How did you get to school when you were little? If you walked, there’s a good chance that you may have been assisted by the “big kids” on the school safety patrol. That certainly was true in Pleasanton in the 1940s, ’50s, and part way through the ’60s.
It was considered quite an honor to be selected to serve on what was locally known as the Alameda County Junior Traffic Reserve. Bob Trimingham, now a Seattle resident, took time out from planning the 60th reunion for Amador Valley’s Class of 1946 to find a photograph of the patrol for which he was captain from 1941-42, his eighth grade year. He towers over some of his younger schoolmates, all of them wearing what he described as “orange military-type caps” and armbands, the uniform of the day. Only boys were recruited for patrol duty here (although the author herself was captain of a similar group in the small town of Okanogan in eastern Washington).
Trimingham remembers the patrol boys would march to their one post, at Main and Abbie streets, by the Veterans Memorial Building. “A ‘squad’ consisted of three guys–two carrying stop signs and the third the ‘sergeant’ in charge,” he wrote. “The sergeant and the captain were the older guys, and the rookies carried the signs.” For taking on the responsibility of serving on the safety patrol, boys were given passes to see movies for free at the Roxy Theater on Main Street (where The Wine Steward is now located). Trimingham also has a program from a turkey dinner hosted for the patrol boys by the local Jaycees around the holidays, plus a certificate presented to the patrol members at an end-of-the-year assembly.
Local resident Paul Delucchi (Amador Valley High School Class of 1948) was one of the “rookies” that year. He remembered his sergeant would blow his whistle each time the patrol boys were to hold out their stop signs. Because First Street in those days was a dead end at the arroyo to the north, not yet connected to Stanley Boulevard, what little traffic there was jogged down Main Street, Delucchi said. He grew up on Stanley Boulevard in the block before Main Street and remembers how much traffic passed through, adjacent to where his father raised crops of tomatoes, sugar beets and barley on fields extending through what is now Jensen Tract, Alisal Elementary School and Amador Estates.
Thirteen years later, in 1954-55, safety patrol boys had a new look: Fred Martin remebers the pride he felt being selected for patrol duty and the thrill of going down to the school basement (when Pleasanton Elementary School served grades K-8 and faced Abbie Street) to try on the spiffy red jacket and white belt that diagonally crossed his chest, like the sash of an ambassador. A yellow garrison cap finished off the uniform. “On rainy days, we had yellow raincoats, and that was a big deal because my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a raincoat,” Martin said.
By then, the safety patrol boys manned five “posts” and there were three shifts each day because many children went home to eat lunch. After the morning shift, the squad would march back to the school, where they were given the privilege of pulling the thick rope to ring the bell in the tower that marked the official beginning of the school day.
“We had a dinner at Hearst Ranch [now Castlewood Country Club] with our dads,” he said, “but the really big thing was that every other year we got to ride on the California Zephyr train. They took us on a bus to Oakland and then we rode in the Vista Dome car to Stockton or Tracy. On the return trip, they would stop the train right here in Pleasanton to let us off. It was great!”
Asked what he learned from the safety patrol experience, Martin said without hesitation, “responsibility, respect for the law.” Friends have teased him that he also learned to love a uniform. After high school, Martin enlisted in the United States Army and worked for the United States Postal Service before entering a 30-year career with the California Highway Patrol.
Fellow patrol members included third-generation educator Don Hanifen (retired), former vice mayor and owner of the Cheese Factory George Spiliotopoulos (deceased), and District Attorney Tom Orloff. One aspect of patrol duty Orloff remembers was that when one of the two police cars that Pleasanton had back then passed by a safety patrol post, the patrol boys would snap to attention and salute, and the police officers would return their salute. “It did get you out of class,” he added. Orloff’s son, now 35, later served on the school safety patrol in Oakland, where the family now lives. “Unlike me, he worked his way up through the ranks,” Orloff said.
By the 1960s, Sgt. Joe Rose was in charge of the school safety patrol, bringing to the task his experience as a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War. “I wanted them to be like professionals, to take pride in being part of the community,” he said. “That’s why I held regular inspections, to make sure their shoes were shined and that their trousers and white shirts were clean.” Rose recalls that Tom Hart, for whom the newest middle school is named, was then principal of Pleasanton School and personally selected the boys who served on the patrol. They were supposed to be role models for the younger students.
One younger student was quite in awe of “the big kid with the belt and badge.” Lisa Lorentz, now a school district employee, remembers being yelled at by a patrol boy for cutting across a private lawn. “But I live here,” the Valley View kindergartener said sheepishly.
Why did school safety patrol vanish from Pleasanton? Rose is not sure, but thinks it may have had to do with the increased amount of traffic and the school district’s concerns about liability. Whatever the reason, there are more than 500,000 students–both boys and girlsñ-still serving on school safety patrols in other parts of the nation, according to the Automobile Association of America. AAA founded the program in 1916 and it has since spread to 30 different countries.
Police Chief Tim Neal said Pleasanton now staffs 22 adult crossing guards at the same number of intersections throughout the city for a total of $215,000 per year. When asked if he would ever consider reinstating school safety patrol, Neal–a veteran of the Santa Clara Safety Patrolñ-said “absolutely, though we would have to look at it from a liability standpoint first.” Several local elementary schools have evolved a variation of the safety patrol idea, which they call “valet service.” Starting at Mohr Elementary School and spreading to Lydiksen, Walnut Grove and Hearst elementary schools, the “valet” program trains students to assist with the drive-up traffic that now is more common than students walking to school. “They choreograph the orchestra of pulling up, dropping off and moving on,” Neal said of the valets, adding that the City Council recognizes their service each year with a proclamation and certificates.
In the “School Safety Patrol Operations Manual” that AAA has distributed around the world, they emphasize that “patrols direct children, not traffic,” because “only police officers or adult crossing guards can stop vehicles.” There are schools in all 50 states that still use volunteer student safety patrols.
