Crossing guard returns to his post after 60 years

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — A Watsessing Elementary School crossing guard has returned to his post 60 years after leaving it.

“The job is perfect,” said Richard Sheldon, 71. “It’s six minutes from my home, I know the area and the hours are good.”

A retired banker, Sheldon was a Watsessing kindergartener in 1957. As a fifth- and sixth-grader, he was a crossing guard at the same post he now oversees. A life-long Bloomfield resident, his affinity for Watsessing is a strand of the family DNA: His parents and two siblings attended the school as did his own children.

“This school is great,” he said last week during an interview in the teachers’ lounge. “My kids loved it here and my parents were involved in a lot of activities.”

Sheldon mused about where the interview was taking place. It was his first grade homeroom.
“I never thought, 65 years later, I’d be here,” he said. “I had a crush on my first-grade teacher, Miss Thompson, in this room.”

Currently residing on Maolis Avenue, as a boy he lived on Ashland Avenue, a street which crosses Maolis. A few blocks away, in front of the 1899-built, red brick school, he guarded the Prospect Street crosswalk.

“We got out of school ten or 15 minutes early,” he said. “We were chosen to be guards if we showed an interest.”

He does not enter the school often these days, but said its interior had not changed much except for the third floor. When he was a student, it had four classrooms, one in each corner, and an auditorium.
“The all-purpose room was built when I was in fourth-grade,” he said of the school extension. “I still call it ‘the new gym.’”

Like everyone from that time, he remembers President John Kennedy’s assassination, the early space flights and, in October, 1962, the Cuban missile crisis.
“I remember thinking if we were going to get blown up or not,” he said. “We really didn’t understand what was going on at that point.”

Sheldon was promoted from elementary school in 1964 and attended Bloomfield South Junior High School.

He went to Bloomfield High School, played soccer for Coach Jim White, ran track and graduated in 1970.

“My father dropped out of Bloomfield High School to join the Navy,” he said. “It was during World War II and he was a pharmacist’s mate. He died when I was young so there were a lot of questions I never got to ask or have answered.”

His father, he said, worked as a salesman and manager for Swift’s Premium, the meat packing company, in Newark.

“He also worked nights in the post office and was a house painter on the weekends,” he continued, adding that his father was also involved with the Bloomfield Little League.
His mother was a homemaker who worked for the school district.

“She was a substitution teacher and became what they called ‘an elementary librarian,’” he said. “She ordered the books and helped repair them.”

Sheldon attended Bloomfield College, graduating in 1974, with a degree in business administration.
“I was a career banker,” he said. “I started working part-time while in college, at Bloomfield Savings Bank, downtown at ‘Six Points.’”

After college, he joined Union County Savings Bank, in Union, and worked his way up.
“I always loved history and biology,” he said. “But I was offered a job when I was in college, right across the street from the campus. I was going to stay with it until I found my real calling. But I stayed with it. I was always grateful I could work. Some people are sick, some people don’t want to work. I was 33 years without a sick day.”

Sheldon started as a teller and became the head teller, assistant bank manager, branch manager and retired in 2017 as an assistant vice-president. He has been married for more than 40 years, has three grandsons, from his son, in Ohio, and a girl on the way, from his daughter, in North Jersey. He had been with the Bloomfield Emegency Medical Services for 25 years, but said that was a younger man’s job. Needing something to do in retirement, he thought working as a school crossing guard was “perfect.”

The toughest part about his duty was inattentive drivers. Drivers do not necessarily obey the stop sign of a school guard or even the flashing red lights of a school bus. A week earlier, he said a car missed a turn near his post, lost control and came within two feet of hitting him. Nonetheless, he remained philosophical.

“After all you’ve been through in your life, you come full circle,” he said. “There are certain doors I prefer to keep closed, but not here. Sometimes I think I’m too long in Bloomfield, but it’s still my home. I’ve seen a lot of changes. My smell isn’t what it used to be, but I bet this school smells the same.”