ADDISON – Lewis B. Lovejoy is a perfect picture of job satisfaction.

After all, he gets to sweep and mop the Lewis B. Lovejoy Gymnasium five days a week, and more when the Daniel W. Merritt School has extra events on weekends.

Lovejoy isn’t a town figure in Addison – he’s an 88-year-old custodian – but he’s the most adored custodian in all Down East.

On Sunday, he turns 89. Today, his daughter and granddaughter are hosting an open house in his honor at the Addison Town Hall from 1 to 4 p.m.

He was surprised with a birthday party Friday on the very floor he has cared for so carefully over the years.

“I didn’t know about the surprise until I got there,” Lovejoy said Friday afternoon. “[Principal Mike Kelley] kept me going around, checking all the heaters.”

The entire school was in on the secret. Even the youngest pupils, who fondly call him “Lewis,” kept it from their favorite custodian.

The lifelong Addison resident says that he expects 89 “will feel just like 88.”

“I can’t see much difference,” he said. “I feel good, and I work every day.”

Lovejoy is such a part of the school that he has never contemplated retiring. After 20 years of digging clams on the Addison flats, he applied for the custodian position back in 1975, the year the school opened.

Twenty years later, when he reached 79, the school put his name on the gym.

But even that didn’t give him any ideas about retiring.

“I could, I guess,” he said, taking on the obvious question. “But it’s not the money part. I just don’t like sitting at home alone. I like the work. And this staff is awfully good to me.”

Today, kind words will be heaped on the man who, as far as anyone can tell, has never murmured a bad word in public about anybody.

Said Kelley, who has been the school principal the last four years, “He has never said a bad thing about a soul.”

Lovejoy’s 6-foot, 180-pound proportions are true to his level of activity. His days are filled with setting up lunch tables, bleachers or chairs, then putting them back. He mops floors, empties trash, carries things and makes the rounds.

When he takes his month of vacation every August, he picks blueberries in fields belonging to twin sisters Dawn and Darlene McManus.

Dawn McManus has worked alongside Lovejoy as Merritt’s cook the last 15 years.

“God forbid you can’t have anything on the floor,” she said, looking out at the gleaming hardwood from the kitchen. “This floor is his baby. You could eat off it.”

For years Lovejoy went every Sunday to open the gym to those in the community who wanted to play basketball. He never charged a cent. But people brought him pints of scallops or crabmeat anyway, as a gesture of thanks.

To everyone’s recollection, Lovejoy hasn’t missed a day of work in his 29 years at Merritt.

Mitchell Look, now the principal at Rose M. Gaffney School in Machias, was the principal at Merritt starting in 1991.

“He never was sick, and never took a day off,” said Look, who will attend the open house today. “One day I had to force him to go home at noon. I had to fight to get him to do that much.”

Home is nearby, in the village of Addison. A widower, he lost his wife of 52 years, Venia, 16 years ago. He keeps company with Molly, his black Labrador retriever, who croons when he plays the harmonica.

A World War II veteran who received four bronze medals, Lovejoy is a member of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts.

He reports to the school daily at 6 a.m. He can’t shake his lifelong habit of rising at 4 a.m. He finishes at 3 p.m. The evening custodial duties are shared by Peggy Cirone of Columbia Falls and Troy Randall of Harrington.

“They’re good workers,” he said.

They have a good example in Lovejoy, who has no intentions of giving up his job.

“Why should I?” he asked. “As long as I’m enjoying it, I’ll stay.”