A Royal Sendoff

If life has brought you past the busy corner of Heaton Park Drive and Coventry Road on early weekday mornings or mid-afternoons, you might have seen a tall woman in a navy blue uniform leading school kids and their parents safely to and from .

For the past 10 years, crossing guard Jean Williams has so brightened the corner where she worked that the neighborhood was a little shocked last week to learn she was hanging up her blinking red stop sign and bright yellow-and-orange sash for good.

“We just found out you’re retiring,” said Karen Kersting last Wednesday, stopping to chat with daughter Liana on one of the week’s last cool mornings. The mother of three said she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the thought, since Williams has been part of her family’s school life since her oldest – now a freshman in high school – was in kindergarten. “We don’t know what to think,” she said. “You’re part of our morning!”

While she’s happy Miss Williams — as the kids call her — won’t have to work so hard in the future, Kersting said, she’s “really sad to see her go.”

Turns out the beloved crossing guard – mother of four and grandmother of six – was herself in two minds about leaving this job.

On one hand, she said, she figured she might as well enjoy retirement, since she’s still relatively healthy – her leukemia is in remission and she can walk just fine.

“I’m 65,” Williams said. “A lot of people don’t get to be that old.”

But leaving the families she’s come to love wasn’t anything she looked forward to.

Over the years, she’s come to know everyone’s name – and temperament.

“I’m going to miss my babies too,” she said, glancing down the street to see who was headed her way next. “There’s Eli right there,” she said. “He’s already got a mood.”

She raised her voice to reach one of her favorite 7-year-olds, who was trudging up the slow hill with his mother, but was still a half-block away.

“Cool down before you get up here,” she teased in her distinctive voice, which holds the feel of a laugh if not the sound.

Sara Maughan – who joined forces with Kersting to ensure Williams got a proper farewell – said her son was having one of those mornings. He likes his routines unvaried, she said, and the morning had involved some last minute changes so Maughan and her camera could be there early enough to snap portraits of the children on Williams’ route.

On the first day of pictures, her middle son wasn’t yet ready for his.

Williams wasn’t worried. She knew Eli would come around.

What she didn’t know until Friday was how many other families wanted to tell her what she meant to them. They surprised her Friday afternoon with bouquets of pink roses and bright yellow sunflowers, gift cards and cash, and a leather-bound photo album filled with smiling faces and hand-written goodbye notes.

“We wanted to do something special for her,” Maughan said. “My thought was if I had put in 10 years of service somewhere, I would want something to commemorate my time.”

So she gathered the children’s pictures into an album, and brought the book to Fernbank Elementary on Friday morning for everyone to sign. The curved stone bench some neighbor had put in for the crossing guard got a page of its own.

It was pure serendipity, Maughan said, that the man who walked up to her in the cafeteria that day turned out to be the one responsible for the bench. Though she didn’t get his name, she had him sign her photograph of the resting spot that will forever remind this neighborhood of its favorite safety officer.

Talking about the grand farewell days later, Williams said she had enjoyed it so much – and had been completely surprised.

“I didn’t think that many people cared that much about me,” Williams said on Monday. “People in the cars stopped too, told me how much they would miss my smiles in the morning time and my hellos. I never had anything like that happen to me before.”

She’s been through a lot over the years, she said, including losing her husband in 1984 and her oldest son in 1995. Along the way, she said, she’s learned a lot of things people just don’t realize – chiefly, “be sweet to kids and kids will be sweet to you.”

“Our kids don’t get enough love,” she said. “People don’t realize they need to cherish their kids as long as possible, because when they get to 12 or 13, all they’re interested in is their peer group and they don’t want to be bothered with us. You’ve got to give them all you got while you’ve got them.”

Sara Maughan said Williams’ sweetness to her kids on her route included handing out small gifts each year on the last day before Christmas.

The corner won’t be the same without her, she said. And she wasn’t ready to start thinking about who’d be standing guard there next year.

“I couldn’t pick a better place to retire from,” Williams said. “I loved the kids – but I love the people too, because they were beautiful.”

Oh – she added – remember the little one that didn’t want to have his picture taken that first day? Eli? Turns out he came back at the end, gave her a hug and posed for a photo.

“I’m gonna miss them,” Williams said. “They’re all my babies.”