ROCHESTER — As he was getting ready for the students to flow into the gym at Lincoln K-8 for lunch Monday morning, Luke Fenton took out a stuffed animal and put it in a see-through plastic container on the table he uses to register the kids’ meals. In front of the jar, he stuck a hand-written sign that said “Lionel the Eurasian Lynx.”
Lionel is just one of a small zoo’s worth of stuffed animals that has made an appearance during the lunch hour at Lincoln. Fenton brings them in from the stockpile of his kids’ old toys at home.
As simple as that daily gesture may be, it’s one the students have gravitated toward; it’s a way Fenton uses to connect with them as they come through his line.
One after another, plenty of students took Lionel out of his designated spot, either to give him a hug or to just examine the oddity of the day. One student took him out and pressed his paws against the keypad, using him to enter her student I.D. into the school’s digital lunch system.
Another student asked if Lionel was the one the school used to hide around the building for the students to find. After all, the animal of the day just happened to be the same as the school mascot — a lynx.
Joe Ahlquist / Post Bulletin
“It’s just fun interacting with the kids,” Fenton said. “It’s different every day. … You get to know them, even though they see me for 30 brief seconds out of the day.”
It’s because of those kinds of small gestures that Fenton was recently named recipient of the 2026 Hero Award by the Minnesota School Nutrition Association, which “recognizes an individual who consistently goes above and beyond.”
When the association announced Fenton as its award winner, it said “his kindness is evident, whether greeting students by name, encouraging them to try something new, or offering a friendly face.”
Along with the kitchen Lead Nick Rudlong and another longtime school nutrition services associate, Jina Shin, Fenton is busy in the kitchen long before the students arrive for the mid-day meal.
In the relatively small kitchen located off of the gym, the three were making sure everything was ready Monday morning.
A calendar of the meals for the month was taped onto one of the cabinets, listing everything from chicken Alfredo and beef sambusa to more standard comfort food selections like hamburgers and mini pizza triangles.
Monday’s meal was orange chicken with rice and peas – something that Fenton remembered before he chose what stuffed animal he was going to bring for the day.
“I was going to bring the chicken, but – we were having orange chicken,” he joked.
Once everything is ready, they roll up the shutters separating the kitchen from the gym and move the rollable counter into place. Fenton then moves his station outside the kitchen so that the students head right to it when they come into the gym for the day.
Sometimes, he’ll have music playing at his station. He even used to take song suggestions from the students until the school’s schedule got altered, leaving the lunch period more crunched than it had been before.
“There was one time, I was playing Taylor Swift, and they all knew the song — they were all singing it,” Fenton said. “It was parents’ day too.”
Fenton has been working in the lunch room at Lincoln for the past four or five years … although the exact number of years was one that didn’t come to mind amid the work of getting everything ready for the rush of students on a Monday morning.
He initially tried to get a position at another of Rochester’s elementary schools since that was where his kids were going at the time.
But even though Lincoln wasn’t his first choice, Fenton and his zoo of stuffed animals has been a welcome addition ever since.
“Luke has gone above and beyond,” Rudlong said. “That’s why he’s been singled out.”
