Since his teen years, Floyd Sylvester has been a sounding board for people’s personal difficulties, issues and dilemmas.

“I’ll be standing in line at a grocery store with my wife and the person next to us will start telling me about their problems,” said Sylvester, director of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Employee Assistance Program. “I don’t know why, but that’s the way it has been my whole life. It’s one of the reasons I became a licensed independent mental health practitioner and certified employee assistance professional.”

Now, after more than 30 years in the field — the last 15 spent counseling university employees and family members — Floyd is hanging up his couch. His final day at Nebraska is May 1.

“I’ve had a great career that allowed me to work alongside thousands of people, helping them find positive ways to make their lives more enjoyable,” Sylvester said. “It’s been a rare privilege, but it’s just time for me to move on and focus on the more positive things in life.”

A graduate of Indiana University, the Michigan native started his career as an elementary school teacher, first in Canada, then in Indiana. During those years, colleagues (much like strangers in grocery lines) would come up and start talking openly about their problems.

“It felt pretty normal at that point, but it struck me that I really didn’t know what I was doing,” Sylvester said. “I certainly did not want to do damage with my advice. So, I went to graduate school to study counseling and do it professionally.”

Sylvester first worked as a trained counselor in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and with Montgomery County Youth Services bureau. During his tenure with youth services, Sylvester served as interim director and developed a program that offered counseling assistance to schools.

“My early work was marital/family counseling that involved a lot of youth court ordered counseling,” Sylvester said. “It was very difficult work, but it taught me enormously.”

“The last day is going to be difficult. But, I’ll get through it because — and this is something not a lot of people can say — I believe I did with my career exactly what I was born to do.”

– Floyd Sylvester, director, Employee Assistance Program

Changes in a local school board prompted Sylvester to seek other opportunities. He landed in Nebraska with Continuum Employee Assistance, a Lincoln-based business that contracts counseling services with companies and corporations.

While the job was rewarding, Sylvester was drawn to the diversity of people and jobs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He joined EAP as a counselor in 2003 and served as director for more than 10 years.

“I’ve loved working with everyone here at the university,” Sylvester said. “Each story has been an adventure and I’m fascinated by people’s resilience — their ability to get knocked down, find an opportunity to get back up, move forward and grow from it.

“Assisting with that process has been an amazing privilege.”

While personal defenses have allowed Sylvester to have a psychology career that is nearly double that of the national average, he’s recently sensed a growing weight to the work.

“Stories that therapists hear — those of trauma or incredible life experiences — can be difficult,” Sylvester said. “While the vast majority of these stories end positively through counseling assistance, the subconscious picks up pieces from each story along the way.

“For me, it just began to feel like, maybe, I’ve heard enough of the pain stories.”

In retirement, Sylvester plans to pursue passions he’s long hoped to master, including guitar, personal fitness, Spanish fluency and volunteering in the community. He also hopes to help guide programming in a new apartment community he and his wife, Mitzi, are moving into.

When his wife retires as a teacher with Lincoln Public Schools in the next few years, the Sylvesters are planning to hike the 500-mile-long El Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage through France and Spain.

“We plan to take the French way, which is the full-length of the pilgrimage,” Sylvester said. “There are shorter paths, but we’ve have both run marathons. If we’re going to do it, we figure why choose something less.”

Cortyn | Shutterstock

The Church of St. James marks the end of the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage. Known in English as the Way of St. James, the pilgrimage is a network fo paths that lead to the shrine at the apostle's cathedral in northwestern Spain. The cathedral is traditionally observed as the resting place of the remains of St. James. The pathways are among the most important Christian pilgrimages of the Middle Ages.

Overall, Sylvester will look back on his career, especially that in Nebraska, with joy and a sense of accomplishment.

“The last day is going to be difficult,” Sylvester said. “But, I’ll get through it because — and this is something not a lot of people can say — I believe I did with my career exactly what I was born to do.”

Now, with retirement just days away, Sylvester is gearing up to defray those unexpected grocery line counseling sessions.

“I’m hard of hearing, so I plan to turn my hearing aid off when I’m in line,” Sylvester said with a laugh. “No, I couldn’t do that. I’ll just ask them if they have an EAP and suggest they go talk it through with them. In my experience, they’re pretty good people.”

Due to the private nature of his counseling work, Sylvester has requested no celebration be held in honor of his retirement. Members of the campus community can send him a private note at fsylvester2@unl.edu or FSylvester2@gmail.com after May 1.