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.

Have you driven a Ford (on the beach) lately?

Just about every numbered highway in New Jersey has at least one: a car dealership. They're so commonplace that they'd almost be invisible, except for the giant flags and inflatable thingies dancing in the breeze created by passing traffic. It's hard to believe that there was a time when there were no dealers at all: no lots filled with rows and rows of cars, no salespeople asking what they needed to do to get you into "that" car today. Originally, most if not all auto manufacturers sold their products through catalogs and print advertisements.

Given its onetime status as America's Motor City, it's probably not surprising to discover that Detroit was the home of the first independent automobile showroom. However, the very first Ford dealership wasn't in Michigan, but in the resort town of Cape May, its founding the unintentional consequence of an auto race.

In the early days of the 20th century, manufacturers and hobbyists tested the latest and greatest cars on sand tracks and even on frozen lakes. The names of now-famous brands were participants, including Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet, who drove their own races.

Cape May's beach was lauded as an ideal spot for auto racing, prompted by the formation of the city's own automobile enthusiasts club in 1903. Two years later, more that 10,000 people flocked to the resort city for a weekend beach carnival that included three days of motor racing. All of the big names were expected to be there, including Chevrolet (driving a Fiat), Ford, professional racer Walter Christie and a host of others.

According to the August 31, 1905 issue of The Motor World, Ford was delayed in reaching Cape May for the August 25 races, forcing him to drive his 60 horsepower car without benefit of making necessary tuneups. The auto magnate came in dead last in a field of four, with eyewitnesses later claiming that a sudden wave had overtaken his car, literally washing out his lead.

Reports of the time say nothing of it, but legend has it that Ford was counting on winning the race so he could use the prize money to pay for his accommodations at the Stockton Inn. Lacking those funds, he offered the hotel manager stock in Ford Motor Company, which had gone public only a year earlier. No dice. Maybe the manager was skeptical about Ford's viability, or maybe he was simply risk averse, but he wanted cash.

Dan Focer, sitting in the Model F he bought
directly from Henry Ford.

Ford then looked to the unquestionably valuable assets he had with him. Besides his race car, he'd brought a Model F sedan, which he offered to local resident Dan Focer for $400. To sweeten the deal, he promised to make Focer the first dealer of Ford vehicles. An engineer on the West Jersey Railroad, Focer agreed to the transaction and started selling cars in Cape May three years later, around the same time Ford began using the production line to manufacture cars. He later took on J.E. Mecray as a partner in the dealership.

As for Ford, he left Cape May with his accounts settled. A few years later, he and a partner purchased land in the city, with the vision of building transatlantic shipping facilities to import cars to Europe. However, nothing became of the plan.

Focer and Mecray reportedly went out of business in 1937, though the WPA Guide to 1930s New Jersey claims that the "First Ford Agency" on Washington Avenue was still displaying the car in 1938. Regardless, the vehicle hasn't been seen publicly in quite some time. It was last known to be with a now-defunct Ford dealership in Chester, PA.

Get your kicks on Route ... which Route is this?

It should come as no shock that we Hidden New Jerseyans spend a lot of time on the road, whether it be for birding or to scout out more obscure history. From time to time, we've highlighted a couple of those roads, like the Pulaski Skyway and the White Horse Pike, and of course, the mighty Turnpike, but we've never talked much about the numbered roads, with the exception of the shortest one.

Between us, Ivan and I are at least reasonably conversant about the highways that criss-cross the state, so when we led a talk at the Sussex County library this past summer, we felt pretty confident in answering an audience member's question about the road system in place during the Cat Swamp hijacking of 1921. But as only lifelong residents can, another audience member clarified, "Route 46 was Route 6 then."

Ah, yes. Forget about traffic: our roads have the power to confuse on a whole different dimension.

A treatise on the history of New Jersey's road system could go on for thousands of words. Suffice to say it's been a continual work in progress since the Lenape discovered that spending the summer down the shore was a pretty great idea. With the arrival of European settlers, some of the natives' paths became carriage and stagecoach routes and eventually some of the roads we know so well today. Others were forged by the newcomers, using the best technologies of the day to surmount environmental challenges that had frustrated earlier efforts. Paterson Plank Road in the Meadowlands, for example, was paved literally with wood planks that prevented horses and carriages from sinking into the murky marsh.

Corporations were initially chartered in the early 18th century to build a series of turnpikes, but over time, investors shifted their money into canals and railroads, leaving many roads underfunded. By the dawn of the 20th century, the state had assumed ownership and maintenance of the derelict pikes. The 1916 Egan Good Roads Bill established funding for 13 numbered state highways, with routes largely linking the state's larger cities. Additional legislation the following year established two more roads and a state highway department; one more road was added in 1921.

