The young beginning to see, the old trying to remember. : A Quiet Moment With Joe

Joe Sammaritano stepped with authority into the face of the traffic and held at full arm’s length a red and white sign that said Stop. He is a slight man, barely 5 feet 4 inches tall, but there was dignity in his manner, and the moving cars on Serrania Avenue obligingly halted at the crosswalk.

Then, and only then, did Joe smile and motion a group of waiting children across the street. One of them hugged him and said, “Thanks, grandpa.”

He’s there every morning, noon and afternoon, the old guy in front of Serrania Avenue Elementary School, shepherding the kids from one side of the busy street to the other. Joe the crossing guard.

“You don’t fool around on this job,” he explained one sweet morning, on a day before the heat came. Children gathered around him as he stood under a pepper tree, ever alert for little ones who wanted to get across the street.

“You don’t know who’s driving these days. Drunks, dopers. They might kill the kids if I wasn’t there. One car ran right on through just yesterday and I hit the window with the sign. That didn’t stop him. He just kept going. Look what it did to the sign.”

He held up the stop sign to show a slight chip, glaring in remembered anger. “That made me madder than hell. But then, a woman who went through came by the next day and apologized. She hadn’t been paying attention. I told her to be careful.”

Joe is 73 years old, a retired garment presser with a slight Italian accent. He earns $6 an hour as a crossing guard, which helps pay the bills for him and for Lilly, his wife of 47 years. He has been helping kids cross the street since 1978.

I knew Joe before I ever spoke to him. The Woodland Hills school lies along my path through the Valley. I had noticed him because of the way the children responded to him. They seemed always clustered around Joe. Some called him grandpa, others pop. More than one hugged him.

I decided then I wanted to write about Joe. But life is a series of challenges with little time left for quiet moments, and many months have passed since the first time I saw him. We look at so much, but see so little. The Joes of the world fade into the background of emerging issues. They rarely lead a parade.

But there was a reason other than that and even other than the man himself that finally compelled me to stop and talk to Joe.

I have a good feeling about Serrania.

Years ago, on the first day of school busing in Los Angeles, I was assigned to visit elementary schools to see how kids bused from the inner city were greeted by their peers. What I observed at Serrania was not so much the kids as the teachers.

One especially caught my eye. I don’t remember her name, but I remember she knelt to one knee and helped a little boy from the ghetto remove his coat. Then she held his face gently in both hands and said, “We’re so glad you’re here.”

I knew she meant it by the way she said it, and even though busing went down the tube three years later, the memory of that moment remains for me and, I hope, for the kid from the ghetto.

The story, by the way, never ran. Quiet times don’t always make it when big events are clanging in the city.

“These are good kids,” Joe was saying. The school bell had rung and he was off duty for the morning. “You can’t help but like ‘em. They trust me. Up until about 10, you know, they’re still innocent. Sometimes they bring me their problems. A boy needed 20 cents to call home. I lent it to him. He paid me back the next day.”

The school had a fund-raising drive. The children sold candy for $1 a bar. Joe ended up buying nine bars because he couldn’t say no to the little people who gathered around him. He doesn’t eat candy.

Albert Gross came down the street slowly, using a cane, a dapper little man about Joe’s size in a snap-brim Panama hat.

“He’ll be 93 soon,” Joe said, watching him approach. “He passes this way twice a day. We talk about the weather. Today it’s going to rain, today is going to be a good day . . . “

“A beautiful day,” Albert said, stopping.

“Perfect,” Joe replied.

“It’s a mile and a quarter around the block,” Albert said. “I put in 2 1/2 miles every day. I live with my daughter. She says it’s good for me.” He laughed as though he might not believe that.

“Albert is going to live forever,” Joe said gently.

“Pretty soon I’ll be blind,” Albert said. “There’s nothing they can do about it. I went to San Francisco and they examined me for three hours. It’s hopeless. I’ll have to remember things when I’m blind. I won’t be able to see anymore.”

I stood with Joe a very long time. I watched the children come to school and I watched Albert Gross walk slowly down the block, the young beginning to see, the old trying to remember.

I watched Joe smile at the children in a manner that was especially gentle and I watched him stand face to the traffic, sign held high, 5 feet 4 inches of human dignity, of protection, of caring.

It was not a very significant moment. But I will remember it a long, long time.