Guardian Angel : Kay Greer Takes Crosswalk Job Seriously; She Also Admits She’d Be Lost Without It

Holding her red-and-white stop sign, the school crossing guard waits for the children. “A lot of people don’t think that we do very much,” Kathryn (Kay) Greer says, “but it’s a big responsibility. My mind is no place else but on this.”

The children emerge two or three at a time from a neighborhood of low houses and, at the intersection of Woodruff and Centralia avenues, put themselves in her hands. They carry book bags, along with a hint of morning sleepiness that she can’t afford.

The light turns green, then WALK appears; the button activating the sign is smooth as glass, she has pushed it so many times.

“Remember, stay behind me,” Greer says with darting eyes. A crossing guard since 1973, she is wearing blue pants and a gold shirt with a City of Lakewood patch on the shoulder.

She blows a whistle and steps briskly off the curb, a group of students following. “I’m a fast walker,” she says, adding that she was faster a few years ago before she fell and broke her hip.

Halfway across four-lane Woodruff, she turns to the traffic and holds high her wood-handle stop sign. The children proceed to the sidewalk and, before continuing half a block to MacArthur Elementary School, hear her say, “Have a nice day.”

The sun above the crisscross of telephone wires in this treeless intersection beats down on the crossing guard. Her squint lines are deep, the eyes themselves bleached of some of their blue. Fearing skin cancer, she often wears a bonnet.

Greer works from 8 to 10:20 a.m., then the noon shift and finally from 3 to 4:20 in the afternoon. She goes back and forth across the asphalt but never seems to tire. Her few breaks are spent eating a banana in the 1966 car she calls her old jalopy.

Her long record is unblemished. A child has never been hit in her dozen years at this corner, though cars stream by, some with engines revving savagely. “I don’t think I could continue,” she answers when asked what she would do if an accident happened.

So she is strict. “You have to be when you’re running a corner,” Greer says. “When they start a fight or if they’re playing in the crosswalk, I’ll write ‘em up, and they know it, because it’s too dangerous.”

The crossing guard herself has had close calls, and on this recent morning has another. A car turns left onto Woodruff and speeds in front of Greer and her flock.

“See what I mean, they cut me off,” she says. “They’re in a hurry, but how’s that little second going to make a difference to them? Sometimes you want to take your sign and pound on them and say, ‘Can’t you read ? How’d you get your driver’s license?’ but you don’t.”

She does not reveal her age but says her oldest son is 38. Greer is a widow who lives in the same neighborhood as the children.

The thin gold band she wears that pinches a finger’s tan flesh was put there by her beloved Maury during a ceremony in a St. Joseph, Mo., church 42 years ago. Her turquoise earrings, glinting in the sun, were a gift from him during an Australian vacation.

“A wonderful man,” she says of Maury, a dispatcher who died three years ago. He had mouth cancer and, on top of that, a stroke.

Unknowingly, the children fill the void. “This is the only thing that keeps me going,” Greer says. “If it wasn’t for this, I’d give up.”

Greer knows all of the students by their first names: Erin, David, Brandy, Danny, Trinity, Courtney, Leslie and more than 100 others. Proud of this, she says: “I went down to Col. Sanders to get some chicken Sunday, and a girl I used to cross said hello to me. She’s 17 now, but I couldn’t remember her name and I felt badly about it.”

She has no plans to retire. “As long as I can walk and have a good disposition, I’ll stay,” she says. “When the kids get on my nerves, I’ll leave. But they’re nice children. When I was laid up, I really missed them.”

She recalls that a couple of the parents picked her up when she was recovering from her broken hip and took her to the school where, in a ceremony, she received a plaque that praised her dedication.

It has never been questioned.

“She’s always done a good job for us, she’s very conscientious,” says her boss, Carol Flynn, Lakewood’s school safety coordinator.

Late in the afternoon, the children vanish back into the neighborhood. John Thrasher, a fifth grader, heads home carrying a branch. “I’m going to make a wreath for Kay for Christmas,” he says. “She’d risk her life for any kid.”

As quitting time nears, the bonneted Greer sits in a lawn chair next to the curb, the traffic’s roar in her ears. A sad moment for her? A lonely one?

Not at all, the crossing guard says cheerfully. There may still be a few more children coming. She keeps her eyes on the school.