At that point, the barn door was open. The increasing number of motorists wanted a decent road to drive on, and the business community was clamoring for well-maintained highways to get raw materials to factories and finished product to market. I don't know if frustration with state bureaucracy had anything to do with it, but local politicians started to take matters into their own hands. By 1930 the miles of paved road in New Jersey had doubled, engendering confusion along the way. In their zeal to get roads into service, local authorities had started numbering them with no regard for how other highways in the state were labeled. As a result, drivers could drive one Route 18 from Camden to Toms River, another 18 between Penns Grove and Atlantic City, or from Hoboken to Alpine. A realignment in 1923 helpfully added "N" or "S" to some road designations, but seriously? This was supposed to make sense?

Yet another law in 1927 sought to regain some order statewide, renumbering roads within a system that added logic to the mix. Routes 1 through 12 were in the northernmost part of the state, 21 through 28 originated in or near Newark, 29 through 37 started in Trenton, 38-47 radiated from Camden, and 48 through 50 were in the southernmost reaches. Still, though, Route 25 eventually spawned a series of roads called S-25, 25-A, 25-AD, 25-B, 25-M and 25-T.

Then there was the confusion between the state highway numbering system and the federal designations. State 29, at one point, shared pavement with U.S. 22 for several miles before the two routes diverged. It wasn't till 1953 that the mess was finally settled with a set of rules that forbade giving a state road the same number as a Federal road, assured that numbers matched when New Jersey roads flowed into New York or Pennsylvania, and declared that roads could not have both a state and Federal number. And clarifying another issue brought up with the new "superhighways," neither the Garden State Parkway nor the New Jersey Turnpike would have route numbers, though they'd earlier been assigned the numbers 400 and 100, respectively. The now-familiar "black square surrounding white circle" state road sign design was also introduced starting in 1954.

We often joke about needing to be 'from here' to know where the roads go, but imagine the confusion launched 60 years ago by all of the changes. Cartographers raced to make the necessary changes to their products, with the State Highway Department spending 250 staff hours updating the official map. Officials had already coordinated with the gasoline companies and motorists' clubs to ensure that their courtesy maps reflected the new reality of New Jersey roads.

The old state highway signs are long retired, but you can still find vestiges of the old numbering system on some of the aging bridges of the earlier highways. Look for the aggregate cement structures along the outer shoulders of the road, and you might see an unfamiliar road designation set, literally, in stone.

A potentially Titanic life cut short

A lot is being said today about the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the unfortunate deaths of over 1500 people in the icy waters of the Atlantic. I'll be thinking about one of a handful of New Jersey notables to perish on the ship, Trenton native Washington A. Roebling, II. The 31 year old son of Charles, the president of John A. Roebling's Sons Company, Washington was returning to the United States after touring Europe with business associates. He hadn't been discussing bridges or wire rope, though; he was all about automobiles.

Washington Roebling II memorial at the family plot
in Riverview Cemetery in Trenton. 

Young Washington had worked at the family business for a few years before taking an interest in the nascent car manufacturing industry. In the days before the Ford, Chrysler and General Motors became the Big Three, there were dozens of small automobile companies around the country, including a high end brand owned by William Walter, a family friend. Seeing an opportunity when Walter ran into financial trouble, Washington was among several partners who purchased the company, moved it from New York to an old brewery plant in Trenton and renamed it the Mercer Automobile Company.

Like his father and uncles, Washington was a talented engineer, a skill that came to great use in designing and building high-performance cars. He didn't just make them, though; he drove them, too, to some success. Competing behind the wheel of his custom-designed Roebling Planche racer, he took second place honors at the Vanderbilt Cup Race in 1910.

Washington chose to take the maiden voyage of the Titanic after touring Italy and France with his friend Stephen Weart Blackwell and chauffeur Frank Stanley. Rather than bringing a Mercer to Europe, Washington took a Fiat, which seems kind of like bringing pork roll to Trenton. A Night to Remember, the seminal chronicle of the experiences of upper class Titanic passengers, says little about Washington, other than relating his calm and helpful demeanor in helping women into lifeboats. Those whom he helped said he assured them they'd be all right and possibly even back on the ship by daybreak. If he'd heard about the severity of the damage to the ship, he was well aware that staying on board would lead to certain death, but he followed the gentlemen's code of the day and remained.

One can only wonder what Washington might have achieved with the Mercer Automobile Company had he lived to old age. The few Mercers still around are treasured as specimens of some of the finest auto engineering of the day. Perhaps Trenton would have become a mecca for high-performance racing, or the Mercer would be prized along with the Porsche and Lamborghini.

Incidentally, the Fiat didn't go down with the ship. Stanley had fallen ill in Europe and left a week later, taking the car with him.