A guardian angel is remembered as a hero

Lynbrook crossing guard who saved boy’s life still honored after 60 years

Contributed by SteVe GroGAn

He was just a 9-year-old boy, a fourth-grader at Our Lady of Peace School on Merrick Road in Lynbrook. It was noon as he walked down Peninsula Boulevard, heading home for lunch on this damp and dreary April day.

The boy lived on Irwin Court, a short street just behind Flinch and Bruns Funeral Home, and a very short walk from the busy intersection of Peninsula Boulevard and Hempstead Avenue where the boy would cross to get home.

On this day, as always, the boy was met by the school crossing guard who helped protect the children crossing that busy intersection. The crossing guard greeted the small boy with a smile, took his hand, and began to cross him. They first crossed Hempstead Avenue to the northeast side of the intersection. Then, when the light changed again, and still holding his hand, she took him across Peninsula Boulevard, going south.

This day, however, would be different from all those other days of walking to and from school. It would be a day that the boy would forget for all those years, until recently.

The boy was Joe Calderone, and on this day, April 30, 1963, he witnessed one of Lynbrook’s most tragic accidents, an accident that took the life of the school crossing guard who held his hand just seconds before.

Three Lynbrook volunteer firefighters would also die along with Rosalie Roy at that intersection just moments after Calderone was crossed.

Calderone has never talked about what happened that day. He is now a grown man with his own child. He believes that until recently he blocked the tragedy out of his mind. What happened that day now bothers him, and recently he began thinking about the crossing guard who died. The memories all came back when he saw two crossing guards at an eatery in Franklin Square, and he began to think about Roy, and her own family.

Curious about that accident, Calderone went to the Lynbrook Fire Department website to see what was written about the accident and found the story written by this author. Calderone said he was “shocked how accurate the fire department story was.”

Even though it has been nearly 45 years since that deadly crash, what happened that day is still a vivid memory for Calderone. He knows he was the last person to be with Roy before she was killed.

Calderone sat down with Lynbrook Village Historian Art Mattson and myself to tell his story.

He recalled that while he walked down Peninsula Boulevard toward his home he heard the fire horns blowing. “They were loud,” he said. “The horns at the time were on top of the old Municipal Building on Merrick Road, just opposite the block where he lived. He also remem-