Maggie Poston is finally ready to retire – at 90.
Since 1978, the widowed mother of two has been a crossing guard at PS 282 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, between 6th Avenue and Lincoln Place – which locals often call “Miss Maggie’s Corner.”
“She’s always at her station, never sitting,” Poston’s supervisor, school crossing coordinator Ida Ripo-Ramos, told the Post.
Poston was 44 when she started working. Jimmy Carter was president, Ed Koch was mayor, the Bee Gees were topping the charts, and “Grease” had just hit theaters.
She worked in retail in Montgomery Ward, but the department store closed the location she was at.
A friend told her about the open crossing guard position and she jumped at the chance.
“I was looking for a job,” she remembers. “I love children.”
Every morning at 9:30 a.m. and then at noon, the little light is posted in its corner.
One spring day, a woman pushed a stroller in front of Poston, then turned around to declare, “She’s awesome!” »
The crossing guard humbly acknowledged the compliment, saying with a smile, “Everyone knows me. »
In winter, it is usually held on the street side of the school. In summer, she crosses the village to enjoy the shade of the trees on the other side.
Poston doesn’t mind snow much, but “on rainy days it’s terrible,” she said.
In over 45 years of work, she has hardly ever taken a day off.
“She has, I don’t even know, maybe 1,000 hours of sick leave accrued. She doesn’t take it,” said Ripo-Ramos, who has known her for 18 years. “She surprises me.”
Between shifts, she walks nearly a mile to her rent-controlled fourth floor walk-up in Prospect Heights, where she bides time in various ways but never naps between shifts — for fear return to work late.
On weekends, she attends church and spends time with her two children and her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
In more than four decades of standing at the same intersection, she has noticed little change.
“It’s nice, calm. Everyone minds their own business,” she said.
She admitted there was “more traffic now” but said everyone still “obeyed” her.
“I have no problem,” she said of the growing number of cars and drivers. “I tell them to stop, they stop. I tell them to leave, they leave.
When Poston turned 90 in January, his colleagues were surprised.
“I thought she was 83,” Ripo-Ramos said.
Later this month, at the end of the school year, she will hang up her yellow reflective vest. In retirement, she hopes to see more of the world and take a trip to Jamaica.
“I have worked all my life. My whole life,” she said. “It’s time to travel.”
New York Post
