They've been crossing guards for 50 years
A confident "OK" is all Claire Bauman needed to utter, and the kids of Cherry Hill's Horace Mann Elementary knew it was safe to shuffle across the street under the watchful gaze of the crossing guard.
A confident "OK" is all Claire Bauman needed to utter, and the kids of Cherry Hill's Horace Mann Elementary knew it was safe to shuffle across the street under the watchful gaze of the crossing guard.
Across town, at A. Russell Knight Elementary, Helen Nitz smiled as three young girls sporting bright backpacks made their way to Pearl Croft Road, where she stands watch. "These are my little ladies coming," she said. The girls offered "thank yous" as they walked across the street and Nitz held a stop sign to halt traffic.
As certain as the 3:30 p.m. dismissal, the students scurrying out of school with post-class grins, and the buses and parents arriving to scoop them up, is the expectation that Bauman, 87, and Nitz, 88, will be there to see it happen. It's what the two childhood friends have done for 50 years.
"In the snow, the rain, the sleet - she's out there," Nancy Welsh, 46, a Cherry Hill mother of four, said of Bauman while waiting for her 8-year-old daughter, Jessica, to finish school for the day. Welsh's oldest, Matthew, 16, also attended the school under Bauman's watch. "I think I can count the days she's missed on one hand."
That's because the two enjoy the job too much, Nitz said. They wake about 5 a.m., hours before they have to report to their locations at 8 a.m. for the first of two one-hour shifts that each pay $15.60 per hour, Nitz said. They return again at 3 p.m. in preparation for dismissal. Both live in Cherry Hill, within a short drive of their schools.
"This is good for senior citizens. The Vitamin D is free, and the fresh air keeps you young," Nitz said. "Right now it's a godsend, because I'm widowed - and this is my life."
On Tuesday, Cherry Hill will honor Bauman and Nitz at a Township Council meeting with proclamations for their half-centuries of service.
The women have seen a lot over five decades of crossing-guard duty. They've watched students passing through their streets transform into the parents waiting on the other side. And, if they have it their way, there will be no changing of the guard: Neither plans to retire.
"It gives me a good reason to get up in the morning," Bauman said on a recent afternoon, after parking her red Honda in a space next to the crosswalk reserved by a traffic cone. She laughs now at the fact that, when she took the job, she vowed it would be temporary.
It was 1965 and the Cherry Hill Police Department desperately needed new recruits for the guards. Bauman's late husband, John, then a town patrolman, and a colleague made a concerted effort to recruit the two, then both mothers and homemakers.
Nitz obliged, starting work Oct. 18 of that year. "I thought, 'Yeah, I'll try it,' " she said, remembering her first assignment at a bus stop near Church Road and Route 38. "I like the outdoors. I like kids. And it filled my day."
A month later, Bauman caved: She started Nov. 22, working at Woodcrest Elementary. "I said, 'All right, I'll give you one week,' " Bauman said. Two months later, still on the job, she was transferred to Horace Mann and her Walt Whitman Boulevard post. "Here I am 50 years later."
Stand at their posts long enough, and it's apparent that the two have become vigilant neighborhood watchwomen. Their daily observations make them experts on the small details: which children take the bus, which neighbors walk their dogs, when soccer practice is held.
"They become eyes and ears for the police department," Cherry Hill Police Chief William Monaghan said.
Monaghan admitted it's not a job he'd expect to command a "staying power for 50 years." The department today has about 50 permanent crossing guards throughout the town. Currently, Bauman and Nitz are the longest-serving department employees, he said, calling their work a "milestone."
Bauman, a Haddon Heights native, and Nitz, raised in Barrington, met in the first grade at St. Rose of Lima School in Haddon Heights. Bauman couldn't recall how it happened. Maybe in class, she said, or "jumping rope or playing hopscotch - those good things they don't do anymore."
They went on to graduate from Camden Catholic High School in 1946 and remained close friends. Their husbands died young: John Bauman in 1977; Carl Nitz, a Cherry Hill mechanic, in 1982.
Today, Bauman - a mother of two who lost her son, John Jr., last year - has three grandchildren. Nitz has four children, six grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. Their shared line of work has seemed to only strengthen their bond. They've taken trips to San Francisco and Vermont together, and dine together nearly every weekend.
On Saturdays, they'll often head to the Starview Diner in Somerdale for a soup ("she gets cream of crab; I get vegetable," Nitz said) and a sandwich (both like the turkey clubs and cheesesteaks).
They'll swap stories from the streets. There was that recent student at Russell Knight who arrived in a downpour with no umbrella. The summer-acclimated drivers who don't expect to encounter the guards when September rolls around. And the parents who can't help but jaywalk rather than use the crosswalks.
But those gripes pale in comparison with their enjoyment for their jobs.
Russell Knight principal Eugene Park said Nitz "just does her job well - and she does it with a smile on her face every day." Former students concur.
"When you're a little kid, some of the dumbest stuff can be the most traumatic - and she was always there to lift you right up," said Kathryn M. Laughlin, 39, who attended Russell Knight in the mid-'80s. Laughlin's family grew to know Nitz so well through crossing that Nitz babysat Laughlin and her brother, John, on occasion.
"There are so many of us that came from that small little development in Barclay Farms that have such fond memories of her," said Laughlin, an attorney in Ocean City. "She's the unsung hero in a lot of people's lives."
At Horace Mann, Bauman is "part of the fabric," principal Shilpa Dalal said. "Students and the parents and the teachers just depend on her. When they don't see her, they get thrown off."
The crossing-guard job, while largely the same as in 1965, has changed, too, Bauman and Nitz said. It once required a midday shift, because children would go home for lunch. Parents have become more protective, and fewer children walk to school.
And then there's the uniform. Now requiring a bright, neon vest, it once called for blue serge, a cape, gloves, and a hat. "This is what you get now," Nitz said, "which is OK."
Bauman hasn't retired her hat, though. She still wears it proudly, a silver police-style badge shining atop her head.
Each day, she brings it from home, along with her vest, for the first shift. During the day, she'll leave it on a hook installed by a janitor for her some years ago, and get geared up again when she returns for dismissal. It's a routine she wants to continue.
"Every June, the parents will go to me, 'You coming back in September?' " Bauman said. "And I say to them, 'Good Lord willing.' Here I am again."
856-779-3917 @AJFichera