When Marissa Howard, Programs and Membership Coordinator at DeKalb History Center, sent this photograph to me, I thought perhaps it was a group of school safety patrol students. The group of students in the front have a sign that reads Morgan Falls, a former school in Sandy Springs I have written about before. The photograph is part of the Guy Hayes Collection in the DeKalb History Center archives.

I wondered if the groups of children may have been preparing to leave on the annual safety patrol trip by train to Washington, D. C. and in some years New York City also. I participated in the safety patrol at DeKalb County’s Pleasantdale Elementary School back in 1969 and 1970 but didn’t know the origins of the program or when it started. I also did not recall that it was associated with AAA, the American Automobile Association.

If you look closely, you will also see the name of two other Fulton County Schools at that time-Center Hill and Lakewood Heights Schools of Atlanta.  Several of the students are wearing badges and a few have on their safety patrol sash with the badge attached. There are quite a few suitcases.

I would guess based on the clothing and hats on the women that this photograph was taken in the 1950s.

American Automobile Association (AAA) started the School Boy Patrol in 1924 with the goal of decreasing traffic accidents around schools. In a 1926 statement, AAA announced “Thousands of boys already are enlisted in the service of local AAA clubs in patrol work and have proved themselves efficient and responsible guardians of the safety of the hundreds of thousands of school children whose lives they are safeguarding. (The Ithaca Journal, July 16, 1926, “Boy Patrols for Traffic Will Expand”)

Patrols were asked to help at crosswalks, open car doors for students being dropped off at school, and monitor hallways for running and rough housing.

I have fond memories of my safety patrol trip in 1970. Although the sites we visited are not foremost in my mind, the time spent riding on the train with friends was a lot of fun. The boys were in one car and girls in another, but we wrote notes back and forth.  

I asked a few people and a Chamblee High School alumni Facebook group if they would share their memories of the safety patrol trip, assuming they were patrols. One common memory was the discomfort involved in trying to sleep on a train.

The memories below are just a few of those shared by former safety patrol students that went on the Washington D. C./New York trip. I will share more in a future post.

Terri Joiner Jones went on the 1966 safety patrol trip as a student of Ashford Elementary School. She remembers box lunches on the train, a food fight and sitting on the Capital steps in D. C.

David Jackson of Cary Reynolds Elementary (Sequoyah) remembers “the misery of trying to sleep sitting upright in those train seats!” He went on the trip in 1965.

Susan Harvey Reeves, Michael Brown and Joe Putnal were all members of the safety patrol at Montgomery Elementary School in different years. Putnal went in 1969 and remembers how cold it was and the discomfort of trying to sleep in a train seat. It was snowing that year in New York City. Similar to my memories, he recalls the train trip more than sightseeing.

Ottis Moore recalls that about 30 boys from Our Lady of the Assumption School went on the trip in 1963. They had to sell “railroad carloads of Krispy Kreme donuts” to pay for the trip. Moore said he has been to both cities many times since, “but that one was special.” Patrick Connors and six other boys at OLA missed the trip after getting their fifth demerit two weeks before the trip. Connors admits to being someone who kept the patrols busy.

Look for more memories of the school safety patrol trip in an upcoming post. This trip for 7th grade students seems to be a memorable one for many!