Happy wake-up honks from the smiling waver
Carol Moore is a slight woman with a wide smile. She feels it is her duty to chase the morning blues away from the driver of every car that passes her on busy Marquette Street in Davenport.
Carol is a school crossing guard who shepherds kids across the traffic to Jefferson School, which is perched on a nearby hillside.
It is also her avowed personal responsibility to wave at the occupants of cars, trucks and motorcycles who drive by.
In the mornings before school begins, and on afternoons when the kids go home from school, Carol waves at the drivers of hundreds of cars. She gets the most response in the morning — between about 7 and 8:15 — when there are more cars heading down Marquette Street hill with their drivers going to work. It is not a bashful wave, but one that is sweeping. Mostly, there are honks of “thanks” for the wave.
“A morning wave cheers up people. It makes me happy, too, because practically all of them wave back.” Likely, 99.9 percent of the motorists don’t know her name. To the people behind the wheel, she is just “the happy waver.”
Joe Engel says, “I’m driving to work, thinking of all that’s ahead of me, and then I see her wave at me. For a couple seconds I forget everything else and just smile. Her wave makes me feel good.”
Carol has been a crossing guard for 14 years and can‘t recollect how she got into this habit of waving. “It just does me good to wave.”
On a recent chilly morning, when she was wearing ear muffs, I stood beside her at the curbside. She waved, waved, waved when not holding up a big red warning sign and guiding kids across Marquette Street.
One driver waved and yelled out an open window, “You make my day.” I returned a couple of afternoons later to watch her waving ritual. It was a gray drizzly day, but it was the same sunshiny waving “ceremony” to every passing car. Windshield wipers were criss-crossing; still, practically all motorists slowed to wave. One downhill driver rolled down his window and yelled, “C’mon honey, a big wave.” A FedEx driver beep-beeped twice when he and Carol exchanged waves.
This is not to say that everyone waves or slows down in the school zone where cars are to drive at no more than 25 mph.
“I’ve had a day when five cars ran the stop light at my spot,” Carol says. “They have even gone through the light when I was in the street with my sign. Isn’t that awful?”
Across from the school, Carol is a friend and good neighbor. Larry Webster, who lives nearby, has been in the hospital twice in the past few years.
“Carol has my house key. She brought in my mail and watered the plants while I was sick.”
A crossing guard’s life is not child’s play. She works 10 hours a week at $13 an hour. “But when there’s no school, there’s no pay,” she says.
Winter weather is rugged, standing in snow and ice and puffing steam to command the kids to “stay put.” Still, Carol waves nonstop to drivers.
“My hands get cold, but waving warms my heart,” she says.
Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.