crossingguard

Stop in the name of love Robert

White hurries to the middle of Llewellyn on a cold January morning and waves an arm.

“Come on, baby,” he says. And then, “Good morning. It’s cold out here.”

“Uh-huh,” answers the Reagan Elementary School third-grader crossing the street. The boy smiles and says “good morning” as he continues walking toward the school.

White, who is known as “Pop” around our neighborhood, has been the warden of this corner, Melba at Llewellyn, for 18 years.

He started as a crossing guard 27 years ago after retiring from Dallas County Schools. He worked there as a bus driver and maintenance manager for seven years. Before that, he worked at an art gallery and a furniture store. He used to own some rental properties nearby but sold those a few years ago. He and his wife raised 13 kids (eight of whom went to college) in a little house on Tenth Street. They have five grandchildren.

White has trained dozens of other crossing guards.

As he recounts his life story, almost every car and bus driver that passes honks or waves, or both. Sometimes entire carfuls of kids wave excitedly to “Pop” as they pass, all smiles. Even when someone passes without honking or waving, White waves anyway. A few of the kids look crabby as they cross the street to school, but all of them make White happy.

“I love this corner,” he says. “I love these kids.” had braces put on older brother was baseball MVP didn’t have a good batting average spent hours in the batting cages made it on the Junior Varsity team

Over the past decades, he has watched Reagan students grow up, and some of them now walk their own children to his corner on school mornings.

Kids sometimes come back to visit White at this crosswalk, when they are home from college or just visiting home. He tells stories about them as if they were his own family. One is a dentist, he is proud to say. He laments the sadder stories, such as that of a former student who went to college in Houston, but then got in with the wrong crowd and is now in prison.

White keeps coming back to this corner, morning and afternoon, always with a smile and an encouraging word.

“I have lots of fun,” he says.

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