Look both ways before you cross: Newark's groundbreaking school safety patrols

Back a few years ago, our visit to Newark's Military Park revealed that America's first school safety patrol was established in New Jersey's largest city in May 1916. According to a commemorative plaque placed by the Schoolmen's Club, Newark Schools Attendance Supervisor Charles MacCall and Officer Felix Dunn of the city's police department recommended that the board of education start the patrol to make sure that children learned to cross the street safely on their way to and from school.

What sounds like a pretty obvious concept now -- why wouldn't a kid know to wait to cross the street until cars passed or came to a stop for them -- wasn't at the time. Automobiles were a fairly recent phenomenon, and as traffic increased, the simple act of crossing the street became fraught with potential injury. Guard stationed at intersections and crosswalks would make sure kids passed safely while drumming the "look both ways, then cross" mantra into their brains. The Newark program brought it one step further by enlisting students as guards, perhaps thinking that kids would be more likely to listen to their peers.

In researching the program, I found that the school safety patrol concept, like many good ideas, has been claimed by many parents. It took a while for me to find a non-Schoolmen's reference that placed citing the birth of Newark's program before others. Some branches of the American Automobile Association claim that AAA originated the idea in 1920, while cities like St. Paul, Minnesota proudly state that their safety programs took root in the early 1920s.

To be fair, AAA once recognized that safety patrols seem to have sprung up in many areas at around the same time. A 1940 New York Times article said that the organization was attempting "to find and to honor the far-sighted leaders who pioneered the movement." By then, 300,000 children had donned the familiar safety patrol belts to help to keep their peers safe from oncoming traffic.

Even the originators of the Newark movement seem to be in question. A 1949 obituary states that Eugene Sheridan, not MacCall, was the public schools attendance bureau director who came up with the idea and worked with Dunn to implement it. I haven't been able to clear up the discrepancy, but I discovered that Sheridan was lauded by the AAA as one of several pioneers at a massive safety patrol parade in Washington, DC in 1941. By the time he retired, almost 3400 Newark youngsters were serving as guards, and no fatal accidents had occurred at any of the patrolled intersections or crosswalks since the start of the program.

Dunn headed the Newark School Safety Patrol from its formation in 1917 until his retirement in 1930, and while he did so much to ensure childrens' safety on the road, his family was touched by a car accident. In 1933, he was driving with his wife from Fort Lauderdale to Newark when a tire on their car blew out and the car overturned. Mrs. Dunn died from her resulting injuries, while Mr. Dunn suffered only minor injuries.

Who belongs to Newark's Schoolmen's Club, and are they still around?

Not far from Newark's Liberty Pole are a few more historic markers of varying ages and topics. Like the Pole marker, at least one bears the curious legend of being erected by the Newark Schoolmen's Club, with the assistance of the pupils of the city's public school system.

I haven't been able to find very much about the Schoolmen's Club, but the website Old Newark describes the organization this way:

Look closely at the bottom of this marker,
and you'll see an acknowledgement
of the Newark Schoolmen's Club

"To inspire the future with a record of the accomplishment of the past, the Schoolmen's Club assisted by the pupils of the Newark Public Schools has, since 1911, celebrated "Newark Day" each year by placing in certain prominent or hallowed locations tablets of enduring bronze commemorating significant events and outstanding personages in the rich history of our city, the "town on the Pesayack" founded in 1666."

Wow... one would hope that the Schoolmen might have gotten the author of that passage a primer on run-on sentences. I ran out of breath just typing that.

A Google search revealed that the organization had published a book that contained all of the information immortalized on the bronze plaques placed around town. The idea was that "the children of Newark, like the Athenian youth shall leave our city not only not less but greater and better than it was transmitted to them." A noble intent, indeed.

The Old Newark website only lists plaques up to 1941. However, the final word on the group may just have come from Charles Cummings, who was, until his death, Newark's official historian. In one of the series of columns he wrote for The Star Ledger, he chronicled the many memorials and statues downtown, also mentioning the Schoolmen's Club. According to the 2004 story, the group had erected historical tablets until "just recently." Whether that means they stopped after the turn of the century or many years before, it's hard to tell.

It's admirable that an organization was so imbued with civic pride that they'd make the effort to uncover history and then raise sufficient funds to cast it in brass and post it for all to see. Newark's nearly 350 years of existence have been both tumultuous and productive, and I doubt anyone with knowledge of its history would deny there's a lot to trumpet. I wonder how many of the Schoolmen's plaques are still within view of the general public? I have to believe that a few of the old office buildings have them hanging on their exterior walls.

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out whenever I go downtown.