Members of the AAA School Safety Patrol wore shoulder straps/belts with badge and carried red flags to halt traffic. Pittsfield began the program in 1932 and membership reached 300.

In 1952, the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp, featuring a depiction of the School Safety Patrol program, recognizing the 50th anniversary of the AAA.

In 1920 the American Automobile Association (AAA) initiated the national School Safety Patrol program for elementary schools and provided equipment as badges that wore proudly worn by members in the fifth and sixth grades.

Members of the AAA School Safety Patrol wore shoulder straps/belts with badge and carried red flags to halt traffic. Pittsfield began the program in 1932 and membership reached 300.

One of the proudest roles for a fifth or sixth grade baby boomer was to serve as a voluntary crossing guard as a member of the school safety patrol.

This honor entitled you to have a shiny metal badge identifying you as a member of the safety patrol with the AAA (American Automobile Association) sponsor name in the center, a white shoulder strap/belt and a red flag on a wooden dowel. More importantly you were allowed to be late for class and to leave early each day to get to the designated crosswalk to help the younger school children to cross safely.

However, this also meant being at the designated station a half hour earlier in the morning and leaving a half hour later each day whether there was rain, snow, sleet or sunshine.

Besides safely holding the flag to stop motorists and let children cross, you were to report the names of youngsters who ignored your directions and the license numbers and descriptions of cars that ignored the flags and violated safety measures.

There was a lot of competition in grade school for these positions and the selected few wore their badges with pride. I was fortunate to be a fill-in now and then when a member was unavailable.

In 1952, the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp, featuring a depiction of the School Safety Patrol program, recognizing the 50th anniversary of the AAA.

The first nationally recognized student safety patrol program was developed by the AAA just over 100 years ago. In 1920 Charles M. Hayes, president of the Chicago AAA branch, had the misfortune of seeing a car accident take the lives of several school children that were pedestrians.

Hayes then launched a traffic safety program for students that became the model for the national organization. In the 1930s the National Safety Council and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers collaborated in the development of the program and created training programs and guidelines that eventually became the operating standards for AAA School Safety Patrols.

In the 1920s and 1930s this program became paramount as the increasing popularity of the automobile had outpaced the development of traffic signs and signals. With traffic regulations in their infancy, youngsters walking to and from school needed some protection from the influx of new and often inexperienced drivers.

Independently many schools, communities and states had begun safety programs to offer children some protection. The AAA’s program brought the importance of student safety patrols to the forefront and provided a model that all communities could adopt. To support the program, AAA held rallies, educational events and campaigns throughout the country and even organized an annual safety patrol parade in Washington, D.C.

AAA credits this program for saving many lives of school-age children. On its website the organization states that the national pedestrian death rate per 100,000 children aged 5-14 had dropped from 10.4 in 1935 (the first year records were kept) to three in 1986.

By 2000, the death rate for pedestrians under age 10 was 0.81 per 100,000. Children in this age group used to have the second-highest fatality rate of any age group; today they have the lowest.

Experts credit School Safety Patrol programs with making a strong contribution to this significant improvement. Since the program’s inception millions of young people in 30 countries have been safety patrol members. Similar to the U.S., these countries have also experienced a significant reduction in student pedestrian fatalities.

Pittsfield’s School Department adopted AAA’s national program in 1932 with the first members at Tucker School. This new program was placed under the supervision of the traffic bureau of the Pittsfield Police Department.

In 1920 the American Automobile Association (AAA) initiated the national School Safety Patrol program for elementary schools and provided equipment as badges that wore proudly worn by members in the fifth and sixth grades.

By the late 1940s the program was operating in all 27 public and parochial schools in the city. The automobile organization provided all the badges, belts and flags for all of the schools and within a few years purchased yellow raincoats for all members.

Older baby boomers may remember Miss (Alice) Coffey, the schools’ supervisor of health and safety education, who coordinated the program along with Officer Merton Vincent and Capt. Camille Marcel, of the police traffic bureau.

Beginning in 1949 members, often called traffic boys, were invited to annual recognition banquets and outings where representatives from each school received awards. Presenters included the mayor, police chief and school superintendent.

In 1952 on the 20th anniversary of the local program, the recognition event was attended by 475 traffic boys from all of the Berkshire County communities, with 250 representing Pittsfield schools. Unfortunately, the program in Pittsfield was limited only to boys until 1959 when two females attending Notre Dame School (Marilyn Ross and Joanne Cyr) became legal members of the patrol.

In 1953 Pittsfield expanded its safety program by hiring 15 adult crossing guards who were mostly females. With more automobiles on the road and more students in the city during the baby boom spurt, the city felt adult participation was necessary.

The safety patrol program continued with the pre-teen participants working collaboratively with the adults. The student program maintained a roster of 300 members until 1980 and the number of adult crossing guards had reached 33 by then.

However, in the 1980s as the population of Pittsfield declined, and elementary and parochial schools began closing, the student safety patrol program waned and all but disappeared by the 1990s. The number of adult crossing guards was also reduced both due to the school closings and the impact on the city’s budget of the state’s Proposition 2 ½.

Over the years the introduction of more traffic controls, such as lights, crosswalks and school zone speed limits, along with greater motorist awareness, all contributed to the safety efforts, once the role of the school patrols.

The AAA School Safety Patrol program celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2020 and publicized that it still had 679,000 patrollers in 35,000 schools throughout the country. The organization credited the program for reducing pedestrian deaths of students aged 5-14 by another 24 percent since 2010.

Jim Shulman, a Pittsfield native living in Ohio, is the author of “Berkshire Memories: A Baby Boomer Looks Back at Growing Up in Pittsfield.” If you have a memory of a Berkshire baby-boom landmark, business or event you’d like to share or read about, please write Jim at jesjmskali@aol.com.

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