around both properties on Tuesday. The extra effort paid off at Pikeside Learning Center, effectively breaking down the icy layer on the snow and enabling him to quickly clear it away within a few hours. Unfortunately, the situation was not quite so straightforward around the Berkeley County Schools Division of Operations & Business Services building.
"Everything here has frozen solid," Mumma said. "It's going to be a bit more of a challenge because of that, but we're going to try to get it all done today."
Mumma planned on calling maintenance to bring in a snow plow to remove more of the snow, after he did what he could to get things cleared up. In his 21 years as a custodian with Berkeley County Schools, he said he has often worked together with others in this and other ways, which tend to yield more thorough results than would be the case if he did it all on his own. The only limitation to this kind of partnership has been when staffing numbers are low - as happens to currently be the case.
"I don't like to stay home, and I enjoy working here. I like to keep busy," Mumma said. "Though, I wouldn't mind having a little more help once in a while. That's kind of hard to do, though, because we really don't have enough people employed in the system."
Thankfully, Mumma said dealing with the results of a storm of this magnitude is something he has done many times before over the many years he has lived and worked in Martinsburg.
"I've been here my whole life - all 58 years - and have seen many storms come and go. It happens every so often, that we get a deeper snow like this," Mumma said. "It ain't nothing new."